or rolling heavily and angrily with a ground swell from the ocean, promising a storm.
And every hollow of the reefs, every crevice of the rocks, is filled with life: in pools of water, clear and transparent as crystal, swim thousands of marine animals, amidst waving forests of seaweed, endless in colour and variety. Probably in no part of the English shores is so wide a field open to the inquiry of the naturalist as this portion of the coast of Cornwall. Rare plants, and rarer seaweeds, will reward his search; but, for the conchologist, very little. Scarcely a shell, even broken in half, will be gathered in a day, a perfect one hardly ever. We cannot have everything, and if we want fine shells, we must go to the edge of a smoother sea and by the wash of lighter waves than what we find in the full face of the great Atlantic. Yet, in justice, it must be added that very perfect specimens of one of the most fragile and uncommon of English shells, the purple Helix, have, twice or thrice, been picked up amongst the rocks or on the sands at Bude.
If the conchologist should be disappointed, there is ample scope for not only the student but the professor in geology. For some miles along the shores, on either side of Bude, the broken sea-face of the cliffs furnishes a constant succession of rare examples of strata, well worthy of examination. In many places these are twisted into most curious forms; in others, not only slanting at unequal angles, but even perpendicular. And, at one spot, in the beautiful little cove at Melhuach there are a contortion and mixture of various strata, which no theory (we believe) has, as yet, satisfactorily accounted for.
On either side of the harbour, whether upon that which we have been speaking of towards the south, or upon the other to the north, the tops of the cliffs are covered with admirable turf, and fine open downs stretch onward and onward to Hartland in the one direction, to Tintagel in the other.
Nothing can exceed the charm of a walk along these downs and cliffs. The immense expanse of sea, the broken headlands, the glittering surf below, and the hollow murmur filling the ear from the breaking waves; a few white sails near land or far out upon the dim horizon; a sweeping gull or soaring hawk upon the wing; the sweetness of the thyme with which the turf abounds, crushed under the tread, and filling the whole air with perfume; or the fragrance of the blossoms of the furze spread in large patches here and there, and gilding the more distant slopes; the expanse of country, often visible inland, with waving corn growing in a few spots down to the very edge of the cliff, and a white farmhouse or church tower of some neighbouring village just showing above a cluster of low trees;—all these, bathed in an autumn sunshine, in the purest air, form a picture which, we do not hesitate to say, is unequalled upon any other part of the coast of England.
To stand upon the brow of one of the lofty cliffs near Bude, and look forward over the expanse of ocean, is suggestive of many solemn thoughts, even in our own time, when the world has been so carefully mapped out, and weighed, and measured; when we know exactly what is before us, though at the distance of a thousand leagues, and could put our finger (as it were) upon the capes and bays of North America, or bending southwards on the Gulf of Florida and the islands of the Caribbean Sea. But, four hundred years ago, how different were the thoughts, and with what a far more curious and eager eye must the thoughtful wanderer along these shores have gazed across the sea! He must have dreamt then of Atlantis and of the glories of Cathay; he must have longed to inquire of the strange fragments of foreign woods or cane which might be found upon the beach, and of every wave which rolled in upon the sand, and of every breath which blew upon his cheek, the truth and history of the marvellous lands which he had been told of in song and fable; or the fate of some of the many ships which had sailed out into that unknown ocean, with the reckless courage of mad adventure, never to return. There was bliss in that mediæval ignorance: we are very wise and learned in our own day, and we have lost all the old imaginations and romance.
A few words must suffice for a description of the shore which lies to the north of the Breakwater. As we have already said, the cliffs on this side have at low water at their base not low rocks and reefs, but a superb range of firm sand, more than three miles in length. This gives to Bude its great variety: on the one hand you have rocks; upon the other, sand; you may choose your walk, and the whole character of the one is as different from the other as if they were fifty miles apart. A little way along these sands, during the summer months, a long, low, jutting reef of rock is appropriated as “the ladies’ bathing-place.” And there may be seen—of course by strange eyes, only from a very great distance and very indistinctly—numerous gleaming, moving, creatures, running in and out, and shining white garments spread upon the rocks, and a little mob of figures, in clinging robes, amidst the last ripples of the last waves. But where are the bathing-machines? Where, indeed. Such little huts on wheels are well enough perhaps on sands like those at Ryde or Weymouth: but the first tide which washed the cliffs at Bude would leave behind it but a very dismal account of them: a broken wheel, perhaps, or a few fragments of the sides.
Perhaps the most magnificent sea-sight which the world can show, is a ground-sea coming in, with an advancing spring-tide, upon these sands. There will be, probably, little if any wind; and far at sea, not a breaker, not a glimmer of white foam, is visible; only long, low, undulations, reaching miles in length. But, some mile or two from where we stand, these undulations seem, at short regular intervals, to grow out of the sea; as they roll in, nine or ten, it may be, following each other, they lift higher and higher: they begin to tip, in parts, and slightly break; but still roll in, and gather as they roll, until the horizon is completely hid; then, one after another, in succession, the whole mass thunders in upon the sands, a perfect cataract of foam. It is no exaggeration to say that these waves frequently sweep up over the sands a full mile from the place where they may first be seen to break and top their edge with white: or, to give another proof of the
