THE SMUGGLER'S LEAP.
To find the "Smuggler's Leap" one must make as for Acol. "Near this hamlet of Acol," says Ingoldsby, in a fictitious quotation prefixed to the fine legend of Smuggler Bill and Exciseman Gill and their doings, "is a long-disused chalk-pit of formidable depth, known by the name of the 'Smuggler's Leap.' The tradition of the parish runs that a riding-officer from Sandwich, called Anthony Gill, lost his life here in the early part of the eighteenth century, while in pursuit of a smuggler. The smuggler's horse only, it is said, was found crushed beneath its rider. The spot has, of course, been haunted ever since." For the original of this quotation, the reader is referred to a "Supplement to Lewis's History of Thanet, by the Reverend Samuel Pegg, A.M., Vicar of Gomersham," supposed to have been published by a "W. Bristow, Canterbury, 1796"; but Ingoldsby, who composed the legend, invented his quotation as well, and those who seek the Reverend Samuel Pegg's "Supplement" will not find it.
But if so much be imaginative, the smuggling exploits common in the district a hundred and thirty years ago, as recorded in the Kentish newspapers, were in many respects like that celebrated in the Ingoldsby legend. The Kentish Gazette of Saturday, November 22nd, 1777, gives a case in point: "On Monday last Mr. Harris, Officer of Excise, and Mr. Wesbeach, Surveyor of the Customs at Ramsgate, attended by six dragoons, met with a body of smugglers at Birchington, consisting of at least a hundred and fifty, armed with loaded whips and bludgeons. After a sharp skirmish, in which the smugglers had many of their horses shot, they made a very regular retreat, losing 8 gallons of brandy, 96 gallons of Geneva, 162 lb. of Hyson tea, and five horses."
MONKTON.
The chalk-pit, too, is sufficiently real. Crossing the open fields, spread starkly to the sky, between Monkton and Cleve Court, it is found on the Ramsgate road, opposite the "Prospect" inn, where it still gapes as deep and wide as ever. Do not, however, if you wish to be impressed with the truth of Ingoldsby's romantic description, view it by the brilliant sunlight of a summer's day, because at such times the great cleft in the dull white of the chalk does not properly proclaim its immensity. It is only when the evening shadows fall obliquely into the old chalk-pit that you applaud the spirit of those lines:
It's enough to make one's flesh to creep
To stand on that fearful verge, and peep
Down the rugged sides so dreadfully steep,
Where the chalk-pit yawns full sixty feet deep.
When Ingoldsby wrote there were, according to his testimony, "fifty intelligent fly-drivers" plying upon Margate pier, who would convey the curious to the spot for a guerdon which they term "three bob." Cycles and electric tramways have nowadays so sorely cut up the trade of the intelligent that few of those depressed individuals remain.
