possessed the
same estate for I do not know exactly how long; only I suppose it must
have been some time after Noah disembarked from the ark, and, at all
events, for a very long time. The estate of which I speak was in a wild
part of the country, and not at that time very productive; but I believe
that my father would not have parted with it for ten times its market
value. It contained between four and five hundred acres of hill and
dale, and rock and copse, and wood; its chief feature a lofty cape,
which ran out for a considerable distance into the sea. On one side it
was exposed to the almost unbroken sweep of the Atlantic Ocean; on the
other it was washed by the tranquil waters of a deep bay, which formed a
safe and picturesque harbour for numerous small craft which frequently
took shelter there from press of weather when running up channel.

That headland, where the happiest half-year of all my boyhood's days was
passed, is now dotted with several pleasant summer residences; its acres
are marked off by fences and walls, and variegated with the diverse
crops of well-tilled fields, and on its bay-side are occasional small
wharves for pleasure-boats. Fifty years ago it was very different, and,
(though, perhaps, I may be an old fogey and have that grey-hair fashion
of thinking, with an expressive shrug, "Ah, things are not as they were
when I was a boy!") I must say, far more beautiful to my eyes than it is
now. You have seen a bold, handsome-bearded, athletic sailor-fellow,
with a manner combining the sunniness of calms, the dash of storms, and
the romance of many strange lands about him. Now, if our admired hero
should abandon his adventurous profession, and settle down quietly into
the civilised career of an innkeeper, or village constable, or shopman,
or sedate church clerk, and we chanced to meet him years after his "life
on the ocean wave," it would probably be to find a sober-faced
gentleman, with forehead a little bald, with somewhat of a paunch, with
sturdy legs and gaiters, perhaps with a stiff stock and dignified white
collar--altogether a very respectable, useful citizen. But the eye and
the heart could not find in our excellent acquaintance the fascination
which so charmed us in our _friend_ the brave sailor. So with our cape:
fifty years ago, in all its natural wildness; in the beauty of its
lonely beaches strewn with pieces of shivered waterlogged spars and
great rusty remnants of ship-knees and ke