Coast town

“ The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. ”

“ Right and left of the city, when viewed from the sea, extends low country, whilst behind it, and to the east, rises in the distance a lofty range of mountains. From the open sea, the town and flat country is divided by a natural breakwater that maintains the general trend of the coast. ”

“ A new village is going to be built at the place which the Coast Guard picks out along the shore as being the best site for a town. It's going to be a regularly laid out place, with sanitary arrangements and everything else complete. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one, who is familiar with the bustle and activity of an American commercial town, would recognize, in the repose which now reigns in the ancient mart of Rhode Island, a place that, in its day, has been ranked amongst the most important ports along the whole line of our extended coast. ”

“ There is much sadness yet poetic charm in the landscape sweeps of silvery-green olive or bluish salicornia against a pale-blue sky, dull-brown fishing villages bordering sleepy lagoons, stretches of white sand, with here and there a glimpse of the purple, rock-hemmed sea. Little of life animates this coast, in many spots the custom-house officer and a fisherman or two being the sole inhabitants, their nearest neighbours removed from them by many miles. ”

“ But oh, the freedom of being nobody, and of having nothing to think of or do! And everything I see and hear gives me joy; a lark rising from the turf, and carolling its little self up into the blue; the great Atlantic breakers, pounding upon the shore; the fisher-folk, standing at the doors of their picturesque thatched cottages. All things seem alive, 85 with an exuberance of living, to which I have long been a stranger.
Do you know this coast, with its high moorland, its splendid cliffs; and, far below, its sand coves, and ever-moving, rolling, surging, deep green sea? ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have the villa-studded, pastoral plain—the spacious bay, with all its variety of coast, from the sandy beach to the bluff sea-promontory—the richly-wooded valley with its limpid river—the lonely mountain glen with its cataracts and tiny trout-streams—the purple heath and the solitary tarn, or pool—the rural village and the gay watering-place; while in addition to all these, the interest imparted to natural scenery, by remains of ancient times, is every where present. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Broken wooded ridges, deeply cleft, rise from the water's edge, gray, deep-roofed villages cluster about the mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice cultivation, bright with the greenness of English lawns, run up to a great height among dark masses of upland forest. The populousness of the coast is very impressive, and the gulf everywhere was equally peopled with fishing-boats, of which we passed not only hundreds, but thousands, in five hours. ”

“ In those days there must have been a good many such heathen villages along this coast with a nomad population far more numerous than now.
Thence we easily ascend the ship hill, over rock and moss, and occasional patches of snow. The view is really grand, though bleak and bare. Hundreds of rocky islands lie between us and the seaward horizon, while to north and south one can scarcely distinguish them from the bold headlands which stretch out into the ocean. Northward, the white sails of from thirty to forty fishing schooners are gleaming white in the sun. ”

“ The vast peat bogs are dreary, the meadowlands monotonous, the villages, if interesting, far from beautiful, and the detached cottages often positively painful in their filth and squalor. But the frame of the picture—the glorious coast line—surely, mile for mile, its equal may hardly be found on the globe. ”

“ Once a sailor has picked up Nauset Light on his way north to Provincetown, the only signs of life he will find along the beach will be the coast guard stations and the little cottages which the surfmen build about them for their families. Thirty miles of the thunder of the breakers, thirty miles of Nature in the elemental mood, thirty miles where night reveals no welcoming window light, and the world vanishes into a darkness full of unutterable mystery, keen, moist, ocean smells, and thundering sound. ”

“ The village is bounded by wooded hills, and a drive oceanward brings us to the dunes where the State, year after year, has waged war with the drifting sand of its Province Lands. Life-saving stations and beacons are set at short intervals, and are needed, on this shore, and out there lie the great shoals of the Peaked Hill Bar, the cruellest of all the coast, where ship after ship has piled her bones, and men by the hundred have gone to their death. To the eye, in a crisp north wind, they present only lines of vivid jade-green water set in the wide field of blue ”

“ The plain itself is like a hive, with its dwellings and scenes of life, while the heights behind it teem with cottages and the signs of human labor. Quitting this smiling part of the coast, we reach a point, always following the circuit of the bay, where the hills or heights tower into ragged mountains, which stretch their pointed peaks upward to some six or seven thousand feet toward the clouds, having sides now wild with precipices and ravines, now picturesque with shooting-towers, hamlets, monasteries, and bridle-paths ”

“ I have never seen a more grim or cruel-looking coast than that which stretches for miles east and west of Portsoy. One shudders even at the thought of those detestable, razor-edged rocks, tilted up at all angles, with the tide for ever boiling and hissing about them. Neither by land nor sea, at many parts of the coast, can you get to what might be reasonably called a beach. The so-called shore-road is high up on the hills, and gives a good view far out over the billows, but does not take the traveller's feet near the water at all. ”

“ These towns cannot escape the imminent tragedy of the sea nor the splendid austerity of the unconquerable seacoast which, in some parts, has not given man a foothold since the Pilgrims first made their adventurous landing.
These towns breed brave men and women, and occasionally a lad like David Ellison grows up, who seems to be kin to the sea and to the lonely and savage coast. ”

“ The whole of the coasting trade passes within this barrier, and the houses and villages, of which there are many, lie hidden on the sheltered shores of the numerous channels; so that, however well peopled the coast may be—and in some places population is by no means scanty—neither house, nor boat, nor ship, except the foreign trade as it approaches or leaves the coast, is ever seen by the outside coaster. ”

“ This may be seen anywhere on our coasts; excepting the seaports and fishing settlements, the towns and villages are almost always some distance from the sea, often in a hollow or at all events screened by rising ground and woods from it. The modern seaside place has, in most cases, its old town or village not far away but quite as near as the healthy ancients wished to be. ”

“ On one hand we have a line of green waving forest coast, where the oak, the elm, the linden, and the maple, and stately yellow birch are standing in pretty groups, or gracefully bending over the water—upon the other we have a shoreless ocean. For miles there are no signs of human existence, and then some little village appears with its invariable accompaniment, a pier, lighthouse and schooner. We passed Fairport, at the mouth of Grand river, and from thence the ground begins to rise, being a band of argillaceous schist, which extends to Cleveland. ”

“ This coast is wind-swept, yet the winds from the sea are never cold, so that wherever there is shelter there trees, shrubs, and flowers luxuriate. In a dip in the land, at the source of a little stream, snuggling into the folds of the down, bedded in foliage, open to the sun, hummed about by bees, twinkled over by butterflies, lies this lovely old house. ”

“ Ahead there is a lighthouse, a signal post, a few houses embowered in trees, high cliffs of white limestone or dark basalt, and then, as we round the promontory into the harbour, the quaint yet lovely town is all before us, extending along the bluffs above the shore, the only natural depression being where a stream flows into the sea from a lagoon in a valley at the back of the town. ”

“ With the exception of the little fishing station of Porthleven there is not a place all along the coast from Cuddan Point to the Lizard large enough to be called a village. Inland the country is in keeping with the character of the coast. ”

“ The first things that meet our eye at every station are large and splendid lawns, young plantations of palm trees and other plants characteristic of the Southern coast climate, flowers of brightest hue, all started by the enterprising immigrants who came here to buy climate, sun and air, and to enjoy the breakers and the ocean every day in the year. After Oceanside, we touch at Carlsbad and Del Mar, both seaside resorts with magnificent villas costing from twenty to forty thousand dollars each, and with fine but young plantations and gardens. ”

“ It is a pleasant place in which to live, where, in winter, the air is warm, and in summer a cool breeze from the ocean tempers the hottest day. At the feet of the town the ocean beats restlessly on the narrow strip of beach that fringes the shore. On the distant horizon one may often see the black smoke, sometimes the hull, shadowy and indistinct, of some passing steamer. But only the smaller steamers or ships can enter the bay, for there are reefs and sand-spits, to touch which would mean destruction. Beside the town, the River Grey enters the ocean. ”

“ The whole of this coast is a paradise of natural beauty, investing with its own loveliness the time-eaten wrecks with which it is strewn; the mouldering past is mingled with the vivid present; ruin and grey annihilation are decked in eternal spring. The woody windings of the shore reveal, in their deep recesses, the gleaming marble fragments of the abodes of ancient heroes ”

“ The eastern coast, with its ragged outline of bays, headlands, indentations, islands, capes, and sand-spits, from Watch Hill, a favorite breezy resort, to Mount Desert, presents an almost continual chain of hotels and summer cottages. In fact, the same may be said of the whole Atlantic front from Mount Desert down to Cape May. It is to the traveler an amazing spectacle. The American people can no longer be reproached for not taking any summer recreation. ”

“ You realise, when come to the village, that it stands in a flat, low-lying space giving upon a distant bay; a bay distant just upon one mile. Once upon a time—a time so distant that history places no certain date against it—the village immediately faced the sea, and indeed took its name, which means “the enclosed port,” from the fact of the harbour running up to this point, deeply embayed between the enfolding hills. Rich meadows now spread out where the sea once rolled ”

“ To this sheltered coast through the summer months people come from the hot towns inland and fill every lodging and inn and pitch tents on the shore, and pass serene, lazy, amphibious days in and out of a sea which has the inestimable advantage over English seas that it is always at hand. ”

“ The pulling down of old houses has revealed many a hollow in the thick walls and under the flagged floors; there is even a story that one great gentleman used to conceal a store of illicit goods—in his carriage!
Relics of an older civilisation have been dug up on these headlands. It is possible, before the sand swept in overwhelmingly, that the coast may have supported a larger population. ”

“ When the tide retires from the shore, the sea leaves upon the coast some few of the numberless beings which it bears in its bosom. In the first moments of its retreat, the naturalist may collect a crowd of substances, vegetable and animal, with their various characteristic colours and properties. The inhabitants of the coast find there their food, their commerce, and their occupations. At low water the nearest villages and hamlets send their contingents, old and young, men, women, and children, to the harvest. ”