English Channel Ports and the Estate of the East and West India Dock Co

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FALMOUTH. I Should not like to say that Falmouth makes a lovelier picture than Penzance; but no one viewing the wide extent of harbours and roadsteads, of hills and valleys on a fine bright day can doubt that there are few, if any, fairer scenes to be beheld in all England. I have looked at this place from...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FALMOUTH. I Should not like to say that Falmouth makes a lovelier picture than Penzance; but no one viewing the wide extent of harbours and roadsteads, of hills and valleys on a fine bright day can doubt that there are few, if any, fairer scenes to be beheld in all England. I have looked at this place from several points. 1 have seen it from lofty summits and low foreshores, and I have .witnessed nothing but picture after picture of tender and shining loveliness. The harvest fields slope their pale gold to the dark blue water. The tall hills swell in undulations under the sun, and melt into an azure film, so vague that it can scarcely be distinguished from the sky. Water of the colour of the glorious heavens stretches in sheets into embowered recesses betwixt widely sundered shores, into creeks whose peaceful surface gives back the image of the white cottage or the drooping tree. Whoever has explored the river Fal cannot speak of scenery more gentle and beautiful. I stood on the eastern breakwater and had on my right the point on which Pendennis Castle stands, trailing with verdure, and the hard black rocks and old fort low down at the extreme end; the English Channel was beyond, a sheet of sparkling blue. In the middle of the harbour rose the Black Rock, as it is called; and on my left St. Anthony's Point, with the cream-coloured lighthouse at its base, and a dense growth of ravishingly rich foliage above, superbly contrasting with the green and yellow plains, denoting acres of cultivated soil, which stretched away northwards to St. Mawes' Harbour, with the Castle on the point, till the swelling, brightly-clad soil brought the eye to the St. Just Pool, where lay the old line-of-battle ship Ganges, with thirty other vessels of all kinds, some of them of very large tonnage....