No parade, or esplanade, or such formality affronts the dignity of the sea here, and although the more or less interesting fact may be gleaned that the London and Paris telephone-cable, completed in March 1891, lands here from Sangatte, on the French coast, one might well go in ignorance of it, so far as any visible evidence goes.
One simply idles here, and reads and rests those tired brains—if one is happy enough to possess any. Almost unconsciously, like Mr. Silas Wegg, the idler drops into poetry:
“Here spreads a little sheltered bay,
Beneath the tall and windy downs,
All undisturbed by nigger lay;
Far from the clustered seaside towns.
“Here haply by the world forgot
I linger on the pebbly beach,
And seat me where the sun is hot,
And colour like the ripening peach.
“Here workers come to rest their brains,
O’erwrought in search of fame and pelf—
And so would I, to ease such strains,
Did I possess some brains myself.”
They have a saying down here in St. Margaret’s Bay that “the Channel is as well lighted as Regent Street,” and it is indeed on some dark evening a striking and a beautiful sight to gaze out across these waters upon the many lights flashing and sparkling out there; including not only those of the lightships and the lighthouses, but the lights of Ramsgate eleven miles away, twinkling quietly, the riding-lights of vessels at anchor in the Downs, and the brilliant illumination of some great liner surging past.
Beyond the clustered lamps of Ramsgate flashes the occulting North Foreland light; and out to sea the position of the Goodwin Sands is marked by the Gull Lightship, with its recurrent flash every twenty seconds; the North Goodwin Lightship, with three flashes in quick succession; the brilliant South Goodwin, with its double flash every thirty seconds; the South Sand, visible ten miles; the East Goodwin, easily distinguished from its fellows by flashing a green light every fifteen seconds; and the Varne Lightship, far away in the south-west, a crimson flash. To these add the electric beam of the South Foreland lighthouse overhead, the distant radiance of Dover town; the similar every five seconds’ flash of Cape Gris Nez and the more frequent gleam of Calais Harbour, and you have an extraordinary galaxy, not easily to be matched elsewhere.
WESTCLIFFE.
The South Foreland lighthouse has always been used more or less experimentally. Here magnifying lenses were first installed, in 1810, and here Faraday, in 1853, experimented with the electric light. In 1862 lime-light was tried. It now displays from its height above the sea of 374 feet a powerful electric occulting beam distinguishable at a distance of twenty-six miles. The lower lighthouse, used in conjunction with the upper light before the installation of the present brilliant flash, was discontinued in 1905, and the building has since been let as a private residence.