ristic of this corner of the Hampshire coast, and of the
neighbouring Isle of Wight.

[Illustration: BOURNEMOUTH PIER AND SANDS FROM EASTCLIFF

Besides offering the usual attractions, Bournemouth Pier is the centre
of a very fine system of steamship sailings to all parts of the coast.]

A century ago the whole of the district between Poole on the west and
Christchurch on the east was an unpeopled waste of pine and heather, and
the haunt of gangs of smugglers. So great had the practice of smuggling
grown in the eighteenth century, that, in 1720, the inhabitants of Poole
presented to the House of Commons a petition, calling attention to "the
great decay of their home manufacturers by reason of the great
quantities of goods run, and prayed the House to provide a remedy". In
1747 there flourished at Poole a notorious band of smugglers known as
the "Hawkhurst Gang", and towards the close of the same century a famous
smuggler named Gulliver had a favourite landing-place for his cargoes at
Branksome Chine, whence his pack-horses made their way through the New
Forest to London and the Midlands, or travelled westward across Crichel
Down to Blandford, Bath, and Bristol.

Gulliver is said to have employed fifty men, who wore a livery, powdered
hair, and smock frocks. This smuggler amassed a large fortune, and he
had the audacity to purchase a portion of Eggardon Hill, in west Dorset,
on which he planted trees to form a mark for his homeward-bound vessels.
He also kept a band of watchmen in readiness to light a beacon fire on
the approach of danger. This state of things continued until an Act of
Parliament was passed which made the lighting of signal fires by
unauthorized persons a punishable offence. The Earl of Malmesbury, in
his _Memoirs of an Ex-Minister_, relates many anecdotes and adventures
of Gulliver, who lived to a ripe old age without molestation by the
authorities, for the reason, it is said, that during the wars with
France he was able to obtain, through his agents in that country,
valuable information of the movement of troops, with the result that his
smuggling was allowed to continue as payment for the services he
rendered in disclosing to the English Government the nature of the
French naval and military plans.

Warner, writing about 1800, relates that he saw twenty or thirty wagons,
laden with kegs, guarded by two or three hundred horsemen, each bearing
three tubs, coming over Hengistbury Head, and making thei