Then appeared Babbacombe Downs, on which the cowslips grow within sound of the sea, and nowadays there are golf links and smart villas, and Oddicombe, with its white pebble beach forming so vivid a contrast to the still red cliffs in the bright light of early morning. Then ever delightful Anstey’s Cove, excelling in beauty even Babbacombe, and both of these with deep water close in shore. Through the passage between Hope’s Nose and the Orestone, where there is also deep water, one glides at once into Torbay; beautiful almost beyond description, with its three and a half miles of shining sea lying between picturesque Daddy’s Hole, and sheer upstanding Barry Head, which forms the southern horn of the bay, flat-topped as Table Mountain itself. Torquay is so charmingly situated, and presents, as one passes London Bridge, and enters the harbour, such a beautiful picture of tree-clad heights and foliage amid which the picturesque-looking villas are embosomed, that it is little wonder the town has been popular with both holiday folk and yachtsmen for many years, and has been often likened to towns on the Italian Riviera, and by the great Napoleon himself to Porto Ferrajo, Elba. The harbour is a good one, and of considerable size, and in summer time there are many white-winged craft within its basin which can lie snug enough in any save strong easterly or southerly gales, when a nasty sea outside makes an uncomfortable swell within. From a beautiful watercolour drawing by David Cox (reproduced as a print at the end of the eighteenth century) one is able to see that even then the wooded heights above Meadfoot Sands and the present harbour and the lovely coves along that favoured shore from Daddy’s Hole to Hope’s Nose were being gradually dotted over with houses and villas set picturesquely amid the green.