A tourist not preoccupied with the arts would inevitably style this a “miserable place,” a “wretched hole,” or other things uncomplimentary; but to a painter, wanting atmosphere and utter unconventionality, it is delightful. Poor fisherfolk are its only inhabitants, and its one inn neither offers accommodation to the tourist, nor, if it did, would he be likely to accept it. For one thing, strangers, either here or at the sister hamlet of Hall Sands are rare, both places being innocent of roads of any kind. Just a row of rude whitewashed cottages on the level: that is Beesands, and just a double row of somewhat superior cottages on the cliffside; that is Hall Sands. A mile of climbing up cliff paths and scrambling down, and then across another scrubby bottom where the white campions grow, brings the adventurous stranger to Hall Sands, built into the tall dark cliffs, just as the house-martens plaster their nests against the eaves. The hardihood—the foolhardihood, if you like it better—that ever induced mortal man to build houses in this perilous position under the threatening eaves of the cliffs and on the margin of the waves can only be appreciated by those who look upon the place itself. It beggars description. [Illustration: HALL SANDS.] The scene is one of a wild beauty, the cliffs rising dark and craggy overhead, draped thickly with ivy, the end of the street blocked with gigantic masses of fallen rock, and the sea at the very foot of some of the houses; with here and there a narrow strip of beach. The hardy fisherfolk exist chiefly on seine-net fishing and crab and lobster-catching. The trained Newfoundland dogs that are still a feature of this hamlet and of Beesands are fewer than of yore. There were some seven or eight of them, taught to swim out through the particularly rough surf of this shore, to meet incoming boats and bring the end of a rope to the beach, so that the boats might be hauled in.