HERM AND JEDTHOU
Are lying along in a lake of molten gold, for so smiles the Channel in a calm evening of July. We are rowed across with sketch-book and wallet and hammer.
Jedthou—Grande Hogue—as it was a famous beacon-hill or watch-tower, is not more than a mile long, offering fair rock subjects for the pencil, with its satellite blocks, Fauconnière, Goubinier, and Crevisou, for every block has a name.
Herm is two miles in length, and is deeply quarried. Rabbits are burrowing among its rocks, and very small crustacea lie profusely around its shore. But there to the north is spread its carpet of sand and its shell beach, on which we may chance to gather very choice specimens: for instance, chiton, lepas, pholas, solen, tellen, chama, cypræa, voluta, haliotis, murex, and sponge and coral. It is a treasury of wrecked shells; probably among the granite there is a lack of lime for the construction of shell, so as to yield a profusion of living shell-fish.
On such a night, and the currents calm, we may row across the Channel by moonlight to Port St. Pierre, as safely as we may float in a gondola across a lagune in Venice. The moon has lighted on our slumber, and at the earliest sunbeam we start from our couch, and we are looking on a long amethystine ridge just coming out of the morning haze, and thither are we bound.
SERK