The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1878-10-01 00:00:00

by throwing out a secreted acid. Ind if we mango,
its shell we see end feel rows of sharp spine-like pro-
jections; it fixes its sucker-like foot no to where it
wants to embed itself. and then by presenting its saw•
like ridges to the object, it forms it. future home.
The long oyster, or razor shell (soles), Is found
abundantly here, just off the sand bar; they are used
as food occasionally. The trochus, murex, nessus,
turritella, cowrie, limpet, are also found.
The Cora/line marine plants are, after a storm
from the Nest. torn from their beds especially on this
part; but being so numerous and so lovely neither
time nor space will allow of my describing their
beauties.

Just beyond and at the juncture where the road
inids upon the shore, is a stratum of black consolidated
organic matter, composed of branches of the hazel
tree, with nuts, of which thousands could have been
dm; out some few years ago. Doubtless this meal was
floated and carried from some distance inland, and
deposited at this part ; there another stratum was
formed or upheaved. on it, and owing to the encroach-
ment of the v• just hers, it was exposed in section,
which has now been obliterated by carte andother traffic
passing over portions,so that of this black consolidation
little now remains to he seen.
The high blue cliff beyond is of the Kimmeridge
formation, which we see so well either through a glass
or naked eye ; there before the concrete wall was built
was a rich hunting ground for fossil-seekers. Rather
• singular fact connected with the findings there was
that on one day one might find • predominance of the
fossil teeth ,d shark or Saurian, on another the pave-
ment late-scales of the Dapaiies, with their beautiful
jet black enamel on one idle; on another vette,. of
Saurian, of fish, rhinconella. claws of cruetame,
Trigonis---in fact, all or most of the fossils of the
Kimmeridge formation, so much so that two men
apparently derived more profit from coliectiag and
selling them than doing other work.
We have now a full view of the Ferry or Passage
Bridge, or, more properly, the Railway-bridge over
the Fleet, which was in former years crossed by •
boat and a rope bent over this isthmus, and used by
ferrymen without oars. Rapid changes have taken
place in the configuration of this portion of the coast
owing to the altered action of current., which have so
washed and wasted the land and have brought to light
ancient remains from out of the sand and cliff. I may
briefly mention again • few of them :—Bones of ox,
sheep horse, leg of mastodon, flake flints, bone awls
polished, fish hooks, sharpening stones, fragments of
very coarse pottery, and very many others of extreme
interest.

Before we arrive off Portland I will again draw
your attention to the bridge. Under in • narrow arm
of the IN called the Fleet, which extenda to Abbot.-
bury, and which from here Li only accessible at spring
tides. Here is the Chesil Beach. or, as an obstinate
old fellow would have it, "Chesil Beach," from its
having chiselled so many poor fellows out of their lives.
This extraordinary ridge of pebbles lithe largest and
longest in Europe. except that of Memel, in Polish.
Prussia. The pebbles oonsist, some of white cal-
careous stone, others of quartz, jasper. he. They
diminish in size from the Portland end of the bank ; and
It has been said that smugglers oould tell what place
they were opposite to from the size of these pebbles.
Several ingenious theories have been advanced to
account for this singularly magnificent work of nature;
but still these hypotheses remain unsatisfactory.
Anything like a description of the terrible storms
which sweep actor the broad Atlantic Ocean on to
this Chesil Beach should be done mythologically, the
gale cnicentrating all its might from so many
thousands of miles, being only impeded by this beach;
the commotion caused by the grinding of the shingle
one against another, together with the howling of the
hurricane and the roaring of the sea, make up an
occasion never to be forgotten; one might almost
sympathise with the ancients, who would have believed
that from out of this chaotic blackness of the obscure
distance, where all the elements—fire, earth, air, and
water, roar and mingle in horrible confusion the
nestles spirit of the storm, .Eelus, Terror, and Death,
were marshalled on by old Neptune and his trumpeter
Triton, in whose voice is the intonation of thunder,
raging in furious strides over this world of waters.
The waves now dash against the beach, rising up like
mountains, then, after seven attempts (the fourth
Is the least wave), am if exhausted, subside but for a
moment, then to be revived by another wave of
greater magnitude; all this host contending, as it
were, for the prize—the lives of some poor mariners,
against Abeona, the goilskeeof sailors returning from
voyages, and who with terror fly from this awful
scene, which is lighted up by flashes of lightning.
I will but briefly outline more of the terrible sights
—the old ferry-house washed down and undermined,
the fate of the inmates, swept away by the incessant
torrent of water rushing through the breaches in the
beach, vessels wrecked and thrown clear over the
beach from the west side into the Weymouth side—
during that tempestuous hurricane, of November,
Int, long to be remembered on this coast.
A remarkable coincidence took place at the time of
the Avalanche and Forest, of Windsor, being run
down. Some men were "eel bobbin" up the Fleet,
and, in their own words, one man was by himself in
his trow and heard all at once • terrible noise as of
screeching. "Twee a terrible noise, and he thought it
was his mate crying out; he went to him, but be
hadn't heard it. They both wondered and talked
about it all the way home, and thought it must have
been the cry of the storm. When they arrived home
they told their people and others. The most curious
part is that they should have mentioned it the same
night as happening just at the time that the collision
did take place. It was useless telling them it wars
Impossible that they could have hoard the cries of the
drowning at such a distance; their reply was—" It
don't matter for that, sir, the wind was right in here,
and he heard the cries sif those psmr dear souls, and he
told it the Mlle night, or I shouldn't have thought
anything of it myself."
We now see another castle on the shore, with the
waves gently fringing its feet. It is Portland
Castle; aloft are the feathery clouds floating on • bed
of blue, only darkened momentarily by our black
smoke, coiling and uncoiling like writhing serpents as
the stoker puts on more coals. The castle, too, was
built during the year 1509, and, like Sandsfoot
Castle, had also an anterior one, built in 1142. That
was of great extent, and was taken possession of by
Robert, Earl of Gloucester, in the IMMO of the
Empress Maud.
Portland, it is 'abetted, takes the name from one
Port, a Saxon pirate, who about the year 500 took
possession of it as • retreat for himself and fellow.
robber,, from whence the name of Port's land or Port-
land. It may be considered, in a geological point of
view, to omelet of one mama of freestsme. There is
now very little wood growing on the island • but
geology has disclosed that in ages long past ;here
flourished luxuriantly the lordly oak, remains of ex
-
tansies forests of them having been found petrified,
with the Zamia, of the class off Cycadece, or, as the
natives will have it, "birds' meta."
The fossils, peculiar to this formation, are too
11110:1111r0911 to attempt to enumerate. Sheep are dotted
on the slopes above us like daisies in spring, nibbling
the soft, short., sweet grass, peculiar to this island.
In the B.r.s, great number, of gulls fly about the
ships, feeding well on the bits thrown overboard.
They, unlike the gulls from the North Coast, do not
follow after us, though gulls sometimes do so, under
certain circumstances many. will for miles.

Before steaming through the opening of the Break-
water, we view with ever fresh interest H.M.S.
Thunderer, that castle in the sea. the Warrior, and
that wooden liner, the old Trafalgar, now the
Boscawen—three of the grandest types of our ships of
war, the walls of old England of the past and present,
but who can say of the future? It appean probable
that these may be superseded, not by old Neptune,
but by his son, Polyphemus, being unlace anything
that yet sane, and having when engaged only the
smallest portion of her steel-arched plated deck
visible, her engines capable of being worked to a
tremendous power.
By the bye, that is the noted KS. the Lively, well
named for once, for lively is what Lively does.
As we steam through the opening we see the bright
blue sea beyond, the Shambles Light Ship, on our port
bow, being about three miles off, and exposed to all
the fury of the gales in the English Channel, but
warning poor mariners away from the immense
shallow shell-bank, either by beating its great copper
gong, or with that dismal booming noise from die fog
horn, which I need sosrosly say is worked by stsion
power.
Coasting along on our starboard bow are Balaclava
Bay and Coastguard-station, directly under which •
Spanish vessel went ashore and was wreaked some
taw years ago. Sometime afterwards a convict made
his escape during • very thick fog, got on board this
wreck, and at dark launched • rat, which he, having
been an old sailor, skilfully spliced together out of the
loose planks, tutobssrnid although under the eye of
the Comaguardatation. However, after having drifted
seaward with the tide on the wings or sails of hope
and • few turnips, hoping some foreign outbound
vessel would have believed his story of being • cast-
away, be, after having suffered much from harm and
hunger and cold, was brought back by the turn of the
tide, picked up by a pilot cutter, and returned to the
iirison authorities. We see gangs of these "canary
bb cis," some working on the shore, others above.
Prom a battery close by imam smoke from a firing
iarty of soldiers the explosion is soox followed by •
i Bag, which from ta colour shows that the crack from
that rifle WWI not a bull's eye.
An old lady near me is anxious to show another
elderly lady where St. Paul's Cathedral was built. It
was pointed out to her where the remains of old Bt.
Paul s Wharf is, from when°e the stones of St. Paul's '
Cathedral were shipped.
It is astonishing how sailors are not only asked, and
supposed to know, the destination of any and every
vessel either going up the Channel or going down, but
even their names. . .

---
A bright thought is as to whet they do with the
Thuoderer at night, "Do they chain 'en up r "What
do em do with the men t'' These queetione were
explained and answered to the entire satisfaction of
the questioner, apparently from far inland. On the
top is "The Grove," where is the prison, having
about 1,500 or 1,600 prismera Ths warders' cottages
and a portion of the dormitories of the prison are
built on • towering cliff 400 ft high, like an immense
mass of masonry, the parallel strata showing se it
were the bond of the stone work, here and there
having quite the appearance of a great frowning
fortress with ivy-mantled watab-towsrs.

Round this point we suddenly come broadside to
penwleardia a castellated MAMdoII. surrotmded with
trees but owing to the prevalence and force of the...
breezes. the tress bending Inland eves them mast an
unhealthy and stunted appeeranon

Bow and Arrow, or Rufus Castls, with its arrow
boles, from whence arrows have, doubtless, often been
shot perhaps against the ancient Inhabitants of
postiitod, who—like the ancient inhabitants of the
Baleares in the Mediterranean sea, were anciently
the beet 'lingers of all Englishmen —is built on and
overhangs an immense block of stratified stone,
showing intentions of flint -like masonry, rearing aloft
Its
_gigantic head the protector of these reahua, as if
sheltering in peaceful sympathy the ruins of a little
church repaing at its feet. The castle. whose defence
was bows and arrows, hae long pearled sway, and only
It. mina, ,the terror of the pest, now ei&t, like the
rains of the church, whose troubles too annoy/ ended.
Yet even in death and ruins a wall stands pointing us,
if we would look, towards that adestial home,
not made with hands. The nine now are only ,
disturbed by tlee wild wind an the inoient rooks below '
The bUiowy smiles= nese*, deep wet ekes of