Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
The town of Dover is like other sea-port towns; but really much more
clean, and with less blackguard people in it than I ever observed in any
sea-port before. It is a most picturesque place, to be sure. On one
side of it rises, upon the top of a very steep hill, the Old Castle,
with all its fortifications. On the other side of it there is another
chalk-hill, the side of which is pretty nearly perpendicular, and rises
up from sixty to a hundred feet higher than the tops of the houses,
which stand pretty nearly close to the foot of the hill.
I got into Dover rather late. It was dusk when I was going down the
street towards the quay. I happened to look up, and was quite astonished
to perceive cows grazing upon a spot apparently fifty feet above the
tops of the houses, and measuring horizontally not, perhaps, more than
ten or twenty feet from a line which would have formed a continuation
into the air. I went up to the same spot, the next day, myself; and you
actually look down upon the houses, as you look out of a window upon
people in the street. The valley that runs down from Folkestone is, when
it gets to Dover, crossed by another valley that runs down from
Canterbury, or, at least, from the Canterbury direction. It is in the
gorge of this cross valley that Dover is built. The two chalk-hills jut
out into the sea, and the water that comes up between them forms a
harbour for this ancient, most interesting, and beautiful place. On the
hill to the north stands the Castle of Dover, which is fortified in the
ancient manner, except on the sea-side, where it has the steep _Cliff_
for a fortification. On the south side of the town, the hill is, I
believe, rather more lofty than that on the north side; and here is that
Cliff which is described by Shakspeare in the Play of King Lear. It is
fearfully steep, certainly. Very nearly perpendicular for a considerable
distance. The grass grows well, to the very tip of the cliff; and you
see cows and sheep grazing there with as much unconcern as if grazing in
the bottom of a valley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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