CHAPTER VI 



SARK: THE GARDEN OF CYMODOCE 



IT is a " far cry " from Colonsay in the northern Heb- 

 rides washed by the rollers of the broad Atlantic, and 

 little Sark, near the coast of France, almost the most 

 southern of the British Isles, but much resemblance 

 may be traced between some of the natural features 

 of these two gems of the sea. On the north coast of 

 Colonsay may be found the same beetling precipices, 

 the same deep caves, and the same natural arches, 

 washed, scooped out, and chiselled by the same rush- 

 ing and tumultous tideways 



"Thick-sown with rocks deadlier than steel, and fierce 

 With loud cross-countering currents." 



Each is a paradise for the naturalist, the botanist, 

 and the artist ; and few who have visited either can 

 resist its charm. More than twenty-five years ago I 

 paid my first visit to the Channel Islands and spent 

 a week on Sark. I fell in love with it at once, and 

 afterwards made it a favourite resort for short spring 

 holidays with my wife and children. The poet Swin- 

 burne has painted it with all his enthusiasm for beauty 

 and the sea in his melodious rhapsody entitled " The 

 Garden of Cymodoce*" It is high praise which he 

 awards it in the apostrophe to the sea, which he calls 



the " mother of himself and of his song "- 



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