“By means of similar lights, of different arrangements and of various colours, fixed and revolving, erected upon rocks, islands, and headlands, the British Channel is now lit up along its whole extent, and is as safe to navigate in the darkest night as in the brightest sunshine. The chief danger is from fogs which alike hide the lights by night and the land by day. Some of the homeward-bound ships entering the Channel from North American ports first make the St. Agnes Light, on the Scilly Isles, revolving once a minute, at a height of 138 feet above high water. But most Atlantic ships keep further south in consequence of the nature of the soundings about the Scilly Isles; and hence they oftener make the Lizard Lights first, which are visible about twenty miles off. “From this point the coast retires, and in the bend lie Falmouth (with a revolving light on St. Anthony’s Point), Fowey, the Looes, and Plymouth Sound and Harbour; the coast line again trending southward until it juts out into the sea, in the bold craggy bluffs of Bolt Head and Start Point, on the last of which is another house with two lights—one, revolving, for the Channel, and another, fixed, to direct vessels inshore clear of the Skerries Shoal. But between the Lizard and Start Point, which form the two extremities of this bend in the land of Cornwall and Devonshire, there lies the Eddystone Rock and Lighthouse, standing fourteen miles out from the shore, almost directly in front of Plymouth Sound and in the line of coasting vessels steaming or beating up Channel. “On the south are seen the three Croquet Lights on the Jersey side; and on the north the two fixed lights on Portland Bill. The west is St. Catherine’s, a brilliant fixed light on the extreme south point of the Isle of Wight. Next are the lights exhibited on the Nab, and then the single fixed light exhibited on the Ower vessel. Beachy Head, on the same line, exhibits a powerful revolving light 285 feet above high water, its interval of greatest brilliancy occurring every two minutes. Then comes Dungeness, exhibiting a fixed red light of great power, situated at the extremity of the low point of Dungeness beach. Next are seen Folkestone, and then Dover Harbour Lights, whilst on the south are the flash light, recently stationed on the Verne Bank; and further up Channel, on the French coast, is seen the brilliant revolving light on Cape Grisnez. The Channel is passed with the two South Foreland Lights, one higher than the other, on the left; and the Downs are entered with the South Sandhead floating light on the right; and when the Gull and the North Sandhead floating lights have been passed on the one hand, and North Foreland on the other, then the Tongue, the Prince’s Channel, and the Girdler are passed.” The Nore Light passed, the navigation of the Thames commences. CHAPTER XI. THE LIGHTHOUSE (_continued_).