refractory rock which falls at length, can prove itself a quick worker on occasion. At times there come fierce gales with their attendant heavy ground-swells. As the quick waves strike the beach the hollow roar of rolling pebbles marks each receding column of water; masses of shingle are scoured away while the hurricane lasts: one night of this fierce work will carry back into deep water from two to three and four millions of tons of stone, yet these, on the return of calmer weather, will all be thrown in again in the course of very few days. We have chosen a bright summer day for our visit, a day when the West Bay is lazily flinging in its five or six waves per minute; when white-sailed yachts and tall ships slide between us and the horizon; when the gulls are wheeling peacefully about their nests among the cliffs, and all Nature suns herself and rests. The mention of ground-swells, however, reminds us of times when storm instead of sunshine has tempted us with its grandeur, and we have crouched here behind the fishermen’s semicircular rough stone curtains erected for protection, holding fast on while the hard rain and blinding spray struck the face, striving to see, through the mist-darkened shadows of a November afternoon, the mad sea wrestling with the cruel wind. At times like these the Chesil Bank is not a place of the pleasantest associations; the long ridge of stone breasting the channel rollers becomes with every storm a strong protection or a deadly danger to the seaman’s life, just as it happens upon which side of it his ship lies. A terrible place for stranded vessels is this red beach when the south-wester is fairly loosed; at such times the waves which fall in here are terrific,—one breaker alone falling full upon a vessel of large size, which had driven on the bank, has been known completely to destroy and break it to pieces. Terrible as such a lee-shore is, however, some very remarkable escapes have happened here. The 23rd of November, 1824, for instance, was made memorable on all this coast by a night of severe storm. On that night a small sloop bound for Portsmouth found herself unable to “fetch” Portland Bill, and lay at the mercy of the gale, with the certainty of stranding upon the beach before her. With death imminent, which no human effort seemed able to avert, the captain tried one last desperate venture for life. Abandoning the vain attempt to make an offing, he put the vessel’s head straight for the bank. Thus with sail upon her, the howling wind driving her at speed towards the shore, the dark November night around her, she held on a steady course. During the few minutes which elapsed before she struck, the hard tense silence of suspense reigned from stem to stern; there was nothing more to do now but wait with the grim quiet courage of sailors the coming blow. One chance for life remained, and only one. A lucky wave might lift the craft with way upon her high above the deadly hammer of the breaking seas; so it proved: just when the black shore showed close through the night, one huge roller took the little vessel, aided by her momentum, rapidly onward and upward almost to the very crest of the beach. How the grip of that painful silence loosened, and what a thankful cheer rang out against the gale as with comparatively little damage the good ship Ebenezer settled down, with her keel deep in the pebbles, out of the reach of anything more dangerous than the spray flung at her from the disappointed surges!
But we have digressed considerably, while as yet we have not exhausted the interests of the bank itself.
It seems odd here—as indeed it does on any beach—to find that an inversion of what we should naturally consider to be the order in sizes of the shingle from low-water line upwards takes place. The biggest pebbles are always highest up, lining the high-water mark. Now, having already shown that the pebbles are brought to shore by the action of the water, the inference seems clear that this element would be so far like most other bearers of burdens that it would take the first opportunity of dropping the heaviest portion of its load. We should expect then to find the large stones at low-water and the gravel at high-water line; this is precisely what does not take place, for we all know that it is towards the sea we must walk to come upon the finest portion of a beach. Here this is strikingly apparent; the shingle diminishing very regularly in size as we descend the slope.
We account for the paradox thus: when an advancing wave throws down upon the shore its load of pebbles and retires, it is evident that the discharged freight will lie more or less closely packed just in proportion to the size of the stones which compose it; that sand or gravel, for example, will form a comparatively flat floor over which the following wave will roll the larger pebbles, until the smallest among these have packed into one another with sufficient approach to a level surface to permit the water to pass over them without any great tendency to move them further forwards. The largest sizes, however, can never lie so closely together but that enough of their surface will remain exposed to allow of their propulsion by a wave of very ordinary force; hence their travels will not end till the sea, like a successful Sisyphus, has lodged them at high-water line.
This law, which is in force on all beaches, has a perfectly gigantic exemplification at Portland; for not only is it here true of the slope comprised between tide-marks, but its action is extended throughout the whole length of the beach. It has previously been mentioned that both the general dimensions of the bank as well as the individual sizes of the shingle diminish from the island to the Eype Rocks: it seems natural to suppose that the gravel to the westward has been derived from the large stones east, presuming these to have been driven from east to west, and ground smaller and smaller with every mile of their progress. But the winds to whose efforts the existence of the bank is due, blow, as has been shown, from the opposite quarter to that which would be required for this result, and the rule just stated furnishes the true explanation of the difficulty. Large stones and small are brought together to the beach, and whether between tide-marks or along the whole length of the isthmus, it is the rolling of the larger pebbles upon the smaller in
