Anglesey 



But the point of sanity is the camera. When it 

 has been rigged up, the old herring-gull from the 

 cornice above drops sheer on to it, until, when within 

 a few yards from it, she glides up again and beyond. 

 The birds are high up, and the water so near, that 

 one cannot get far enough back. The camera has 

 to be set up in defiance of every rule of perspective, 

 and perpendicular columns incline toward one 

 another as if in drunken embrace. The climax was 

 reached when the camera's centre of gravity tried to 

 emulate the extravagances of its centre of position, 

 and, aided by a fair breeze, brought the whole 

 structure crash on the rocks. There be land wrecks 

 and water wrecks, but this was both ; for whilst 

 splinters of the camera shot about the weed-grown 

 slab, one of the dark slides slipped between the 

 blocks, and, striking clear water, set off merrily to 

 sea. For the information of those who have never 

 made the experiment, I may state that a dark slide, 

 if it be a good one, sails perfectly, as flat as a raft, 

 and that an exposed plate contained therein is not 

 necessarily lost. The picture of the Guillemots' 

 Hole is probably the only one ever produced from a 

 plate whose development started with a sea bath. 

 Misfortunes sometimes bring a certain cold comfort 

 of their own : I should not have known the satisfac- 

 tion of recovering the dark slide, or of repacking the 

 giblets of the camera, if I had not come nigh losing 

 the one and ruining the other. 



A last look up at the cliffs before starting to 

 215 



