INTRODUCTION. 3 
‘inhabitants number about 1500, besides a garrison of 300 or 400 
soldiers. 
Sark, which is commonly termed the gem of the Channel Islands, 
is distant alout seven miles east from Guernsey. It is a little 
smaller than Alderney, and its resident population hardly numbers 
more than 600 or 700, but this figure is largely augmented during 
the summer by the influx of visitors. 
Herm is a small island about a mile and a half long, situated 
midway between Guernsey and the northern extremity of Sark The 
census of 1891 gives the number of inhabitants as thirty-eight. 
Jethou, pronounced /e/Zo, is only half the size of Herm, from 
which it is separated by a narrow channel. Only one or two 
families reside on the island throughout the year, and not more 
than about fifty acres of ground are available for cultivation. 
On examining a chart it will be seen that all the islands, rocks, 
and shoals which collectively compose what are called the Channel 
Islands are naturally divided into four distinct groups separated by 
wide channels: 1, a northern group, comprising Alderney, the island 
of Burhou, and the Casquet Rocks; 2, a western group, comprising 
Guernsey, Jethou, Herm, and Sark; 3, a south central group, com- 
prising Jersey and several clusters of rocks towards France; and 4, 
a southern group, comprising the Minquier Rocks, the Chausey 
Islands, and some outlying reefs. The Chausey Islands, which 
belong to France, consist of a number of small islets situated about 
eight miles from Granville. 
The ancient names of the islands. as known to the Romans, 
were Caesarea for Jersey, Sarnia for Guernsey, and Azduna for 
Alderney. ‘The word Sarnia has sometimes been used by writers as 
though it applied to the whole of the Channel Islands collectively, 
but this is altogether a mistake; Sarnia signifies Guernsey ex- 
clusively. In French the name takes an intermediate e, which 
changes it into a word of three syllables—Guernesey. Sark also 
undergoes a change both in spelling and pronunciation, becoming 
Servcg in French, and Alderney assumes the Latinised form of 
Auregny or Aurigny. The names of the others are similar in both 
languages. 
In a constitutional and ecclesiastical sense the smaller islands, 
Alderney, Sark, Herm, and Jethou, are dependencies of Guernsey, 
so that all of them together, or, in other words, the whole of the 
Channel Islands which lie to the north of Jersey, constitute what is 
termed in legal phraseology the Bazliwick of Guernsey. It is this 
area which forms the subjeet of the present volume. 
There can be no doubt that the Channel Islands are the 
remaining vestiges of a territory which at some period in the remote 
past stretched away into the Atlantic Ocean,—stony hill-tops which 
have managed to keep their summits above the encroaching sea, and 
so have become islands. Geologists tell us that the separation of 
