DOVER.
Beyond, the coast rises up from the low sandy level, and rounding the South Foreland, on which is a fine electric lighthouse of modern construction, we come to the chalk-cliffs, on top of which are the dark towers of Dover Castle, from whose battlements the road descends to the town along the water's edge and in the valley of the little stream that gives the place its name—the Dour, which the Celts called the Dwr or "water," and the Romans the Dubræ. The great keep of Dover dates from William Rufus's reign, and is one of the many badges left in England of the Norman Conquest. There are earthworks at Dover, however, of much earlier origin, built for protection by the Celts and Romans, and forming part of the chain that guarded this celebrated coast, of which Dover, being at the narrowest part of the strait, was considered the key. But no such Norman castle rises elsewhere on these shores. "It was built by evil spirits," writes a Bohemian traveller in the fifteenth century, "and is so strong that in no other part of Christendom can anything be found like it." The northern turret on the keep rises four hundred and sixty-eight feet above the sea at the base of the hill, and from it can be had a complete observation of both the English and French coasts for many miles. Within the castle is the ancient Pharos, or watch-tower, a Roman work. Over upon the opposite side of the harbor is Shakespeare's Cliff,
"——whose high and bending head
Looks fearfully on the confined deep."
THE PHAROS, DOVER CASTLE.
There is no more impressive view in England than that from the Castle Hill of Dover, with the green fields and white chalk headlands stretching far away on either hand fringed by the breakers, the hills and harbors faintly seen across the strait in France, and the busy town of Dover lying at the foot of the cliff. This is half watering-place and half port of transit to the opposite coast. Its harbor is almost entirely artificial, and there has been much difficulty in keeping it open. That there is any port there now at all is due mainly to Raleigh's advice, and there is at present a well-protected harbor of refuge, with a fine pier extending nearly a half mile into the sea, with a fort at the outer end. From the top of the hill there looks down upon this pier the Saluting-Battery Gate of the castle, within which is kept that curious specimen of ancient gunnery known as "Queen Elizabeth's Pocket Pistol."
SALUTING BATTERY.