Men's and Women's Wages--The Signal Tower--The passing Fleet--
The Lighthouse--The Inland View--Cliff scenery--Outstretching
Reefs--Selwick's Bay--Down to the Beach--Aspect of the Cliffs--
The Matron--Lessons in Pools--Caverns--The King and Queen--
Arched Promontories--The North Landing--The Herring-Fishers--
Pleasure Parties--Robin Lyth's Hole--Kirk Hole--View across
little Denmark--Speeton--End of the Chalk--Walk to Filey.
A fresh, bright morning succeeded the stormy night, and it was but a few
hours old when, after a look at the old Danish tower at the west of the
village, I walked across the fields to the lighthouse. A woman trudging
in the same direction with a hoe on her shoulder said, after I had asked
her a few questions, she wished she were a man, for then she would get
nine shillings a week and her meat, instead of one shilling a day and
feeding herself, as at present. However, 'twas better than nothing.
Presently her daughter came up, a buxom maiden, wearing her bonnet in a
way which saved her the affliction of shrugs and the trouble of tying.
It was front behind: a fashion which leaves no part of the head exposed,
shelters the poll, and looks picturesque withal. It prevails, as I
afterwards noticed, among the rustic lasses everywhere.
As I passed the old stone tower near the coast-guard station, the
signal-man was busy raising and lowering his flag, for a numerous fleet
of coasting-vessels was running by to the southward, each telling its
name as it came within signal distance. The man sends a daily list of
the names to London for publication, whereby coal-merchants and others
hear of cargoes on the way, and calculate the time of their arrival. It
is a peculiarity of Flamborough Head, an enlivening one, that ships can
keep so close in that the men on their decks are distinctly seen, and
their voices heard by one standing on the cliff.
The lighthouse, a circular white tower, eighty-two feet in height,
stands on the verge of the cliff, displaying inside and out all that
admirable order and cleanliness characteristic of British lighthouses.
There is no difficulty in obtaining admittance; you sign your name in a
book, and are forthwith conducted up to the lantern by the chief or one
of his aids. The light is revolving, alternately white and red, and can
be seen at a distance of thirty miles. But here, elevated two hundred
and fifty feet above the sea, you feel most interested in the prospect.
No "shadowy pomp of woods" arrests the eye looking landwards, but a
region bleak and bare in aspect rolling away to the distant wolds, the
line of uplands which, sweeping round, approaches the coast about
Scarborough. The village with its windmill, and the few farms that are
in sight, look naked and comfortless: not an inviting territory for an
invader given to the picturesque. But seawards, and along the rugged
front of the cliffs, grandeur and variety exert their charm. Here the
up-piled chalk flings out a bold perpendicular buttress, solid from base
to summit; there the jutting mass is isolated by yawning cracks and
chasms, and underneath, as we shall presently see, is fretted into
fantastic shapes, pierced through and through, or worn into caverns by
the headlong billows. In places a broken slope of rocky hummocks and
patches of grass, weeds, and gravel descends, more or less abruptly, to
the beach, opening a view of the long weed-blackened reefs that,
stretching out from the Head, afford a measure of the amazing
encroachments of the sea. Northwards, the bluff crowned by Scarborough
Castle, backed by higher elevations, closes the view; to the south you
have the low, fading coast of Holderness; and all the while brigs,
ships, and schooners are sailing past, more than a hundred in sight,
some of them so near that you fancy they will hardly escape the lurking
points of the dark reef. One small vessel, the keeper told me, had
touched the day before, and lay fast and helpless till, the weather
being calm, she floated off by the succeeding tide. You can look down
into Selwicks Bay, and see men and boys quarrying chalk, and donkeys
laden with heavy panniers of the lumps, toiling painfully up the steep
winding road which forms the only approach. The farther horn of the
little bay is arched and tunnelled, and, taken with the waterfall
plunging down in its rear and the imposing features of the points
beyond, invites to further exploration.
The residents at the lighthouse enjoy an abundant supply of water from a
spring within their enclosure: their garden produces cabbages and
potatoes; the neighbours are friendly, and visitors numerous. Hence life
is more cheerful to them than to the amphibious hermits who dwell at the
Spurn.
While looking for a practicable descending-place, I noticed many tufts
of thrift as thick with flowers as in an antiquated garden where the old
favourites are still cherished.
"Even here hath Nature lavished hues, and scent,
And melody; born handmaids of the ocean:
The frowning crags, with moss and rock-flowers blent,
Dazzle the eyes with sunlight, while the motion
Of waves, the breezes fragrant from the sea,
And cry of birds, combine one glorious symphony!"
The time--dead low water--being favourable for a stroll on the beach, I
scrambled down a rough slope to the south of the lighthouse, and across
the rougher beach to the rocks beyond the outmost point, where, turning
round, I could view the cliffs in either direction. And a striking scene
it is! A wild beach, as rugged with water-worn lumps of chalk as any
lover of chaos could desire. Here the cliff jutting proudly, the white
patches gleaming brightly where masses of chalk have recently fallen,
and the harder portions presenting a smooth, marble-like appearance;
there receding into the shade, and terminating in darksome hollows, the
mouths of gullies and caverns; and everywhere broken up with buttresses,
piers, and columnar projections, the bases of which are garnished with a
belt of shelly incrustation, and a broad brown fringe of weed. Above,
the white surface is varied by streaks and stains of yellow and green;
and seafowl innumerable crowd on all the ledges, or wheel and dart in
restless flight, as if proud to show their white wings to the sun.
The reef stretches out a quarter of a mile, as one may guess, worn here
and there with channels narrow and deep, along which the water rolls
with intermittent rush and roar, reminding the loiterer here in the
slumberous July weather of tremendous energies lulled to repose. I
walked round the Matron--an isolated pyramid of chalk--and patted her on
the back; and strode from one little pool to another, taking an
unscientific lesson in natural history while watching the animal and
vegetable occupants, and those that seemed to be as much one as the
other.
I picked up a fine specimen of the hermit crab, and proved the strength
of local attachment: it would not be coaxed from its hermitage--the
shell of a whelk. I saw a limpet give its shell half a rotation, then
grow tall for an instant, and then shut itself snugly down upon the
rock. At times, while I stood quite still, 'ninnycocks,' that is, young
lobsters, would venture out from their crevices, and have a frolic in
their weedy basin; but they would tolerate no intruder, and darted into
undiscoverable retreats on my slightest movement. And the animated
flowers that displayed their orange and crimson petals at the bottom of
the basin were equally mistrustful, and shut themselves up if I did but
put my hand in the water, even after they had looked on without winking
at the gambols of the ninnycocks.
There are times when ignorance has a charm, and this was one of them.
How much happier to sit and watch a crowd of weeds, a very forest in
miniature, tenanted by creeping things innumerable, and to have your
faculty of wonder excited as well as admiration while observing them in
full liberty, than to come prepared to call one an ascidian, another an
entomostracan, and so on, and to assign to each its place in the
phycological handbook, or the zoological catalogue!
In some of the smallest and deepest caverns which curve as they enter
the cliff, you get effects of cross lights from their inner extremity,
and see the glistening of the walls, which, worn smooth by the water,
appear to be varnished. In all the floor rises more or less rapidly; and
in one, a hundred paces deep, the rush and roar of the surge outside
comes only as a gentle murmur, and a slow drip-drip from the crevices
has an impressive sound there in the gloom where the entrance cannot be
seen.
I took advantage of the opportunity, and explored most of the openings,
catching sight now and then of belemnites and other curious fossils in
the chalk, wading at times knee-deep in weed, and scrambled round the
bays on each side of the point, and failed not to salute the venerable
King and Queen.
Having rambled about till the rising tide began to cut off the way round
the promontories, and the crabbers came in from their raid on the reefs,
I climbed the rough slope, and paced away for the North Landing. Beyond
Selwicks Bay the cliff is more broken and cut up into romantic coves and
bays, with confused landslips here and there, and in places the green
turf rushing half way down masks the chalk; and everywhere are thousands
of birds, with their ceaseless cry and clang. Isolated masses are
numerous; and from one point I could count eight headlands, each pierced
by an arch. And here the water, no longer stained with clay, shows green
and bright along the base of the cliff, beautifully pellucid where it
rolls over a bottom of chalk, contrasting strangely with darksome gulfs
and broad beds of weed. And mingling with the cry of birds, there comes
from time to time to your ear the noisy report of the guns, or the chant
of the fishermen, as rocked on the swell, they sit watching their nets.
The North Landing is a gap similar to the South, but broader, and with
an outlet wide enough to be described as a bay. Here I saw some sixty or
eighty boats perched from top to bottom of the steep slope; and groups
of fishermen with their families, men, women, and children, all busy
with preparations for the herring fishery. While some sorted the nets,
others lifted in big stones for ballast, or set up the masts, and others
pushed their boats down to meet the tide, and all in high good humour;
while all about there prevailed a strong fishy smell. And besides the
fishermen, there were parties of young men with their guns embarking for
a sporting cruise; some armed only with parasols and accompanied by
ladies, setting off for a sail round the Head; for this is the chief
port of Flamborough, and the _North Star_, a public-house at the top of
the hill, is convenient for victual.
The advance of the tide prevented my seeing Robin Lyth's Hole, a cavern
on the eastern side of the Landing; named, as some say, after a certain
smuggler who kept his unlawful merchandise therein; or to commemorate
the name of a man who was caught in the cavern by the tide, and saved
his life by clinging to the topmost ledge till the water fell. Another
cavern is known as the Dovecote; another as Kirk Hole, and of this the
tradition runs that it extends far underground to the village
churchyard.
I climbed up the western side of the gap, and continued my way along the
cliffs, which maintain their elevation. Soon I came to the northern end
of the Dike, a height of three hundred feet, and from the top beheld the
whole territory of Little Denmark, and the sea all the way round to the
lighthouse, and the southern end of the Dike. According to Professor
Phillips, this remarkable bank was probably already in existence when
the Danes landed: "perhaps earlier than the Anglian invasion," he says;
"perhaps it is a British work, like many other of the entrenchments on
these anciently peopled hills."
A mile farther, and the cliff rises to a height of more than four
hundred feet. In some places the bank which encloses the fields is broad
enough for a footpath; but you must beware of the landslips. The fences,
which are troublesome to climb, project beyond the edge of the cliff to
keep the cows, as an old farmer said, "from persevering after the grass
and tumbling over." Then at Speeton the chalk turns inland away from the
coast, and the cliff makes a deep hollow curve, chiefly gravel and dark
blue clay, abounding in fossils. To avoid the curve, I zigzagged down to
the beach; but was presently stopped by a point against which the waves
were dashing breast high. I scrambled over it, and was struck by its
curious appearance. It seemed to be a high clay buttress, which had
fallen perhaps within a few weeks, and was broken up into masses of
somewhat regular form, resembling big loaves, and the long grass that
had once waved on the surface now looked like dishevelled thatch. It was
an interesting example of the way in which the sea commences its
ravages.
Farther on the cliffs diminish in height, and are furrowed by numerous
streamlets, and the rugged, stony beach changes to smooth, yielding
sand. Filey comes in sight, and Filey Brig, a long black bar stretching
into the sea from the extreme point of the great bay, half concealed at
times by a quivering ridge of foam. Then we pass from the East to the
North Riding, and ere long we look up at Filey--a _Royal Hotel_, a
crescent, and rows of handsome houses, coldish of aspect, a terrace
protected by a paved slope, and gravelled paths and a stair for easy
access to the beach. The terrace commands a view over the bay, and of
the cliffs all the way to Flamborough.