retty
nearly measured by the extreme length of Jersey. If the island of Jersey
could be turned round upon Corbiere, as upon a hinge, St. Catherine's
Point would almost touch the Douvres, at a distance of more than four
leagues.

In these civilised regions the wildest rocks are rarely desert places.
Smugglers are met with at Hagot, custom-house men at Binic, Celts at
Brehat, oyster-dredgers at Cancale, rabbit-shooters at Cesambre or
Caesar's Island, crab-gatherers at Brecqhou, trawlers at the Minquiers,
dredgers at Ecrehou, but no one is ever seen upon the Douvres.

The sea birds alone make their home there.

No spot in the ocean is more dreaded. The Casquets, where it is said the
_Blanche Nef_ was lost; the Bank of Calvados; the Needles in the Isle of
Wight; the Ronesse, which makes the coast of Beaulieu so dangerous; the
sunken reefs at Preel, which block the entrance to Merquel, and which
necessitates the red-painted beacon in twenty fathoms of water, the
treacherous approaches to Etables and Plouha; the two granite Druids to
the south of Guernsey, the Old Anderlo and the Little Anderlo, the
Corbiere, the Hanways, the Isle of Ras, associated with terror in the
proverb:

"_Si jamais tu passes le Ras,
Si tu ne meurs, tu trembleras._"

the Mortes-Femmes, the Deroute between Guernsey and Jersey, the Hardent
between the Minquiers and Chousey, the Mauvais Cheval between Bouley Bay
and Barneville, have not so evil a reputation. It would be preferable to
have to encounter all these dangers, one after the other, than the
Douvres once.

In all that perilous sea of the Channel, which is the Egean of the West,
the Douvres have no equal in their terrors, except the Paternoster
between Guernsey and Sark.

From the Paternoster, however, it is possible to give a signal--a ship
in distress there may obtain succour. To the north rises Dicard or
D'Icare Point, and to the south Grosnez. From the Douvres you can see
nothing.

Its associations are the storm, the cloud, the wild sea, the desolate
waste, the uninhabited coast. The blocks of granite are hideous and
enormous--everywhere perpendicular wall--the severe inhospitality of the
abyss.

It is in the open sea; the water about is very deep. A rock completely
isolated like the Douvres attracts and shelters creatures which shun the
haunts of men. It is a sort of vast submarine cave of fossil coral
branches--a drowned labyrinth. There, at a depth to which divers would