Part 4

On the face of the cliff yawn two deep and dark caverns, to reach which at low water a ledge of rudest steps has been cut diagonally on the perpendicular face of the rock. The descent by this rock-ladder is no puerile feat. We are halfway down, and are checked by a block having fallen from the ledge. There was no turning, so there we lay on the side looking down over the perpendicular 200 feet on the black rocks in the cave. To fall or not to fall, that was the question: if we condescended to drop, that is, to descend rapidly, in obedience to the primal law of gravitation, a fracture of limb or neck was a certainty, and yet we deemed an ascent an impossibility; so as a _dernier ressort_, or rather a forlorn hope, we turned on the back, worked upwards half on and half off the cliff, when happily a wider ledge _by six inches_ enabled us to turn, and then we stood erect in proud triumph, crowing like a bantam at our really _narrow_ escape, and looked gratefully down on the frowning rocks thus cheated of “an awful catastrophe.” There is a grey kite, too, hovering noiselessly over our head. We wave him off majestically—we are not to be the prey of gleds and corbies be sure on’t.

Silence reigns around, a calm between the storms, save when the sea-bird flutters screaming along, or the beetle wheels around us his droning flight. But, hark! again—thunder is growling like a jealous gnome at our escape and our exalted enjoyment. Twice, indeed, we essayed to leave this accomplished spot, and lingered until the broad evening shadows began to deepen even the gloom of the storm-cloud, and we descend by two dismantled forts, their guns lying rusted on the turf. _Les Pierres du lacq_—_the Paternosters_—high above water on our ascent, are now lost in the deep.

The tempest was raging as we were driving down a wooded dingle. A flash and a crash in quick succession—the lightning has struck the rock: a huge block, several tons in weight, rolls thundering down the precipice, crushing trees to atoms in its downward course.

The driver of our carriage is scared from under the boughs and dashes down the valley like a madman. Poor fellow, he was neither a Franklin nor a Faraday; and not reflecting that the storm-cloud travels swiftly, he did not know that this very dingle was now the safest place in Jersey.

The villes of St. Mary and St. John are near us; their churches of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries.

In St. John’s, on its saint’s eve, was once celebrated in all its degraded perfection of orchard-robbing, cow-milking, &c., the wild marauding game of _Faire brave les Poeles_, a stain on the sporting annals of Jersey. It is now, we hope and believe, nearly obsolete.

The coast is still bold, and there are tiny cascades on the runnels close by, and a ruined mill somewhat picturesque. It is on this northern coast that the scenic contrasts of the islet are so exquisitely displayed. Not far from the verge of a cliff 300 feet high, we are in a leafy dingle, and look over the waters unconscious of our height. Yonder, a mile off, are the _Pierres du lacq_ at low water; the front of Guernsey looming on the left, and Serk rearing its majestic wall of sienite on the right.

The granite quarries of _Mount Mado_ are above the coast, and near the point of Belle Hogue there is a little _twin_ spring of water that is believed to cure blindness, age, and dumbness—and this is the legend of the wells. These little founts were the tears of two fairies—for fays feel like ordinary mortals.—Well, _Arna_ and _Aruna_ were wont to gambol and to chant around the rocks of _Belle Hogue_. They were at length sanctified, and wafted to heaven by an angel; but the love of their Channel home was still warm in their little bosoms, and once, musing in melancholy mood on the delights of their Belle Hogue, and fluttering with longing hearts directly over the enchanting spot, each dropped a tear of regret on the earth, and from them two little fountains were instantly playing up the sparkle of their crystal drops.

From _Belle Hogue_ to the bold round block of _La Coupé_, the cliffs are of breccia, or pudding-stone; the rest is chiefly schist, with veins of porphyry, especially about St. Martin’s and Roselle.

_Trinity_ lies about a mile from the shore. In the old manor house, the home of the Carterets, are still preserved the goblet, table, and gloves, presented by Charles II. The lord of this manor presents two drakes before the sovereign who may be dining in Jersey.

Descending along a fine dingle, we open the wide bold bay of _Boullay_, the landing-place of Strozzi, the invader, in 1549. The panorama, enlivened by its beacon and its pier, is almost as beautiful as that of St. Brelade’s, and it is belted by very splendid cliffs and rocks of thallite, greenstone, and porphyry.

Near _Le Nez du Guet_ are the Roman mound works of _La Petite Cæsare_.

And now opens the little bay, _Havre de Roselle_, a beautiful rocky basin, bounded by Le Nez du Guet and _Le Couperose_, and spotted with three rocklets, and possessing a barrack. A fine rocky dingle, between lofty cliffs and fringed with wood, runs up into the land towards a Druidical _Poquelaye_ above Le Couperose and _La Coupé_ and the bay of _Fliquet_, with its tower. The road from Roselle to Gourey is scooped in the shore rock. Round the point of _Verclut_ opens the bay of _St. Catherine_ with its insular horns of rock, and one crowned by the tower of _Archirondel_. Then there is _St. Geoffrey’s rock_, from which in the olden time criminals were thrown into the sea. Roselle Manor and the ville of St. Martin’s lie on the high ground.

Approaching _Gourey_, we stumbled on two most interesting bits of antiquity. On the hill near the coast is a very fine _Poquelaye_ in a rough field near the warren. An oval of twenty-one stones—fourteen within, in two rows, supporting three large horizontals, one fifteen feet long and ten and a half broad, and weighing eighty tons. Near the Parc de la belle Fontaine a very quaint old house stands in an orchard. Its turret staircase, _La Tourelle_, is especially curious, but we cannot find it described.

And here below us on a shallow bay is the quaint little town of Gourey, the third ville of importance; its church perched on the brow—large dark blocks lying around its little haven—one, l’Ecquiercriere, standing out the most eastern point of the islet. Above all, the magnificent, though now dismantled fortress of _Mount Orgueil_ is towering aloft on its rock, fully illustrating its proud title. It is a perfect subject for the pencil, and is replete with historical associations. It was an especial object with King John. In the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV. the Count de Maulevrier seized Mount Orgueil and half Jersey for Henry, while Carteret of Grosnez, Seigneur of St. Ouen, held the rest for Edward. In its dungeon were imprisoned by De Carteret the two Bandinels; one, in trying to escape, was killed on the rocks; the other went mad. It was the prison of Prynne, who here wrote his thoughts and Rhymes on the castle, which he dedicated to—

“Sweet Mistress Douce, fair Margaret, Prime flower of the house of Carteret.”

As we mount the immense flight of steps, we come on the door through which Charles II. passed to the cliffs where the boat was moored that wafted him to France. He had fled hither to Jersey from St. Mary’s in Scilly, as more remotely secure. Near this is the crypt—one of the most eccentric bits of antique masonry which we have seen—and opposite is the court in which was discovered the effigy of the Virgin Mary; and onwards yawns the tower dungeon deep and dark. There are Roman bits of masonry still in the walls. Near the gate are stone benches, once the seat of judges, and close by beams for the suspension of those whom they condemned. From the keep the Cathedral of Coutances is distinct in a clear atmosphere.

On the rocky beach of _Grouville_ bay, a profusion of vraich is often deposited. The sand hillocks are covered by long grass, and the eryngo here blooms beautifully. The oyster bank, for which Gourey is famous, is spread two miles off the bay. The rocky ledge of sienite which underlies the schist of all this south-east point fringes the whole south-eastern angle, and is defended by a formal range of martellos—_La Roque_ at the point, and _Seymour_ tower stands in the midst of the waves.

And near _La Roque_, or _Rocbert_, is the _Rock of the Hag_, and this is the legend of the rock:—

There was a very beautiful Madeleine and there was a young fisher named Hubert, who loved her; but he was inveigled by the witches, and charmed into aversion to her. The heroine in despair, with a cross in her hand, incurred the perils of storm and billows to save him from these spells, and as a memento of her happy success, there is the _Point du Pas_, the “footstep of the virgin,” to this day.

Then there is another large rock, once a stumbling-block of contention between St. Magloire and the Druids. The priests engaged the Devil to roll a block from the shore to proselyte the people; but when they tried to roll it back again, St. Magloire laid his holy book on it and it was immovable; he then set the cross on the rock, and the demon fled, the Druids succumbed, and the immortal safety of the people was insured.

And these rocks may be discovered if one will, and pebbles and shells may be gathered, and we may bathe at the favourite dipping-place of _Portague_, or we may ramble to the nice little church of Grouville, dated 1312.

But we must not overlook the bit of antiquity about midway between Gourey and St. Helier’s—the Prince’s Tower, _La Tour d’Auvergne_, or _La Hogue bie_—Hogue, mound, or monument—that crowns a mount on the most elevated brow in the islet. It was built on the site of an ancient chapel, on the model of the Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and was enlarged by Mabon, Dean of Jersey, about 1750, who, it is said, worked miracles under the Virgin. One of its lords was the Prince de Bouillon, an English admiral; but the legend of De Hambie, as deep as it is obscure, is the illustrative charm of La Hogue. This is the tale in brief:—The servant of this De Hambie murdered his master and married the widow, who, stung by remorse, erected this tower, visible from her _chateau_ at Coutances, to the memory of her dishonoured lord. Another record refers the death of De Hambie to the poisonous breath of a dragon which he slew; but as even the Livre Noir of Coutances leaves the matter undecided, we presume not to fathom the secret.

A blind boy is our guide, who from habit points out correctly the very richly-wooded panorama from the summit. The islet resembles one expanded grove, spire and turret peeping up just where the imagination of a consummate artist would have placed it.

And so we may wander back to St. Helier’s by the elegant ville of St. Saviour’s, the living of the Dean of Jersey, and the largest church in the islet; among richly cultivated grounds and gardens teeming with myrtles and verbenas and fuchsias and amarillidæ, or we may wander yet further afield amidst yet more beautiful nature—lanes fringed with blushing hedges, and knolls of woody luxuriance, and banks and meadows gemmed with floral wildings, and here and there a blossom most rare in England; and we may perchance meet little groups of juveniles on their way to drink warm milk at a dairy farm, and all this at an equable temperature between 50° and 60°, purified by the occasional sprinkling of a genial summer shower.

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Transcriber's note:

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in punctuation and the use of hyphenated words have been maintained.

Some illustrations moved to facilitate page layout.