the

extensive; forwards the unbroken view over the sea, from the height of the cliff-some 400 feet-extends to an amazing distance; eastward the Sussex coast lies like a faint cloud on the distant horizon; while westward Sandown Bay, with its reddish clay banks circling the light green waves, the softly swelling hills above, dotted over with half-concealed villages and scattered cottages, may be looked on from day to day with ever new pleasure. Culver Cliff approaches the perpendicular, and has a rather fearful appearance in looking over its summit. About thirty feet down the cliff, on its westward side, is a narrow cave, known as Hermit's Hole. It is mentioned in all the descriptions of the island; which speak of the descent to it in somewhat extravagant terms. In one work for example we find it said: "The path which leads to it from the summit of the cliff is steep, narrow, and rugged; but it is impossible to return after you have once descended from the brink of the precipice till you come to the cave below, as the path is too narrow, contracted, and irregular to permit a change of position for the feet. Most visitors satisfy themselves with the terrific aspect it presents on the sea-shore below-the idea of such an adventure is enough to disturb strongest nerves." Now this is just nonsense. It is of course not worth while for a person of weak nerves or unsteady feet to venture down a narrow path in the face of a nearly perpendicular cliff, when a slip would ensure a fall of some 350 feet; nor is it perhaps worth while for any one to do so. But, in fact, the danger is strangely overrated; a mountaineer would run down the path, and anybody of ordinary nerve may walk down without the slightest trepidation. The cavern itself, as the books very truly say, has nought in its appearance that can repay even the trouble of the descent to say nothing of the danger, if there is any. It is simply a narrow excavation, piercing some fifteen or twenty feet into the cliff. But one thing about it is very fine, and as it is nowhere mentioned, may deserve to be noticed. On reaching the end of the cave, you must of necessity turn round, when looking out of the dark recess you see before you the noble Sandown Bay with the graceful hills rising over it, standing out with a brilliancy and vividness of effect that is perfectly startling. As we gazed upon it early one fine morning last June, we could not remember ever to have seen anything so exquisite of its kind, nor could we recall anything in art that would bear comparing with it, except perhaps some of the finer of Stanfield's pictures of mingled sea and coast. But the effect may have been a transient one, and we do not by any means recommend any one not well used to mountain or cliff climbing to test it.

Culver Cliff, with White Cliff Bay, forms the eastern extremity of the island. The southern side of the island, which we have now reached, and along which we are to proceed, is generally termed, at least by the natives, the Back of the Island: it includes nearly all the scenery for which the Isle of Wight is ordinarily visited. The Culver Cliff itself may be said to be the

first of the more favoured localities. It is particularly interesting to geologists from its presenting a section of nearly vertical strata of chalk, and on the western side of the plastic clays,-answering to the still more remarkable section shown by the cliffs at Alum Bay, at the other extremity of the island. As we may allude to the peculiar features of these cliffs when we reach the latter place, it is unnecessary to make any further reference to them here. We may, however, just call the attention of the ordinary tourist to the singular nature of the flints which are imbedded in the chalk. Originally, of course, the strata were horizontal, but by some amazing upward pressure they have been raised to a nearly vertical position-lying in fact at an angle of 70°-so enormous has been the pressure, that the flints have been actually shivered, without however in the least altering their outward appearance; so that what seems a perfect flint splits into fragments when ever so slightly disturbed. The cliff is the haunt o. innumerable gulls, and auks, and other sea birds. According to Pennant it owes its name to this circumstance-culfre being the Saxon name of a pigeon which builds in the cliffs, and is here exceedingly numerous.

Sandown Bay is a wide and deep bay, of very picturesque though not very remarkable character. The cliffs are of a ferruginous sand and dark-coloured clay, of varying height, and broken, with more or less deep recesses, which permit a pleasing play of light and shadow, as well as of much richness of colour. A few fishermen's huts and humble cottages are dropped here and there along the cliffs, and two or three boats may generally be see hauled on the beach. In the early morning, when the cliffs lie in deep shadow, or about sunset, when their sombre tints deepen into a richer hue, while two or three shrimpers are plying their craft, or a wayfarer is winding along the sands to or from his day's labour, the scene has a quiet beauty that reminds one of the charming pictures of similar scenes which Collins used to paint so delightfully; not a few of his paintings were indeed taken from sketches made in this neighbourhood. In the little village of Sandown a neat church has been recently erected. There is also a fort here, known as Sandown Castle, but it has nothing to call for remark. Wilkes of '45 notoriety had a cottage—or as he commonly calls it in his correspondence a villakin-at Sandown, which was the favourite retreat of the later years of his life. It is said in the neighbourhood that he used to buy all the birds which the children of the place could catch, and amuse himself by rearing them and watching their habits. The cottage has been smartened of late and is now to let, furnished."

66

SHANKLIN.

Proceeding onwards, a pleasant walk, we soon reach Shanklin, the next noticeable place in our journey. The little village lies in a beautiful spot in the curve of Sandown Bay, and is admirably sheltered by Shanklin Down. The seaward prospects are very fine, and

inland the village itself as well as its vicinity affords many charming prospects. The beauty of the neighbourhood, and the fame of its lion Shanklin Chine, have rendered it very attractive to strangers, for whose accommodation new houses and good hotels have sprung up to a degree that has within a few years considerably altered the character and appearance of the place. These hotels, and one or two villas, are rather pretty and unassuming buildings; but though the tourist will "at the close of the day when the hamlet is still," or at the dinner-hour, fully appreciate the additional comfort they have introduced here, at any other time he will be disposed to regret the loss of the quiet humble seclusion which Gilpin and some other of the older visitants mention, and some of the ancient natives like to talk about. Except the scenery the village has little to describe. The church is old, but small and mean, and in bad preservation: it is quite time it gave place to a more convenient new one. Church accom

modation is not one of the advantages that can at present be held out at Shanklin as an attraction to the stranger.

We will now turn to the Chine. And this being the first we have had to notice of those curious objects which occur so often along the south-side of the island, and which are thought to be so characteristic of it, it may not be amiss to explain briefly their general nature. They are, then, deep fissures which have been cut in the cliffs by the action of a streamlet falling over the summit. All of them have the same general features: there is a wide opening on the seaward side which contracts with more or less rapidity inland, according to the hardness of the rock, the greater or less quantity of water which ordinarily falls over, or other circumstances. In some cases the ravine reaches for nearly a mile inland, and is lost at length in the ordinary bed of the brook; in others it terminates abruptly in a waterfall. Although the stream must

in every instance be regarded as the chief agent in cutting the Chine, its enlargement is perhaps as much or more owing to other influences. The action of the waves during great storms, when the sea is driven violently against the cliffs, has tended considerably to enlarge the opening of the Chines; while the landslips, which continually occur after severe frosts, must have caused the steep slopes to fall in from time to time: but the deepening of the Chines is always brought about by the stream, as may be observed in any of them where measures are not taken to prevent the constant wearing away of the rock. At Shanklin it has been found necessary to have the ground above the fall laid with stones, and a large slab serves as a shoot to throw the water over without allowing it to touch the edge of the Chine. The name Chine appears intended to designate their character. Sir Richard Worsley--who, by the way, like many other topographers being infected with the etymological disease, deems it necessary to find a parentage for the term in a Greek verb-has probably given the true account of its application he says, "The term is applied to the back-bone of an animal (both in the manége and culinary language) which forms the highest ridge of the body. Echine, in the French, is used in the same sense; and Boyer has the word Chinfreneau for a great cut or slash. Hence the word chine might be thought peculiarly expressive of a high ridge of land cleft abruptly down; and the several parts of the southern coast denominated Chines, all correspond with this description." Worsley might have mentioned the use. of the word in French as a verb: Echiner, to break the back-bone, in colloquial usage implies to cut through. Somewhat in this way Dryden employs it, "He that did chine the long-ribbed Apennine." | Scott notices in his Diary, kept while in the Orkney Islands, that he "saw two remarkable indentures in the coast called Rivas, perhaps from their being rifted or riven" and it would not be difficult to adduce other like applications of similar words if it were needful. We shall borrow a description of the Shanklin Chine from Sir Henry Englefield; it is much superior to any other we have seen, and with the engraving, (Cut, p. 440) will give a tolerably fair idea of it.

In some

trifling particulars there have been alterations since Sir Henry wrote, but the general features are the

same.

"The most eastern of these chines, and the most celebrated, is Shanklin Chine. The cliff, where the stream which forms it enters the sea, is about one hundred feet in height, and the chasm is perhaps one hundred and fifty feet wide at the top, and at the bottom not much wider than the channel of the stream. The sides are very steep, and in most places clothed with rich underwood, overhanging the naked sides. At a small distance within their mouth, on a terrace just large enough to afford a walk to their doors, stand two small cottages, at different elevations. Rude flights of steps descend to them from the top, and an excavation from the sandy rock forms a skittle

ground to one of them, overshadowed by the spray of young oaks. During the war, a sentinel was placed on a prominent point of the slope, and added much to the scenery. After proceeding about a hundred yards in a direct line from the shore, the chasm makes a sudden bend to the left, and grows much narrower. Its sides are nearly perpendicular, and but little shrubbery breaks their naked surface. The chasm continues winding and decreasing in breadth, till it terminates in an extremely narrow fissure, down which the rill which has formed the whole falls about thirty feet. The quantity of water is in general so small, that the cascade is scarcely worth viewing; but after great rains, it must be very pretty. The sides of the gloomy hollow in which it falls, are of the blackish indurated clay of which the greater part of the soil hereabouts is composed, and the damp of the waters has covered most part of it with shining green lichens, and mosses of various shades. The brushwood which grows on the brow on either side, overhangs, so as nearly to meet; and the whole scene, though it cannot be considered as magnificent, is certainly striking and grotesque. Above the fall, the stream continues to run in a deep and shady' channel, quite to the foot of the hills in which it takes its rise."

:

Our sketch was made immediately after a very heavy storm, and it is seldom indeed that so much water is seen falling over. But there is a passage in Wordsworth about such scenes that may comfort the traveller who is disappointed in not finding the rill in flood: the passage is well worth the consideration of the tourist who desires to look on Nature with an intelligent eye :-" It is generally supposed that waterfalls are scarcely worth being looked at, except after much rain, and that the more swollen the stream, the more fortunate the spectator; but this however is true only of large cataracts with sublime accompaniments and not even of these without some drawbacks. In other instances, what becomes at such a time of that sense of refreshing coolness which can only be felt in dry and sunny weather, when the rocks, herbs, and flowers glisten with moisture diffused by the breath of the precipitous water? But considering these things as objects of sight only, it may be observed that the principal charm of the smaller waterfalls or cascades consists of certain proportions of form and affinities of colour, among the component parts of the scene; and in the contrast maintained between the falling water and that which is apparently at rest, or rather settling gradually into quiet in the pool below. The beauty of such a scene, where there is naturally so much of agitation, is also heightened, in a peculiar manner, by the glimmering, and, towards the verge of the pool, by the steady reflection of the surrounding images. Now all these delicate distinctions are destroyed by heavy floods, and the whole stream rushes along in foam and tumultuous confusion."

The beauties of Shanklin Chine may be inspected at leisure, and dry-footed. There is a good, though too formal, path all along it, which, with the steps spoken

of above, is kept in repair by a fisherman who pays rent for the Chine, and lives in a cottage at its mouth. The Chine is enclosed, of course; everything in the island is enclosed which there is any way of enclosing, and which it is thought anybody will pay for seeing; but at each end of it a person is in waiting to unlock the gate and receive the fee, and when let in you are left to wander about at will. It is worth looking over leisurely. The curvature of the ravine brings the several parts into very various and often graceful combinations the views, too, looking from the Chine, where the broad expanse of ocean is seen, set in a frame of dark cliffs, wrought over with a tracery of exquisite foliage, is both peculiar and pleasing; while, from the platform, on either side of the mouth, the Bay, with its bold headlands and broken cliffs, is even grand. The visitor who stays at Shanklin for a day or two, should not leave it without strolling up Shanklin Down, and he will do well to continue his walk to Appuldurcombe. The views from the Down are most extensive. From the highest part, the eye wanders without hindrance quite across the island, over a tract of the very richest country; and beyond it, the Solent is seen, diminished in appearance to a river, while the Hampshire coast, and hills, close the distance. In every other direction the prospect is as wide, though not perhaps of such extreme beauty; but that westward is at least as remarkable, embracing as it does a good part of the singular scenery of the Undercliff. Many other spots in the neighbourhood also afford delightful rambles.

About a mile further along the coast is Luccombe Chine, which though inferior to Shanklin, is well worth visiting. It is altogether on a humbler scale than Shanklin, but it has the advantage of not being quite so ostentatiously trimmed and dressed. The water dashes boldly over the dark rock, and winds its way to the shore, beneath a canopy of luxuriant foliage. Two or three cottages vary the scene, without destroying its simplicity. The walk from Shanklin to Luccombe is singularly fine, whether the higher or the lower ground be taken. The high road, which leads over Dunnose Head, displays the widest extent of landscape; but the lower, which is a footway, running partly across the fields and partly along the beach, is the more secluded, and perhaps the most beautiful. The cliffs at Dunnose are rent into vertical and parallel fissures in a very wild manner; large fragments of the rock are also here scattered along the foot of the cliffs; and in fact the whole of this part of the coast has a very marked character.

THE UNDERCLIFF.

At Luccombe commences a strange tract of country, quite unlike any we have seen hitherto, and such as is hardly to be paralleled elsewhere. This is the famous Undercliff, a narrow strip of land, which has separated bodily from the hills of which it was originally a part, and sunk down a considerable way below them; and which

now forms a lower or under-cliff lying between the hills and the sea. It extends from Luccombe to Black Gang Chine, a distance of nearly seven miles, and varies from a quarter of a mile to nearly a mile in width. To understand its character, and the cause of its subsidence, it is necessary to be acquainted with the geological nature of the rocks, and the influences to which they have been subjected, when the explanation becomes very simple. The strata, reckoning from the bottom, are first red ferruginous sand, then blue marl, next green sandstone, and at top chalk and chalk marl. The stratum of blue marl is soft and easily acted upon by land springs, when it becomes mud, and oozes out; and the sandstone and chalk being deprived of their support, must of necessity sink down. The subsidence, if thus brought about, might be gradual and scarcely perceptible, except in its ultimate results; but the sea was at the same time beating with violence against the lower strata, and washing out the sand and marl, which were already loosened by the springs. This double process would go on till the superincumbent mass became unable to sustain itself by mere adhesion to the parent rock, when it must necessarily break away and fall forward. That this was the way in which the Undercliff was produced is evident, from an examination of the phenomena it presents, and what may be observed still going on, though on a lesser scale. The great change in the level must have occurred at a very distant period: churches and houses of ancient date, which stand on different parts of the Undercliff show that no very considerable alteration can have taken place for centuries. But there have been many sudden convulsions within confined limits. One, which occurred in 1810, at East End, destroyed thirty acres of ground; another, in 1818, above fifty acres; and there have since been several of more or less severity. The debris of many may be seen-especially of one that happened in the last winter, when a mass of rock fell from above, sufficient to provide stone for building the walls and repairing the roads along here for some time, without quarrying. The most extensive of the comparatively recent slips occurred at Niton, in February, 1799, when a small farm-house and above 100 acres of land were destroyed. As described in a contemporary letter, "the whole of the ground from the cliff above was in motion, which motion was directed to the sea, nearly in a straight line. . . . The ground above, beginning with a great founder from the base of the cliff, immediately under St. Catherine's, kept gliding down, and at last rushed on with violence, and totally changed the surface of all the ground to the west of the brook that runs into the sea; so that now the whole is convulsed and scattered about, as if it had been done by an earthquake: of all the rough ground, from the cottage upwards to the cliff, there is scarcely a foot of land but what has changed its situation. . . As far as the fence from the Chale side, the whole may be called one grand and awful ruin.. there are everywhere chasms that a horse or a cow might sink into and disappear." The evidences of this severe convulsion are