The name of this famous point has been connected with the German _Nieder Fels_; but there seems no need of going further than a homely simile that would come to mind and mouth of sailors who, in another language, have threaded the same suggestion on the southernmost rocks of Africa. Of the three sharp-backed islets that stand out here braving the winds and waves, the innermost is known to have risen 120 feet higher in a tall pillar called “Lot’s Wife,” which fell in 1784. Since Turner painted them, unless they loomed for him through a haze of imagination, the Needles have dwindled in size. Naturally of course they are worn away by every gale, like their kinsmen “Old Harry and his Wife” on the Dorset coast, one of which isolated masses has been washed down to a stump within the last few years, the same end as threatens the “Parson and Clerk” off the red sandstone cliffs of Devon; and in the far north the more robustly gigantic “Old Man of Hoy” has now but one leg to stand on. Bitten at as they are by old _Edax Rerum_, the Needles have still a bulk which, dwarfed against the cliffs behind, might not be guessed till one’s eyes are fixed upon the lighthouse on the outermost rock, or upon human figures displayed against them, to give their due proportion. Thomas Webster, the geologist, saw them about a century ago under most picturesque conditions, when the fifty-gun frigate _Pomone_ had stuck fast upon the outer edge, and lay captive there, to be broken up by the next gale, the waves already spouting through her ports and hatchways, while all around swarmed a fleet of smaller vessels engaged in salving the wreck, or bringing idle spectators to such a singular scene: he was surprised to find the frigate’s hull overtopped by more than three-fourths of the rock.