THE FRESHWATER CLIFFS.
FRESHWATER BAY, I.W. (The two remarkable isolated Rocks and Entrance to the principal Cavern.)
"Suspended cliffs, with hideous sway,
Seem nodding o'er the caverns gray."
Several romantic Caverns near Freshwater-gate: the Needles Light-house—and the wonderfully colored Sands of Alum Bay, are accessible without taking boat: the celebrated Needle Rocks are seen (though not to advantage,) from the down and beach: but the Grand Arch, the Wedge-Rock, and several deep Caverns and other curiosities of Rock-scenery, can be viewed only by water, which is extremely desirable in calm weather.
The white Cliffs of Albion is so favorite a poetical designation of the English coast, that it is with some degree of pride we hail our "sea-girt isle" as surpassing in the magnificence and splendor of this characteristic, every other part of the kingdom; for even Shakspeare's cliff at Dover, immortalized as it is by the pen of the bard himself, is little more than half the elevation of some of the chalk precipices of the Isle of Wight,—which, at Freshwater, rise from the bosom of the blue ocean with a perpendicular face of the most dazzling whiteness, the sublime altitude of more than 600 feet!—being nearly one-half higher than the pinnacles either of St. Paul's or Salisbury Cathedrals.
A stranger from the inland districts, who may never have seen a precipice upon a grander scale than is presented by the sides of some deep chalk-pit, would be at a loss to imagine wherein consisted the beauty and the interest of such seemingly monotonous scenes; especially when informed that they are indebted to no borrowed ornament from either tree or shrub: and indeed it would prove equally difficult on our part to furnish a comprehensive definition. One eminent writer enthusiastically eulogises their appearance as "singularly elegant when viewed at a proper distance; and with the Needle Rocks, constituting a whole that is scarcely to be equalled:"—another declares that "the most lofty and magnificent fabrics of Art, compared with these stupendous works of Nature, sink in idea to Lilliputian size:"—and a third, that "the towering precipices of Scratchell's Bay are of the most elegant forms;" and "the pearly hue of the chalk is beyond description by words, probably out of the power even of the pencil."
As almost every visitor has a card of all the local curiosities presented to him by some of the boatmen of the place, it would be useless here to describe individually the several objects deserving personal observation: we shall therefore confine our notice to a few of the most prominent,—commencing at ...