With the terminating western cliffs of the chalk-hills of the Isle of
Wight beyond High Down we will close this pleasant journey. The
far-famed Needles are a row of wedge-like masses of hard chalk running
out to sea in the direction of the axis of the range of hills. They do
not now much resemble their name, but in earlier years there was among
them a conspicuous pinnacle, a veritable needle, one hundred and twenty
feet in height, that fell in 1764. At present the new lighthouse, built
at the seaward end of the outermost cliff, is the nearest approach to a
needle. The headland behind them is crowned by a fort several hundred
feet above the sea. There were originally five of these pyramidal
rocks, but the waves are continually producing changes in their form,
and now but three of them stand prominently out of the water.
* * * * *
And now our task is done. The American visitor landing at Liverpool has
been conducted through England, and has been shown many of its more
prominent attractions, but not by any means all of them, for that would
be an impossible task. But he has been shown enough to demonstrate the
claim of the mother-country to the continued interest of the Anglo-Saxon
race from beyond the sea; and to this pleasant panorama and description
there cannot be given a better termination than at the lovely Isle of
Wight, the perfection of English scenery and climate, whereof Drayton
has written,
"Of all the southern isles, she holds the highest place,
And evermore hath been the great'st in Britain's grace;
Not one of all her nymphs her sovereign favoreth thus,
Embraced in the arms of old Oceanus."
[Illustration: THE NEEDLES.]