Scenes in North Wales: With Historical Illustrations, Legends, and Biographical NoticesWright, G. N. (George Newenham)
History
Scenes in North Wales: With Historical Illustrations, Legends, and Biographical Notices
Wright, G. N. (George Newenham)
Wales, North -- Description and travel
HOLYHEAD has been rendered a tolerably safe asylum for shipping at a vast
expenditure of money and great exertion of scientific men. It possesses
few natural advantages for a packet station or floating dock, the
convenience of its position with regard to Dublin excepted; and for this
pure reason it must continue an important position, until some other on
the Welsh coast, possessing superior claims, be discovered and adopted by
the legislature. Amongst the auxiliaries which art has contributed to
give interest to Holyhead, the most picturesque and not the least
important is the lighthouse, erected upon the South Stack. This singular
Pharos stands upon a rocky island, the surface of which is elevated one
hundred and twenty feet above the sea. It is separated from the mainland
by a deep chasm, across which a chain suspension foot-bridge is thrown,
from the mural cliff on the land side to the island. The descent from
the top of the cliff to the bridge is effected by many flights of steps,
cut in the front of the rock. The transit of the bridge is rather a
nervous ceremony, and the fine craggs of serpentine rock, which overhang
the gulf, are unequalled in the mineral kingdom, for variety of pattern
and brilliancy of colouring. Beneath the island is a dark cave,
excavated by the waves which dash into the narrow chasm with the utmost
violence, and used in the milder seasons as a boat-house. On the highest
point of the islet stands the lighthouse, a lofty hollow shaft surmounted
by a lantern placed at a height of about two hundred feet above the sea,
and exhibiting a bright revolving light, which bears upon the Skerries
light south-west, half west nearly, eight miles. The light is produced
by Argand lamps placed in the foci of metallic reflectors ground to the
parabolic form. The sea cliffs of Holyhead mountain, presented to the
South Stack Island, are beautifully bold, precipitous, and finely tinted
with a variety of colours. Here innumerable sea birds, trusting to the
dizzy and dangerous position of their dwellings for protection against
human invasion, build their nests. But the ingenuity of man is only to
be equalled by his courage, an assertion very fully substantiated by the
trade of nest hunting pursued along these dangerous cliffs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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