THE FIRST EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE. 159 



lighthouses they are literally screwed into the rock or hard ground. Seventy of this 

 class of structures now exist in the United States. 



One of the most remarkable early lighthouses is the Tower of Cordouan, situated 

 on a ledge of rocks at the mouth of the Garonne, which empties into the Bay of Biscay. It 

 was commenced in 1584, and completed in 1610, by Louis de Foix. 



The ledge is about 3,000 feet long and 1,500 feet broad, and is bare at low water. It 

 is surrounded by detached rocks, upon which the sea breaks with terrific violence. There 

 is but one place of access, which is a passage 300 feet wide, where there are no rocks, and 

 which leads to within 600 feet of the tower. The tower was a circular cone, rising from 

 its rocky base to a height of 162 feet. It is now shorter. The apartments of the tower 

 are highly ornamented, consisting of four storeys, all of different orders of architecture, 

 and adorned with busts and statues of Kings of France and heathen gods. The basement, 

 or lower storey, appears to have been intended as a store-room; the second storey is called 

 the " King's apartments ; " the third is a chapel ; and the fourth consists of a dome 

 supported by columns, a kind of lower lantern ; above this was originally a lantern formed 

 of a stone dome and eight columns. In the upper lantern a fire of oak wood was kept 

 burning for about a hundred years, when, in 1717, the fire having weakened the stone 

 supports by calcining them, the upper lantern was taken down, and the light was kept up 

 in the lower lantern. As it did not show well there, an iron lantern was erected in 1727 

 above this, in the place of the old stone lantern, and coal was then used for fuel instead 

 of wood. 



The following history of the Eddystone is largely derived from one of Mr. Samuel 

 Smiles' graphic and learned works.* 



In 1696, Mr. Henry Winstanley (a mercer and country gentleman), of Littlebury, 

 in the county of Essex, obtained the necessary powers to erect a lighthouse on the 

 Eddystone. That gentleman seems to have possessed a curious mechanical genius, 

 which first displayed itself in devising sundry practical jokes for the entertainment 

 of his guests. Smeaton tells us that in one room there lay an old slipper, which, if 

 a kick was given it, immediately raised a ghost from the floor; in another the visitor 

 sat down upon a chair, which suddenly threw out two arms and held him a fast 

 prisoner; whilst, in the garden, if he sought the shelter of an arbour, and sat down 

 upon a particular seat, he was straightway set afloat in the middle of the adjoining 

 canal. These tricks must have rendered the house at Littlebury a somewhat exciting 

 residence for the uninitiated guest. The amateur inventor exercised the same genius, to 

 a certain extent, for the entertainment of the inhabitants of the metropolis, and at Hyde 

 Park Corner he erected a variety of jets d'eau, known by the name of Winstanley 's 

 Waterworks, which he exhibited at stated times at a shilling a head. 



* o 



This whimsicality of the man in some measure accounts for the oddity of the wooden 

 building erected by him on the Eddystone Rock; and it is matter of surprise that it 

 should have stood the severe weather of the English Channel for several seasons. The 

 building was begun in the year 1696, and finished in four years. It must necessarily 

 have been a work attended with great difficulty as well as danger, as operations could 



* " The Life of Smeaton," as incorporated in his "Lives of the Engineers." 



