lands; formed of rocks barely covered with a thin vegetation,
surrounded by precipices, they seem accessible only to sea birds,
who take refuge there in the tempests.

The Island of Longstone is at the head of the group, and serves as a
sort of vanguard, and is, perhaps, the most dangerous of all. A
gloomy collection of black rocks, full of crevices worn by the
action of the winds, the waters, and the tempests, it does not
nourish a single plant; not an atom of soil adheres to its surface;
it is naked and barren; its steep sides bristle with cockle shells
which encrust the rock.

The interior is still more desolate than the exterior; it is a
succession of black hillocks cut by narrow ravines into which the
sea rushes, roaring and furious, at high tide, detaching from the
rocks fragments which it grinds, rounds into pebbles, and deposits
pell-mell with the mud and sea weed in some deep crevice, where it
again will come to seek them in the storm, roll them over once more
in its foam, and drag them off to its profound caverns.

While our feet were wounded by the rocks, above our heads hundreds
of sea birds hovered screaming, and among them we discovered the
sea-gull by its shrill and harsh scream.

Notwithstanding these horrors, this island is not a desert. At the
summit of the rock, there rises a round tower where every evening a
light is kindled, so contrived as, at intervals of some seconds, to
throw a brilliant light upon the points where the fretted waves rage
and boil round a hidden rock, and to light the dangerous channel
which separates the island from its sister isles, and to warn the
pilot to avoid by every means the perilous labyrinth.

The keeper of the lighthouse did not live alone in this wild place;
his wife followed him there; his family increased, and the cradle
has rocked again and again.

Grace Darling, the eldest of the seven children, has just reached
her twenty-second year, and all the family are rejoicing at the
festival, for every anniversary is religiously kept by the little
company that animates the solitude of Longstone.

Every one is gone out to seek something by which he may take his
part in the festivity, and prepare a surprise for the well-beloved
sister. The mother remains at home kneading a nice cake to gratify
the appetite of the little marauders.

"Mother, Mother!" cried John, who returned the first; "see what a
superb lobster the rising sea has brought up and left in the crevic