1 8 ALONGSHORE « 



just reach the sea-wall, they pile the shingle on 

 the top of the beach; but should they run well 

 against the wall, then they rake the beach away, 

 sweeping it east or west. The northerly off-shore 

 wind which usually follows, lifts the shingle up- 

 wards, first making at high-water mark steep cops, 

 or banks, that are bad to land against; and, finally, 

 though the sea inshore be ever so calm, digging 

 out guUies with hog-backed mounds between them; 

 a formation which curiously resembles the guUies 

 on the flanks of chalk downs. 



Yet nothing can be accurately predicted of the 

 beach. Winds, waves, tides— high or low, long 

 or short — and even the weather in the Western 

 Ocean may differ in a thousand ways as to strength 

 and time, and all exercise their due combined effect; 

 likewise the lay of the land. High water itself is 

 seldom or never punctual to the tide-table. One 

 morning last year high water ought to have been 

 not later than eight o'clock. A stifflsh breeze had 

 been blowing the day before, but at peep o' day the 

 sea, though still leaden and troubled, as it always Is 

 after strong winds, was not too rough for launching 

 a small boat. Just before six, however, a lobster- 

 potter was nearly capsized by three huge ground- 

 swells that suddenly rose and broke outside his 



