122 CHURCH HOPE. 



out of the rock brings tlie traveller to a far more 

 ancieut structure, wliicli tradition assigns to 



*' — That red king who, while of old 

 Through Bolderwood the chase he led. 

 By his loved huntsman's arrow bled." 



It is named indifferently Eufus Castle or Bow-and- 

 arrow Castle, from the square loop-holes with which 

 its solid walls are pierced. A single square tower 

 remains, on the summit of an almost isolated mass of 

 rock scarcely more than commensurate with itself, 

 along which the road winds forty feet deep, through 

 the arch of a bridge, which leads to the castle-door 

 from the adjacent heights. 



A most magnificent prospect expands as we pass 

 under this bridge. We are on the verge of a preci- 

 pice, with a Kttle cove below, called Church Hope, 

 the only landing for a boat along this coast. Broken 

 masses of stone are heaped in the wildest confusion 

 on every side, and all up the craggy slopes — a wilder- 

 ness of grey stone, of which the aspect is painfully 

 desolate, and, so to speak, ruined. A steep and diffi- 

 cult road has been cut down to the beach, and about 

 half-down is a hollow, whither the inhabitants resort 

 for water. Beneath a stone a stop-cock is inserted, 

 that none may be wasted of a fluid so precious : a 

 woman with her pails coming down informed me that 

 every drop they drink has to be fetched in this labo- 

 rious manner, and carried up the steep precipice. To 

 make it worse, the spring fails in droughts, when they 

 must resort still lower, to a little stream that breaks 

 out of the cliff below. 



