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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
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