“Strong and at labour suddenly he reels,
Death came behind him and struck up his heels,
Such sudden strokes, surviving mortals, bid ye
Stand on your watch, and to be allso ready.”
This collection is ended with the touching record of a French sailor-lad:
Sacred to the Memory of
Jean Jacques Wattez, Mariner,
of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Drowned at Torbay, 29th March, 1897.
Buried here 30th June, 1897.
Aged 17 years.
“The only son of his mother, and she a widow.”
St. Luke vii. 12.
There is fine, rough walking up over the cliffs past the coastguard station of Branscombe, or down by the sandy shingle to Littlecombe Shoot and Weston Mouth, where the landsprings well out of the marly cliff-sides and petrify everything within reach. At the cost of scaling some of the buttery slides of red mud, and becoming more or less smothered with an ochreous mess resembling anchovy paste, it is possible to find most interesting examples of petrified moss and blackberry brambles; but the weaker brethren and those “righteous men” (as defined by Mrs. Poyser), who are “keerful of their clothes,” purchase such specimens as they may at Branscombe, and on their return home, yarn about the Alpine difficulties of discovering them.
On the summit to the western side of Weston Mouth, away back from the beetling edge of Dunscombe Cliff, 350 feet above the sea, stands the picturesque group of Dunscombe Farm and the ruined, ivy-mantled walls of what seems to have been an old manor-house. To this succeeds the valley of Salcombe, with the village of Salcombe Regis, away a mile inland.