Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, April 1905Various
History
Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, April 1905
Various
Agriculture -- Southern States -- Periodicals; Southern States -- Periodicals
We leave the quiet churchyard and its tragic story to continue our walk
around the island. A tramp on the promontory Peninnis, which stretches
out southward into the sea, brings to view many fantastic rock
formations. Great boulders are left curiously poised upon each other by
the action of wind and wave in ages past. Pulpit Rock, composed of huge
flat blocks of stone resting on each other and leaning out to sea, is
perhaps the most famous, though why it should be called “Pulpit Rock” is
more than one can well guess. It looks more like an hundred other things
than it does like a pulpit. Most of all it resembles a great gun mounted
on the rock to command the sea at this point. We next encounter the
Logan Rock (pronounce _loggan_). Everyone who has read Baedaker’s “Great
Britain” knows of the existence of Logan Rock in Cornwall, a rock of
sixty-five tons weight so delicately poised that it can be set in motion
quite easily. I was not aware before that the phenomenon had repeated
itself, but I learned last summer that there was quite a number of these
“_loggan_,” or rolling rocks to be found at different places.
The Logan Rock at St. Mary’s is quite famous and was discovered somewhat
recently by accident. A resident of the town, overtaken by the storm,
took shelter beneath a huge rock. The wind was blowing fiercely and to
his great surprise, if not terror, he discovered that the rock was
moving gently to and fro. He could scarcely believe his senses at first,
but on further examination, he found it was so poised that it readily
responded to his efforts and could be made to sway back and forth. Its
estimated weight is three hundred and sixty tons, and while it requires
some energetic effort to put it in motion it rocks with ease afterwards.
Hugh Town, the port and principal town of the island of St. Mary’s, and
indeed of the entire group of islands, enjoys a very unique situation.
On the southwest a promontory juts out into the sea. This is the site of
Star Fort, and one can make its circuit in about half an hour. It is
joined to the mainland by a narrow isthmus of sand which separates St.
Mary’s Pool, the harbor on the north, from Porth Cressa Bay, on the
south. On this narrow strip of land, across which a boy can cast a
stone, and over which the high tide threatens to leap, Hugh Town is
built. There is no pretension to architecture, no striking buildings,
none even that have the interest of antiquity to recommend them. The
town is practically contained on the narrowest part of the isthmus,
though westward, where the strip of land widens, the houses scatter
somewhat. Save for its audacious situation, daring, as it does, the rage
of the sea from both sides, it is commonplace and uninteresting.
[Illustration:
HUGH TOWN.
]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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