VI Cornish Cliffs in Spring 



A WONDERFUL display of bloom and verdure paints 

 the sea-cliffs of south Cornwall before midsummer. 

 As sheets of a single colour, no display of blossom 

 can surpass the heather on a thousand August moor- 

 lands, or a downland hill-top of dense mustard 

 blossom. But the Cornish cliffs excel such single 

 displays in the variety of their vegetation, just as 

 they overwhelm the mingled blossoms of inland 

 woods and commons in multitude and richness. 



From the edge of the cultivated fields the cliffs 

 break away to the sea, two or three hundred feet 

 below, in steep slopes of verdure and rock, which, 

 though interspersed with many precipices, are by 

 no means wholly precipitous. With activity and 

 fair steadiness of head, it is possible to thread one's 

 way from one rocky terrace or steep lawn to another 

 along wide tracts of the sea-face. The beauty of 

 these wild hanging gardens is amazing, and is greatly 

 heightened by their position over the wave-washed 

 reefs beneath, by the landscapes of the sinuous 

 coast-line, and by the vast horizon of sea. Their 

 chief and almost universal feature is the contrast 

 of the sheets of red, white, and blue blossom. 

 The sea-pink, or thrift, supplies the red, the cloaks 

 of matted sea-campion the white, while the blue- 

 bells, growing densely on all but the most exposed 

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