4 THE SOUTHERN CLIFFS 



hanging, with waving lines of flints running from top 

 to bottom. For fifty feet above the water the cliff 

 was covered with pale, sulphur-coloured lichen, and the 

 surface was so smooth and hard as to afford no foothold 

 even to the birds, except to the sand-martins, which, 

 abandoning the burrowing habits of their race, had 

 made themselves nests of chalk-pellets, like those built 

 by house-martins beneath the eaves. The beams of the 

 setting sun streamed over the top of the precipice, and 

 against the light the tiny martins were visible, like 

 gnats against the evening sky f The next wall of the 

 cliff was hardly more favourable to the birds. A few 

 gulls were sitting on a knife-like edge of chalk, which 

 juts into the sea at its extremity, and the first cor- 

 morant launched itself heavily into the air, and flew out 

 to sea. But as we approached the third and least 

 accessible angle of the precipice, the cries and calls of 

 the birds could be heard, and cormorants and gulls 

 came flying round to see who were the disturbers of 

 their evening quiet. At the extreme angle of the rock, 

 the sea has bored two deep black holes in the chalk, 

 and in one of these the body of the last of the Culver 

 cragsmen was found some years ago, where the sea had 

 washed it. At this point the cliff is, perhaps, more 

 impressive than at any other, rising sheer, white, and 

 lofty, untenanted by birds, and unmarked even by the 

 creeping samphire. Beyond the " nostrils," as the black 

 holes are called, the surface of the chalk alters, and is 

 marked with long, horizontal lines and ledges of grass 

 and samphire, and crowded with the old and young 



