Miscellanies. 385 



intelligent coast guard man accompanied me. It was after eleven 

 o'clock when we started, I knew what I had to encounter, and 

 most dearly paid for it, — for the fatigue and torture of walking 

 along the shingle was absolutely dreadful, enlivened and relieved 

 only by my anxiety to examine the masses of chalk which had 

 fallen along the base of the cliffs, from among which we picked 

 up a few fossils. "We entered several caves, made to serve ship- 

 wrecked mariners, one called the Parson's Hole, was most exten- 

 sive, with several passages, and must be pretty old, as I saw dates 

 cut in the chalk of 1778, 1794, &c. The cliffs varied in height, 

 but were very high in some places, from 300 to 450, .and, finally, 

 near Beachy Head 600 feet ; and to stand underneath some of 

 them, on top of immense masses v/hich had fallen, with towering 

 masses above threatening to fall, it naturally made one feel more 

 or less nervous. We were exposed to two dangers along this 

 piece of coast, one of being washed into the sea when passing 

 these fallen masses of chalk, — the other of being crushed to death 

 by some enormous mass of chalk rock. After a weary and really 

 toilsome tramp in the heavy shingle, we at last got to the Cows 

 Gap, just beyond Beachy Head, and ascended this steep hill for 

 600 feet. Being quite exhausted I had to stop several times for 

 breath and rest, until the top was reached at half-past 2 o'clock ; 

 when, lo ! I had of all things on earth the greatest luxury it was 

 possible to wish for at this time, a glass of rain water. My 

 mouth was parched from my walk on the loose shingle in the 

 broiling sun, my tongue was dry and clove to the roof of my 

 mouth, I did not dare touch the sea-water, and when my lips 

 tasted pure rain water, it was perfect ecstasy and happiness ; I 

 drank two tumblers of it, and was thoroughly refreshed and re- 

 lieved, so that I was now enabled to descend the hill in a northerly 

 direction with a coast guard man of the name of Blackman to 

 the village of Meads, which I reached at twenty minutes past 3 

 o'clock, and where I dined on a rasher of bacon and eggs. The 

 longest day of my life, I shall never forget this fatiguing walk 

 along the heavy shingley coast round Beachy Head ; the cliffs 

 were so stupendous and their whiteness so dazzling, it made one 

 dizzy to look upwards from their base in the burning sun. 



I may here remark that there are few places in England in 

 which the chalk can be studied with greater advantage, as the 

 venerable Dr. Fitton has observed before me, than along the range 

 of cliffs, beginning at Brighton and terminating to the eastward 



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