VIEW FROM BABBICOMBE CLIFF. 33 



Tor, whose front of white marble has been laid bare by 

 the quarriers. Beyond this is the ruddy sandstone 

 once more rising into lofty headlands of noble shapes. 

 At the foot of one of these an isolated rock, called, from 

 its figure, the Bell, stands in the sea, where, even while 

 I am writing this paper, a mournful tragedy has occurred. 

 Two Babbicombe fishermen went out at midnight to 

 examine their crab-pots at this rock, and did not re- 

 turn. The morning revealed the keel of the boat 

 bottom-up, moored by the pot-lines, and one poor 

 fellow entangled by his feet in the same lines, while 

 the sea washed his hair about the surface. The other 

 has not yet been found. 



Farther on, the bluff Ness marks the harbour of Teign- 

 inouth, and as the sunlight falls on the white villas that 

 stud the opposite side, the scene looks attractive. Then 

 the cliff-line rapidly diminishes in height as it recedes, 

 and the heads of Dawlish project, and we see no more 

 till at Exmouth the land trends to the eastward, and 

 from its white terraces faintly seen in the slanting sun 

 now, but to stand out full and clear in the afternoon, 

 we follow the bold, varying, beauteous coast, beauteous 

 in its outline, but dim in its detail, for some twenty 

 miles farther, till the straining eye finally fails to dis- 

 cern it somewhere between Lyme and Bridport ; though 

 Portland itself is sometimes to be seen, and I have my- 

 c 



