Not only is the Douglass tower a beautiful example of lighthouse engineering, but it was relatively cheap. The engineer, when he prepared the designs, estimated that an outlay of £78,000, or $390,000, would be incurred. As a matter of fact, the building cost only £59,255, or $296,275, and a saving of £18,000, or $90,000, in a work of this magnitude is no mean achievement. All things considered, the Eddystone is one of the cheapest sea-rock lights which has ever been consummated. CHAPTER VI SOME FAMOUS LIGHTS OF ENGLAND The captain of the lordly liner, as he swings down Channel or approaches the English coast from the broad Atlantic, maintains a vigilant watch until the light or the slender proportions of the lonely outpost rising apparently from the ocean’s depths off the south-west corner of the Scilly Islands, become visible. This is the Bishop Rock, the western sentinel of the English Channel, mounting guard over as wicked a stretch of sea as may be found anywhere between the two Poles, where the maritime traffic is densest and where wrecks, unfortunately, are only too frequent; for the toll levied by the sea off the Cornish coast is fearful. Among these islands was planted one of the first beacons erected off the British coasts. At the outset it was merely a wood bonfire, then a brazier, and finally a lighthouse, which crowned St. Agnes’s height, to guide the mariner on his way. But to-day the St. Agnes light is no more than a memory. Two or three years ago the keepers quenched the light in the misty grey of the dawn for the last time. The vigil which had been maintained over shipping uninterruptedly through some 230 years was ended. On a neighbouring point a superior modern light had been planted which took up the sacred duty. Although established in 1680, the St. Agnes was not the oldest light in England. This distinction belongs to the North Foreland light on the East Kentish coast, which was set going as far back as 1636. This warning was shed from a tower of timber, lath, and plaster, built by Sir John Meldrum, but it fell a victim to fire forty-seven years later. The light was reconstructed promptly, and to-day throws a red and white gleam of 35,000 candle-power, which may be picked up twenty miles away. [Illustration: _Photo, Paul, Penzance._ THE “BISHOP,” THE WESTERN OUTPOST OF ENGLAND. This tower marks a treacherous reef, rising from the depths of the Atlantic off the Scilly Islands. Its slim proportions are familiar to Transatlantic passengers.]