A charge of sixpence is attempted at a farm at the Seaton end, to view this remarkable place, and it is worth an entrance-fee; but explorers coming from Lyme Regis are not unlikely to stumble into the place, unaware; and in any case the attempt is an impudent and illegal imposition, for the question of free access was fought out successfully some years ago by the Lyme Regis corporation.
THE LANDSLIP.
Word-painting is all very well as a pastime, but the result makes poor reading. We will, therefore, not emulate the local guide-books; which, to be sure, transcend the descriptive art so greatly as to come out at the other end, as works of unconscious humour. Thus, when in those pages we read of “Dame Nature,” and “Old Father Time,” working these miracles of landslides, we get a mental picture of a stupendous old couple that fairly takes the breath away. Moreover, the scene is compared with “the island home of Robinson Crusoe,” and likened to “the wildness of Salvator Rosa or the fairy scenes of Claude,” while “the huge boulders you can convert into sphinxes,” and find “deep and thickly wooded dingles, in which lions and tigers could lurk unseen.” Still more, we read: “If you give full scope to your imagination, you may fancy that the pale moonlight would inhabit the ruins with the spirits of those who lived in the ages of mythology.” In short, if these directions are faithfully followed, and these lions and tigers and these spirits of mythological creatures—the “Mrs. Harrises” of ancient times—are duly conjured up, the too-imaginative explorer is likely to emerge fully qualified for a lunatic asylum.
The exceptional beauty of the scene does not require any of these fantastical aids to appreciation, and the hoar ivied rocks, the fairy glades, the brakes and willow woods are sufficient in themselves.
The mile-long beauty of the great Dowlands Landslip having been traversed, the way lies across the down over Haven Cliff, the striking headland that shuts in Seaton from the east.
CHAPTER III
SEATON
Down there lies Seaton, looking very new, along the inner side of a shingly beach, with the strath of the river Axe running, flat and green, up inland to the distant hills, and the silvery Axe itself looping and twisting away, as far as eye can reach.