n on passing, so as to see the busy scene
of granite trimming, breaking, and loading, which goes on here from
sunrise to sunset all the year round. I could plainly hear the
detonations as shots were fired in the quarries, and the dull rumble of
the stone, as great masses of granite, which have been unmoved since the
creation, were rent asunder and toppled into the quarry below. Vale
Castle and Bordeaux harbour, where I anchored, look picturesque from
whatever points they are seen, whether from land or sea, and two hours
quickly glided by as I sketched the lovely little bits of scenery around
me. My plan was to take about half an hour for each sketch, to get the
general outline and feeling of color, so that on my return I had plenty
to occupy me on a rainy day.

The next point of interest was a little rocky island just past Bordeaux,
called Hommet Paradis, which is the scene of the death of Victor Hugo's
hero, Gilliatt, as related in "The Toilers of the Sea." He creates a
splendid hero, and in the last chapter makes him commit suicide in an
impossible manner. He causes his hero to stand in the sea, so that the
tide rises up to his feet, his knees, his waist, his shoulders, till,
still watching the vessel which bears his love from him through his own
stupid act, nothing but his head remains. Then the tide continues to
rise, and as the vessel vanishes on the horizon, "the head of Gilliatt
disappears. Nothing was visible now but the sea." Surely he might have
left a lock of hair or a sigh to mark the spot where he disappeared. I
have tried on even a very calm day to stand as Hugo's hero did, and let
the tide rise around me, but find the thing an impossibility. The motion
of the rising tide would lift one off their feet long before the water
rose above their shoulders, and as to making the man stand _still_ and
drown, why the idea is ludicrous. But as Hugo created his hero, why
should he not be allowed to destroy him as he likes? The book (except
the last chapter) is an exquisite piece of word painting, but I always
wish he had made a happy end of his hero. I felt this so much when I
read it on Jethou (for the third or fourth time) that I actually
re-wrote the last chapter for my own edification, and made Gilliatt
marry Dernchette willy-nilly, so that everything ended properly, and the
lovers "lived happily ever after."

North Guernsey (called Parish) is very uninteresting, in fact, from the
sea it looks a perfectly flat wi