SARK. 
EW persons who spend a holiday in the Channel Islands fail to 
visit Sark, if only for the sake of its magnificent coast 
scenery. Throughout the summer months there are daily 
excursions by steamer from Guernsey, and the passage only occu- 
pies an hour: but it must not be imagined that a hurried scamper 
over the island will suffice to see what is worth seeing. On the 
‘contrary, there is quite enough to interest a lover of nature for a 
week, and still leave much to be explored. 
Like all the other members of this small archipelago, the main 
island is surrounded by a multitude of smaller islands and rocks, 
some of them wave-washed and bare, some covered with vegetation 
and peopled by seabirds which resort there to breed. ‘ Nowhere 
can the destroying power of the sea be better studied,’ says Ansted, 
“than in the grand scenes presented at every point round this re- 
markable island. Detached portions of the main island—others 
nearly detached and only connected by natural bridges or narrow 
necks of land—huge vaults through which the sea dashes at all 
times, or into which it penetrates only at high water—fragments of 
rock of all dimensions, some jagged and recently broken, some 
rounded and smooth—vast piles of smaller rocks heaped round : all 
these offer abundant illustrations of nature’s course when the ele- 
ments meet on the battlefield of an exposed coast, the tidal wave 
undermining and tearing asunder even the hardest porphyries and 
granites, however they may seem to present a bold front, and bear 
the reputation of being indestructible.’ 
Unlike the island of Guernsey, which is wedge shaped, and has 
the high part lying on the south, sloping gradually northwards, Sark 
is an almost level tableland, elevated 350 feet above the sea, with 
but few valleys, and surrounded at nearly all points by lofty and 
almost perpendicular cliffs. In outline the island may be roughly 
compared to an hour-glass, or an elongated figure 8; or perhaps 
more correctly, to a double loop, the two portions being of unequal 
size, and connected by a short line. This connecting line is the 
famous Coupée—‘ the glory of the Channel Islands,’ as it has been 
termed—a narrow isthmus 200 yards long, 300 feet high, and only a 
few feet wide at the top, so that from the pathway along the ridge 
