The Islets of the Channel

But running water is well-nigh a blank in Jersey. As in all small islets, the rivulets are quiet little runnels rippling down from springs on the northern brow, and stealing south straight into the bays; the gulleys of Grève le Lecq and Boullay creeping northward. Here and there the runnels turn a little mill-wheel; and then, in our walks, we often stumble on an old church, and also on a venerable manor-house, of which there are about half a score in Jersey, St. Ouen’s, Rosell, La Hogue Boëte, &c. And now to compass the beauty of Jersey. The walks should be around and across the south-west and south-east corners, from Town to La Corbière, and to Gourey, the northern coast from Le Tac to St. John’s, and thence to St. Martin’s. A pony may carry us to any of the northern villes, from which we may reach the magnificent points of the northern coast, or a carriage may take us along the Devonian valley of St. Peter’s to St. Ouen’s, and await us at St. Martin’s, to bring us back to St. Helier’s, and, in this lovely valley of St. Peter’s, if we are fond of cryptogamic botany, let us thread the bosky cliffs of the glen, and on the stems of the wild rose find the finest tufts of the beautiful golden lichen, Borrera chrysophthalma.

High and low water display contrasted aspects, both equally perfect. At high tide, the full bays and havens, like gigantic mirrors, are resplendent with the reflection of their beautiful shores.

To the botanist, the geologist, and even the artist, low water is far more propitious, for the beach, cliffs, and rocks are profuse in weed and sea-flowers and pebbles and shells, and they thus give up their treasures for the seeking; the outlines and colours present a perfect charm for the pencil.

Let us be off in pursuit of these temptations, scramble among the rocks, creep round the bays, or into the caves; for, like the violet, much of the more enduring beauty of the creation lies hid in the deep shades of the earth.

We are about to make the circuit of the islet. It is high water, and we float over the wide bay to St. Aubin’s, or to Noirmont. It is low tide, and we walk round the shore of this marine crescent on the firm carpet of sand. (At a tiny rill at Doet de Demigrave there is a very sudden transition from firm to soft.) There a group of girls are disporting like Nereids among the waves. It is at full tide, and at evening hour, however, that the bay of St. Aubin’s is perfect to the eye; the setting sun is flinging the most gorgeous colours on the little slate rocks and the walls of the fort: the hue is gold, with a shadow of bronze, while the more distant walls of Elizabeth Castle are bronze with shadows of deep grey, a scene special for the eccentric brush of Turner.

From the brow over St. Aubin’s the view is splendid, overlooking the now poor, yet neat and secluded little village town, its petty haven, and its castle. We are at the entrance of a richly wooded glen, leading up to the peninsular hill (on which stands a tolmen stone), that dips southward to Noirmont, a ridge formed of sienite, rose feldspar, and thallite, striated at the point; ay, and we may gather a wallet-full of ferns – and there is one very rare, if not quite unknown, in England, gynogramma leptophylla. We may creep round the secluded Portelet Bay (enlivened by the Janerim towers or martello) from Noirmont to Point la Frette, or descend from the brow to the broad bright bay of St. Brelade’s, divided by a red rock ledge into two; the cliffs and rocks come out in great splendour, and the out-crops of the sienite groups on the hills are in the finest style. One enormous mass of blocks is a perfect specimen of Titanic arrangement; it looks primeval, antediluvian. It is richly covered by grey and yellow lichen, and deeply festooned with ivy and clematis, amidst the most luxuriant variety of heath-flowers, pink and deep purple, blended with the bright golden pods and deep green of the mountain furze. Around it are the green tufts of the protonoma moss and the adiantum, or maiden-hair fern, and myriads of the dwarf rose d’amour are studding the turf, and amidst all this floral profusion green lizards are creeping stealthily, their eyelets sparkling like diamond points amid the leaves – a perfect study for a Pre-Raphaelite. From the hills we descend to the white hard-soft sand around the crescent bay – it is a luxury to step on it.

The gem of St. Brelade’s is its very quaint little church, the parish fane of St. Aubin’s. It is perched on the edge of the Rock cliff, overwashed by the waves at spring tide, and surrounded by tombs and slabs on the velvet turf, and spotted with cypress. It is of the æra of Henry I., 1111, one of the twenty-five erected at that period, and its history bears a very romantic legend. It was to have been built eastward of the bay, but the fairies of the sward removed from their realm the work and tools of the masons for three successive nights, and dropped them at St. Brelade’s; and at length the people, in a panic, yet warned and directed by this deposit, erected their church on the spot which the fairies had thus selected. On the walls of an antique chapel the form of Herod and the angel Gabriel are rudely figured, and on a scroll from the mouth of the Tetrarch is inscribed, “Herod le Roy,” and before him is the Saviour, bearing his cross.

On the brow of La Maye is the signal-post, and off the cove of Beauport lie the Aiguillons rocks, and off the south-west point the rock of La Corbière, its apex painted white for a sea-mark. From the downs the views are complete.

An extensive district of this south-west corner, Les Quenvais, is a record of the devastation of the hurricane in the fifteenth century. In St. Ouen’s Bay, as in Loughneagh, in Ireland, it is believed that ruins of houses and walls are visible at low ebb. The village was overwhelmed, and all the people drowned, for decoying, by false beacons, some Spanish argosies that then foundered on the rocks. The wreckers plundered and plunged them into the deep. As they were by Bacchanalian orgies celebrating the anniversary of the wreck, the sea rolled in and overwhelmed the sinners and their ville beneath its waves.

And there spreads out its arc of nearly three miles the flat bay of St. Ouen, from the rock of La Corbière to that of Le Tac, or La Crevasse. The bay shore consists almost entirely of round hillocks of mica-quartz sand (the relics be sure of the avenging elements), profusely covered by long marine grasses, to the fine stems of which myriads of tiny univalves are adhering. The sea holly, eryngo, is in the most brilliant flowering; its blossom, of the purest cerulean blue, may rival in Jersey the brightest exotic of the greenhouse. The Great and Little Sandbanks lie off the bay, and nearer are the fine group of La Rocca, and the Gorden tower in the bight.

The quaint ancient church of St. Ouen is on the brow and close by the venerable manor-house, and there is a fresh-water marsh lake, La Mara. And here Sir Philip de Carteret was fishing in the olden time, when he was attacked by a French troop; but he escaped by leaping his horse over a chasm near La Val de la Charriere, the animal falling dead as he reached his home. A giant rock stands alone at Le Tac and La Pinnacle, 100 feet high at the extreme point, both very fine studies. A recluse may lodge at Le Tac, almost out of the world.

The road abruptly winds from the beach over the hill, and on the downs we are at the hamlets of Grosnez and Vincelez. Cape Grosnez, “the great nose,” points half a mile to the left, the boldest cliff of the islet. The rocks are of magnificent proportions, 300 feet deep, and almost perpendicular. The gate arch of the very ancient castle of Grosnez, its origin believed to be Roman, and the home of Le Carteret, in the æra of the Plantagenets, stands alone on its green platform. From it the whole group of islets to the north-west forms an exquisite little picture.

From the “Stone Plank,” lying across a deep rock ravine, a youth fell, and was washed to sea, in sight of his friends assembled at a pic-nic.

A flash, a peal – ay, all in keeping with the scene – the growl of thunder completely around and above us, and the lurid gleam flings a sort of spectral halo over the heavens. There are two intensely black clouds sailing in contrary currents towards each other, like destroying spirits. The flash from the Guernsey cloud charged highly electric streams over to that from Sark. Guernsey comes out in bright light for a moment, and then is lost. Sark is overshadowed, and looms out like a great purple wall, the chiselling of its cliffs and rocks, that a minute since showed like huge bastions and gables, is totally obscured. An awful position, if we linger here, and yet the mise en scène is most magnificent – sublime. The storm instantly bursts on Grosnez, and we brave its wild fury, to look forth on a glory from which Salvator, Loutherbourg, and Turner might have drunk in ideas of elemental majesty. A black and murky cloud settles round yon point of Pleinmont, a bold, caverned rock of sharp sienite, shaking with its thunder the old fort and drawbridge, and driving its flood across the bay of Grève au Laucheon, and far into its caves of gloom, 400 feet deep. One of those sudden transitions of electric storm brings out the brightest sunbeams, and we look across yonder rocky dingle two miles away on the beautiful cove of Grève la Lecq, with its barrack and hostelry. The sea is rolling gloriously at high water over the rocks of Les Deniers, its mountains of milk-white foam breaking on a floor of sand as white as they, and thundering on the deep umber rocks, embossed on the surface, and then rolling with a deeper roar into that yawning cavern on the western cliff. Towering over the shore of the bay hang stupendous cliffs, some 400 feet high. From the eastern mound over the Crab Caves, Catel de Lecq, we look up the two dingles which come down, rich in woodland, to the bay, just about an old grey martello: then by a mere turn on the heel we are directly on the verge of a magnificent cave, closed in by cliffs nearly 500 feet high, huge granite blocks strewed around their bases, and more seaward a belt of white sand and a beach of black pebbles. The scene is wild and rude as the Hebrides, and where the rolling surge on the beach meets the transient flood of a storm-cloud, it displays a picture almost as majestic as a sea-loch in Skye.

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.