172 THE SEA. 



sunshine. The chief danger is from fogs which alike hide the lights by night and the land 

 by day. Some of the homeward-bound ships entering the Channel from North American 

 ports first make the St. Agnes Light, on the Scilly Isles, revolving once a minute, at a 

 height of 138 feet above high water. But most Atlantic ships keep further south in 

 consequence of the nature of the soundings about the Scilly Isles ; and hence they of tener 

 make the Lizard Lights first, which are visible about twenty miles off. 



" From this point the coast retires, and in the bend lie Falmouth (with a revolving 

 light on St. Anthony's Point), Fowey, the Looes, and Plymouth Sound and Harbour; the 

 coast line again trending southward until it juts out into the sea, in the bold craggy bluffs 

 of Bolt Head and Start Point, on the last of which is another house with two lights 

 one, revolving, for the Channel, and another, fixed, to direct vessels inshore clear of the 

 Skerries Shoal. But between the Lizard and Start Point, which form the two extremities 

 of this bend in the land of Cornwall and Devonshire, there lies the Eddystone Rock and 

 Lighthouse, standing fourteen miles out from the shore, almost directly in front of Plymouth 

 Sound and in the line of coasting vessels steaming or beating up Channel. 



" On the south are seen the three Croquet Lights on the Jersey side ; and on the north 

 the two fixed lights on Portland Bill. The west is St. Catherine's, a brilliant fixed light 

 on the extreme south point of the Isle of Wight. Next are the lights exhibited on the 

 Nab, and then the single fixed light exhibited on the Ower vessel Beachy Head, on the 

 same line, exhibits a powerful revolving light 285 feet above high water, its interval of 

 greatest brilliancy occurring every two minutes. Then comes Dungeness, exhibiting 

 a fixed red light of great power, situated at the extremity of the low point of Dungeness 

 beach. Next are seen Folkestone, and then' Dover Harbour Lights, whilst on the south 

 are the flash light, recently stationed on the Verne Bank ; and further up Channel, on the 

 French coast, is seen the brilliant revolving light on Cape Grisnez. The Channel is passed 

 with the two South Foreland Lights, one higher than the other, on the left; and the 

 Downs are entered with the South Sandhead floating light on the right; and when the 

 Gull and the North Sandhead floating lights have been passed on the one hand, and North 

 Foreland on the other, then the Tongue, the Prince's Channel, and the Girdler are passed." 

 The Nore Light passed, the navigation of the Thames commences. 



CHAPTER XL 



THE LIGHTHOUSE (continued}. 



The Bell Rock The good Abbot of Arberbrothok Ralph the Rover Rennie's grand Lighthouse Perils of the Work 

 Thirty-two Men apparently doomed to Destruction A New Form of Outward Construction -Its successful Com- 

 pletionThe Skerryvore Lighthouse and Alan Stevenson Novel Barracks on the Rock-Swept Away in a Storm The 

 Unshapely Seal and Unfortunate Cod Half -starved Workmen -Out of Tobacco Difficulties of Landing the Stones- 

 Visit of M. de Quatrefages to H^haux Description of the Lighthouse Exterior How it Rocks Practice versus Theory 

 The Interior A Parisian Apartment at Sea. 



SOME eleven miles eastward from the mainland of Scotland, near the entrances to the 

 Firths of Forth and Tay, lies an extensive ledge of very dangerous rocks, nearly two 

 miles in length. This sunken reef was a source of much peril to the unfortunate sailors 



