INTRODUCTION. 



13 



the mist opens at a long distance off, and reveals a bright vignette-like patch of sun- 

 lit country, over which it will as quickly close again. Very similar to Cornwall is 

 the beautiful district of North Devon, and in the " Valley of Rocks/' near Lynton, 

 we have seen a remarkable effect of this sea-fog, which the Cornish say " is 

 all fur yitt un pilchards." It was in December. The valley of "Waters Meet," 

 crag, and brown wood, and mountain wall standing sheer up from the river's edge, 

 lay steeped in the winter sunshine, and the brow of the hill rose against an 

 unclouded sky. The only sound in the stillness was the rushing' music of the 

 torrent's march. Mounting the hill to Lynton, and looking up for a moment, the sky 

 appeared suddenly filled with huge falling snow-flakes ; but those great feathers 

 were flakes of mists, and strange as had been the look of the sky, as though it 

 were closing- in and coming down on us, yet more strange was the sight in the 

 " Valley of Rocks." Itself many hundred feet above the sea, the " Valley of Rocks " 

 is between hills covered with rocks and stones in fantastic shapes, pinnacles, spires, 

 heaps of stones as if for an universal road-making, buttresses, and castles. The 

 sky above was blue, but the valley was full of mist, white as the driven snow ; 

 sweeping up the hill-sides and hanging among the rocks in forms more fantastic 

 even than they. It was like a dream. There was no perceptible wind ; but the 

 mist- wreaths varied at every moment : an entire summit was hidden, and the mist 

 sprang, as it were, and divided into a thousand fragments, — these trooped off in a 

 spirit-dance ; a grey wall of vapour stood up, slowly and slowly it rifted from the 

 top to the bottom, and its debris disappeared with a whirl and left the turf and the 

 rocks quiet beneath the sun. Anon came a white curtain, hiding sky, and sun, and 

 sea ; but even as we gazed it was rolled away and gone ; and all to us was new 

 and strange, for we had never been in the valley before, and could not tell what 

 the lifting of the curtain might reveal. Down the coast, where the woods grow 

 to the very waves, midway along the heights lay silver wreaths of cloud, and 

 coming round the cliff-path and looking across Lynmouth Bay, we saw the bay 

 filled with a cloud, like an Alp, its summit a thousand feet above us, so near that 

 we could have plunged into it, and we could tell all its hollows, and its shades, 

 and its depths, and its heights, and its brightness as the brightness of the sunlit- 

 snow, towering up white into the blue heaven, and its base becoming thinner and 

 more thin, until it hung as a veil over the sapphire waters. 



These mists stalk along the gTanite heights in Cornwall in ghostly processions, 



