Part 77

The force and hight of these seas are increased by the fact that the rocks stretch across the channel, in a direction north and south, to the length of above one hundred fathoms, and by their lying in a sloping manner toward the south-west quarter. This _striving_ of the rocks, as it is technically called, does not cease at low-water, but still goes on progressively; so that, at fifty fathoms westward, there are twelve fathoms of water; neither does it terminate at the distance of a mile. From this configuration it happens, that the seas are swollen to such a degree, in storms and heavy gales of wind, as to break on the rocks with the utmost violence. It is not surprising, therefore, that the dangers to which navigators were exposed by the Eddystone rocks should have made a great commercial nation desirous to have a light-house erected on them. The wonder is that any one should have had sufficient resolution to undertake its construction. Such a man was, however, found in the person of Mr. Henry Winstanley, of Littleburgh, in Essex, who, being furnished with the necessary powers to carry the design into execution, entered on his undertaking in 1696, and completed it in four years. So certain was he of the stability of his structure, that he declared it to be his wish to be in it “during the greatest storm which ever blew under the face of the heavens.” In this wish he was but too amply gratified; for while he was there with his workmen and light-keepers, that dreadful storm began, which raged most violently on the night of the twenty-sixth of November, 1703; and of all the accounts of the kind with which history has furnished us, no one has exceeded this in Great Britain, nor has been more injurious or extensive in its devastations. On the following morning, when the storm was so much abated, that an inquiry could be made, whether the light-house had suffered from it, nothing was to be seen standing, with the exception of some of the large irons by which the work was fixed on the rock; nor were any of the people, nor any of the materials of the building ever found afterward.

[Illustration: THE EDDYSTONE LIGHT-HOUSE.]

In 1709, another light-house was built of wood, on a very different construction, by Mr. John Rudyerd, then a silk-mercer on Ludgate hill. This very ingenious structure, after having braved the elements for forty-six years, was burned to the ground in 1755. On the destruction of this light-house, that excellent mechanic and engineer, Mr. Smeaton, was selected as the fittest person to build another. He found some difficulty in persuading the proprietors, that a stone building, properly constructed, would be in every respect preferable to one of wood; but having at length convinced them, he turned his thoughts to the shape which would be most suitable to a building so critically situated. Reflecting on the structure of the former buildings, it seemed to him a material improvement to procure, if possible, an enlargement of the base, without increasing the size of the waist, or that part of the building placed between the top of the rock and the top of the solid work. Hence he thought a greater degree of strength and stiffness would be gained, accompanied with less resistance to the acting power. On this occasion, the natural figure of the waist, or bole of a large spreading oak, occurred to our sagacious engineer.

With these very enlightened views, as to the proper form of the superstructure, Mr. Smeaton began the work on the second of April, 1757, and completed it on the fourth of August, 1759. Its appearance, as completed, may be seen in the cut on the preceding page. The rock, which slopes toward the south-west, is cut into horizontal steps, into which are dovetailed, and united by a strong cement, Portland stone and granite. The whole to the hight of thirty-five feet from the foundation, is a solid body of stones, engrafted into each other, and united by every means of additional strength that could be devised. The building has four rooms, one over the other, and at the top a gallery and lantern. The stone floors are flat above, but concave beneath, and are kept from pressing against the sides of the building by a chain let into the walls. It is nearly eighty feet in hight, and since its completion has been assaulted by the fury of the elements, without suffering the smallest injury. To trace the progress of so vast an undertaking, and to show with what skill and judgment this unparalleled engineer overcame the greatest difficulties, would far exceed the limits of this work.

BELL ROCK LIGHT-HOUSE.

The Bell rock, or Inch cape, is situated on the north-east coast of Great Britain, twelve miles south-west from the town of Arbroath, in Fifeshire, and thirty miles north-east from St. Abb’s head, in the county of Berwick. It lies in the direct trace of the firth of Tay, and of a great proportion of the shipping of the firth of Forth, embracing a very extensive local trade. This estuary is besides the principal inlet on the northern coast of Britain, in which the shipping of the German ocean and North sea take refuge when overtaken by easterly storms. At neap-tides, or at the quadratures of the moon, the Bell rock is scarcely uncovered at low-water; but in spring-tides, when the ebbs are greatest, that part of the rock which is exposed to view at low-water, measures about four hundred and twenty-seven feet in length, by two hundred and thirty in breadth; and in this low state of the tides, its average perpendicular hight above the surface of the sea is about four feet. Beyond the space included in these measurements, at very low tides, a reef extends about a thousand feet in a south-west direction, from the higher part of the rock just described; and on this reef the light-house is erected.

In the erection of a light-house on the Bell rock, independently of its distance from the main land, a serious difficulty presented itself, arising from the greater depth of water at which it was necessary to carry on the operations, than in the case of the Eddystone light-house, described above, or of any other building of the same kind, ancient or modern, which had been hitherto undertaken. Its description is as follows.

The Bell rock light-house, which has not improperly been termed the Scottish Pharos, is a circular building, the foundation stone of which is nearly on a level with the surface of the sea at low-water of ordinary spring-tides; and, consequently, at high-water of these tides the building is immersed to the hight of about fifteen feet. The first two, or lowest courses of the masonry, are imbedded, or sunk into the rock, and the stones of all the courses are curiously dovetailed and joined with each other, forming one connected mass from the center to the circumference. The successive courses of the work are also attached to each other by joggles of stone; and, to prevent the stones from being lifted up by the force of the sea, while the work was in progress, each stone of the solid part of the building had two holes bored through it, entering six inches into the course immediately below, into which oaken tree-nails, two inches in diameter, were driven, after Mr. Smeaton’s plan at the Eddystone light-house. The cement used at the Bell rock, like that at the latter, was a mixture of pozzuolana, earth, lime, and sand, in equal parts, by measure.

The stones employed in this surprising structure weigh from two tuns to half a tun each. The ground course measures forty-two feet in diameter, and the building diminishes as it rises to the top, where the parapet wall of the light-room has a diameter of thirteen feet only. It is solid from the ground course to the hight of thirty feet, where the entry door is placed, the ascent to which is by a kind of rope-ladder, with wooden steps, hung out at ebb-tide, and taken into the building again when the water covers the rock; but strangers to this sort of climbing are taken up in a kind of chair, by a small movable crane projected from the door, from which a narrow passage leads to a stone staircase thirteen feet in hight. Here the walls are seven feet thick, but they gradually diminish from the top of the staircase to the parapet wall of the light-room, where they measure one foot only in thickness. The upper part of the building is divided into six apartments for the use of the light-house keepers, and for containing the light-house stores. The lower, or first of these floors, contains the water-tanks, fuel, and other bulky articles; the second, the oil-cisterns, glass, and other light-room stores; the third is occupied as a kitchen; the fourth is the bed-room; the fifth, the _library_, or stranger’s room; and the upper apartment forms the light-room. The floors of the several apartments are of stone, and the communication from the one to the other is effected by wooden ladders, except in the case of the light-room, where every article being fire-proof, the steps are made of iron. In each of the three lower apartments are two windows; but the upper rooms have four windows each. The casements of the windows are double, and are glazed with plate-glass, having besides an outer storm-shutter, or dead-light, of timber, to defend the glass from the waves and spray of the sea. The parapet wall of the light-room is six feet in hight, and has a door leading out to the balcony, or walk, formed by the cornice round the upper part of the building, which is surrounded by a cast-iron rail, curiously wrought like net-work. This rail reposes on batts of brass, and has a massive coping, or top-rail, of the same metal.

The light-room was, with the whole of its apparatus, framed and prepared at Edinburgh. It is of an octagonal figure, measuring twelve feet across, and fifteen feet in hight, formed with cast-iron sashes, or window frames, glazed with large plates of polished glass, measuring about two feet and six inches, by two feet and a quarter, and the fourth of an inch in thickness. It is covered with a dome roof of copper, terminating in a large gilt ball, with a vent-hole in the top. The light is very powerful, and is readily seen at the distance of seven leagues, when the atmosphere is clear. It is from oil, with argand burners, placed in the focus of silver-plated reflectors, measuring two feet over the lips, the silver surface being hollowed, or wrought to the parabolic curve. That this splendid light may be the more easily distinguished from all the other lights on the coast, the reflectors are ranged on a frame with four faces, or sides, which, by a train of machinery, is made to revolve on a perpendicular axis once in six minutes. Between the observer and the reflectors, on two opposite sides of the revolving frame, shades of red glass are interposed in such a manner, that, during each entire revolution of the reflectors, two appearances, distinctly differing from each other, are produced: one is the common _bright light_ familiar to all; but on the other, or shaded sides, the rays are tinged of a _red color_. These red and bright lights, in the course of each revolution, alternate with intervals of darkness, and thus in a very beautiful and simple manner, characterize this light.

As a further warning to the mariner in foggy weather, two large bells, each weighing about twelve hundred pounds, are tolled day and night by the same machinery which moves the lights. As these bells, in moderate weather, may be heard considerably beyond the limits of the rock, vessels, by this expedient, get warning to put about, and are thereby prevented from running on the rock in thick and hazy weather, a disaster to which ships might otherwise be liable, notwithstanding the erection of the light-house. The establishment consists of a principal light-keeper, with three assistants, two of whom are constantly at the light-house, while the third is stationed at a tower erected at Arbroath, where he corresponds by signals with the light-keepers at the rock. This stupendous undertaking is highly creditable to Mr. Stevenson, the engineer, and does honor to the age in which it has been produced. The lights were exhibited, for the first time, on the first of February, 1811.

STONEHENGE.

This celebrated monument of antiquity, a view of which is given in the cut on the next page, stands in the middle of a flat area near the summit of a hill, six miles distant from Salisbury. It is inclosed by a double circular bank and ditch, nearly thirty feet broad, after crossing which an ascent of thirty yards leads to the work. The whole fabric, of which the cut exhibits only a section, was originally composed of two circles and two ovals. The outer circle is about one hundred and eight feet in diameter, consisting, when entire, of sixty stones, thirty uprights, and thirty imposts, of which there now remain twenty-four uprights only, seventeen standing, and seven down, three feet and a half asunder, and eight imposts. Eleven uprights have their five imposts on them at the grand entrance: these stones are from thirteen to twenty feet high. The smaller circle is somewhat more than eight feet from the inside of the outer one, and consisted of forty smaller stones, the highest measuring about six feet, nineteen only of which now remain, and only eleven standing. The walk between these two circles is three hundred feet in circumference. The _adytum_, or cell, is an oval formed of ten stones, from sixteen to twenty-two feet high, in pairs, and with imposts above thirty feet high, rising in hight as they go round, and each pair separate, and not connected as the outer pair: the highest eight feet. Within these, are nineteen other smaller single stones, of which six only are standing. At the upper end of the adytum is the altar, a large slab of blue coarse marble, twenty inches thick, sixteen feet long, and four broad: it is pressed down by the weight of the vast stones which have fallen upon it. The whole number of stones, uprights and imposts, comprehending the altar, is one hundred and forty. The stones, which have been by some considered artificial, were most probably brought from those called the _gray weathers_ on Marlborough downs, distant fifteen or sixteen miles; and if tried with a tool, appear of the same hardness, grain and color, being generally reddish. The heads of oxen, deer, and other beasts, have been found in digging in and about Stonehenge; and in the circumjacent barrows, human bones. From the plain to this structure there are three entrances, the most considerable of which is from the north-east; and at each of them were raised, on the outside of the trench, two huge stones, with two smaller parallel ones within.

[Illustration: STONEHENGE.]

Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his history of the Britons, written in the reign of King Stephen, represents this monument as having been erected at the command of Aurelius Ambrosius, the last British king, in memory of four hundred and sixty Britons who were murdered by Hengist the Saxon. Polydore Virgil says that it was erected by the Britons as the sepulchral monument of Aurelius Ambrosius, and other writers consider it to have been that of the famous British queen Boadicea. Inigo Jones is of opinion that it was a Roman temple; and this conclusion he draws from a stone sixteen feet in length, and four in breadth, placed in an exact position to the eastward, altar-fashion. By Charlton it is ascribed to the Danes, who were two years masters of Wiltshire; a tin tablet, on which were some unknown characters, having been dug up in the vicinity, in the reign of Henry VIII. This tablet, which is lost, might have given some information respecting its founders. Its common name, Stonehenge, is Saxon, and signifies a “stone gallows,” to which the stones, having transverse imposts, bear some resemblance. It is also called in Welch, _choir gour_, or the giants’ dance. Mr. Grose, the antiquary, is of opinion that Doctor Stukely has completely proved this structure to have been a British temple, in which the Druids officiated. He supposes it to have been the metropolitan temple of Great Britain, and translates the words _choir gour_, “the great choir or temple.” It was customary with the Druids to place one large stone on another for a religious memorial; and these they often placed so equably, that even a breath of wind would sometimes make them vibrate. Of such stones one remains at this day in the pile of Stonehenge. The ancients distinguished stones erected with a religious view, by the name of _ambrosiæ petræ_, _amber stones_, the word _amber_ implying whatever is solar and divine. According to Bryant, Stonehenge is composed of these amber stones; and hence the next town is denominated Ambresbury.

ROCKING STONES.

The _rocking stone_, or _logan_, is a stone of a prodigious size, so nicely poised, that it rocks or shakes with the smallest force. Several of the consecrated stones mentioned above, were rocking stones; and there was a wonderful monument of this kind near Penzance in Cornwall, which still retains the name of _main-amber_, or the sacred stones. With these stones the ancients were not unacquainted. Pliny relates that at Harpasa, a town of Asia, there was a rock of such a wonderful nature, that, if touched with the finger, it would shake, but could not be moved from its place with the whole force of the body. Ptolemy Hephistion mentions a stone of this description near the ocean, which was agitated when struck by the stalk of the plant asphodel, or day-lily, but could not be removed by a great exertion of force. Another is cited by Apollonius Rhodius, supposed to have been raised in the time of the Argonauts, in the island Tenos, as the monument of the two-winged sons of Boreas, slain by Hercules; and there are others in China, and in other countries.

Many rocking stones are to be found in different parts of Great Britain; some natural, and others artificial, or placed in their position by human art. That the latter are monuments erected by the Druids, many suppose can not be doubted; but tradition has not handed down the precise purpose for which they were intended. In the parish of St. Leven, Cornwall, there is a promontory called Castle Treryn. On the western side of the middle group, near the top, lies a very large stone, so evenly poised, that a hand may move it from one side to the other; yet so fixed on its base, that no lever, or other mechanical force, can remove it from its present situation. It is called the _logan-stone_, and is at such a hight from the ground as to render it incredible that it was raised to its present position by art. There are, however, other rocking stones, so shaped and situated, that there can not be any doubt of their having been erected by human strength. Of this kind the great _quoit_, or _karn-le hau_, in the parish of Tywidnek, in Wales, is considered. It is thirty-nine feet in circumference, and four feet thick at a medium, and stands on a single pedestal. In the island of St. Agnes, Scilly, is a remarkable stone of the same kind. The under rock is ten and a half feet high, forty-seven feet round the middle, and touches the ground with not more than half its base. The upper rock rests on one point only, and is so nicely balanced, that two or three men with a pole can move it. It is eight and a half feet high, and forty-seven in circumference. On the top is a basin hollowed out, three feet and eleven inches in diameter at a medium, but wider at the brim, and three feet in depth. From the globular shape of the upper stone, it is highly probable that it was rounded by human art, and perhaps even placed on its pedestal by human strength. In Sithney parish, near Helston, in Cornwall, stood the famous logan, or rocking stone, commonly called _Men Amber_, that is, _Men an Bar_, or the top stone. It was eleven feet by six, and four high, and so nicely poised on another stone, that a little child could move it. It was much visited by travelers; but Shrubsall, the governor of Pendennis castle, under Cromwell, caused it to be undermined, by dint of much labor, to the great grief of the country. There are some marks of the tool on it; and it seems probable, by its triangular shape, that it was dedicated to Mercury.

THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND.

Every one, almost, has heard of the round towers of Ireland; and yet, who has been able to explain their origin, or solve the mystery that hangs over the history of their builders, and the purposes for which they were erected?

Of these towers, one hundred and seven are known to have existed; but probably there were many more. Some are still perfect, others are in ruins. They bear a general resemblance to each other, seeming, therefore, to have had the same object in view; yet there were many minute points of difference. Some were but forty feet high; others sixty, eighty, and one a hundred and twenty feet. The common hight is about eighty or ninety feet. Most of them were of a cylindrical form, and were covered with a conical roof. They were generally divided into three stories, with a window to each. The door of entrance was from six to twenty-four feet from the ground; but how this was reached is not known. In some cases, they were built of hewn stone, nicely laid in mortar; in others, the stones are merely hammered; in others still, they are small and of all shapes, but always firmly cemented by mortar, nearly as hard as the rock itself.

That these towers are very ancient, is clear from the fact that when Ireland was first invaded by the English, in the twelfth century, they were then deemed antiquities, and no one was able to tell their origin or design. Some have been used as towers and belfries of churches; but these churches were built in later times, and this use of the towers was, evidently, but an adaptation of old structures to new purposes. The fact that near them, in most cases, ancient churches, or their remains, are found, has led to the belief that they were ecclesiastical structures, erected by the early Christians of Ireland. This idea is exploded by the circumstance that no such buildings have ever been known to be erected in any other part of the world, in connection with the Christian religion; nor is it possible to conjecture for what object, as part of Christian worship, they could have been designed.