The British Seas; Picturesque Notes (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1894. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV Down Channel (continued). Isle of Wight--Cowes--Shipping in the Solent--Bournemouth --Weymouth and Bridport--Torquay--Plymouth and its Sound and scenery--Falmouth from Pendennis Castle-- Penzance--Mount's Bay--Newlyn--Cardiff, its docks and streets. In the warm months one is readily advised of one's approach to the Isle of Wight by the white canvas of yachts hovering in the blue distance like wings of gossamer. They are the butterflies of the deep, announcing that summer is at hand or has arrived. There is something wonderfully proud, yet tender, too, in the aspect of the southern majestic terraces of the Isle of Wight. From the summit of St. Catherine's Hill you command an elevation of hard upon eight hundred and fifty feet, as though the coast of France, more distant yet from this point, must be proportionately watched by some Eye of Old England, whose giant owner here has stepped a pace from the mainland and stands, knee-deep and isolated, gazing. It is impossible to imagine a set of pictures more delicate than those the interior of this little gem of Channel land offers to the gaze that centres it. Cowes, divided by its rippling stream of river, I do regard as the sweetest, toy-like, most charming, memory-haunting spot in Great Britain. All is garden-like and of an exquisite refinement. I seem to find such airy delicacy of atmospheric effect, of floating fabric, of rooted structure ashore all about this little bit of island coast as is nowhere else to be matched--indeed, I may say, as is nowhere else to be witnessed. The impression left is that of having surveyed a mass of fairy-like work wrought in ivory. There is a suggestion of littleness here of an especial sort of choiceness, with the grace of a dainty prismatic radiance over all; the Solent and Spithead are litt...