Shanklin and Sandown, the most growing resorts of the Island of late years, love one another like Liverpool and Manchester, like Ramsgate and Margate, like St Paul’s and Minneapolis, and other pairs of too near rivals for popularity. Careful parents may prefer Sandown as a place where their youngsters will find nothing to fall off; but poetic and artistic souls will give their vote for Shanklin, which has chalybeate springs and elaborate baths as attraction, as well as beautiful surroundings. Its beauty spot _par excellence_ is, of course, the Chine above mentioned, which makes one of the shows of the Island. The Chines, so named here and on the opposite mainland coast--but in one part of Hampshire _Bunny_ is a less romantic title for them--are deep, irregular ravines carved out by streams of water upon cliffs of soft clay or sand, often sheltering a profusion of tangled vegetation, or again, as at Bournemouth, revealing the frame of naked nature. The Shanklin Chine, in the former variety, is by many judged the prettiest, as it is perhaps the best known to visitors. A description of it may be borrowed from Black’s _Guide to the Isle of Wight_. This popular sight, like other wonders of nature on the Island, is enclosed, a small charge being made for admission, and in more than one respect rather suggests the tea-garden order of resort, but nothing can spoil it. It is to be entered at either end, but excursion coaches usually bring their passengers to the head of the Chine. At the top will be found a ferruginous spring. Here the chasm is at its narrowest, increasing till it has a breadth of nearly 300 feet, while the steep sides are in parts almost 200 feet high. Winding walks take one for some quarter of a mile down a deep glen, which differs notably from Blackgang Chine in being choked up with trees and a rich undergrowth of ferns, moss, and brushwood, wherever any shade-loving plant can take root. Into the top pours a little waterfall, rushing to the sea at the bottom of this wilderness of greenery. But even without its Chine, Shanklin would have a right to be proud of itself. It lies at the corner of the southern range of Downs that separate it from Ventnor and the Undercliff. Open and airy walks may be taken on these heights; or less arduous strolls by the leafy knolls and hollows on their flanks. One favourite ramble is to Cook’s Castle, an artificial ruin [Illustration: SHANKLIN CHINE] upon a wooded brow commanding a fine view, whence it is a short mile to Wroxall, the next station on the railway as it bends inland, to find nothing for it but a tunnel through the heights that shelter Ventnor.