The sea is by far too treacherous and violent to make boating safe, and we seldom, if ever, saw pleasure–boats out, although they were lying in the harbour. Some isolated rocks stand out in the water, separated from the mainland, with which, I fancy, they have at one time been connected. They are rough, and rugged, and bare, and honeycombed, and even, occasionally, altogether perforated by the water; bearing witness in their haggard condition to the violence of the waves by which they are continually assailed, undermined, broken up, and thrown down. It is, indeed, very beautiful to see, during a swell, the water lashing the rocks and dashing over in clouds of white spray, or sometimes through the perforations or over and down the rocks in streams of white foam. During the day we used to stand and observe the swell surging into the large cavities formed by continual action, and tossed out again, as if the rocks had said with Phineas, ‘Friend, thee isn’t wanted here;’ while the whole water around, nothing daunted, was boiling and excited, dancing and glancing and sparkling in the sun as if in glee, or in the spirit of fun and mischief. This, too, in calm weather. But at night we used to hear the boom of the waves as they tumbled into these caverns and were as promptly turned out again, as if it had been guns firing—for which, indeed, at first we were inclined to mistake the sound. Unlike the Mediterranean Sea, the tide has the usual ebb and flow of the Atlantic, consequently not only is the beach more interesting, but the town is kept more healthy. The sands afford the usual occupation and delight to children, but shells and seaweed are rare. A good many jelly–fish are thrown up; some gelatinous animals of a large size perhaps were octopi. We used often to sit by the beach and watch the sea, especially under the Basque Rocks, where the waves, with the slightest breath of wind, would come charging gallantly in, high and crested, and turn gracefully over in long lines when they neared the shore. Over the rocks the inhabitants would seem to have the odious habit of running their drains or dirty water, both unsightly to the eye and leaving disagreeable black pools below. This surely might be remedied. It does create a drawback to this most enjoyable beach. Equally objectionable, if not more so, is the practice, so offensive at Cannes, of putting the outlets of the town drains close to each of the bathing–places. The tide, no doubt, is such at Biarritz as to remove the stuff carried down, but there could or should be no difficulty in carrying the pipes away to some distance from parts where people enter the water to bathe, and at all events in not making them so obnoxiously near and prominent. * * * * *