house there lies (not stretches) a tiny dell,
thickset with elm and ash, above which rises
the cattle-sprinkled down. The pretty sitting-
rooms look out in this direction; as do most of
the bed-rooms; which are large and airy as
need be, with sheet and coverlet, and curtain,
white as snow. Suppose, three Robinson
Crusoes, with every comfort in life super-
added, and there you have us.

Fallen mortals that we were, how could we
have been so puffed up as to expect another
Eden! ln this hotel, misnamed as we
thought, by reason of its beauty and retirement
—whose door was unspotted with a
licence, whose front undisfigured by a sign—
there was not one drop of Beer! Sherry
indeed there was,—soft pleasant drink,—
different enough from the fiery tavern stuff
in England, but to us Cantabs, fresh from
climbing the climbing wave, sherry was a
mere delicate insult. Upon inquiry, we heard
that the Guernsey cutter-boat would
probably bring some beer the next day, and in
that hope we lingered on.

On the morrow we descended by the rope
again, and embarked in a little rowing boat
at early morn to circumnavigate the island.
We had never seen such rocks, or holes in
rocks, in our united existences; but there
always was a cross current, always a
breaker a-head, so that for the first three-
quarters of an hour our fear exceeded our
admiration. Then we became accustomed to
it, and could look upon the sheer precipices
and slippery downs above, with an equal mind.
When we reached the entrance of the Lesser
Sheep (Moindre Mouton), we were again
astonished rather than made happy; a hill of
water, that rose in the mass without a wave,
and swept for about a hundred yards straight
inward, where it lost itself in gloom, took us
upon it into the bowels of the rock. The fine
old fellow and his handsome son, who rowed us,
both declared no mortal had been further than
where we lay at that present upon rested
oars, just fending ourselves off the sides, and
keeping our position as well as might be. The
water dripped from the lofty roof above us
with a melancholy sound into the sea; and,
from the darkness beyond, there came a
dreadful thunder, like the roar of a thousand
monsters of the deep. If the feeding time at
the Zoological Gardens were "unavoidably
postponed" for a day or two, and we should
take a ramble therein during a total eclipse
of the sun, we might experience a similar
but not more awful sensation. The return
into the sunlight seemed like a rescue from
the dead; and as we passed by natural archway
and immemorial tower, the croak of
the raven and the shriek of the goshawk
seemed a pleasant music after those mournful
surges. We threaded a hundred craggy
islets, where gull and cormorant were
congregated in voiceless council; and one of our
party who had the bump of destruction and
a gun dissolved a number of such conclaves,
and lessened them by several representatives.
The gulls fell principally upon the rocks
whereupon they had deliberated, and we
climbed their summits, bringing the fair
white palpitating bodies into the boat; but
the cormorants sought a watery tomb. Often
too, when we were congratulating our
comrade upon his success with these last, the
supposed victim, after a submarine transit of
sixty or seventy yards, would come up with
his teeth chattering, but otherwise in good
health. They are sneaking, low-foreheaded
fellows, who set much too high a value on
themselves, and are not, as the boatman told
us and we readily believed, good eating.

Bay after bay we rounded, each one having
some especial wonder of its own; fissures of
gigantic size, into which no sun-ray
penetrated; fantastic rocks, now aping some
dreadful likeness of humanity, now rising up
in pillar, dome and steeple, like palace and
cathedral in one: an especially ecclesiastical
fragment of great size was called the Chapel
of Sea-gulls (des Mauves), the outside of
which, however, rather than the in, those
white-robed birds seemed to prefer. Three
monstrous rocks—les Antelets—especially,
stretched out at intervals some distance into
the sea; huge altars, of an age of religion
before history was, or pillars of some temple
the very titles of whose gods are forgotten;
everywhere, and here in particular, gape
the dark mouths of caverns, and emit an
awful sound. It seems, indeed—even if the
general belief that Sark was once a part of
France be false—that it must have been in
ancient times four times larger than at
present, and that the whole circumference of the
island had been gradually clipped away by
that devouring sea, which is even now eating
out its rocky bowels, and undermining it as
slowly but as surely as ever. How unnecessary
do these adamantine sentinels, which
stand like advanced guards around the shore,
appear in this calm weather! They only
serve to feed a sheep or two, who are drawn
up by ropes and left to browse upon their
summits through the summer. The broad
blue deep, breaks not one tiny wave against
our prow; and only by the fringe of foam
along the rocky shore, can we detect the
ground-swell, which in truth would make
our landing perilous; and yet upon the Le
Creux harbour a sea so terrible once broke,
that, after carrying the large packet-cutter
(torn from her moorings) out of the narrow
opening, it cast the same vessel, with the next
mountain-wave, right on the sea-wall, which
is forty feet in height, into the harbour back
again. She fell upon a small craft therein
and crushed it to pieces, but without much
damage to herself. When the wind blows at
all, indeed, it makes terrible music about
the Sark cliffs. Such mutterings and
thunderings are then heard under the whole
island as only pent waters in the deep caverns
of the earth can make, or, as the natives say,