12 _ GUERNSEY. 
The Chapel of St. Apolline, at St. Saviour’s, is the last remaining 
one of the chapels erected for Christian worship before the building 
of the parish churches. It is the oldest building in the island, 
belonging to some early period anterior to the Norman Conquest. 
Conjecture has variously assigned its erection to the eighth, ninth, 
or tenth century. This chapel is fairly well preserved, and bears. 
traces of rude frescoes on some of its walls. 
All along the coast of the lowlands, in suitable places, the in- 
teresting and picturesque custom of seaweed-gathering may be seen 
in full operation. This seaweed, or wrack (termed in the patois 
vrac), is largely used by the farmers for manuring the ground for 
certain crops, and they collect it in great quantities at various 
seasons. What may be called the harvest of the sea is secured by 
two methods : wrack-cutting, or detaching the Awcus from the rocks. 
with billhooks, a process strictly regulated by law, and only per- 
mitted for certain weeks twice in the year ; and wrack-gathering, or 
the raking in of Zamtnaria and other seaweed washed ashore after a 
storm, and this is allowed from sunrise to sunset throughout the 
year. 
The entire northern end of Guernsey falls within the parish of 
the Vale, which possesses the greatest extent of coast line, as well as 
the largest piece of unenclosed land in the island, viz., Lancresse 
Common, a fine expanse of undulating sandy ground a mile and a. 
half long. The Vale is famous for its granite quarries, which are 
very numerous, and furnish the bulk of the stone exported from 
Guernsey. The Castle of St. Michael (better known as the Vale 
Castle, a very interesting and picturesque relic of the tenth ‘century 
or a little later’ is at the present moment seriously imperilled by 
the extension of a hideous granite quarry almost underneath its. 
foundations. 
Two ancient structures still exist at St. Sampson’s. First, the 
Parish Church, one of the three in the Channel Islands built, it is- 
said, in the year ri11 (St. Brelade’s in Jersey, and St Anne’s in 
Alderney being the others)—it was completely mantled with ivy 
until a few years ago, but now it is shorn of its glory; and, secondly, 
an ivy-covered ruin known as Ivy Castle, but properly named 
Le Chateau des Marais, or the Castle of the Marshes. Tradition 
says it was built by Robert, Duke of Normandy, the father of 
William the Conqueror. The town of St. Sampson’s is a busy little 
place on account of the stone trade, most of the granite exported 
being shipped from there. 
The parish of St. Andrew’s, which occupies the entire central 
portion of the island, abounds in pretty lanes, but it does not border 
the sea, and consequently it lacks an element of charm and beauty 
which its sister parishes share in common. 
I had intended to devote a page or two to the curious dialect 
which is still in use among the rural population of Guernsey, an 
