A Summer in the Scillies

IT is notoriously unsafe to lay out one’s summer holiday on the recommendations of friends, however intimate or similar in tastes. The personal equation which enters into all the problems of life is here predominant. Unfortunately, and for the same reason, one’s most respected authorities are equally unsafe as guides for summer travel, whatever they may have proved themselves in the domain of art, or literature, or morals. Perhaps, with Pleasure at the prow. Folly is at the helm oftener than we know or would be willing to acknowledge. At any rate, and as a matter of fact, I have often found the best finger-posts for days of leisure in works of fiction.

While Miss Edwards’s Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys has led us into a village with accommodations for fifty, and a tourist population of five hundred, and Miss Muloch’s An Unknown Country has taken us into regions with no accommodations at all, we owe to Thomas Hardy a never-tobe-forgotten summer in Dorset, BaringGould has helped us to see and appreciate the Cornish coast, Kingsley has added a new charm to Clovelly and Bideford, and Blackmore has given to Devon and the Doone Valley a living interest that equals their natural attractions. The Scottish Highlands, the Lakes, the Derbyshire Peak, even Kenilworth, owe as much to Scott as to history ; Rochester without Pickwick and Edwin Drood would be melancholy ; and even Ainsworth has succeeded in putting a keener edge on the pleasure of a first visit to the Tower of London.

That there may be exceptions to the rule the recent differences of opinion between the Pennells and William Black would seem to show, but the last word has not yet been said in that controversy. Without risking further generalization, however, Mr. Walter Besant is responsible for our visit to the Isles of Scilly ; and if, after having spent a summer there, I were asked to recommend the best guidebook, I should name Armorel of Lyonnesse. The opening chapters of that story made it clear that, to any one fond of the sea ; of sailing and bathing and fishing; of seeing new faces, but not too many of them ; of escaping temporarily from the accustomed routine of talk and thought and work ; in a word, of changing one’s whole atmosphere, physical, social, and intellectual, these islands offered at least a possible opportunity.

They sound remote, but if, for any reason, the transatlantic trip has been made, they will be found as accessible as St. Augustine or Bar Harbor from New York or Philadelphia. A nineo’clock evening train from Paddington, with excellent sleeping-carriages (if I had the courage of my convictions, I should say that they are far preferable, in privacy, ventilation, and genuine comfort, to our Pullmans), reaches the most westerly town in England, Penzance, at eight o’clock the next morning. Four days in the week a commodious steamer leaves for the Scillies on the arrival of the train, and lands its passengers in the harbor of Hugh Town, on St. Mary’s Island, before noon. If Penzance is not reached on a steamer day, it may be said, en passant, that there are worse places in which to spend twenty - four hours. The tradition which locates the scene of the Arthurian legends in the district between the Land’s End and the Scillies, Lyonnesse, divided by the old chroniclers into one hundred and forty mythical parishes, and now submerged, lends a tinge of romance to the short voyage, and acquires an air of probability when the granite cliffs of Menawethen are sighted, and their geological identity with the rocky spines of Devon and Cornwall becomes apparent.

The harbor of Hugh Town is, in appearance, almost an open roadstead, but is sheltered by so many low islets in so many directions that it is really landlocked. It has only the beauty which belongs to the meeting of sea and shore and sky wherever it occurs, and which gives a charm even to the sands of our New Jersey coast. The picturesque quality of such bays as those of Acapulco, Rio Janeiro, Naples, and Stockholm is lacking here, as it is, indeed, in most of the harbors of Great Britain; and it may be said at once that the first impressions of the Scillies will be disappointing, as will perhaps the later ones for travelers who follow the guidebook routine and visit only the places and points therein recommended.

To begin with, while the entrance to Hugh Town from the quay, through an old gray stone gateway into a narrow corner between the end of a crooked street and a high sea-wall, has a certain mediæval quaintness, the town itself will be found to consist of two rambling streets of small stone or stucco houses, old enough and stained and weather-worn enough to have lost the charm which, for example, perfect order and spick-and-span neatness and cleanliness give to some otherwise uninteresting Holland villages like Broek, and yet without the artistic flavor that comes with genuine antiquity and decay. It can, however, scarcely be described as a modern town, as it is said that it “began to be of importance" during the reign of Elizabeth.

To live here comfortably for any time (and a short visit will be found unprofitable), it is well to have one’s own house, and to be final arbiter as to meal hours, provisions, wines, and general supplies. In this way only, here or elsewhere, can what should be regarded as a fundamental principle of restful holidays be complied with, the maximum remoteness from ordinary civilization with the minimum deprivation of its comforts.

Such a house, with three bedrooms, a servant’s room, a drawing-room, a dining-room, and two kitchens, was obtained at the price of three pounds per week. This included the services of the worthy proprietress, her grown-up daughter, and a small handmaid. Only a narrow road, protected by a low stone embankment, separated us from the sea, which at high water was almost on a level with our front hall, — doorstep we had none, — and not more than twenty feet distant. Back of us were a low hill, a modern but pretty gray stone church, and then, not very far off, the sea again.

One essential of life here must be mentioned. A boat and boatman are as necessary as a gondola and gondolier in Venice, and much more care should be exercised in their selection. It is truly the land of tides and currents and eddies ; of “ races ” and whirlpools and breakers without end ; of shoals and bars and ugly jagged sunken rocks ; of mysterious “draughts” of wind, sudden gales sweeping in from over the western ocean, or, more dangerous still, stealthy fogs creeping up, and in a moment blotting out everything in the universe beyond the tiller or the bowsprit. It is no place for amateurs or strangers to practice navigation on any scale. Fortunately, there is no lack of competent boatmen, and we secured an ex-pilot and fisherman, the descendant of unnumbered generations of Scillonians, who, notwithstanding his seventy years, was still as competent and as vigorous as in the days of his youth, and who, despite a praiseworthy tendency to taciturnity, was an easily tapped fund of local information. The countless rocks and shoals and ledges, the intricate channels, the twists and turns of tides and currents, were to him as Piccadilly or Broadway at noonday to us ; and all this knowledge, together with a large, roomy sailboat and a comfortable punt, was put at our service for two pounds a week.

Thus equipped, sight-seeing becomes a matter merely of individual fancy ; dependent upon wind and tide, to be sure, but far less so than in ordinary seaside localities. Calms are rare in Scilly, which is more often storm-swept than any other part of this meteorological district, the average being twenty-two gales yearly. But in summer storms are uncommon, and there is much advantage to the seeker for health or pleasure in the fact that every breeze is a sea breeze, and every wind a fair wind. No matter from what quarter it may blow, there are to be found to leeward fishing of some sort, new islands to visit, rocks to climb, caves to explore, and coves to bathe in.

The ordinary guidebook attractions of the islands, while far inferior to those that are scarcely mentioned, are by no means to be despised. On St. Mary’s, the coast scenery at Peninis Head, Giant’s Castle, Clapper Rocks, Normandy Gap, and elsewhere is extremely fine, and all these points can be reached in a half-day’s walk.

The rocks are granite, and resemble those of the Cornish coast, with which they are probably continuous. The lines of decomposition in this granite follow certain minute “ joints,” which as a rule run either horizontally or perpendicularly. Where these are about equal in numbers, the rocks are broken up into immense irregular cubical masses, rounded at the edges and angles ; if the perpendicular joints predominate slightly, the granite is left, in the course of ages, in enormous columns resembling basaltic pillars ; while if the horizontal joints are almost entirely absent, the rocks still stand as great slabs, almost upright, and often mistaken for Druidical remains, with genuine examples of which the islands abound.

As a result of these factors, the headlands and rocky coasts of Scilly have a charm peculiarly their own, due to the chaotic confusion, fantastic forms, and never ending variety of their gigantic boulders. What they lack in height and coloring is compensated for by boldness of outline, by the endless surge of the breakers at their feet, by the miles of sea and sky that form their background. They have, on a smaller scale, the great advantage possessed by the mountains which encircle the Norwegian fjords or skirt the shores of the Strait of Magellan. They are seen at a glance in their entirety, from base to summit. It is this that often makes heights of three thousand feet in Norway or Patagonia more impressive than mountains of quadruple that altitude in Switzerland or the Tyrol. As Besant says, though Nature “ raised no Alpine peak in Scilly, she provided great abundance and any variety of bold coast-line, with rugged cliffs, lofty cairns, and headlands piled with rocks. And her success as an artist in this genre has been undoubtedly wonderful.”

It is astonishing what a multitude of devious and intricate ways may be discovered in and between the boulders of these granite headlands by any one fond of rock-climbing. On Peninis Head, for example, only one hundred and nine feet in height, there is a maze of rocky passages, all far beneath the surface, through which, by squeezing and crawling, sliding and jumping, now ascending, now descending, one may clamber for hours without once appearing above the level of the ground ; while at one place, by going many yards down a perpendicular shaft or chimney, just large enough to admit the hips and shoulders, a cavern is reached, where no ray of light penetrates, and which extends inland a considerable distance. This spot, which rejoices in the euphonious name of Issicumpucker, was once the resort of smugglers and wreckers, and can even now be found only after their “marks” on the summit of the Head have been pointed out.

On St. Mary’s, a short walk leads to the “ Garrison,” a fortified inclosure above Hugh Town, surmounted by a picturesque old building, Star Castle, which was erected by the first governor of the islands, Sir Francis Godolphin, in l593, during the reign of Elizabeth. It is still in good repair, and is inhabited. From the weather-beaten ramparts, about sunset, a wonderful panorama is spread out in every direction. To the westward and southward, Mincarlo, Great Minalto, Annet, Crebawethen, and dozens of other islets in the track of the sun glow in an orange and crimson haze; while to the north and east, Samson, Bryher, Treseo, St. Martin’s, and Great Ganilly stand out in bold silhouette, first purple and then black against the sky. As the sun disappears, the lanterns in the lighthouses, which stand guard on every hand over this land of shipwrecks, begin their nightly duty, and on a clear night the lights from St. Agnes, Round Island, the Bishop. the Wolf, and Longships can all be seen. They are certainly needed.

To call Scilly a land of shipwrecks is no mere form of words. The place is replete with their traditions, their history, and their relics. At every turn one is met -with reminders of them. The bells that ring in the churches once struck the time on a man-of-war or a merchantman; the churchyards are filled with monuments to the drowned; the gateposts are often parts of old prows or bits of timber ; the fences are pieced out with ships’ beams or planking; the shores are strewn with wreckage; and an island on which one or more ships and many lives have not been lost is scarcely to be found. After a time one comes to have a strange sort of familiarity with some of these dead-and-gone people. We felt, for example, as if -we had more than a passing knowledge of Sir Cloudesley Shovel when we recalled the elaborate but hideous monument in Westminster Abbey which marks his present resting-place, visited the spot on the shore of Porth Hellick where his body was washed ashore (and on which no grass has grown from that day to this !), and sailed around the solitary southernmost rock of the Scillies, the Gilstone, on which his ship, the Association, was lost in 1707. It was rather reversing the usual order of acquaintanceship, but it undoubtedly awakened an interest in this unfortunate gentleman, whose obstinacy in refusing advice from one of his seamen was, according to tradition, the cause of the loss not only of his own ship and life, but of three other large ships and nearly two thousand men.

In more modern times, the wreck, in 1875, of the steamship Schiller, a German mail boat bound from New York to Hamburg via Plymouth, on the Retarrier Ledges, not more than a mile from the Gilstone, is perhaps the most noteworthy. Three hundred lives were lost, and for weeks dead bodies were found floating in the channels between the islands, stranded on the beaches, or caught in the rocks on the shores. One hundred of them lie in the churchyard at St. Mary’s.

A mere list of the intervening shipwrecks would be tiresome, but a certain ghastly interest attached itself to each new island as we sailed up to it, and learned from our skipper and our guidebook of the fatalities associated with it. The whole world seems to have contributed. On Rosevear was wrecked, in 1784, the Nancy, an East Indian, with Mrs. Ann Cargil, a successful actress returning from India with her accumulated fortune. She lies in St. Mary’s churchyard, and her fortune fathoms deep off the Western Islands. On the Rags, a French schooner was lost in 1685; on Meledgan, a Dutch vessel in 1760 ; on the Ponds, a Portuguese steamer in 1869; on White Island, in 1875, a Russian steamship, the Aksia: and this remarkable mortuary record might be continued almost indefinitely. It is evident that during the centuries Scilly has been no respecter of either nationalities or persons; and although it is said that she is behind the Goodwin Sands in the actual number of shipwrecks, she has certainly, by virtue of her jagged reefs which impaled some, and of her irregular, deeply indented shores which held others in their clutches, preserved and kept in evidence more relies of marine disaster than any other part of the world I know of.

Visits to some of the lighthouses should not be omitted. The most accessible, but the least interesting in its surroundings, is that on St. Agnes, which is one of the oldest in Great Britain. It was first lighted in 1680, and in the gardens of Tresco Abbey may still be seen the antiquated coal-burner which then, and for a century afterwards, held the flickering flame that at the best could scarcely be seen at St. Mary’s, two miles away, and at the worst, it is strongly suspected on the authority of Heath, was allowed to go out at times when it was most needed by storm-driven vessels.

Round Island, to the northward, a bold mass of rock crowned with its lighthouse, has an approach which, in the picturesqueness of the surroundings, recalls Gibraltar. A rope leading from the summit across a narrow, deep chasm to the shore of a neighboring islet answers for the mooring of visiting craft, and as a cable by which supplies are hoisted when stormy weather renders landing impossible. A staircase cut in the solid rock, and leading in zigzags up the face of the precipitous cliff, conducts to the base of the lighthouse, which has the duty of protecting the northern approaches to the Scillies. From its lantern, perhaps, the best general view of the northern and eastern islands is obtainable, though here each succeeding view-point seems better than its predecessors.

The visit to the Bishop, however, is an experience not to be classed with anything else. The lighthouse rises from a rock far out to the westward, four miles from any inhabited land, and stands guard over the so - called “ Western Isles,” probably the most fatal in their past history, and the most menacing in their possibilities, of any of the group. Besant, in Armorel, has picturesquely described their dangers : the hidden rocks, the long ridges of teeth that tear and grind to powder any boat caught in their devouring jaws, the currents which run swiftly and unexpectedly to dash the boat upon the rocks, the strong gusts which sweep round the headlands and blow through the narrow sounds. For these reasons, but chiefly because otherwise a landing could not be effected, an exceptionally calm day must be selected for the visit. Only on approaching the Bishop closely can its remarkably exposed, solitary, and perilous position be fully realized. The rock on which it is built is just sufficient to give support to its base. There is literally and absolutely nothing beyond it. A penny held at arm’s length from the lantern and dropped falls into the sea. On the very quietest day the waves wash up to, and often over, the summit of the rock. In rough weather they beat against the brass door, sixty feet above the sea, which closes the lowest opening in the side of the tower ; in severe storms they wash clear over the lantern, at a height of one hundred and forty-three feet. Not many years ago, a fog-bell, strongly fastened one hundred feet above the sea, and weighing five hundredweight, was broken off and carried away by the waves, as were a ladder and flagstaff, twenty feet higher. Men who have served their time at the Eddystone, the Wolf, the Longships, and other outlying lighthouses say that at the Bishop both the wind and the sea are fiercer than at any other station. The process of landing, although probably unattended by any real risk, is not without some elements of excitement. A portion of the party disembark from the larger boat into a punt. This is rowed as near the base of the rock as the sea will permit. In very quiet weather, a rope cast from a little platform at the foot of the lighthouse permits the cautious approach of the boat to the slippery steps cut in the side of the rock, green with algæ, and either dripping with the foam of a receding wave, or many feet under the crest of an incoming roller. With the help of the rope and by careful watching for an opportunity, a quick jump while on the summit of a wave may land the visitor where he can scramble up out of the reach of the next breaker, but on most days this would be altogether impossible. The only method of landing safely the few ladies or children who venture to pay such a visit (and all persons in moderately rough weather) is by casting to the boat a loop of stout line leading over a pulley near the summit of the lighthouse and down again, to be rolled over an iron windlass fastened to a little stone ledge, or set-off, thirty-two feet from the sea. One person at a time is tied in or sits within this loop, to which a second line is made fast, the other end being held in the boat, so as to keep the visitor clear of the rocks and the sides of the lighthouse during the process of hoisting. The windlass is manned, and the occupant of the rope seat is swung into the air, inwards across the foam and boil of the breakers (a space varying from three to thirty yards, according to the weather), and then upwards, until the stone ledge is reached and a secure footing is obtained. The sensation during the transit is novel, as is the view of the surf over which one swings. In the history of the lighthouse no accident has ever occurred; but, after all, there have not been many opportunities for accident. We had the curiosity to count over the names in the Visitors’ Book, opened in 1864, five years after the completion of the building. In the three decades which have elapsed, two hundred and twenty persons had visited the lighthouse, or less than eight persons annually.

After reaching the ledge, a giddy perch only a couple of feet in width, a brass ladder, with steps about two inches wide, each step riveted into the stonework, must be climbed for another thirty feet before access to the building is gained, and then an inside spiral staircase leads upwards through the storeroom, the kitchen, the bedroom, and the service-room into the lantern. Four men are on duty at a time, and are relieved every three weeks ; but it is not uncommon, in heavy weather, for the relief to be delayed from a month to six weeks, owing to the impossibility of landing. The men at this station are said to become neurasthenic after about a year’s service; and it is not difficult to divine the cause, if one but recalls the twentytwo annual gales that they weather, and pictures the loneliness and isolation of their lives during these periods, when the waves of three thousand miles of Atlantic are dashing themselves against the lighthouse, or flying over it in sheets of foam, and making even the seven feet of masonry at its base tremble and vibrate.

If one seeks a respite from the almost uninterruptedly marine occupations of the islands, a visit to the gardens of Tresco Abbey cannot fail to give pleasure. They are unique in Europe, if not in the world. I have never seen an open-air garden to compare with them, unless perhaps the Botanic Gardens of Rio Janeiro, and I do not recall even there so remarkable a variety of vegetation as that which flourishes here in the mild and equable temperature produced by the Gulf Stream. Side by side with the firs and pines and evergreens of northern Europe are found the palms and aloes and cacti of the tropics, the Cape fig of South Africa, the Puya Chilensis (said to be the only plant of its kind that has flowered in the open air in Great Britain), ferns from New Zealand, azaleas from India, cedars from Lebanon, rhododendrons from the Himalayas. magnificent eucalypti, and fuchsias, hydrangeas, magnolias, and myrtles growing to the height of trees, and filling the whole place with color and fragrance. The present lord proprietor, a very courteous and hospitable gentleman, universally respected in the islands, which he practically governs, has given great pleasure to hundreds of visitors by the free access to these gardens which he permits under proper restrictions. A fresh-water lake, flanged with silver-plumed pampas grass, at the foot of a lawn stocked with Egyptian geese, American ostriches, white ducks, and other fowls, adds to the attractiveness of the picture. The ostriches were very small as compared with those I had seen on Patagonian plains, but it may be that they were young ones.

The special and characteristic Scillonian tinge is given to the gardens by a collection of grotesque figureheads from wrecked vessels ; a capstan surmounted by a Mexican eagle; an ancient anchor, the iron of which has been not merely covered, but actually replaced, by silicates and lime salts during the ages which have passed since it saw the vessel which had borne it go into splinters on the rocks. Even a garden, in Scilly, must savor of the sea and of shipwrecks.

A picture quite as striking in its way, and little less beautiful, may be obtained on any quiet day by watching the panorama of the sea-bottom, while drifting slowly in a boat over places where the depth does not exceed two or three fathoms. I have never seen, except in the West Indies and off the Brazilian and Chilian shores, such extraordinary luxuriance in submarine vegetation, such brilliant coloring, and such abundance of animal life. There is no end to the variations in the browns and greens and yellows of the seaweeds, and in their sizes and shapes : some as delicate and feathery as maidenhair fern, swaying to and fro with every ripple of the water ; others with stalks as thick as one’s arm, and great spreading branches, like subaqueous trees, but with an unpleasant way of surrounding, and clutching, and even of drowning the swimmer who gets in their midst. The zoöphytes are no less numerous and variegated, while beautiful flower-like anemones, purple and green and white sea urchins, yellow starfish, and brown sea cucumbers can be seen by thousands. Frequently a graceful jelly fish, or possibly a half dozen, will float across the field of view, with fringe outspread and undulating ; or a scorpion crab or sea spider or enormous lobster will sidle across the bottom ; or the water will suddenly be absolutely filled with pilchards, darting hither and thither, or swimming quietly, with their noses all turned in one way, in obedience to some imperceptible current.

The fishing is, on the whole, excellent, and is varied enough to keep up the interest of the most unenthnsiastic angler. I he pollock fishing, a sort of slow trolling; the chadding, with the boat anchored in a tideway; the pilchard fishing, with nets after dark ; and the fishing for plaice and bream and gurnard and sole and cod. are worthy of description by some one more learned than I am in piscatorial ways and methods.

But there is yet other fishing to be had here, which deserves more than passing mention. About three miles southwest of the Bishop there is a shoal, several acres in extent, rocky, sandy, or weedy in patches, and known as “ the Pol.”Here the depth of the ocean decreases to from sixteen to twenty fathoms at low water. This shoal, the top of a submerged islet, is now, as it apparently has been for centuries, the favorite feeding-ground of some extraordinary marine animals, notably the great conger eel, from four to six feet in length, in girth the size of one’s thigh, and from forty to one hundred pounds in weight, living among the rocks and weeds, and fearing, according to Besant, “ nothing that swims except the calamary.”Here, too, is the ling, a snakelike fish, often outweighing the conger ; and the skate, even larger and more hideous, favoring the sandy spots, and when hooked coming up on the end of the line as a dead, inert mass of ugliness. Sharks are constantly found there at all depths, doubtless attracted by the abundance of animal life in the vicinity. For hundreds of years this place has been known to the Scillonian fishermen. Our boatman told us that his great-grandfather could not remember having heard of a time when it was not resorted to, under proper circumstances, and some of the oldest, books on Scilly allude to it. Then, as now, however, those circumstances occurred with comparative rarity. The conditions absolutely necessary for a successful visit to the Pol are many. It must be on a neap tide, and at the slackest part of it, or there will be too much current on the shoal for anchorage. This at once strikes out of every fortnight all but three or four days. The sea must not be very rough, or again anchorage becomes impossible. If the wind is too strong, the same result follows ; while if there is a dead calm, it is difficult to reach the ground. Finally, “ thick ” weather or a fog, by obscuring the “ marks,”—that is, the cross-bearings, the alignment of certain far-distant rocks and islands, — renders it impossible to find the shoal at all.

When all the favorable conditions are present, however, the visitor to the Scillies, who is not subject to seasickness and is of fair bodily vigor, should by no means miss a trip to the Pol. Freedom from seasickness is desirable, as on the very quietest day there is sure to be a great ocean swell coming lazily in from the westward, and imparting considerable motion to the boat; bodily strength is necessary, since to haul in from fifty to sixty fathoms of stout line, a lead weighing from five to ten pounds, and a fish that will turn the scales anywhere from forty to one hundred and fifty pounds will severely test the angler’s muscles and endurance, especially as it must probably be done in a rolling and pitching boat, swinging around with wind and tide, and slippery with fish slime. The same care should be exercised in the selection of the boat and men as was advised in the matter of pleasure-boating. The choice will in all likelihood fall on a Hicks, or a Jenkins, or a Legg of St. Agnes, who will call for you at an unearthly hour, and convey you in a roomy but not overclean lugger to the fishing-ground.

On arrival in the supposed vicinity of the Pol there is sure to be an animated consultation of the boatmen anent the “mark’s” which are to determine the exact position to be selected ; the top of this shoal, from ninety to one hundred and twenty feet beneath the surface, being mapped out into separate districts with as much precision as if it had been done by a New England town surveyor. To the landsman, at this time, the landscape consists of the sky, the sea, and the Bishop, whose top may sometimes be seen when the lugger rises on the summit of a wave. Far off to the eastward, an occasional dull, cloudlike spot showing above the huge Atlantic rollers suggests land. That is all that the most persistent, eye-straining gaze will reveal, and it gives an almost ludicrous tone to the excited discussion about the relations of unseen points of land on invisible islands. The peculiarities of the Scillonian dialect and grammar are marked enough to add still further to the interest of the occasion.

When it is finally determined that “ the Crebinacks are on a line with the northern Cuckoo, and Pednathias with the Rags,” and that neither Maiden Bower nor Biggal, islands which for a time had seemed unaccountably dislocated, has left its moorings, it is agreed to drop the anchor and begin to “ fishee.” As a matter of fact, if the lantern of the Bishop had not now and then shown itself over the tops of the intervening surges, we might have supposed ourselves anchored in the middle of the broad Atlantic. But it is not long before the result justifies our boatmen’s procedure. On our last, visit to the Pol the tide permitted about four hours’ fishing. In that time three lines brought up over two thousand pounds of fish of the kinds already mentioned. This included eleven sharks, the largest, of which was between eight and nine feet in length, nearly three feet in girth, and weighed over one hundred and fifty pounds. It was an interesting sight to watch the shark bait, which consisted of a large fish-head, and was kept at a depth of about three fathoms. It was never long without a visitor, and the exceeding clearness of the water permitted a careful inspection of his every movement. Usually, a smell or two, or perhaps even a touch with the rounded snout, a, quick whisk of the powerful tail sending him off like an arrow, and a slower return, with a few graceful curves around the centre of attraction. would constitute the performance. Then the really beautiful lilac and blue of his shining back would disappear, and the dirty-white belly turn uppermost, while the bait vanished as though drawn into a cavern. After that, the haul to the surface, the struggle at the gunwale, while the water was in a lather about the boat from his lashing and writhing, the gaffing, and the lifting him inboard made a few moments of intense and very pleasurable excitement.

But, after all, I have left the very best of Scilly to the last. The great charm of the place, the supreme attraction, is in the visits to the outlying islands ; the long days spent idling on their shores, or clambering over their rocky summits, or bathing in their bewitching bays, each one seemingly more secluded and picturesque and fascinating than the others.

Annet, the few acres of its soil undermined by the puffins, so that at each unwary step one sinks to one’s knees; strewn with the eggs and the fledgelings of gulls and cormorants, guillemots and gannets, shags and hern, oyster - catchers, kittiwakes, and shearwaters ; with no signs of human life, past or present, except those afforded by an excavation traditionally referred to a Phœnician tin mine perhaps one thousand years before Christ, and some immense ship’s timbers left, high up above the rocks when the vessel went to pieces, years ago; with no trace or record of having been in touch with humanity during the intervening centuries, — Annet is unlike anything else I have seen in this hemisphere. In geologic chronology, its underlying granite makes the volcanic tops of the Galapagos Archipelago in the Pacific (an equally strange and unusual place) seem modern in comparison. The soil of Elizabeth Island, near the Atlantic end of the Strait of Magellan, is similarly undermined (by penguins instead of puffins) ; but its traditions begin — and end — with Drake and Hawkins, and its history, in comparison, seems only of yesterday.

Menawahr, with its rugged head cleft by two chasms running far below the sea level, is among the more imposing and gloomy and solitary of the Scillies. The view from the very edge of one of these chasms, when, pushed by wind and tide, the waves are boiling through it like the rapids below Niagara, is little short of sublime. About halfway to the difficult summit, a profound vertical gap extending down to the ocean is partly roofed in by some enormous boulders, which have fallen so that their apices meet, and make a rude, irregular arch. As one peers into the crevices between them, nothing is revealed but inky and impenetrable blackness, filled with the roar and grinding of the surf far below. A fall here would be as hopeless as if it were into a crevasse of the Matterhorn.

Rosevear, with gulls and cormorants so tame that they sit almost within arm’s length, anil watch with curious eyes the proceedings of the unaccustomed visitors ; with seals almost as tame, who sun themselves on the rocks near by, or follow the boat with doglike patience and pertinacity, has also a fascination of its own. A pathway over huge rocks leads to a cove, the wall of which is penetrable at one point, where the masses of stone have worn away so as to leave an arch that can be entered quadrupedally. On assuming the erect posture, one finds one’s self in a place which brings back stories of shipwreck and adventure from Robinson Crusoe to Treasure Island. Indeed, from the merely scenic standpoint, I found the genuine Selkirk’s cave in Juan Fernandez less impressive than this nook in Rosevear. We visited it more than once, and always with the feeling that it was about as out-of-theworld a spot as could be reached anywhere. At low water it is a romantic and picturesque cleft in the rocks. During a flood tide it becomes an amphitheatre, with granite ledges for tiers of seats, looking down upon the seething foam and the never ending rush and roar of the combat between the waves of a thousand leagues of ocean and the walls of this rocky outpost of Great Britain.

In a westerly storm, the north end of Bryher, separated from the great mass of Shipman Head by a chasm only ten or twelve feet in width, but impassable by all ordinary methods, presents a scene not to be forgotten. Hell Bay, to the westward, always a spot deserving of its name, becomes a veritable caldron, as the tremendous breakers are shattered on the tops of the dozens of sunken reefs and spurs of rock ; while farther out the waves come up in great green mountains, rush up the steep sides of the Head, and shiver into spray and foam which rise far above the topmost peaks, and then descend in long graceful sheets, recalling the Staubbaeh or the Syve Söstern.

As for the remainder of the islands that mark the outer limits of the archipelago, on which even now it is rare for human foot to tread, which are alone with wind and ocean, seals and seabirds, from one year’s end to another, they offer an infinite variety of scenes of the same description. Besant again is the best guide: “ Some of them are close together, some are separated by broad channels. Here the sea is never calm ; at the foot of the rocks stretch out ledges, some of them bare at low water, revealing their ugly black stone teeth ; the swell of the Atlantic on the calmest days rises and falls, and makes white eddies, broken water, and flying spray. Among these rocks they rowed : round Maiden Bower, with its cluster of granite forts defying the whole strength of the Atlantic, which will want another hundred thousand years to grind them down ; about and among the Black Rocks and the Seal Rocks, dark and threatening; they landed on Ilyswillig, with his peak of fifty feet, a strange, wild island ; they stood on the ledge of Castle Bryher, and looked up at the tower of granite which rises out of the water like the round keep of a Norman castle ; they hoisted sail and stood out to Scilly himself, where his twin rocks command the entrance to the islands. He consists of two great mountains rising from the water, sheer, precipitous, and threatening : each about eighty feet high, but with the air of eight hundred ; each black and square and terrible of aspect; they are separated by a narrow channel . . . through which the water raced and rushed, boiling into whirlpools, foaming and tearing at the sides.”

The history of the islands, traced traditionally from idyllic periods by the remnants of hedges and stone walls, and even of houses, which according to Troutbeck and other old chroniclers are to be seen far down on the sea-bottom on calm days ; through the Phœnician period by the gaps and excavations said to have been made for the mining of tin ; through the early British and Danish centuries by the barrows and tumuli, the kistvaens and Druidical altars and cromlechs ; through the wars of England by the picturesque ruins of Cromwell Castle at Tresco, and the pointed peak of Hangman’s Island, said to have served the Protector as a place of execution, —all this must be passed over.

So, too, with the industries of the islands, from the times when the men were pilots or smugglers or wreckers, or all three; then, successively, kelpmakers, ship - builders, potato - growers ; until now, when, all the other occupations having failed, they are enjoying a period of comparative prosperity as flower-farmers, and annually supply the markets of Great Britain with tons of the narcissus and the daffodil.

The people themselves are kindly, pleasant folk, with a certain sturdy independence that commands respect, but polite and courteous withal. They are strong and vigorous, and are exceptionally healthy and long-lived. They would be more so had not long-continued intermarriage intensified the tendency to tuberculosis among them. In times past it has been the source of a heavy mortality ; and even at the present day it much increases the labors and anxieties of the very competent medical man, who has under his sole care these eighteen hundred people, living in several communities, separated by miles of water, often rough, and sometimes impassable.

This same custom of intermarriage has resulted in the persistent predominance of a few family names for hundreds of years. In the old books and documents which have come under my notice, the names of the islanders of the beginning and middle of the last century are practically those of to-day. Besant says of Dorcas, Armorel’s old servant, that she was a St. Agnes girl. “ That’s the reason why her name was Hicks; if she ’d come from Bryher, she ’d have been a Traverse ; if from Tresco, she’d have been a Jenkins.”Those families, with the Thomases and Penders, the Mumfords and Woodcocks, the Tregarthens and Leggs, and a few others, were conducting the affairs of the islands (in a very humble and subordinate capacity) during the times of the earliest Godolpliins, and many of them are doing so to-day.

That I may not by any chance mislead some possible reader, let me repeat that a holiday in the Scillies is essentially a marine holiday. For full enjoyment there, one should love to hear the rippling of waves on a beach, or in stormy weather the thunder of surf against rocky shores, as the last sound at night, the earliest in the morning. It should be agreeable, on drawing the bedroom curtains, to see Tresco and Bryher and Samson and Hangman’s Island looking you in the face across miles of blue water; or, in another part of the town, to find that a trim yacht, a clumsy collier, or a broad-beamed fishing-boat has anchored during the night almost within touch from the back garden. It must be regarded as a pleasant experience to land, after a day’s fishing or sailing, at the rear of one’s own house, and step from the boat directly into the premises, almost as if in Venice. An occasional “ ancient and fishlike smell “ must not be regarded as offensive, neither must the presence of seaweed as the chief constituent of the dust of the streets, instead of the less salubrious forms of organic matter to which most of us are accustomed. That the few street loungers should always wear jerseys and sea-boots, and smell of tar and of fish ; that perhaps the most conspicuous object in the town should he an indicator of barometrical change, thirty feet in height; and that the smallest children should be able to put one to the blush in matters of tides and currents, and slioals and ledges, and wind and weather, can scarcely be thought objectionable by any one. If all this be fully understood and accepted, it is safe to say that though there may be better places than the Scillies for a summer holiday, there cannot be many of them.

J. William White.