“Let us now scramble down the cliff‐side path, tangled with briers and ferns, where the swelling buds of the hawthorn and honeysuckle are already bursting, while the blackbird mellowly whistles in the fast‐greening thicket, and the lark joyously greets the mounting sun above us. Yonder on the shingle lies a boat newly painted in white and green for the attraction of young ladies of maritime aspirations; she is hauled up high and dry, but the sinewy arms of an honest boatman, who, hearing footsteps, has come out of his little grotto under the rock to reconnoitre, will soon drag her down to the sea’s margin, and ‘for the sum of a shilling an hour,’ will pull us over the smooth and pond‐like sea whithersoever we may choose to direct him. “‘Jump aboard, please, sir. Jump in, ladies. Jump in, little master.’ And now, as we take our seats on the clean canvas cushions astern, the boat’s bottom scrapes along with a harsh grating noise over the white shingle‐ pebbles, and we are afloat. “First to the caverns just outside yonder lofty point. The lowness of the tide will enable us to take the boat into them, and the calmness of the sea will preclude much danger of her striking upon the rocks, especially as the watchful boatman will be on the alert, boat‐hook in hand, to keep her clear. Now we lie in the gloom of the lofty arch, gently heaving and sinking and swaying on the slight swell, which, however smooth at the surface, is always perceptible when you are in a boat among rocks, and which invests such an approach with a danger that a landsman does not at all appreciate. “Yet the water, despite the swell, is glassy, and invites the gaze down into its crystalline depths, where the little fishes are playing and hovering over the dark weeds.