From Quarr Abbey, one can stroll on to Fishbourne at the mouth of a creek called the Wootton River, which, a mile or so up, at Wootton Bridge is crossed by the road from Ryde to Cowes, passing presently behind the grounds of Osborne. Wootton is another of the oldest Wight churches, still preserving some features of the time when it was built by one of the Lisle family (_De l’Ile_) who took their name from this Island, and gave it to Dame Alice Lisle, the victim of Judge Jeffrey’s bloody assize. Holding on up the wooded bottom of Wootton River, one reaches the village of Haven Street, from which an hour’s walk leads back to the southern outskirts of Ryde, where all but the name of St John’s Park is now overspread by brick and stone. The way by road gives a fair notion of the Island scenery on this side; and might be very pleasantly extended by lanes and field-paths, copses and commons, seaming and roughening the three mile belt between the sea and the Chalk Downs to the south. But the many rambles that may be taken here-abouts are the business of guide-books; and the high-roads leading out of Ryde need not be pointed out to its crews of coach excursionists, and to passengers on the motor omnibuses that start here for different parts of the Island, some faring as far as Shanklin and Blackgang Chine. For the present let us leave roads and railways, to stroll along the shore to Seaview, which, at the north-eastern corner, makes a sort of chapel of ease to Ryde, as Paignton to Torquay or Westgate to Margate. This gives another very pleasant hour’s walk, to be taken along the sea-wall that continues Ryde’s Esplanade. On the land side the way is much shut in by park woods and castellated villas, but it has an open view over the Solent, across which at night gleam the myriad lights of Portsmouth and Southsea; daylight shows this strait enlivened by all kinds of shipping, and often glorified by the spectacle of a British fleet, as sometimes by international naval encounters in peace and courtesy. Our modern ships of war may make a more impressive display, yet no longer such a picturesque one as when a century ago one visitor could tell how he saw the whole Channel filled by a convoy, several hundreds strong, so that “the blue waters in the distance were almost hidden by the snow-white cloud of sails.” The pictorial place of these sails, indeed, is often taken by the racing yachts, which run all to sail; and “a sail is one of the most beautiful things which man ever invented!” So exclaims Mr George A. B. Dewar, whose “Pageant of the Sea” papers in the _Saturday Review_ give us Turneresque pictures of this landlocked waterway:--