When Daylight Faded The Village Was Very
Dark - No Lamp For The Visitors - And Very Silent, Only The Low
Murmur
Of the sea on the shingle was audible, and the gurgling
sound of a swift streamlet flowing from the hill
Above and
hurrying through the village to mingle with the Branscombe
lower down in the meadows. Such a profound darkness and quiet
one expects in an inland agricultural village; here, where
there were visitors from many distant towns, it was novel and
infinitely refreshing.
No sooner was it dark than all were in bed and asleep; not one
square path of yellow light was visible. To enjoy the
sensation I went out and sat down, and listened alone to the
liquid rippling, warbling sound of the swift-flowing
streamlet - that sweet low music of running water to which the
reed-warbler had listened thousands of years ago, striving to
imitate it, until his running rippling song was perfect.
A fresh surprise and pleasure awaited me when I explored the
coast east of the village; it was bold and precipitous in
places, and from the summit of the cliff a very fine view of
the coast-line on either hand could be obtained. Best of all,
the face of the cliff itself was the breeding-place of some
hundreds of herring-gulls. The eggs at the period of my visit
were not yet hatched, but highly incubated, and at that stage
both parents are almost constantly at home, as if in a state
of anxious suspense. I had seen a good many colonies of this
gull before at various breeding stations on the coast - south,
west, and east - but never in conditions so singularly favourable
as at this spot. From the vale where the Branscombe pours its
clear waters through rough masses of shingle into the sea the
ground to the east rises steeply to a height of nearly five
hundred feet; the cliff is thus not nearly so high as many
another, but it has features of peculiar interest. Here, in
some former time, there has been a landslip, a large portion
of the cliff at its highest part falling below and forming a
sloping mass a chalky soil mingled with huge fragments of rock,
which lies like a buttress against the vertical precipice and
seems to lend it support. The fall must have occurred a very
long time back, as the vegetation that overspreads the rude
slope - hawthorn, furze, and ivy - has an ancient look. Here
are huge masses of rock standing isolated, that resemble in
their forms ruined castles, towers, and churches, some of them
completely overgrown with ivy. On this rough slope, under the
shelter of the cliff, with the sea at its feet, the villagers
have formed their cultivated patches. The patches, wildly
irregular in form, some on such steeply sloping ground as to
suggest the idea that they must have been cultivated on all
fours, are divided from each other by ridges and by masses of
rock, deep fissures in the earth, strips of bramble and thorn
and furze bushes.
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