July 18, 1884.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



63 



the vast majority of heads of families deciding on a seaside 

 holiday are led by names rather than things, and all flock 

 off to comparatively a few places, -which most of them 

 know a little better than their own neighbour- 

 hoods, having had more leisure for the study ; 

 and thus it follows that, to a great extent, the 

 essential framework and normal conditions of town life are 

 precipitated on tlie select and fashionable places of seaside 

 resort, and a number of unsanitary conditions produced 

 which ought never to exist, while the special pleasures which 

 would be derived from the seaside, minus these conven- 

 tional municipal features, are but rarely attained, and are 

 even unknown to many who have, however, had the barren 

 experience brought to them of very many annual seaside 

 seasons. For one thing, the majority of persons are 

 lamentably ignorant, I fear, as to the character of the 

 coasts of their own country, beyond the few miles of it 

 that they have actually seen at the very few watering- 

 places they have visited. Thoy continue going, mechani- 

 cally almost, to the same place, and thus continue to repro- 

 duce in their recreative environments the very same 

 viciously monotonous conditions which they are professedly 

 seeking to escape when, with exhausted bodies and weary 

 minds, they at last decide on a change. 



Many excellent and truly scientific* monographs now 

 exist as to the thermal conditions and general meteorological 

 aspect of the principal British coasts and surrounding seas, 

 and any one desirous of such information can easily 

 ascertain the exact character of the prevalent winds at 

 any particular place, the chemical constituents of the air, 

 and so forth. This, however, is the higher science of what 

 may be called our seaside philosophy, and taking humbler 

 and more easily practicable phases, I would first give a 

 rapid sketch of the salient and picturesque features of the 

 coasts of the British islands, and having noticed rapidly their 

 principal picturesque features, I shall then proceed to give 

 an outline, with all the needful practical particulars for 

 guiding aright intending visitors, of sundry places of beauty 

 and interest on our own coasts which are even now little 

 known, and less frequented, by the mass of people as places 

 of health-resort or recreative retirement. It is manifestly 

 absurd for people to continue visiting the same places, or 

 the same small group of familiar places, year after year, 

 and then, as some do, proceed abroad on the plea that 

 there is nothing fresh for them to see in their own country ! 



First, however, let me say a word as to the general 

 features of the coasts of the United Kingdom. The 

 western coast, broadly, then, is formed by four deep and 

 very wide bays, divided by enormous buttresses of land 

 thrust far out to sea. The scenery is wild and magnificent. 

 Tremendous cliffs and masses of rocks fortify the shore, and 

 generally tower above the sea with rugged, but grand, pro- 

 files. These cliffs are mostly composed of exceedingly 

 ancient and very hard rocks, and have for ages successfully 

 resisted wind, frost, and even the insidious rain, and still 

 present very much the same features seaward that they 

 have done for the last two or three thousand years. As a 

 natural effect of this formation we have here a very deep 

 sea and remarkably powerful tides. Here, too, the waves 

 may be studied in their might, and present an aspect under 

 even a moderate gale which is altogether unlike anything 

 ever to be seen on the south coast. 



On the east, in strong antithesis to the west, we find a 

 rather monotonous coast, usually sloping away south-east, 

 and having few or only comparatively unimportant head- 

 lands and not much cliff. The bays, or rather their equiva- 

 lents, are generally formed by rivers discharging into the 



* See " English Seaside Kesorts," Vol. II., pages 3, 18, 39, 91, 

 109, 102, 17C, 211, 306. 



sea, and such cliffs as exist are comparatively soft and 

 continually wearing away. The outline of the coast here 

 has been much modified by time and the sapping effects of 

 the tides, although these last are generally gentler in both 

 their ebb and flow, and century after century enormous 

 quantities of material is accumulating off the coast, render- 

 ing the ocean bed comparatively shallow. The southern 

 coast, indeed, to some extent unites the characteristics both 

 of the western and the eastern shores of these islands, and 

 as we pass westward along the Channel the sea becomes 

 deeper and its waves grow in magnitude until, at the Land's 

 End, we find ourselves in view of verita'ile Atlantic 

 billows. In truth, the whole of England, Wales, and, to 

 some extent, Scotland, is an inclined plane, having its most 

 elevated side on the west, and having there, too, its hardest 

 rocks. Cardigan Bay is nearly useless for shipping, and 

 generally speaking, with the exception of the Bristol 

 Channel and the mouth of the Mersey, commerce is by no 

 means the presiding genius of our great western coasts, 

 where there may still be found innumerable beautiful 

 nooks and unsurpassed vantages wherein to study the most 

 picturesque aspects of the sea under unusually favourable 

 conditions. 



Then, again, to revert to my original contention as to 

 the capital and common blunder of recurring to a few 

 familiar places only as seaside resorts year after year. 

 While hundreds of thousands of regular seaside visitors 

 know the Isle of Wight more or less thoroughly, how many 

 are acquainted with the Seilly Islands, the Isle of Man, 

 or, more interesting still, put up at the Isle of Anglesea, to 

 say nothing of the Hebrides and other northern groups, 

 which, when they are set for a brief period in summer seas, 

 are in all senses places which repay the visitor a thousand- 

 fold for the little extra trouble involved in getting thus far 

 out of the beaten track 1 Then, again, while so many of 

 us are familiar with Portsmouth Harbour, Southampton 

 Water, and the very faint stretches of blue water off the 

 south coast, how many, comparatively speaking, are fami- 

 liar with the magnificent Bristol Channel, with Swansea 

 Bay, Milford Haven, St. Bride's Bay, Morecambe Bay, and 

 the splendid Solway Firth? How few, again, among 

 the tens of thousands who throng the esplanades of 

 the fashionable and popular south and east coast water- 

 ing-places are acquainted with the formation of the 

 Devonian heights which rear themselves in such stately 

 beauty and culminate at last at a height of 1,700 feet, 

 while on the north this lofty table-land falls grandly to 

 the sea in precipitous cliffs'! Then there are the beau- 

 tiful Cornish highlands, combining much of the romantic 

 and stern beauty of North Britain with the softer graces 

 and luxuriant vegetation of the sunny south. These re- 

 markable hills, which commence on the lovely shores of 

 Bideford Bay, contracting thence, form but a single line of 

 remarkable heights — a kind of English Apennines — sloping 

 abruptly to the sea on each side, and ending in the bold and 

 splendid headland at the extremity of Cornwall, where may 

 be studied the volcanic cliffs off Lizard Point, and where 

 the Seilly Isles, far out at sea, remain mute but eloquent 

 witnesses of the extent of this remarkable peninsula before 

 some awful convulsion rent away its southern extremity and 

 swallowed up what must have been in pre-historic times 

 a kind of Italy attached to a group of islands, which seemed 

 to some of the ancient Romans to be lost among the dreary 

 snowstorms of the Ultima Thule. 



{To he continued.) 



As a protection against blow-fliea, the best thing is creosote. If 

 placed in various positions near and around the meat, no fly will go 

 near it. Pyroligueous acid has the same effect. 



