100 LUNDY ISLAND. 



locality, we know not what answer can be returned. 

 The only suggestion that appears at all probable to 

 my own mind, is, that it may have been the baptismal 

 font of some very ancient chapel, of which no other 

 vestige now remains. Even its hard and solid sub- 

 stance nas begun to yield to the gnawing tooth of 

 time, " tempus edax rerum;" for the vicissitudes 

 of the seasons are already dissolving the bond which 

 united the heterogeneous materials of feldspar, mica, 

 and quartz, in one mass ; and disintegrated nodules 

 of the last-named substance are lying loosely in the 

 concavity, as if a smart hail-storm had just expended 

 itself. 



"We could not leave the island without paying a 

 visit to the lighthouse. We had watched, evening 

 after evening, from the thronged promenade of Cap- 

 stone Hill, its brilliant torch-like flame, as it appeared, 

 first a tiny spark, gradually increasing to a ruddy 

 glare, then waning to a spark again, and, after a few 

 seconds of total darkness, reappearing, to go through 

 a similar evolution. Night after night, on those warm 

 dewy summer evenings, had we lingered on the rocks, 

 with scores of other idlers as interested as ourselves, 

 to mark the first appearance of the light on distant 

 Lundy, and, watch in hand, to count the moments 

 which, with unvarying regularity, elapsed between the 

 successive revolutions. 



The lighthouse, which has been built rather more 

 than thirty years, is placed on the highest summit of 

 the island, a point not quite five hundred feet above 



