English coast

“ Such spots are to be found where the chalk hills abut on the sea, as at Flamborough and Beachy Head, but it is in the neighbourhood of Weymouth that the English coast really begins to be of great interest to the naturalist. From here to the Land’s End almost every part of the shore will yield a great variety of life in abundance, and the same is true of the rocky coasts of the west, and also of the more rugged shores of the Isle of Wight. ”

“ England may be regarded as one of the countries in which attacks by the sea upon the coast are most intense; for the waves of the Atlantic are thrown very violently against the shore by the southwest winds. English geologists appear to be agreed in thinking that the waste of the coasts of Britain under the action of the sea is certainly not more than three metres a century. ”

“ The appearance of the coast is rocky and forbidding, but there are a great number of deep bays and fiords, containing magnificent harbours, and piercing the land for 80 or 100 miles, while the sides present varied scenes of beauty, such as are rarely surpassed in the world's most favoured lands. ”

“ The high rocky coast is much indented by bays and arms of the sea, several of which form excellent harbours, that of St John being safe and commodious, but inferior to English Harbour, which, although little frequented, is capable of receiving vessels of the largest size. ”

“ The hungry ocean has gnawed and ravaged the New England coast, until along almost its entire length it is worn into ragged edges, forming islands, capes, promontories, bold headlands, peninsulas, bays, inlets and coves. In this coast are united the grand, the picturesque and the beautiful. Soft masses of foliage are in close juxtaposition with rugged rocks and dashing surf. ”

“ An iron coast, bleak, black, and desolate, without harborage for so much as a catboat for leagues to north or south. A coast so pitiless, so lashed forever by the long, sullen rollers of the North Atlantic, so tormented by the shifting and treacherous currents of the tide between its chains of outlying rocky islets, that no ship ever ventured willingly within miles of its uncompromising menace. A coast so little favored by summer that even in glowing August the sun could reach it seldom through its cold and drenching fogs. ”

“ It is the atmospheric softness, and the rich vegetation, which, on the west of Ireland, covers the valleys, glens, and the mountain-sides, it is the colour of the deep and lovely tarns, of the expanses of heather, and of the distances, and lastly, it is the rugged, rock-bound coast, a coast of many bays, of desolate islands, of solitary sea stacks, of cliffs, of sandy beaches, and wonderful sea caves, a coast that has for ages withstood the attacks of the mighty waves of the storm-driven Atlantic ”

“ By the west coast is meant the whole of that wondrous succession of far-penetrating fiords and bays, cliff-guarded shores, and sea-washed mountains from Bantry Bay to Malin Head, a distance of over four hundred miles. There may be wilder scenery on the coasts of Norway, Labrador, or Scotland, but for wildness, sublimity, and beauty combined, there is hardly in Europe, or in the world, another four hundred miles of coast equal to it. ”

“ To the east, the coast retires into a semicircular rocky recess, terminating seawards in a lofty, dark-browed precipice, and bristling, throughout all its extent, with a countless multitude of crags, that, at every heave of the wave, break the surface into a thousand eddies. ”

“ Most of those houses intended for the accommodation of visitors have an aspect due west, so as to command an uninterrupted marine view, which at this point presents a field of interest of which the mind and the eye are never weary. The land, gradually rising as it recedes from the beach, acquires a degree of elevation which excludes the eastern landscape; but for this defect the other points of the compass make ample amends, and present landscapes so varied and extensive as can be rarely met with on the coast of Great Britain. ”

“ It comes pure from the Atlantic or from the down-lands, from craggy cliffs or grassy uplands; there is the wonderful glamour of the sea reaching inland to possess and dominate the peaceful charm of the country-side. The inhabitants in this quiet stretch of coast depend rather on agriculture than on fish for their maintenance; the coast is too unprotected, and there is no tolerable harbour to which fisher-boats might run for safety. The cottages for the most part have a pastoral atmosphere, and not the savour of fish and tangle of nets that we meet in so many seaside villages. ”

“ There are stretches of undulating upland, with fragrant turf, gorse, bracken; valleys almost too low for sunlight to enter, the wild and tortuous mouths of rapid streams, patches of meadow and pasture, with lonely cottages and isolated church-towns. Different from the southern coast in aspect, more desolate, less fertile, there is yet a special charm even in the desolation, a stimulating appeal in the solitude, and a marvellous purity in the bracing winds that blow, sometimes with ruthless violence, from a thousand leagues of ocean. ”

“ In summer, the season in which we were there, the sky is clear, with but little rain: if fogs and mists are at any time driven in by the south wind, they are immediately dissipated, and at once it becomes serene and bright again. The sea is calm, not boisterous, and its waves are gentle. Although the whole coast is low and without harbours, it is not dangerous for navigation, being free from rocks and bold, so that within four or five fathoms from the shore there is twenty-four feet of water at all times of tide, and this depth constantly increases in a uniform proportion. ”

“ While in stays the water was observed to wash on a rock not a hundred yards to leeward of us, on which we must infallibly have struck, had we bore up instead of tacking.
[Sidenote: South-east coast dangerous.]
From the north-east to the south-east point, the coast runs south 40o west; the shore to the north-east of this deep bight is bold, and seems clear; that on the south-west side of it presents a formidable barrier of islands and coral reefs, which break to a great distance: in fine weather this part of the coast ought to be approached very cautiously. ”

“ On some parts of the coast-line of the east of England, where the rock is easily worn away, the sea advances on the land at a rate of two or three feet every year. Towns and villages which existed a few centuries ago, have one by one disappeared, and their sites are now a long way out under the restless waters of the North Sea. ”

“ On the blue background of the high coast they seem to float on silvery patches of calm water, arid and grey, or dark green and rounded like clumps of evergreen bushes, with the larger ones, a mile or two long, showing the outlines of ridges, ribs of grey rock under the dank mantle of matted leafage. Unknown to trade, to travel, almost to geography, the manner of life they harbour is an unsolved secret. There must be villages—settlements of fishermen at least—on the largest of them, and some communication with the world is probably kept up by native craft. ”

“ But all this Coast to Pennobscot, and as farre I could see Eastward of it is nothing but such high craggy Cliffy Rocks and stony Iles, that I wondered such great trees could growe upon so hard foundations. It is a Countrie rather to affright, then delight one. And how to describe a more plaine spectacle of desolation or more barren I knowe not. Yet the Sea there is the strangest fish-pond I ever saw; and those barren Iles so furnished with good woods, springs, fruits, fish, and fowle, that it makes mee thinke though the Coast be rockie, and thus affrightable ”

“ As the coast recedes it becomes more lofty, the mountains coming to bathe their feet in the blue sea. There are islands and promontories faintly visible in the soft opalescent haze. Such is the first impression one obtains of a fairyland coast-line, which owing to various circumstances had to be discovered to the French people by foreigners. With their inherited instinct towards roving the [Pg 175] British have not even been able to keep to their own land when merely taking a little seaside holiday. ”

“ The whole coast of England is surrounded by a general “shake hands.” The coast-guard on their wintry walks do not greet each other more surely than old friends all over England do: one clasps another, and another a third, till from Dover to London and so on to York, from Yarmouth on the east to Bristol on the west, from John O’Groat’s house at the extreme north to the Land’s End, the very toe-nail of England on the south—a kindly greeting, we may be sure, will pass. ”

“ The eastern coast, in particular, is provided with little more than a few imperfectly protected roadsteads. The southern portion of the west coast is distinguished by a series of back-waters, or lagoons, parallel with the coast, and affording a safe and convenient waterway for small vessels when the season of high winds makes the ocean unnavigable. ”

“ The east coast of England is not generally noted either for variety or abundance of marine life, and the same is true both of the south-east and a large portion of the south coast. In some places the beach is formed of an unbroken stretch of sand on which one may walk for miles without seeing any sign of life, with the exception of an occasional empty shell and a few fragments of dried sea-weed washed in by the breakers during a recent storm ”

“ The coast, to the northward, is formed of detached 81hills, rising perpendicularly from the sea, with ragged and broken summits; the sides covered with wood, and the valleys between them of a fertile and well cultivated appearance. To the southward, we saw an extensive bay, bounded by a low point of land to the south-east which was covered with cocoa-nut trees; and off it stood a high insulated rock, about a mile from the shore. The haziness of the weather prevented our seeing distinctly the land to the southward of the point ”

“ A subsidence of the land adjacent to the sea permits an extension of the waters landward; the sea will enter the valleys so as to form estuaries, bays, straits, etc., while the high land between the partially water-filled depressions will rise above the water-level and appear as peninsulas, capes, and islands. A bold, deeply sculptured coast when depressed will give origin to an intricate, and what may be termed a ragged shore-line; while a lower region crossed by large river-valleys would be changed to a system of broad estuaries. ”

“ As the Powers finally arranged it, the map of the West Coast is like a mosaic, like the edge of a badly constructed patchwork quilt. In trading along the West Coast a man can find use for five European languages, and he can use a new one at each port of call. ”

“ The coast is ragged with gulfs and bays, which notch it deeply on all sides, making the whole main peninsula a cluster of minor peninsulas, and supplying the people with harbors which invite them to a life of seafaring and trade. ”

“ An indented coast with numerous havens for the shelter of vessels fosters the interests of navigation, including sea fisheries, invites commerce from other lands, and stimulates its inhabitants to explore and travel. A diversity of industries is thus favoured and the people adjacent to an indented coast with good harbours tend to become more progressive and more cosmopolitan than if intercourse with other communities is confined to overland routes. ”

“ A favourite method of determining the exact spots visited by the Northmen has been to compare their statements regarding the shape and trend of the coasts, their bays, headlands, etc., with various well-known points on the New England coast. It is a tempting method, but unfortunately treacherous, because the same general description will often apply well enough to several different places. It is like summer boarders in the country struggling to tell one another where they have been to drive,—past a school-house, down a steep hill, through some woods, and by a saw-mill, etc. ”

“ On the next day we proceeded in our course, keeping always in sight of land, and found a kind of gulf formed by the coast on the south side of the cape [6] . This coast is all low, and full of fine large trees, which are continually green, as the new leaves grow before the old ones fall off, and they never wither like those in Europe; and the trees grow so near the shore, that they seem to drink as it were the water of the sea. The coast is most beautiful, insomuch that I never saw any thing comparable to it, though I had sailed much both in the Levant and the western parts of Europe. ”

“ From this I form my judgment of the direction of this Coast, which is nearly South-South-East 3/4 East and North-North-West 3/4 West, and must be nearly a Strait Shore. In about the Latitude 35 degrees 45 minutes is some high land adjoining to the Sea; to the Southward of that the land is of a moderate heigth, and wears a most desolate and inhospitable aspect. Nothing is to be seen but long sand Hills, with hardly any Green thing upon them, and the great Sea which the prevailing Westerly winds impell upon the Shore must render this a very Dangerous Coast. ”

“ Round by the south the natives are somewhat more tractable than those farther to northward. Between the 11th and 12th degrees the trend of the coast is S.W. by S. and N.E. by N., next S.S.W. and N.N.E. down to the 13th degree; then running on due south as far as the eye reaches. The coast is mainly level without any reefs, and may be approached sounding. ”

“ Very near the most westerly point of Great Britain, and not very far from the promontory called Cape Cornwall, you may see, as you glide along the coast in your pleasure-boat of a calm summer's evening, a pretty little fishing-cove, in shape like a horse-shoe,—the two extreme points being formed by the projecting rocks on either side of the entrance,—the interior, or curved part, immediately under the main land, having a beautiful beach of white sand, on which boats can land with safety, when piloted by those who know the coast outside ”