I take my stand on the margin of the cliff that overlooks Oddicombe, my
feet upon the short soft turf, marked with fairy rings, the Dog’s Head
just on my left,--a remarkable projection of grey lichened limestone
from the very cliff-edge, which, seen from the opposite side, bears
a curious resemblance to the head of a lop-eared, cross-grained cur;
but from my point of view far more forcibly presents the appearance
of the face of a night-capped old man, grinning with pain;--and a
fine vertical, and in some places overhanging, precipice just on my
right, in whose horizontal strata scores of noisy jackdaws find resting
ledges. I see them as they sit in conscious security only a few yards
below the margin, their sleek grey polls wagging, and their black eyes
now and then upturned, as others of the cawing tribe fly in, and seek
sitting-room. Some of the strata are strangely distorted at the western
end; and here a narrow and somewhat perilous track leads down below
the cliff to a grassy plateau at its foot. I scramble down, and sit on
a stony shelf, overhung with sheets of ivy, and mark the bright green
tufts of Sea-spleenwort springing out of the clefts, unfortunately too
high to be reached.
The eye roams northward. At foot a rough broken ground slopes steeply
down, shaggy with thickets of brake and bramble, and of furze which
glows even now with golden blossom, varied with great tracts of broken
fragments of limestone, blackened by the weather. At length this merges
into a broad beach of shingle, snowy white, on which I see ladies
reclining, with books and parasols, as if ’twere July instead of
February. The sea bounds the beach with a line of still whiter surf,
ever renewing itself as it breaks, with a sweet whispering sound.
At the back is a series of most picturesque cliffs of the reddest
sandstone, on the top of which I find in June the beautiful blossoms of
the Purple Gromwell, one of the rarest of British flowers. The ground
at the summit is very uneven; and so my eye rests on the broad opposite
slopes of Woodleigh Vale, chequered with fields and hedgerows, among
which the ploughmen are busy, and the teams are toiling up the steep
furrows.
The formation suddenly changes again, and the limestone is seen in the
fine rounded projection of Petit Tor, whose front of white marble has
been laid bare by the quarriers. Beyond this is the ruddy sandstone
once more rising into lofty headlands of noble shapes. At the foot
of one of these an isolated rock, called, from its figure, the Bell,
stands in the sea, where, even while I am writing this paper, a
mournful tragedy has occurred. Two Babbicombe fishermen went out at
midnight to examine their crab-pots at this rock, and did not return.
The morning revealed the keel of the boat bottom-up, moored by the
pot-lines, and one poor fellow entangled by his feet in the same lines,
while the sea washed his hair about the surface. The other has not yet
been found.
Farther on, the bluff Ness marks the harbour of Teignmouth, and as
the sunlight falls on the white villas that stud the opposite side,
the scene looks attractive. Then the cliff-line rapidly diminishes in
height as it recedes, and the heads of Dawlish project, and we see no
more till at Exmouth the land trends to the eastward, and from its
white terraces faintly seen in the slanting sun now, but to stand out
full and clear in the afternoon, we follow the bold, varying, beauteous
coast, beauteous in its outline, but dim in its detail, for some
twenty miles farther, till the straining eye finally fails to discern
it somewhere between Lyme and Bridport; though Portland itself is
sometimes to be seen, and I have myself made it well out, stretching
far forth upon the wide eastern horizon of blue sea. Now, however,
along that shining line nothing is discernible but a white speck or
two, and yon ocean steamer that passes down the Channel, with a long
line of black smoke on the low sky behind her.
I forsake my sheltered seat, and climb to the down, making my way
towards the left, in order to see the prospect to the right. Here is
a track winding down the broken slope, leading through roods of the
round leaves of the fragrant Butterburr. A month ago the whole air was
loaded with the delicious perfume of its lilac blossom. I make my way,
slippery and tenacious enough just now, along by the hedge of a field,
till I come to the edge of an abrupt perpendicular cliff. How beautiful
from hence is the sweet hamlet of Babbicombe the Nether! The rugged
masses of Black Wall project from the foot of the slope into the sea,
dividing Oddicombe from Babbicombe beach. Beyond it is the latter, a
sweeping curve of pebbles and then of larger boulders, backed by an
amphitheatre of picturesque fishing huts, and elegant villas, half hid
in bowery plantations and woods, with peeps of lawns and gardens, all
occupying the steep sides of the bay, up to the summit of the downs.
Beyond the beach, fine dark rock masses again project; and farther
still, the prospect is abruptly shut in by a magnificent vertical cliff
of great height, the northern boundary of that lovely spot of renown,
Anstey’s Cove.
These features, which I feebly essay to paint with many successive
words, and multitudes of others which I must fain leave untouched, the
eye drinks in at once, grasping the whole grand and beautiful picture
at a glance, steeped as it is in loveliness. Those who have seen it
may possibly find an aid to memory in recalling it in these details of
mine, for I write with the scene before me; those who have not will
probably find little of interest in them.