Jethou; or, Crusoe Life in the Channel IslesSuffling, Ernest R. (Ernest Richard)
General
Jethou; or, Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles
Suffling, Ernest R. (Ernest Richard)
Channel Islands; Jethou
Almost opposite this end of the island and at a short distance, rises
the huge pyramidal mass of granite called La Fauconnaire (The Falconry).
It is nearly two hundred feet high, and surmounted, as already
mentioned, by a white stone beacon, which from Jethou looks the shape
and size of a loaf of white sugar; but a scramble to the top of the
rocks for those who have nerve to climb the steep sides of La
Fauconnaire, will show that the sugar loaf is fifteen feet high. La
Fauconnaire is, I believe, unclimbable except at one place, at least for
those who are not experienced cragsmen or Alpine experts. At low water
a causeway of rocks joins it to the mainland, but at half-tide even it
is impassable, except in a boat on a calm day. On a windy day such a
strong tide rushes through the strait that a boat would be swept away in
the attempt to cross, although the distance is only four or five hundred
feet. The narrowness of the channel makes the rush greater.
Still keeping the middle path we come to an awful yawning chasm in the
earth, called La Creux Terrible. Its sides are so sheer that one
shudders to approach its crumbling brink for fear a slip should mean a
step into eternity. No man could fall here and live to tell the
sensation. Standing near the brink one can just discern the bottom, and
hear the sea surging and rolling along the floor as the tide gradually
rises. The chasm is funnel-shaped, and about two hundred feet deep by
about one hundred feet across. The bottom is connected with the beach by
a cavern, which may be entered at low tide, and the view taken from
below upward; but woe to the individual caught in this cave, for he
would have but a poor chance for his life if the tide once hemmed him
in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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