4 JANUAKY. 



the south-west ; and as it approaches with its huge undu- 

 lations driven up into foaming crests before the howling 

 gale, each mighty wave breasts up against these rocks, 

 as when an army of veteran legions assaults an impreg- 

 nable fortress. Impregnable indeed ! for having spent 

 its fury in a rising wall of mingled water and foam, it 

 shoots up perpendicularly to an immense elevation, as 

 if it would scale the heights it could not overthrow, 

 only to lie the next moment a broken ruin of water, 

 murmuring and shrieking in the moats below. The 

 insular peaks and blocks receive the incoming surge in 

 an overwhelming flood, which, immediately, as the spent 

 wave recedes, pours off through the interstices in a 

 hundred beautiful jets and cascades ; while in the 

 narrow straits and passages the rushing sea boils and 

 whirls about in curling sheets of snowy whiteness, 

 curdling the surface ; or, where it breaks away, of the 

 most delicate pea-green hue, the tint produced by the 

 bubbles seen through the water as they crowd to the 

 air from the depths where they were formed, the evi- 

 dence of the unseen combat fiercely raging between earth 

 and sea far below. 



The shrieking gusts, as the gale rises yet higher and 

 more furious, whip off the crests of the breaking billows, 

 and bear the spray like a shower of salt sleet to the 

 height where we stand; while the foam, as it forms 



