The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1868-01-21 00:00:00

PORTLAND.

I:Nl:lat.—An inquest was held on Wednesday last
at the Convict Proon, before It. N. Howand Esq.,
coroner, on the body of t'harles Reed, • convict, aged
21, who died maidenly on Monday. On the warder
opening deceased's cell door at half-past five pni , he
asked to be put down for the doctor, as he did not feel
well. Ile went to his work with his party as usual,
but shortly afterwards asked to be token to the
infirmary. He was sent to the wanler's hall, that
certain particulars ni*lit he taken down, when he wos
mamma fatally and expired before he could be conveyed
to the infirmary. 'I he medical officer who examined
him stated that death arose from a spasm of the
heart, brought about by irritation of that organ The
jury returned a venlict of "Death from Natural
Causes."

A STORY IN TFIB WRST BAY, PORTLAND.
DIV • JIIMIOIt sore.]
Throughout the whole inorganic creation there are
few things that convey to the mind of man such an
impression of power as a storm on the coast. And there
are tactile of the complex operations of nature that
enable one to revel at once amongst ossuary so vaned,
guonlp.hosneb:ftthnect
thorns of
to listen to diapasons so mournfully savage, and corn.
prebend so fully the sublime. A storm at sea is sa
ini:giit7;io,:eyhanoiud:::l7:thanbantoutontinsuninobtehlvief:riaolver.
:tiTotth:B...ere.yispii tit:zemh,treintyotriiihaosuenouind:
nothing in all them characters m • tempest on the
mast.. The modulations in the broad Atlantic, so deep
Great Britain
grandeur but
nt
as to suggest apertures to the why's, may be awful,
is the eavernoutaasnd
effects
thec;:cio.
embefftectutthar;
with which we are acquainted are all those harmonious
linrcininsudb.
is a storm.

_
It is more than probable that many of our readers
have stood upon the cap of the West Bay beach flaring
a gale from the south-west; we have done so once, on
Saturday last, and will attempt adeacrition.
The tide is flowing, neatly high ; the wind blows
fiercely from the south-west, and there is a tempest.
The sky is veiled in clouds, throwing a sombre gloom
over the rota ensemble, like the "dove-twilight" or crop-
usonitim of the day. We creep to the topmost ridge of
the pebbly beach, and are deluged with @pray that flies
in clouds. But what is that? Nothing to act as •
counterpoise to the splendour of the picture. Walt,
and the chaos of sound, and the unhumonions outlines
of forming and bursting waves will arrange themselves,
I and we shall have a sublime epic.
Before WI the sea and the horizon melt into the
gloomy twilight of the day. To the left a perpendicular
mus rises from the sea, studded at the base with dark
umbrageous rocks, against which giant waves rear and
burst, covering them with millions of crystal globules
that seem oorruseant by rapid contrast. The leaping is
the variation, of [ores inleite. To the right there is a
perpetual, the shivering of the muted waves inoessent,

circular beach, all boulders, pebbles—split, mew
down, polished by the ceaseless notion of the ocean.
Thittren mill does this beach stretch, and there is on
lack or pebbles, each one polished by the great lapidary
—not nne is or nicked. See. wetted by the sem,
serpentine sinuosities are brought to the surf...; lent;
again, that dark spot was one, endowed with oegsnie
existence; this stone is • ecareophague and thus th•
great lapidary, the natant unfolds to the human eye what
eli.ted in that nebulous twilight of the world's history
Wore mills was. Look again seaward —let tia base the
perspective—P ere Sr.' undulations biomes Table, wide,
deem but not appalling. Watch, mid you perce ve
haueorns. The ',see is rapid, the waves infinite, hot
there is order. The juice, though rasid, is measured.
There is no overleaping, no ceOlieion, no destruction of
the embryo formation. Impelled by al/soiniasent laws
the wave gathers, increases, becomes a bill, is crested,
rears, unfolds itself, and breaks upon the beach, and its
mimics for the nonce is accomplished. This is one
wave—but that is not a tempest. No, on Saturday
thousands of waves rose like perpendicular wall.,
threatening, menanting, savage, seemingly charged with
destruction, and burst upon that 13 miles of adamant!
Bat each of these thousands of hilbseas obeyed an im-
mutable law. Could it have been seen, the law of
fermation would be as apparent as the law for diffusion
when precip•tating headlong on the adamantine beach.
The scooped hollows are fringed with a deep birder if
as pure white as the glistening avalanches tremulou•ly
hsnring on the Alps.
Listen! Now there is the strove, new she antistrophe;
there surginge, here roaring& ; the left yet mighty triad
from the sonth•vrest joins in the orchestra, from whence
issues a symphony of awe sublimated and unnainei in
the vocabulary of human speech.
Oh! mighty power of ocean! What can man de to
propitiate thee? Are thy saver diapasons the only
consolation thou hart to offer the widow and the father-
less for the hecatombs thou bast engulphed in tiy
remorseless stood, ? And yet, thou mighty terry,
em
saw the fragile silvery-grey sea-gull swoop down upon
thy mightest !Mows on Saturday, and dip its delicate
wings on thy snowy crest! The erub'em of fragility
saluting the emblem of power and destruction ! Thin
in abstract loAm would surely be an absurdity ; but.
nature is superior to the philosophy of Meier, and the.
sea-gull does tap the bursting mountain billow withs
its wings.
But a short time sinew and we stood upon this beach.
Who then could have said, On the 18th of January
there shall be foaming. and seething, and whirling?
Who would have thought of charging these translucent
waters with treachery, and homed a plenum In-
which • crested mountain in folding itself should
have stood in the forefront? If the thought
had arisen we should have shelved it in oblivion.
Then it was that these apparently somnolent
water* rsfhscted the summer sun dyitur away amid
all tin !Oriel.. blazonry of a Chaldean sky. Then in
the soft twilight the heavens smiled peacefully, the
placid waters were radiant with dimples, infant
eh robe laved their feet, sod the sea-browned fwbennen
crest their Deis and rang with a joy surnaming Out of
the gondoliers of Venice, who chaunt the poetry of
Tam. But now, oh srrsngs metamorphosis ! the
lamb hes become a tigerese robbed of her whelps.
Woe, unutterable woe, to the hapless being who note
falls into thy treacherous embrace. The winding-sheet
is woven and is white, the sepulchre in ready and is
deep, the victim is in thy •mbratte and that 4 death •
Toolity thou art as miserly as creel ; for no homer.
power ran release from thy unfolding error thrt which
thou claimest as thy Me. Lifeboat., '4:setter, belts, art.
all paralysed here. The whole race of into st tndinz Sr.
this narrow compass could not r.leese • brother mortal
from thy grip until his soul had plumed its wings and
returned to the bosom of the great spirit who
" brooded" (merauktfeth ) "on the face of the waters,"
and incubated this resplendent world.
How little, indeed. are we acquainted with. and how
little we think of nhat we Imo of, the delieste arid
wonderful structure of this earth of our,. A ship
amonzet the ht....kers of the West Bay, and how [rimy
human heave weep and tremble at what is known to le
the inevitable result. The visible is appalling because
seen; but how notch mote should we hr mble if the
, mysteries of this earth were laid bare? The whole
world is as • sh;p floating on • liquid fire whose
, gyrations, and whirlpools, and tempestu life unknoen.
1 The crust of the esrth is never quiescent.* But • com-
paratively short distant-e beneath the daisies is an eCelth
, of liquid fire, the heat of which ascends and quickens
the eminent seed even at the Antipodes, when busied
under the intense frost of an Artie winter. Powerful,
too, in this slthtee'relleall ocean ; &eh th• mountain
regions of the world; question the extinct craters
volcanoes and the active crater of Vesitvion. front
whose open mouth new pours • deservictiee lava; in'
terrogate Pompeii, and the Cities that have been ere
gulphed and faded even from the annals if tradition.
Still we exist, still we revolve, and shall revolve around
the POD, an ocean of fire, and an ocean of water,
floating in the infinite ocean of arther, until Hes fiat
of doom is heralded by the puissant inhaegel the
apocalypse.