Contents
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | [The Island] | [1] |
| I. | [Ryde] | [19] |
| III. | [Newport] | [33] |
| IV. | [The East Side] | [54] |
| V. | [The Undercliff] | [77] |
| VI. | [The Back of the Island] | [92] |
| VII. | [Freshwater and the Needles] | [104] |
| VIII. | [Yarmouth] | [119] |
| IX. | [Cowes] | [139] |
| X. | [The Gates of the Island] | [154] |
| [Index] | ||
List of Illustrations
| [1.] | The Needles | [Frontispiece] |
| FACING PAGE | ||
| [2.] | Ryde—Moonrise | [20] |
| [3.] | Newchurch—the Mother Church of Ryde | [24] |
| [4.] | Newport | [34] |
| [5.] | Carisbrooke Castle | [40] |
| [6.] | Godshill | [50] |
| [7.] | Water Meadows of the Yar near Alverstone | [58] |
| [8.] | Sandown Bay | [60] |
| [9.] | Shanklin Village—Moonlight after rain | [72] |
| [10.] | Shanklin Chine | [74] |
| [11.] | Bonchurch Old Church near Ventnor | [84] |
| [12.] | The Landslip near Ventnor | [86] |
| [13.] | The Undercliff near Ventnor | [90] |
| [14.] | Blackgang Chine | [96] |
| [15.] | Shorwell | [100] |
| [16.] | Farringford House | [106] |
| [17.] | Freshwater Bay | [112] |
| [18.] | Totland Bay | [118] |
| [19.] | Yarmouth | [120] |
| [20.] | Shalfleet | [124] |
| [21.] | Calbourne | [138] |
| [22.] | Yachting at Cowes | [144] |
| [23.] | Osborne House | [148] |
| [24.] | Whippingham Church | [152] |
| [Map at end of volume] | ||
ISLE OF WIGHT
THE ISLAND
The Island, as its people are in the way of styling it, while not going so far as to deny existence to the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland—the Wight, as it is sometimes called by old writers—has for the first fact in its history that it was not always an island. It once made a promontory of Dorset, cut off from the mainland by a channel, whose rush of encountering tides seems still wearing away the shores so as to broaden a passage of half a dozen miles at the most, narrowed to about a mile between the long spit of Hurst and the north-western corner of the Island. It may be that what is now a strait has been the estuary of a great river, flooding itself into the sea, which, like Hengist and Horsa, is apt to prove an invading ally difficult to get rid of. Wight is taken to represent an old British name for the channel, that, by monkish Latinists, came to be christened pelagus solvens; but the Solent may have had rather some etymological kinship with the Solway.
The Channel Island, as thus its full style imports, has a natural history of singular interest to geologists, who find here a wide range of fossiliferous strata, from the Upper Eocene to the Wealden clay, so exposed that one scientific authority admiringly declares how it “might have been cut out by nature for a geological model illustrative of the principles of stratification.” Perhaps the general reader may thank a writer for not enlarging on this head; but a few words must be said about the geological structure that shapes this Island’s scenery, forming, as it were, a sort of abridged and compressed edition of no small part of England. It divides itself into three zones, which may be traced in the same order upon the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. Through the centre runs a backbone of chalk Downs, a few hundred feet high and an hour’s walk across at the broadest, narrowing towards either end to crumble into the sea at the white cliffs of Culver and of the Needles. To the south of this come beds of sand and marl, through which the chalk again bulges out in isolated masses on the south coast to top the highest crests of the Island, resting on such an unstable foundation that extensive landslips here have thrown the architecture of nature into picturesque ruin. The north side in general is tamer, a plain of clays dotted by gravel, better wooded than the rest, though much of its old timber has gone into the wooden walls of England, once kept in repair at Portsmouth.
Across these zones of length, the Island is cut into two almost equal parts by its chief river, the Medina, cleaving the central Downs near Newport; and through gaps at either end flow two smaller rivers bearing the same name of Yar, which seems to call Celtic cousinship with the Garonne of France. For the Medina, as for the Medway, some such derivation as the Mid stream has been naturally suggested; but with the fear of Dr Bradley upon me, I would pass lightly over the quaking bog of place nomenclature. These three rivers have the peculiarity of flowing almost right across the Island, a course so short that they may well take their time about it. The other streams are of little importance, except in the way of scenery. On the north side they form shallow branching creeks which get from as much as they give to the sea, that at high tide bears brown sails far inland among trees and hedges. On the south, wearing their way down through the elevated shore line, they carve out those abrupt chasms known as Chines, celebrated among the beauty spots of this coast. The richest valley seems to be that of the larger Yar, which turns into the sea at the north-east corner. The parts most rich in natural charms are the south-eastern corner, with its overgrown landslips, and the fissured chalk cliffs of the western promontory beyond Freshwater.