THE FOAM-FRINGE AND THE WINDS.
BY the sea precipices of the West the foam - fringe and the winds are the greatest of all natural forces. These Atlantic winds, wave-compelling, rock-destroying, drive the hosts of ocean, rank behind rank, to the onset, and search from foot to crest each face and crevice of the tower- ing cliffs. The foam and surge, the bondslaves of the winds, the heavy and light artillery of the ocean bands, are the visible agents of destruction, and on the Cornish coast develop a power so awful, with a display of form and motion so sublime, that the imagination could never picture one half of the volume and immensity of the forces of the air and deep. When the southerly gales come tearing across the Atlantic, up the mouth of the Channel, they rush into Mount's Bay, and, spinning round as in a caldron, beaten and resilient from headland to headland, make their last and fiercest onset on the serpentine walls of the Lizard Penin- sula. From Poldhu and Mullion, over to the Lizard lights, is the climax of the struggle between the forces of earth and air, the rocks and tempests, in which the sea intervenes as the willing and mighty ally of the kingdom of the winds. It is a battle of armies in position, a set piece of natural combat, in which the meeting of the hosts is veiled in mist and smoke and spoutings, and earth and sky re-echo the thunder of their war. The fighting line is the foam-fringe, which comes into action then, as we watch it from one of the black projecting towers of serpentine which guard some deep cove in the Lizard front. From the blue deep of the bay, under scuds of storm wrack and shafts of light, the waves advance with a frontage of miles, blue rank behind blue rank, and ever rising and sharpening towards their summits. The front ranks pass by the watch-tower, bursting invisibly on the left where the buttress projects, but the right mile of wave has not yet hit the coast. Part does, smiting the heads of the cliffs in succession and exploding like mines in smoke and spray; part rushes on in the cove below till we see the back of the waves, green and translucent, as wrecked sailors do, rising between us and the shore, till the billow rises, curls over like a scroll, and then pours forward the rolling fields of foam. The whole frontage of the bay holds nothing but this sea froth, into which the jade-green, sun-pierced mountains of water are ever pouring fresh floods from ocean's store. Acres and acres of foam lie weltering there, some dashing 100 ft. over the squared, black, yellow-stained cliffs, some eddying round or falling back on the sands of the cove, some following the spin of the waters round and floating on half-seen solid sea, lapis blue or green. This welter of the sea divides into three forms: the solid sea water; the white water, which is sea and air mixed by the toppling of the wave or its explosion on the rocks and precipices; and the true foam, which is made of sea bubbles stuck together like a lump of skates' eggs, and often detaches into masses like sponges, large and small, and floats inland in such flights and incessant driftings as to form a separate and peculiar feature of the fringe of these Cornish precipices.
The spray, which dashes over the cliff faces when unbroken waves hit the rocks, is solid water finely divided, wetting and stinging, and destroying or blighting even the hardy vegeta- tion of this strange and awful coast. From the top of Gue Graze, near Synance, and on the cliffs adjoining, the forms and force of foam may be seen as at a "private view," for no one is there to share the sight but the ravens and the falcon on the cliffs. Across the inlet is a wall of black serpentine, 300 ft. high, veined with invisible green, and patched with orange below where the spray does not fall. The serpentine wall stands upright, above a black cavern, Ogo Pons (" ogo " means "cave" in old Cornish), bored out by the Atlantic waves. Above, the serpentine is capped with short turf and Cornish heather and thrift. The whole cove or bay is one inlet of green foam-edged bellying surge, dipping, heaving, swelling, contracting and expanding, with the rolling froth eddying this way and that, and smashed and drowned at regular pulsations by the green and white outpouring waves from the main ocean. As these roll in like minute-grans their right flank hits the projecting cliff before they break, and as from a cannon's mouth the smoking Spray rises in a column wide and high as a cathedral
tower. From base to summit this column of spray ever drenches the cliff, and keeps it wet, black, and bare. It curls over the summit, and throws itself, widened and wind-borne, on the turf mantle at the top, and as the spray of a fresh fountain makes all the grass green within the spread of its refreshing dew, so the pillar of salt spray has turned all the acres of grass on which it falls into a tawny brown and bronze. This spray is violently thrown; it does not float upwards; but the winds here help to carve the rock, even as the sand-grains carve the crags round the Sahara desert. Vexed by the spray, baked by the heat, and frozen in winter cold, the marble-like face of the serpentine cliffs cracks at first into square blocks, whose sheltered sides are slowly overgrown by an exquisite bloom of greys, and powdery yellows, and green lichenous dust, like pastel smoothed on a dark grey ground. These split and split again, and are then carried in tiny squares to the top of the cliffs by the wind. For the wind plays strange tricks as it strikes the cliff face from the open sea. In a forty-mile gale blowing straight from the ocean you may stand on the cliff edge, if at a height of over 200 ft. from the water, almost in a calm. This is one of the mysteries of this home of the wind and foam, and is explained thus. All the wind force which strikes the cliff face rushes upwards, perpendicularly with the face of the precipice, and with greater violence than the horizontal force which strikes the air above the summit. Thus the vertical ascending wind acts as a screen from the horizontal blast, and the watcher on the cliff is shielded from one blast behind the protection of the other. It is on this upward blast that the seagulls float in gales close to the cliff face. It also scrapes off and carries upward from the serpentine little loosened cubes of the rock, green and dark azure, and streaked with bloody red where it is fresh broken, and lifting these above the cliff top, drops them on the flat summit when the horizontal blast overpowers the ascend- ing one. The turf is strewn with these little chips of the wind's undoing. Against lower cliff faces the course of the winds is more wilful. The foam flakes trace its currents, and mark in their slow and devious flight the course and winding of these wandering winds. In Dollar Cove, a low-browed circular niche in the black coast, some 30 yds. across, with a cave under the eastern side, the towering waves rolled before an ocean breeze on the ebb tide had piled masses of sea froth, brewing like wort, 4 ft. deep on the strip of sand which lay at the feet of the rock face. Into the cove, and against the shore, the wind blew steadily, and flakes and masses of the froth, of all sizes, from that of an apple to the rope fender of a coaster, detached themselves from the mass, rose, and followed the course of the wind. There were four main currents, each as clearly marked by the successive and slow travel of the froth masses in air as is the current of boiling water by the sawdust in a chemist's flask. Some rose on either side of the little horseshoe of rock, travelled slowly up the face of the cliff, and then moved off right and left inland along two depressions in the down above, where they made a long trail of slowly expiring bubble masses. Others, when they reached a point to the right or left of these ascending winds, turned backwards in a curve, followed the horseshoe towards the outer edges, and then curled back over the sea, following in the air almost exactly the same course as the refluent waters were taking below. This cove is possibly named from a. Dutch brig, the 'Dollard,' laden with wheat, from Trieste for Fal- mouth, in 1862. One of the crew saved himself by jumping on to a rock and climbing the cliff. The captain, his son, and four seamen perished, and the ship went to pieces in ten minutes. But a month later, at low water, some fishermen made their way into the cave, or " ogo," the bottom of which is always awash, and there found parts of the masts and spars of the 'Dollard,' which had been churned about in this sub- terranean cavern ever since the wreck.
Previous page
