During the joyous months of summer and autumn, this fair group of islets will become more and more attractive as the facility of communication increases, especially as they possess the elements both of the salubrious and the beautiful in a very high degree. Soft and health-breathing gales are wafted along their very lovely and bloom-spangled valleys; they are belted by magnificent cliffs, indented by sheltered coves and deep and darksome caverns, and by outlying rocks of the most fantastic forms, and they are enriched, moreover, by quaint and antique structures, emblazoned in remote history and romantic legend. There is a charm, also, in feeling that they are _our own_, and that the genial atmosphere and the luscious fruits and the light wines of France may be so perfectly enjoyed without the inquisitorial annoyance of the system of Passe-porte. There are hotels and lodging-houses adapted to the most economic purse, the direction to which may be learned on board; and the markets will supply all the delicacies an island appetite can desire. For the votaries of health and joy the islets are thus exquisitely fashioned by the bounty of the Creator, and the invalid and convalescent may with confidence adopt them as a resort, especially as the facility of sailing and boating on genial waters offers delightful recreation without the exhaustion of fatigue and the consequent evil of _reaction_. The islets are fanned by southern breezes, yet the tidal currents in their rock-bound channels, often running seven knots in the hour, foam over the breakers in very wild magnificence. The floods of the _Race_ of Alderney, _Les Ras de Blansharde_, between that islet and Cape la Hogue, and even those of the _Swinge_ between the islet and the porphyritic rock of _Berhou_ are proverbial, and in very foul weather the boat may roll and ship heavy seas in the passage of the Ortac within the crags of the _Caskets_. Through the _Race_ run the boats from the Thames: those from Southampton chiefly through the _Swinge_ or the _Ortac_: those from Weymouth direct in the open channel to Porte St. Pierre in Guernsey, the most rapid and _pacific_ course for the languid and the delicate. * * * * * The geologic _arrangement_ of the islets is in three pairs. Jersey and Guernsey are inclined planes, shelving from magnificent cliffs to a flat beach studded with rocklets; Jersey trending southward, Guernsey northward; the granite rocks of Jersey enclosing one-half, those of Guernsey one-third.