To the geologists, the antiquarians, and those interested in the survival of old customs Portland is of peculiar interest, and it is not wonderful that novelists should have found in the “rugged” isle an appropriate background for their romances. Victor Hugo has described the spot very fully (if somewhat inaccurately) in his _L’Homme qui Rit_; and the greater portion of the action of _The Well-Beloved_, that strangely elusive romance of Thomas Hardy, takes place upon the island, in the neighbourhood of Fortune’s Well, and Pennsylvania Castle, built by the grandson of the famous William Penn. This book contains some of the finest pen pictures of the scenery in “The Isle of Slingers” ever written. There are two lighthouses at the southern end of the island; the lower one was built as long ago as 1789, and the higher one in 1817, rebuilt just half a century later. Both are furnished with extremely powerful lights, which can be seen for many miles along the coast. Chapter VI Bridport--Lyme Regis--Axmouth--Teignmouth Two-thirds of the distance from the Bill of Portland across the wide expanse of West Bay lies the little old-world harbour of Bridport, with its quaint mouth into which runs the tiny river Brit, from whence the name is derived. The town itself stands some two miles from the harbour at the foot of a picturesque and well-wooded hill. On the quay is the famous George Inn, at which King Charles II lay when he came there a fugitive, having ridden over from Charmouth, where he had been almost discovered by a more than ordinarily suspicious ostler and an unusually logical blacksmith, who reasoned that as the fugitive’s horse had been shoed in four counties, and one of them Worcester, the owner of the horse might be the fugitive King on whose head so high a price had been placed. Charles, however, was warned in time, and spurred on to Bridport, and thence to Salisbury ere the hue and cry was raised, ultimately reaching Shoreham, where he took ship for the French coast. To-day Bridport by the sea is just a quiet, picturesque little resort, where weary workers and holiday makers, whose taste is not for the bustling, fashionable type of watering-place, may find rest and quietude from the over-energetic and noisy world without, with the open and uninterrupted expanse of West Bay spread in front of them, sunlit, grey, peaceful or storm-driven by turns, whilst northward and north-eastward lie the green undulating hills and vales of Dorset. The port is nowadays of comparatively little consequence, and has much declined from the times when there was a good deal of trade with Archangel and Riga for the importation of flax and hemp, and a considerable coasting trade also.