ery of Inner Wessex is as varied as the materials that go to
make it up, from the bare rolling chalk downs of Salisbury Plain to
the abrupt and imposing hills around the Vale of Blackmore. To most
who travel in search of the picturesque and the beautiful, the Dorset
coast and the country immediately in the rear, will make the greatest
appeal. The line of undulating cliffs, often towering in bold,
impressive shapes, that commences almost as soon as Dorset is entered
and continues without a dull mile to the eastern extremity of
Weymouth, is to some minds the finest stretch of England's shore
outside Cornwall, a county that depends entirely on its coast line for
its claim to beauty. To some eyes, indeed, the exquisite and varied
colouring of the Dorset cliffs is more satisfying than that of the
dour and dark rocks of Tintagel and the Land's End. And if Wessex
cannot boast the sustained grandeur of the stern face that England
turns to the Atlantic waves, the romantic arch of Durdle Door, the
majestic hill-cliff that rises above the green cleft of Arish Mel, and
the sombre precipices of St. Aldhelm's, with the smiling loveliness of
the Wessex lanes and hamlets behind them, will be sufficient
recompense.

Hampshire has been given the character of having the least interesting
shore of all the southern counties. This is a matter of individual
taste. The surf that beats on the sands from Bournemouth to
Southampton Water washes the very edge of the "Great Wood." Again, the
long pebble wall of the Chesil Bank and the barrier "fleets" of middle
Wessex are a real sanctuary of the wild. This is almost the longest
stretch in England without bathing machine or bungalow. Remote and
little visited also is the exquisite sea country that begins at the
strange little settlement of Bridport Quay and ends in Devonshire. To
the writer's mind there is nothing more lovely in seaward England than
the scenery around Golden Cap, that glorious hill that rises near
little old "Chiddick," and no sea town to equal Lyme, standing at the
gate of Devon and incomparably more interesting and unspoilt than any
Devon coast town.

But the traveller in search of something besides the picturesque will
not be contented until he has explored the wonderful region that
enshrines the most unique of human works in Britain, belonging to
remotely different ages and widely dissimilar in aspect and
purpose--Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge. No one can claim to know
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