[Illustration: ANCIENT COAST-LIGHT.] CHAPTER III ANCIENT METHODS OF LIGHTING So much for the general history of coast lighting. The reader will now wish to hear something about the luminants used of old, and of the improvements that have been made in the system of lighting. It has been said that the lighthouses of the ancients were tall columns, on the tops of which grates were placed, and in these fires of wood or coal were kept burning. The mediaeval lighthouses of England were, some of them, of similar construction, but there were varieties; if the light was placed on the steeple or tower of a church or chapel it would probably be of the kind mentioned; but if the light was shown from _within_ the tower, candles or oil lamps would be used. The hermits of the Ecrehou refer to the _fire_ which they kept burning all night to warn passing vessels; the monks or hermits of Chale, in the Isle of Wight, displayed a light of candles or oil in the top story of their tower, which was an octagon with windows on every side. After the Reformation the use of oil seems at first to have been entirely laid aside; a few of the lighthouses erected were lit by candles, but coal or wood fires certainly illuminated the majority. Given a properly filled grate and a fair breeze, this was certainly the best kind of light. But towards the close of the seventeenth century it entered into the mind of economical man to enclose his coal or wood fire in a lantern with a funnel or chimney at the top. This saved the fuel, but, for that reason, it did not improve the light, and the fire, no longer fanned by the sturdy sea-breezes, needed the constant use of bellows to maintain a flame. Sailors complained a good deal of these shut-in lights, which were tried at Lowestoft, the North Foreland, and the Scilly Islands, and after a while the lanterns were removed; but coal or wood fires were used as lighthouse luminants as late as 1822. The situation of the Eddystone—miles from the mainland, with no space for fuel-stacking—rendered it necessary to think of some other luminant than a fire of coal or wood, and candles, a considerable number of them, of course, were used there from the date of its first construction till comparatively recent times, when oil lamps were substituted. The use of oil as a luminant for lighthouses did not—after the Reformation—come in till almost the middle of the last century. This is strange, as oil was certainly used for that purpose by the mediaeval lighthouse-keepers. In November, 1729, a certain Thomas Corbett begged the permission of the Trinity House to try the _experiment_ of lighting the South Foreland lighthouse with oil. I do not know if this trial was ever made, or what was thought of it if it were; but certainly oil was not generally re-adopted as a lighthouse luminant till much later.