Quæ olim Romanis navigantibus facem præbuit
Pharon in Castro Dubriensi Rogo. Gale Arm.
consecratum posuit Ws. Stukeley 1722.
Stukeley delin.
E. Kirkall sculp.
TAB. XLVII.In the [47th plate] we have shown the ground-plot upon which it is formed, and a section of the work; whence we may readily observe that the design is simple, but admirably contrived for its use and purpose: the base is octagonal without, within a square; but the sides of the square and octagon are equal, viz. fifteen Roman feet, which reduces the wall to the thickness of ten feet. In this manner it was carried up to the top, which was much higher than at present; but it retires inward continually from all sides, with much the same proportion as an Egyptian obelus. Upon four of these sides there are windows narrow, handsomely turned with a semi-circular arch of Roman brick six foot high, so that the outside of it appears as in our TAB. XLVI.[46th plate]. The door to it is on the east side, about six foot wide, very well turned over head, with an arch made of a course of Roman brick and stone alternately, fourteen foot high. All the stones of this work are of a narrow scantling; and the manner of the composure, throughout, is perfectly the same with that lately described at Richborough castle: there are first two courses of this brick, which is level with the bottom of the windows; then seven courses of hewn stone, which mount up to the top of the windows; then two courses of brick, seven of stone alternately, to the top; every window by this means reaching to a stage or story. There are five of these stages left: the windows are visible enough to a discerning eye, though some be stopt up, others covered over, others have modern church-like windows of stone put in. I suppose the inside was intirely filled up with a stair-case: the height of what is left is forty foot; I believe there was twenty foot more originally; and the whole number of windows on a side was eight. This building was made use of as a steeple, and had a pleasant ring of bells in it, which Sir George Rook procured to be carried away to Portsmouth. Since then the office of the ordnance, under pretext of savingness, have taken away the lead that covered it, and left this rare piece of art and masonry to struggle with the sea, air and weather. Mr. Degg gave me a coin of Dioclesian, found here. The Erpinghams arms are patched up against one side of the Pharos, being two bars and a canton; so that I suppose it was repaired in Henry the Fifth’s time, lord Erpingham then warden of Dover castle. In the Roman castle here the Tungrican soldiers had their station. I have heard there is another such Pharos at St. Andrew’s in Scotland.[121]
On the other high cliff opposite to this, beyond the town, has been another Pharos: some part of the bottom part of it is still left, called The Devil’s Drop, from the strength of the mortar: others call it Bredonstone. Here the new constable of the castle is sworn. If we consider the ancient state of Dover, we must imagine that the little river ran directly into the sea, and left a harbour close to the walls of the town; but in process of time, as the sea threw up that vast beach which lies between the town and it, the river was forced by an oblique passage to creep along the shore under the southern cliff, and there vent itself where now is the harbour. This is what Nature practises in the microcosm in innumerable instances, as the passage of the gall and pancreatic juice into the intestines, in the duct of the urine from the ureters into the bladder, of the chyle into the torrent of the blood, insinuating themselves for some space between the membranes. And this caution may be of service in forming harbours; as in that costly work of the French king’s before Dunkirk, where two banks or piers projected for half a mile through the sands directly, which ought rather to have gone downwards a little towards the fall of the tide. The cliffs here are of solid chalk to the very bottom, full of the blackest flints; and those at Calais seem perfectly like them; and no doubt a long vein of chalk is continued from one to the other under the sea, and perhaps through many countries: but that these two places were ever contiguous, or joined by an isthmus, is chimerical.
Though the mariners have much mathematics on board, and in all their tackle and machinery, yet here I had occasion of observing a gross error, that has not been thought on, in the shape of their oars; where the extremity of that fan-like part, which opposes the water in rowing, is broadest. Now this is quite contrary to Nature’s method, who is the best geometrician in like cases: in the shape of a single feather, or in the wings of birds, the extremity is always pointed, and the broadest part is nearest the joint where the power lies, analogous to the fulcrum of leavers; therefore is drawn off to a narrower scantling, as the part recedes from it, and the effect of the moving force: thus it is even in the wings of butterflies, and all other insects, as well as birds; and so in the water-beetles that row with oars. Though the broad part resists the water more as farther distant from the fulcrum, yet it requires more proportionable strength; and in my judgment, therefore, oars ought to be made quite the contrary way, and drawn off into a point, the broadest part nearest the hand; and I doubt not but equal strength will then out-row the other, cæteris paribus.[122]
Beyond Dover southward the cliff is exceedingly high to Folkstone. In the road two great Roman barrows, which will be eaten away in a few years by the sea. Here this larger track of cliff ends, as to the ocean, and slaunts off westward towards Wye in a long ledge very steep all the way to the west. The whole county of Kent consists of three or four of these parcels, lying parallel, and running nearly north and south: they rise gently from the east as a reclining plain, and then end suddenly on the western side with a quick descent: at bottom begins another such plain, and it ends in like manner after it has gone its proper distance, to be alike succeeded, as we said before. Beyond this we are upon, southward is a lesser ledge of high ground sandy and rocky, but good land, especially in the valleys, and full of wood. This is terminated by Romney marsh, such another country as our Lincolnshire Holland. To the right of us is Eleham, seated in a pleasant concavity: there has been a religious house. Upon one end of our upper chalk-hills, near Folkstone, is a camp called Castle hill.
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