BY THE SEA‐SHORE.
English Appreciation of the Sea‐side—Its Variety and
Interest—Heavy Weather—The Green Waves—On the Cliffs—The Sea from
there—Madame de Gasparin’s Reveries—Description of a Tempest—The
Voice of God—Calm—A Great Medusa off the Coast—Night on the
Sea—Boating Excursion—In a Cavern—Colonies of Sea‐anemones—Rock
Pools—Southey’s Description—Treasures for the Aquarium—A Rat
Story—Rapid Influx of Tide and its Dangers—Melancholy Fate of a
Family—Life Under Water.
“In hollows of the tide‐worn reef,
Left at low water glistening in the sun,
Pellucid pools, and rocks in miniature,
With their small fry of fishes, crushed shells,
Rich mosses, tree‐like sea‐weed, sparkling pebbles,
Enchant the eye, and tempt the eager hand
To violate the fairy paradise.”
The sea‐side is nowhere more thoroughly appreciated than in our own rock
and water girt island, as the popularity of so many of our coast watering‐
places fully attests. The wonders of the shore are so many and varied that
they would require volumes like the present to do them full justice. Here,
then, the subject can only be briefly discussed.(51)
“The sea‐side,” says Gosse, a writer who is both artist and scientist in
his powers of description, “is never dull. Other places soon tire us; we
cannot always be admiring scenery, though ever so beautiful, and nobody
stands gazing into a field or on a hedgerow bank, though studded with the
most lovely flowers, by the half‐hour together. But we can and do stand
watching the sea, and feel reluctant to leave it: the changes of the tide
and the ever rolling, breaking, and retiring waves are so much like the
phenomena of life, that we look on with an interest and expectation akin
to that with which we watch the proceedings of living beings.” The sea‐
shore, in all its varied aspects, has beauties and characteristics all its
own.
“How grandly,” says the same writer, “those heavy waves are rolling in
upon this long shingle‐beach. Onward they come, with an even, deliberate
march that tells of power, out of that lowering sky that broods over the
southern horizon. Onward they come! onward! onward! each following its
precursor in serried ranks, ever coming nearer and nearer, ever looming
larger and larger, like the resistless legions of a great invading army,
sternly proud in its conscious strength; and ever and anon, as one and
another dark billow breaks in a crest of foam, we may fancy we see the
standards and ensigns of the threatening host waving here and there above
the mass.
“Still they drive in, and each in turn curls over its green head, and
rushes up the sloping beach in a long‐drawn sheet of the purest, whitest
foam. The drifted snow itself is not more purely spotlessly white than is
that sheet of foaming water. How it seethes and sparkles! how it boils and
bubbles! how it rings and hisses! The wind sings shrilly out of the
driving clouds, now sinking to a moan, now rising to a roar; but we cannot
hear it, for its tones are drowned in the ceaseless rushing of the mighty
waves upon the beach and the rattle of the recoiling pebbles. Along the
curvature of the shore the shrill, hoarse voice runs, becoming softer and
mellower as it recedes; while the echo of the bounding cliffs confines and
repeats and mingles it with the succeeding ones till all are blended on
the ear in one deafening roar.
“But let us climb these slippery rocks, and picking our way cautiously
over yonder craggy ledges, leaping the chasms that yawn between and reveal
the hissing waters below, let us strive to attain the vantage‐ground of
that ridge which we see some fifty feet above the beach. It is perilous
work this scrambling over rocks, alternately slimy with treacherous
seaweed, and bristling with sharp needle‐points of honeycombed limestone;
now climbing a precipice, with the hands clutching these same rough
points, and the toes finding a precarious hold in their interstices; now
descending to a ledge awfully overhung; now creeping along a narrow shelf
by working each foot on a few inches at a time, while the fingers
nervously cling to the stony precipice, and the mind strives to forget the
rugged depths below, and what would happen if—ah! that ‘if!’ let us cast
it to the winds. Another long stride across a gulf, a bound upward, and
here we are.
“Yes, here we stand on the bluff, looking out to seaward in the very eye
of the wind. We might have supposed it a tolerably smooth slope of stone
when we looked at the point from the sea, or from the various parts of the
shore where we can see this promontory. But very different is it on a
close acquaintance. It is a wilderness of craggy points and huge
castellated masses of compact limestone marble, piled one on another in
the most magnificent confusion. We have secured a comfortable berth,
where, wedged in between two of these masses, we can without danger lean
and look wistfully down upon the very theatre of the elemental war. Is not
this a sight worth the toil and trouble and peril of the ascent? The rock
below is fringed with great insular peaks and blocks, bristling up amidst
the sea, of various sizes and of the most fantastic and singular forms,
which the sea at high water would mostly cover, though now the far‐
receding tide exposes their horrid points, and the brown leprous coating
of barnacles with which their lower sides are covered is broadly seen
between the swelling seas.
[Illustration: ON THE SEA‐SHORE: CALM AND STORM.]
“Heavily rolls in the long deep swell of the ocean from the south‐west;
and as it approaches, with its huge undulations driven up into foaming
crests before the howling gale, each mighty wave breasts up against these
rocks, as when an army of veteran legions assaults an impregnable
fortress. Impregnable, indeed! for having spent its fury in a rising wall
of mingled water and foam, it shoots up perpendicularly to an immense
elevation, as if it would scale the heights it could not overthrow, only
to be the next moment a broken ruin of water murmuring and shrieking in
the moats below. The insular blocks and peaks receive the incoming surge
in an overwhelming flood, which immediately, as the spent wave recedes,
pours off through the interstices in a hundred beautiful jets and
cascades; while in the narrow straits and passages the rushing sea boils
and whirls about in curling sheets of snowy whiteness, curdling the
surface; or where it breaks away, of the most delicate pea‐green hue, the
tint produced by the bubbles seen through the water as they crowd to the
air from the depths where they were formed—the evidence of the unseen
conflict fiercely raging between earth and sea far below.
“The shrieking gusts, as the gale rises yet higher and more furious, whip
off the crests of the breaking billows, and bear the spray like a shower
of salt sleet to the height where we stand; while the foam, as it forms
and accumulates around the base of the headland, is seized by the same
power in broad masses and carried against the sides of the projecting
rocks, flying hither and thither like fleeces of wool, and adhering like
so much mortar to the face of the precipice, till it covers great spaces,
to the height of many fathoms above the highest range of the tide. The
gulls flit wailing through the storm, now breasting the wind, and beating
the air with their long wings as they make slow headway; then yielding the
vain essay, they turn and are whirled away, till, recovering themselves,
they come up again with a sweep, only to be discomfited. Their white
forms, now seen against the leaden‐grey sky, now lost amidst the snowy
foam, then coming into strong relief against the black rock; their piping
screams now sounding close against the ear, then blending with the sounds
of the elements, combine to add a wildness to the scene which was already
sufficiently savage.
“But the spring‐tide is nearly at its lowest; a rocky path leads down from
our eminence to a recess in the precipice, whence in these conditions
access may be obtained to a sea cavern that we may possibly find
entertainment in exploring.”
Madame de Gasparin, in her visit to Italy, thus describes her impressions
of a thunderstorm, the reveries of an enthusiastic poet‐traveller.(52) She
says:—“Last night a storm burst over Chiaveri. Three tempests in one! and
we in the very centre of the action.
“The thunder, marching on for a long time with that solemn roll which
reveals the depths of the skies, suddenly explodes with a crash; the
lightnings fall straight and serried—no longer a series of fantastic zig‐
zags, but a very focus of electric light. Sometimes the brilliancy flashes
out behind the castle, and the outline of its square tower, black as ink,
is thrown upon the palazzi opposite to it. Sometimes the fire kindles in
the east, and the square, the houses, the fortress, are all lighted up by
a flame of unbearable white, which scorches the eyes. The air is rent by
the winds in fury, the boom of the waves resounds through an undertone of
wild complaint. Angels of destruction are passing by this night; one hears
the hiss of their swords. What is human life? A nothing. What is man
himself? A worm. In hours like these the boldest among us calls his ways
to remembrance.
“I can understand seriousness; I have no patience with fear.
“There was a time when, during heavy storms, my mother was wont to say to
me: ‘Come!’ We used to go out in the full fury of the tempest. ‘Listen,’
my mother would say; ‘it is the voice of God!’ Then she made me join my
hands; she prayed, and peace descended into my soul.”
And again of a storm elsewhere Madame de Gasparin says:—“The mighty voice
fills the air with clamour. Not another word; there it is in its frenzy.
“There it is, stretching out to the furthest horizons. The clouds which
are driving along alternately dye it grey or black; then the mists are
rent, they let the sun pass through, and the intense blue is lit up to the
very depths of immensity.
“Near the shore squadrons of green waves of baleful perfidious hue—heavy
opaque masses, uplifted by a convulsive throb, shone athwart by a pale
ray—roll over and break with thundering noise; and foaming cataracts,
precipitated in torrents, dash up, then, suddenly quieted, come and lave
the shore with their clear waters.
“Terrible in its rage this sea! full of spite, like a wicked fairy.
Howling to the four quarters of the sky, heedlessly breaking proud ships
to pieces, intoxicated with cries, calamities, frenzied with might; and
then, as in irony, tracing magic circles, enclosing, inundating you, and
thrilling with pleasure, running back, leaving the sand strewn with
rainbowed bubbles.
“We stand motionless, mere nothings in presence of this brute force. But
our soul thrills, feeling herself greater than the sea, stronger than the
waves—she who can lay hold on God.
* * * * * * *
“But a ray or light has shone out....
“And now that the sun is lavishingly scattering diamonds over the sea, now
that the wrath of the waves breaks into sparkling laughter, let us run on
the shore, and defy the spray.
“And so, sometimes flying from, and sometimes braving the wind, we rush
into the uproar, we push on to that mass of rocks upon which the waves are
crashing. Swelling at a distance, they rear themselves up—they are giants!
Hardly have they reached the rocks than they crumble away, and the silly
foam throws its flakes on the pine‐trees holding on to the mountain side.
This is succeeded by a heavenly calm.”
“The peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plane,
Clear as the blue, sublime, o’er‐arching sky.”
“Down we gazed,” says Gosse, in one of his charming sea‐side works, “on
the smooth sea, becoming more and more mirror‐like every moment, as the
slight afternoon breeze died away into a calm, and allowing us from our
vantage height to see far down into its depths. Presently I was gratified
with the sight of one and then another of that enormous Medusa, the Great
Rhizostome, urging its diagonal course at the shining surface. Its great
bluish‐white disc, like a globe of fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter,
moves foremost by alternate contractions and expansions, which remind one
of the pulse of an enormous heart, especially as at each stroke a volume
of fluid is shot out of the cavity, by the impact of which on the
surrounding water the huge body is driven vigorously forward. Meanwhile
the compound peduncle, with its eight arms that hang down to the depth of
two feet below, is dragged after the disc, its weight and the resistance
of the water to its bulk combining to give that slanting direction which
this great Medusa always assumes when in motion. We watched the great
unwieldy creatures a long time, even till evening had faded into night,
and were left almost the only wanderers on the hill. But what a night it
was! So calm, so balmy, so solemnly still and noiseless; even the wash of
the ripple at the foot of the cliff was hushed. There was no moon, but
many stars were twinkling and blinking, and in the north‐west a strong
flush of light filled the sky, which was rapidly creeping along over the
north cliffs. Then those cliffs themselves, all distinctness of feature
lost in the darkness, stood like a great black wall in front of us, which
being reflected in the placid sea so truly that no difference could be
traced between substance and shadow, the dark mass, doubled in height,
seemed to rise from a line only a few hundred yards off; and thus
everything looked strange and unnatural and unrecognisable, although our
reason told us the cause.
“Let us now scramble down the cliff‐side path, tangled with briers and
ferns, where the swelling buds of the hawthorn and honeysuckle are already
bursting, while the blackbird mellowly whistles in the fast‐greening
thicket, and the lark joyously greets the mounting sun above us. Yonder on
the shingle lies a boat newly painted in white and green for the
attraction of young ladies of maritime aspirations; she is hauled up high
and dry, but the sinewy arms of an honest boatman, who, hearing footsteps,
has come out of his little grotto under the rock to reconnoitre, will soon
drag her down to the sea’s margin, and ‘for the sum of a shilling an
hour,’ will pull us over the smooth and pond‐like sea whithersoever we may
choose to direct him.
“‘Jump aboard, please, sir. Jump in, ladies. Jump in, little master.’ And
now, as we take our seats on the clean canvas cushions astern, the boat’s
bottom scrapes along with a harsh grating noise over the white shingle‐
pebbles, and we are afloat.
“First to the caverns just outside yonder lofty point. The lowness of the
tide will enable us to take the boat into them, and the calmness of the
sea will preclude much danger of her striking upon the rocks, especially
as the watchful boatman will be on the alert, boat‐hook in hand, to keep
her clear. Now we lie in the gloom of the lofty arch, gently heaving and
sinking and swaying on the slight swell, which, however smooth at the
surface, is always perceptible when you are in a boat among rocks, and
which invests such an approach with a danger that a landsman does not at
all appreciate.
“Yet the water, despite the swell, is glassy, and invites the gaze down
into its crystalline depths, where the little fishes are playing and
hovering over the dark weeds.
“The sides of the cavern rise around us in curved planes, washed smooth
and slippery by the dashing of the waves of ages, and gradually merge into
the massive angles and projections and groins of the broken roof, whence a
tuft or two of what looks like samphire depends. But notice the colonies
of the smooth anemone or beadlet (_Actinia mesembryanthemum_) clustered
about the sides, many of them adhering to the stone walls several feet
above the water. Those have been left uncovered for hours, and are none
the worse for it. They are closed, the many tentacles being concealed by
the involution of the upper part of the body, so that they look like balls
or hemispheres, or semi‐ovals of flesh; or like ripe fruits, so plump and
glossy and succulent and high‐coloured, that we are tempted to stretch
forth the willing hand to pluck and eat. Some are greengages, some Orleans
plums, some magnum‐bonums, so varied are their rich hues; but look beneath
the water, and you see them not less numerous, but of quite another guise.
These are all widely expanded; the tentacles are thrown out in an arch
over the circumference, leaving a broad flat disc, just like a many‐
petalled flower of gorgeous hues; indeed, we may fancy that here we see
the blossoms and there the ripened fruit. Do not omit, however, to notice
the beads of pearly blue that stud the margin all around at the base of
the over‐arching tentacles. These have been supposed by some to be eyes;
the suggestion, however, rests upon no anatomical ground, and is, I am
afraid, worthless, though I cannot tell you what purpose they do serve.”
[Illustration: SEA ANEMONES.
1, 2, 3. _A. sulcata_. 4. _Phymactis sanctæ Helenæ_. 5. _Actinia
capensis_. 6. _A. Peruviana_.
7. _A. sanctæ Catherinæ_. 8. _A. amethystina_. 9, 10. _Anthea cereus_.]
Southey must have had the deep rocky pools of the Devonshire coast in his
mind’s eye when he wrote—
“It was a garden still beyond all price,
Even yet it was a place of Paradise.
* * * *
And here were coral bowers,
And grots of madrepores,
And banks of sponge, as soft and fair to eye
As e’er was mossy bed
Whereon the wood‐nymphs lie
With languid limbs in summer’s sultry hours.
Here, too, were living flowers,
Which like a bud compacted,
Their purple cups contracted,
And now, in open blossom spread,
Stretched like green anthers many a seeking head;
And arborets of jointed stone were there,
And plants of fibres fine as silkworm’s thread;
Yea, beautiful as mermaid’s golden hair,
Upon the waves dispread.”
It is among the rock‐tide pools that some of the most prized treasures of
the aquarium may be obtained. There are the little shrubberies of pink
coralline, Southey’s “arborets of jointed stone”; there are the crimson
banana‐leaves of the _Delesseria_, the purple tufts of Polysiphoniæ and
Ceramia, the broad emerald green leaves of _Ulva_, and the wavy, feathery
_Ptitola_ and _Dasya_. Then everywhere is to be found the lovely _Chondrus
crispus_, with its expanding fan‐shaped fronds cut into segments, every
segment of every frond reflecting a lovely iridescent azure.
[Illustration: DELESSERIA.]
[Illustration: ULVA.]
Mr. Gosse was reclining one evening on the turf, looking down on a
Devonshire cove that formed the extremity of a great cavern. Though it was
low tide, the sea did not recede sufficiently to admit of any access to
the cove from the shore. Presently he saw a large rat come deliberately
foraging down to the water’s edge, peep under every stone, go hither and
thither very methodically, pass into the crevices, exploring them in
succession. At length he came out of a hole in the rock, with some white
object in his mouth as big as a walnut, and ran slowly off with it by a
way the observer had not seen him go before, till he could follow him no
longer with his eyes because of the projections of the precipice. What
could he possibly have found? He evidently knew what he was about. From
his retirement into the cavern, when the sea had quite insulated it, the
sagacious little animal had doubtless his retreat in its recesses, far up,
of course, out of the reach of the sea, where he would be snugly lodged
when the waves dashed and broke wildly through the cove, kindling millions
of fitful lamps among the clustering polypes below.
The influx of the tide is frequently, as we all know, very rapid on the
sands, and cuts off the communication between rocky islets and the shore
in rather a treacherous fashion. Mr. Gosse, in giving an account of such
influx on a part of the Devonshire coast says:—
“In the evening we strolled down to look at the place, and were beguiled
into staying till it was quite late by the interest which attached to the
coming‐in of the tide. There was a breeze from the southward, which hove
the sea against the opposite entrance of the cavern to that on which we
were standing; and the funnel‐shaped cliffs on that side concentrated the
successive waves, which drove through a sort of ‘bore,’ and covered with
turbulent water large tracts which but a few moments before were dry. We
were pushed from stone to stone, and from spot to spot, like a retreating
enemy before a successful army; but we lingered, wishing to see the
junction of the waters and the insulation of the rock. It is at this point
that the advance is so treacherous. There was an isthmus of some twenty
feet wide of dry sand, when my wife, who had seen the process before,
said, ‘It will be all over by the time you have counted a hundred.’ Before
I had reached fifty it was a wide wash of water.”
A melancholy fate overtook a large family party near here some years ago.
They had walked over the sands to Fern Cliff, and made their picnic in a
cavern close by, forgetful of the silent march of the tide. When they
discovered their isolation escape was cut off, and the overhanging rock
forbade all chance of climbing. They were all drowned, and the bodies
picked up one by one, as the sea washed them in.
All the species of anemone found on the rocks above the water are to be
seen below it, and all displaying their beauties in an incomparably more
charming fashion. The whole submerged wall is nothing else than a parterre
of most brilliant flowers, taken bodily and set on end. “The eye is
bewildered with their number and variety, and knows not which to look at
first. Here are the rosy anemones (_Sagartia rosea_), with a firm fleshy
column of rich sienna‐brown, paler towards the base, and with the upper
part studded with indistinct spots, marking the situation of certain
organs which have an adhesive power. The disc is of a pale neutral tint,
with a crimson mouth in the centre, and a circumference of crowded
tentacles of the most lovely rose‐purple, the rich hue of that lovely
flower that bears the name of General Jacqueminot. In those specimens that
are most widely opened this tentacular fringe forms a blossom whose petals
overhang the concealed column, expanding to the width of an inch or more;
but there are others in which the expansion is less complete in different
degrees, and these all give distinct phases of loveliness. We find a few
among the rest which, with the characteristically‐coloured tentacles, have
the column and disc of a creamy white; and one in which the disc is of a
brilliant orange, inclining to scarlet. Most lovely little creatures are
they all! Commingling with these charming roses there are others which
attain a larger size, occurring in even greater abundance. They are
frequently an inch and a half in diameter when expanded, and some are even
larger than this. You may know them at once by observing that the outer
row of tentacles, and occasionally also some of the others, are of a
scarlet hue, which, when examined minutely, is seen to be produced by a
sort of core of that rich hue pervading the pellucid tentacle. The species
is commonly known as the scarlet‐fringed anemone (_Sagartia miniata_). The
inner rows of tentacles, which individually are larger than those of the
outer rows, are pale, marked at the base with strong bars of black. The
disc is very variable in hue, but the column is for the most part of the
same rich brown as we saw in the rosy. Yet, though these are
characteristic colours, there are specimens which diverge exceedingly from
them, and some approach so near the roses as to be scarcely
distinguishable from them.” The loveliness of these submarine gardens
cannot be over‐rated.