Every man should be his own discoverer. It matters nothing to me that numerous others must either intentionally or by chance have come down here into St. Margaret’s Bay--seeing that there is an hotel on the beach: an hotel with a singular name, whose meaning, although I have stayed there myself, I by no means fathomed. It is called the “St. Margaret’s Bay and Hotel Lanzarote.” There is not, I think, so much actually of a bay down here below the towering cliffs of the South Foreland, which rise to a height of 500 feet. If you glance at the map, it will be noticed that the coastline at this spot exhibits the merest setback from the bold front between Deal and Dover; and a bay (this is a dim memory from school-days) should be something in the nature of a semicircle, large or small, should it not, with enfolding horns, capes, or headlands? To the ordinary observer, this so-called bay appears to be just about a half-mile length of narrow shingly foreshore along a stretch of coast where the cliffs for the most part descend precipitously to the sea at high water; and at either end of this unusual selvedge here it is either impossible to proceed further, or else the doing so is a more or less difficult and dangerous matter. Hence the seclusion of St. Margaret’s Bay; which, however, if plans and schemes of the last few years come to pass, will at no distant date be exchanged, in certain foreshore reclamation works, for a three-miles undercliff drive from Dover. Woe the day! I do not mean to hint, even remotely, that because St. Margaret’s Bay does not figure forth the typical bay of a geographical primer, it is any the worse for it. Not at all; perhaps, I am willing to allow, it is even the better. At any rate, it is entirely delightful as it is. And what, in detail, is it? Let it first be premised that no one has ever yet succeeded in conveying the subtle charm of the place. It is easy enough to describe the surroundings; the South Foreland above, the little beach below, with its modest selvedge of grass; the cosy, home-like hotel, the little “Green Man” inn, and the scattered twenty or so little houses; but the spirit of the place is elusive and refuses to be captured and written down and printed. St. Margaret’s Bay claims much: “the air of Margate and the sun of Torquay, the position of Ramsgate and the quiet of Ventnor,” and I think all these varied charms may well be conceded. Certainly it is quiet, and surely it is warm, sheltered, and sunny. Wild-flowers grow in abundance down here, amid what may at first sight seem the sterile chalk: St. John’s Wort, feather-grass, convolvulus, scarlet poppies, hare-bells, the lovely borage, an exquisite blue, the speedwell, a lighter blue, hawkweed, and many others.