The Islets of the Channel

Our first walk is by the church and the scattered ville of Roselle and the Seigneury to the northern cape. This house of the lord is in the Tudor style, and boasts a lake, a boat, a bowling-green, a flagstaff, and a belvidere, and parterres and greenhouses of choice and beautiful flowers; and it is near the head of a ravine leading down to the most exquisite cave of the islet.

And here we are on the promontory of Point le Nez, the first cape on our scud from Guernsey. The terminal rocks are insular at high water, but Le Bec du Nez may be reached on a ledge at ebb of tide. On the brow the schist blocks, traversed by porphyry, are upheaved in the wildest confusion, and assume an endless variety of form, more so than the shore blocks, which are washed and rolled and rounded by the waves. It is a fine wild range to begin with. The turf down invites us even to an Olympic race, for the pure air elevates both the will and the power of our frame. We feel our muscular energy almost grow upon us, and when we have revelled on the turf, then down among the white, smooth rocks that lie scattered around in chaotic rudeness, like the thrones of Titanic nobles. But prolific nature has gemmed these blocks for a more charming study than mythological fancies; there is a garden of lichens strewn for our special admiration on their surface; there are the golden studs of squammaria, and the grey and purple bosses of parmelia; and if we peep between these stone giants, we shall light on many a lovely flower and rich green plant, blooming and luxuriating within little nooks, and nursed by their genial shelter. The scolopendrium and hart’s tongue are long and broad in leaf, and the grammitis expands its fronds in profusion; and here we breasted one of the most violent gales of the Channel, not without some peril, for it was often difficult to hang on; but the wind blew into us such a joyous and refreshing energy and power that this clinging to the rocks was no labour. Our sketch-book was not so fortunate, it was whirled from our grasp in a moment, and dashed against a towering block. We rushed wildly to save our treasure, but four or five of our favourite sketches were wafted in a few seconds high up among the clouds, imparting a deeper value to the salvage.

Ascending the ledge to the eastern side of the Corbie du Nez or Grin, we come abruptly on a yawning cleft that nearly isolates the cape itself. Its aspect is formidable but its descent is easy, and it leads down to the mouth or funnel of the largest cave in the islet, La Boutique, par excellence. To reach an inner cave a barrier must be mounted. At high water, the billows, after dashing on the shore cliff, rush in with a thundering sound at two chasms on the north and west. At low water the inner boutique may be entered with a light; it is lofty, and on its surface there are a few stalactitic droppings and a sprinkling of ferns. There are smaller caverns in the cliffs. We come out on the broad bay of Banquette, and in the little cave to southward stand out in the most fantastic beauty the finest outlying rocks in the islet, Les Autelets– little altars: in complete contrast, however, one being a stupendous cube of Grauwacke on a very narrow base, the other a huge pyramid, on the ledges of which a flight of choughs and shags settle and roost in the evening. The overhanging cliffs are nearly perpendicular, and along their base lie around in heaps the most gigantic blocks of very variegated stones, black, red and grey; and unlike the angular blocks on the hills they are mathematically rounded off by the attrition of the waves. Among these rocks are deep pools of water, in which we may discover small crustacea, and rich varieties of the daisy actinia, the nereis, and holothuria, and other anthozoa. There is one flaunting in bright orange, and yonder crawls the hermit crab that seems to have perforated an actinia within a shell, the tissue of the anemone forming a ring round the crab. Many of the blocks are richly clothed with fucus spiralis (bladdervraich) and crithmum (samphire) in all their splendour of gold and bronze. We must be wary, however, in paddling over these slippery carpets, a fall from them is not a trifle. Chondrus membranifolius, and pink and green polysyphonia and dasya are hanging on the cliffs, and the ulva and porphyra, oyster-green, and purple laver on the deeper rocks. The blocks are studded with minute univalves, and the patella shells of the limpet show like bosses on a shield.

Through a splendid arch of dark reddish sienite, marked by horizontal lines of schist, standing nobly out from the cliff, we pass into the next bay, the most magnificent in Serque, Porte Meullin. It is a deep wide cave, overfrowned by cliffs of clay shale 300 feet high, that come down perpendicularly on the beach. On their sides and brow zigzags are cut, by which the summit is gained, and from it we look down on the most splendid grouping of the islet. A cleft on the south side of Port Meullin sets off an isolated rock of very quaint form, and leads to another fine cave with chaotic blocks and pools, a lofty pinnacle towering above the cleft, and a wide cavern yawning in the islet rock. These rocks are bronzed by masses of golden gelatine, laminaria bulbosa, and fucus canaliculatus.

Among these ferruginous blocks, talc and asbestos and agate chalcedony, green, red, and yellow jasper may be discovered, and veins of lapis ollaris running across the islet.

During the western gales – and we now encountered one of the most determined violence – the waves roll into Port Meullin a profusion of the most magnificent algæ or weeds that we have beheld. In a few minutes we selected and displayed on the pebbles half a score of splendid specimens, a complete museum of sea treasure. There was a gigantic flag, six yards long, of rich sienna brown with a fringe of pink, covered with white spots, laminaria saccharina, or sea hanger. There were the fleshy fans of nitrophyllum; long brown ribbon slips six or eight in a bunch, asperococcus and rhodomenia; bunches of golden pods or bladders at the end of narrow leaves, fucus spiralis; huge bunches of broad reddish leaves, like those of the oak, delesseria sanguinea; eight or ten ribbon thongs, six feet long, on a thick brown stem, laminaria digitata (they might be a cat-o’-nine-tails for the backs of the Nereids); filigree weeds of the purest pink and white, polysyphonia and dasya; very long, tough, gelatinous brown thongs in a bow, chorda filum, sea whip-lash, and the purple iridea. The heath brows over this lane are clothed in corresponding luxuriance. There were at least three species of erica, a profusion of spurges, aspidia, and asplenia ferns; ophioglossum, adder’s-tongue, and an adiantum, maiden-hair fern, and dwarf polypodium were springing from the stunted stems, and little tufts, like codium bursæ, green purse-moss, and all these among clumps of thrift and chicory, and dwarf thistles, and wild sage and spinach, and vaccinia. We could not light on the stramonium, wormwood, or canna indica, which we were told now grew wild in the islet.

Couleur de rose will ever gild our memory of Port Meullin. It was the scene of our first grand impression of the extreme beauty of Serque; but it was gilded by a sentiment somewhat beyond mere admiration. From another point, a very courteous gentleman left his islet villa, and his lady and his luncheon, and guided us to the descent, where a bevy of fair girls, in all the romance of elegant deshabille, were gathering weed and pebbles among the rocks. Charming! Look across from Port Meullin to Havre Gosselin; there is a green fissure in the cliff 200 feet in height, as if the rocks had quarrelled and fallen away from each other – it is the Moie du Mouton, and along it sheep are lifted to browse on the green down above.

And there on the right stretches the bold isolated rock, Brechou, or L’Isle de Merchant, a table of rich mould on a belt of flat rock. On its southern side yawns a very lofty chasm. We longed to pore into it; but the currents daunted even the boatmen of Serque. Round the point of Lionee opens the wide bay of Le Grand Grève, divided from the opposite bay by that most eccentric wall of rock 200 feet high and 6 feet thick on its ridge. This coupée, thus pared down for safety and for traffic, is chiefly of sienite or hornblende granite, traversed by a vein of porcelain clay, and it divides the islet into Great and Little Serk. This, perhaps prudent cutting down, has, however, shorn the guide-books of the high-flown epithets of “awe” and “terror,” which they affirm must strike the adventurer from Great to Little Serk. This peninsula, presq’île du petit Serque– wears a dreary aspect on its face; yet parterres of the most splendid ericas here and there adorn its soil – a little nest of cots and some scattered ruins of miners’ huts display a curious contrast of vitality and desertion. The southern point is the mining district; and though they have quite abandoned the search for ore, the superficial barrenness is perfectly consistent with mineral impregnation below. Our research for mollusca was more fertile in the pools about the southern point than elsewhere. As we round the point we come on a little bay, the avant courier of a splendid succession of coves and clefts on the eastern coast, and lying off this southern point peers up the bold rock L’Etat du Serq. Every brow on this deeply indented shore should be rounded and scaled and descended, as far as the worn or stony path can be traced, and then we look directly on the face of the cliff and into the caverns. There is one cave especially, called, we believe, Le Pot, as fine as can be imagined – the boldest feature of Little Serk, and on these rock-brows the lichens are in beautiful profusion, and the grey and yellow cetraria, and the fleshy sycophorus deformis.

We now come round to the eastern cliff of Coupée Bay, its extraordinary wall lifting up its causeway almost in the clouds. Beyond, the next headland opens on us the fine bay of Baleine, or Dixcard, the holiday spot of the islet. It is carpeted by white sand, on which small boats may be pushed in calm weather; it is the bathing-place of the visitors, whose half-mile walk from the hotel is chiefly on the greensward, and there is an arched cave in a pinnacle for our disrobing. Every step on this bold shore displays a fresh picture.

Le Creux cavern, a great hole 100 feet deep, and opening above on the hill, yawns on the beach. At high-water a boat can be pushed into this cauldron, which is a perfect miniature of the famed Buller of Buchan in Scotland. Point Vignette, La Terrible, or La Conchée, lifts its proud pinnacles beyond this. Les Burons and La Moie lie off the cliffs. Then comes a black ridge, looking like porphyry, termed, we believe, La Chateau. It bounds the only little cave, L’Eperquerie – Paregorois – Port Gourey, in which boats may be sheltered and moored. Into this caverned cave of green velvet it was our fortune to descend during one of the severest gales, the rolling foam beautifully contrasting with the black-green rocks. The small boats were dancing high on the liquid mountain, and even the cutters and a lugger were rocking and dipping their bows in the water, and yet at the time the water in this cave, and in Creux also, was the calmest around the islet. The group of fishermen below us on a rock-ledge were seemingly in dilemma for ourselves. It was a most perilous footing; so boisterous was the blast around the rocks, that we were compelled to cling to the rocks, and several of our hapless sketches were wafted aloft in a moment. The sailors seemed to think us wild, and to wonder how and whence we came, and, indeed, why we came at all; and yet this was what we hoped to see – a calm would have tamed the scene down to insignificance. Close to the landing-place and the off-lying rock it is all perfect studies. We have La Chapel de Meuve, a square block of pendant granite, as if momentarily about to fall. The range of rocks on the eastern coast consist chiefly of sienite. We have now well-nigh rounded the islet of Serk, a complete embarras de richesse; one glimpse of these rocks taken at random were worth a day’s journey.

Hark! amid the howling of the wind there is the scrape of a fiddle – shade of Straduarius, a cremona in Serk! A band of wandering minstrels are wind-bound in the islet, and in sympathy they are about to invoke Terpsichore in a stable-loft, approached by a narrow mud path, beneath a dripping hedge and a muck-heap! And there is the fair, the fairest maid in Serk, Fanny, of whom it is the fashion to talk, flirting in very accomplished style, raising flames of jealousy among the juveniles who resort to Mrs. Hizzlehurst’s hotel. It was a very fair bit of romantic burlesque, and took.

We are in Serk four days more than we had contemplated; the pressure of harvest binds us in the islet; all hands to the sickle and the sheaf. Boreas, however, had the credit of our imprisonment; yet we regret it not – almost every waking hour was passed in contemplation of some fresh beauty. The bracing breeze of health, the complete retirement —solitude, if you will – the absence of all mere holiday intrusion, the instant transition from our hostelry into the midst of romantic beauty, to be admired or studied as the fit may work, and, withal, the order of domestic economy, all mark this little islet as the perfect home of the student who is reading or writing – of the romantic wanderer – of the artist – of the geologist – of all, indeed, who love to revel in wild and unspoliated nature.

Adieu! beautiful Sark, we shall not soon forget your perfection; adieu! for yonder lies the “Lady” of the islet, in whose bosom we are to be wafted off to Guernsey with the market-people who wend to St. Peter’s Port to replenish the exhausted stores of the islet. Romance itself must be fed, it cannot live on flowers: and so, at five in the morning, in bright moonlight, amid a bevy of visitors and a group of Serquois peasants, we have passed the portal of the rocks, and wait on the beach to be rowed to the cutter in the cove – wind, tide, and currents dead against us; so, to gain an offing, we make the tour of the island, and by a long tack of three miles run up the Great Russell and round Castle Cornet into the haven of Sarnia.

And now, still further southward, we are nearing the fairest islet of the Channel, and after the circuitous struggles of our voyage from Serque, with all the charm of contrast, we overcome time and space with almost a certainty of progression. We chuckle at this triumph of vapour over the gales, yet with time to spare, and with wind and tide and current in our favour – a very rare coincidence in the Channel seas – we would yet prefer to hoist our canvas, and skim leisurely over the glittering waves to Jersey.