cliffs behind us gradually sunk, as those before us rose, and lost their
indistinctness; the blue of the latter soon became grey, and, ere long,
white as chalk, this being the material of which they are, in truth,
composed.

We saw a small whale (it might have been a large grampus) floundering
ahead of us, and acting as an extra pilot, for he appeared to be steering,
like ourselves, for the Needles. These Needles are fragments of the chalk
cliffs, that have been pointed and rendered picturesque by the action of
the weather, and our course lay directly past them. They form a line from
the extremity of the Isle of Wight, and are awkwardly placed for vessels
that come this way in thick weather, or in the dark. The sloop of war got
round them first, and we were not far behind her. When fairly within the
Needles the ship was embayed, our course now lying between Hampshire and
the Isle of Wight, through a channel of no great width. The country was
not particularly beautiful, and still looked parched; though we got a
distant view of one pretty town, Lymington, in Hampshire. This place, in
the distance, appeared not unlike a large New England village, though
there was less glare to the houses. The cliffs, however, were very fine,
without being of any extraordinary elevation. Though much inferior to the
shores of the Mediterranean, they as much surpass anything I remember to
have seen on our own coast, between Cape Anne and Cape Florida; which, for
its extent, a part of India, perhaps, excepted, is, I take it, just the
flattest, and tamest, and least interesting coast in the entire world.

The master pointed out a mass of dark herbage on a distant height, which
resembled a copse of wood that had been studiously clipped into square
forms at its different angles. It was visible only for a few moments,
through a vista in the hills. This was Carisbrooke Castle, buried in ivy.

There was another little castle, on a low point of land, which was erected
by Henry VIII. as a part of a system of marine defence. It would scarcely
serve to scale the guns of a modern twenty-four-pounder frigate, judging
of its means of resistance and annoyance by the eye. These things are
by-gones for England, a country that has little need of marine batteries.

About three, we reached a broad basin, the land retiring on each side of
us. The estuary to the northward is called Southampton Water, the town of
that name being seated on its margin. The opening