PRESENT LIGHTHOUSE OF CORDOVA.
These emotions have been finely expressed by Michelet in his noble book on “the Sea.”
“During our six months’ sojourn on this shore,” he says, “our ordinary object of contemplation—I had almost said, our daily society—was Cordouan. We felt keenly how its position as guardian of the seas, as the constant watcher of the strait, made of it an individuality. Erect against the broad eastern horizon, it appeared under a hundred varied aspects. Sometimes, in a belt of glory, it triumphed under the sun; sometimes, pale and indistinct, it hovered through the mist, no augury of good. At evening, when it abruptly kindled its red light, and darted forth its glance of fire, it seemed like a zealous inspector, who watched over the waters, impressed and disquieted by his responsibility. Whatever occurred at sea was attributed to it. By illuminating the tempest, it was frequently a source of safety, and yet men ascribed to it the storm. It is thus that Ignorance too often treats Genius, accusing it of the evils which it reveals. Even we ourselves were not just. If it delayed lighting up, if bad weather came, we censured it, we growled at it. ‘Ah, Cordouan, Cordouan, thou white phantom! canst thou, then, bring us nought but storms?’”
During the last few years a complete restoration of the lighthouse of Cordouan has been carried out, with the view of replacing the stones—and they were numerous—injured by the weather, and of renewing the sculptures, which it was difficult to trace, they were so worn and abraded. All the buildings which at different times had been erected against the platform-wall to supply the insufficiency of dwelling-apartments in the lighthouse, have been reconstructed. And in 1854 arrangements were made to distinguish it from neighbouring lights; it has now a revolving light, white and red, with a range of twenty-seven miles.
INTERIOR OF THE CORDOVA LIGHTHOUSE.
The introduction of the dioptric apparatus into the Cordouan lighthouse took place long ago; it belongs, in fact, to the earliest experiments of Fresnel, for it is a peculiarity worth notice in the annals of this patriarch of pharoses, that attention has always been directed to it when any question has arisen of testing a new invention. It was one of the first which saw the inconvenient and unsatisfactory chauffer replaced, as a means of lightage, by oil lamps. In 1782 it was provided with at least eighty of these, each accompanied by a reflector. A few years later, when Teulère had furnished Borda with the elements of the catoptric system, the largest apparatus was immediately installed at Cordouan (1790). Finally, when Augustin Fresnel, in his turn, invented the lenticular system, it was at Cordouan that experiments were first made with the most important model.