A WRITER in _The Standard_ gives this description of Morwenstow: “No railway has as yet come near Morwenstow, and none will probably ever approach it nearer than Bude. The coast is iron-bound. Strangely contorted schists and sandstones stretch away northward in an almost unbroken line of rocky wall to the point of Hartland; and to the south-west a bulwark of cliffs, of very similar character, extends to and beyond Tintagel, whose rude walls are sometimes seen projected against the sunset in the far distance. The coast scenery is of the grandest description, with its spires of splintered rock, its ledges of green turf, inaccessible, but tempting from the rare plants which nestle in the crevices, its seal-haunted caverns, its wild birds (among which the red-legged chough can hardly be reckoned any longer, so much has it of late years lessened in numbers),[13] the miles of sparkling blue sea over which the eye ranges from the summits ablaze and fragrant with furze and heather; and here and there the little coves of yellow sand, bound in by towering blackened walls, haunts which seem specially designed for the sea-elves— Who chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back. “Even in bright weather, and in summer—in spite of the beauty and quiet of the scene, and in spite, too, of the long, deep valleys, filled with wood, which, in the parish of Morwenstow especially, descend quite to the sea, and give an impression of extreme stillness and seclusion—no one can wander along the summit of the cliffs without a consciousness that he is looking on a giant, at rest indeed for a time, but more full of strength and more really terrible than any of the Cormorans or the Goemagots who have left their footprints and their strongholds on the hills of Cornwall. The sea and the coast here are, in truth, pitiless; and, before the construction of the haven at Bude, a vessel had no chance whatever of escape which approached within a certain distance of the rocks. Such a shipwreck as is described in Galt’s story of _The Entail_—when persons standing on the cliff, without the smallest power to help, could see the vessel driven onward, could watch every motion on its deck, and at last see it dashed to pieces close under their feet—has more than once been observed from the coast of Morwenstow by Mr. Hawker himself. No winter passes without much loss of life. The little churchyards along the coast are filled with sad records; and in that of Morwenstow the crews of many a tall vessel have been laid to rest by the care of the vicar himself, who organised a special band of searchers for employment after a great storm.”[14]