106 
PHOTOGRAPH. 
for when the sea tunnels back into its weathered slopes, they yield 
readily, and in two cases the waves have actually burst through 
into the drifts which fill the hollow, and as these have been of 
course readily scooped out, circular chasms — pot-holes in fact — 
have been formed in both cases, some little distance from the cliff. 
One of these is small enough to act as a " blow-hole" in rough 
weather, the sea choking up the vent till the imprisoned air bursts 
out with much noise, driving upward a cloud of spray. 
There are a few lateral crevices, connected with caves, that 
" blow " in the same way. Goethe must have seen something like 
this : — 
" Und die langen Felsennasen 
Wie sie scJmarchen, wie sie blasen /"* — ( Walpurgisnacht). 
After all, I cannot tell which is the finer picture — the fantas- 
tic ruggedness of this part of the coast, or the simple grandeur of 
the precipice beyond, where the great grey cliffs hang in a straight 
unbroken wall above the waves that lap and lash far below. 
There, in the spring and early summer, countless swarms of 
sea-birds take up their abode — guillemot, razorbill, puffin and 
kit-tiwake — and pass continually in and out, like bees to a hive. 
Not always is this little bay so bright and pleasant as you see 
it here, for — 
" Sometimes the sea takes a passionate tone 
And roars and raves in an angry mood." 
Even while I write such a mood has come upon it, and this is 
what hjis taken place on the very spot : — 
The schooner Cheval de Troie, of Guernsey, Captain Marri- 
ette, with a crew of six, bound for Shields from Dover, in ballast, 
was caught in the gale and snowstorm of December 6th, off Flam- 
borough Head and driven unobserved od these rocks, f Her crew 
* " The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho! 
How they snort, and how they blow!" — Shelley's Translation. 
t From the wreckage brought ashore she seems to have first struck close 
to where the boat is seen in the left foreground of the photograph, and after- 
ward to have shifted a little further west. 
