GODSHILL. Page 58.
Is one of the prettiest villages in the island.
CHAPTER V THE SCENERY AND HOW IT CAME TO BE
So curious and diversified is the geology of the island that it has been described as a microcosm of geology, for it contains in itself every kind of stratified rock. This geological variety shows itself markedly in the scenery; in fact, there are few places where the influence of geology on scenery can be so well studied. For instance, at Alum Bay, near the Needles, the whole of the strata from the chalk to the fluvio-marine formation are displayed in unbroken succession. The colours in these cliffs are wonderfully striking, ranging from gamboge and terra-cotta through ochres and red-browns, so that the whole is like shot silk seen in certain states of sunlight. As many people come to see the Alum Bay cliffs as the better-known Needles. The effect of the two together is most wonderful, because the coloured cliffs contrasting with the chalky white sharp-toothed crags and the brilliant blue of a summer sea are gorgeous in the extreme.
The razor-edged Needles can really be seen best from a boat, because, looked at from above, they naturally lose in foreshortening, and do not seem to tower out of the water so much as they really do. The only way in which their height can be measured from the shore is to note the apparent smallness of the lighthouse at the seaward end, which is quite a respectable-sized building, standing eighty feet above high-water mark. All home-coming captains look out for the Needles' light, which shows white for fourteen miles westward and red for nine miles south. The ships which have weathered long voyages feel they are home again once they sight that light, but alas! many times, owing to the dangerous fogs in the Channel, the light is hard to pick up, and the captain has to creep along cautiously, aware that he may easily be out of his reckoning, and much too near a singularly dangerous coast. The tallest pinnacle of the Needles at the landward end, known as "Lot's Wife," was broken off many years ago by the waves.
THE NEEDLES
Quite as striking a feature of the island as the Needles are the wonderful chalk downs which run from Freshwater Bay to Culver. The range is broken by a fault at right angles to its main axis, and in this fault is the valley of the Medina. The little River Yar, oddly enough, rises within a few yards of the beach on the south side of the island at Freshwater, and running north through a gap in the chalk falls into the sea at Yarmouth on the north side. Freshwater Bay in itself is a curious formation, a break in the sweeping cliffs which culminate in two horns on the two sides, while the actual beach is of the tiniest proportions, so that the sea, gradually narrowed as it rolls in, breaks with terrific force in a south-west gale. On the highest point of the cliff, near the west end, there used to be a beacon, now replaced by a cross to the memory of Lord Tennyson. The cliff at this place is 490 feet high.