BOOK IV.
LIGHTHOUSES IN FRANCE.
CHAPTER I.
THE TOUR DE CORDOUAN. [50]
“Truly mysterious is the Channel, in that narrow gullet where it engulfs the waves of the North Sea. Violent are the waters of Brittany, as they eddy to and fro in the ravines of its basaltic coast. But the Gulf of Gascony, from Cordouan to Biarritz, is a sea of contradictions; an enigma of strife and struggle. As it stretches southward, it suddenly acquires an extraordinary depth, and becomes an abyss in which the waters are swallowed up. An ingenious naturalist has compared it to a gigantic funnel, which abruptly absorbs all that is poured into it. The flood, escaping from it under an awful pressure, remounts to a height of which our seas afford no other example.”[51]