THE CHESIL BANK. 195 



two or three piles were generally set at the same time, and well bound together by powerful 

 cross timbers. 



The stone quarried for the breakwater from the very top of Portland Island was largely 

 excavated and brought to the spot by convict labour. The stone itself used was unfit for 

 architectural purposes, but quite suitable for the breakwater. The convict prison, also on the 

 top of the island, was virtually the barracks for 900 labourers, who were more profitably 

 employed than in walking a treadmill or picking oakum. The quarries were some 400 or 

 500 feet above the level of the breakwater, and the stone was conveyed to it by three inclines 

 of broad double gauge rails. The trains of trucks or wagons were worked up and down with 

 a wire rope over a drum, the weight of the loaded descending wagons winding the empty 

 ones up again to the quarries. A powerful locomotive pushed the loaded trains to the end 

 of the work, where the stone was tipped into the sea, as much as 3,000 tons a day having 

 been sunk at Portland. The total amount so committed to the deep was about 5,360,000 

 tons, and the area protected by the breakwater would accommodate sixty of the very largest 

 men-of-war, and almost any number of smaller vessels. 



" During the progress of the works/' wrote Mr. Moule, " the engineer has from time 

 to time instituted some highly interesting investigations into the structure of the Chesil 

 Bank. . . . During a single night's gale, between three and four millions of ions 

 weight of pebbles have been found to be swept away into the gulfs of the Atlantic, being 

 gradually thrown back again in the three or four following days. The size of the pebbles had 

 long been observed to vary greatly at the two opposite ends of the beach. At the western, 

 or Abbotsbury end, they are exceedingly small, more resembling gravel than shingle. At the 

 Portland end it is not uncommon to meet with them several inches in diameter, and several 

 pounds in weight. This phenomenon has been explained by the very probable assumption 

 that the pebbles are driven eastward by the wind-waves, and not moved by the slow and 

 (for purposes like this) powerless tidal current. The larger pebbles, presenting a broad 

 surface to the waves, are easily rolled forward, while the smaller ones are passed by, 

 offering a less surface, and becoming more easily imbedded in the sand/' It is said that a 

 practised smuggler on that coast could tell his whereabouts on the bank in the darkest night 

 or thickest fog, by feeling the size of the pebbles on which he stood. And smugglers and 

 " wreckers " were once very numerous among the Portlanders. In these better days their 

 courage and great personal strength has saved many a life and ship endangered off the bank. 



An old and popular song says that 



" Britannia needs no bulwarks, 

 No towers along the steep,'' 



but recent legislators have evidently not been so thoroughly satisfied of the fact, or they 

 would not have authorised the construction of the great fortifications at Portland, which make 

 it almost the Gibraltar of the Channel. The splendid breakwater there did not need protection. 

 All the battering it is ever likely to get could not injure it seriously, and whatever ruins 

 Macaulay's New Zealander may stand upon, they are not likely to be those of a great breakwater, 

 each year of the existence of which renders it generally more compact. But it was for good 

 reasons that the extensive works of Portland were undertaken. " We," said the Times, " of 



