he first Bishop
of Sherborne, and its summit rises nearly five hundred feet, being
crowned by an ancient chapel, where in former days a priest trimmed the
beacon-light and prayed for the mariners' safety. This cliff exhibits
sections of Portland stone, and the view is unusually fine, the entire
coast displaying vast walls of cream-colored limestone. These rocks
extend westward past Encombe, where Chancellor Eldon closed his life,
and the Vale of Kimmeridge, where they dig a dark blue clay, and
Worbarrow Bay, with its amphitheatre of crags composed of Portland stone
and breached here and there to form the gateways into interior coves.
Here are the Barndoor Cove, entered through a natural archway; the
Man-of-War Cove, its guardian rock representing a vessel; and Lulworth
Cove, with its castle-ruins, most of which have been worked into the
modern structure near by where the exiled French king, Charles X., once
lived.

[Illustration: ST. ALDHELM'S HEAD.]

WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND.

The coast next sweeps around to the southward, forming the broad expanse
of Weymouth Bay, with the precipitous headland of the White Nore on the
one hand, and the crags of Portland Isle spreading on the other far out
to sea, with the breakwater extending to the northward enclosing the bay
and making a harbor under the lee of which vast fleets can anchor in
safety. Weymouth is a popular watering-place and the point of departure
for steamers for the Channel Islands, and it was George III.'s favorite
resort. He had a house there, and on the cliffs behind the town an
ingenious soldier, by cutting away the turf and exposing the white chalk
beneath, has made a gigantic figure of the king on horseback, of clever
execution and said to be a good likeness. Weymouth has a steamboat-pier
and an attractive esplanade, and on the cliffs west of the town and
overlooking the sea are the ruins of Sandsfoot Castle, erected for
coast-defence by Henry VIII. They are of little interest, however, and
south of them is the estuary of the Fleet, which divides Portland Isle
from the mainland, but these are linked together by the Chesil Bank, a
huge mound of pebbles forming a natural breakwater. At the lower end it
is an embankment forty feet high, composed of large pebbles, some
reaching a foot in diameter. As it stretches northward it decreases
gradually in height and in the size of its pebbles, till it becomes a
low shingly beach. To this great natural embankment the v