d the Tennyson Beacon high up on the crest of the downs
overlooking the Needles, Freshwater Bay, and the busy traffic of the
English Channel, where the ships make landward to signal the
observers at St. Catherine's Point.

Cowes and "Cowes week" are preeminent annual events in society's
periodical swing around the circle.

The real development of Cowes, the home of the Royal Yacht Squadron,
has been the evolution of week-end yachting in the summer months.
City men, and jaded legislators, held to town by the Parliamentary
duties of a long summer session, rush down to Southampton every
Saturday and each steps off his train or motor-car on to the deck of
his yacht, and then, after a spin westward to the Needles or eastward
to the Nab or Warner Lightship, soothed by the lapping of the waters,
and refreshed by the pure sea air, returns on the Monday to face
again the terrors of London heat and "fag."

Taken all in all, we found the Isle of Wight the most enjoyable
region of its area in all England. It is quite worth the trouble of
crossing from the mainland with one's automobile in order to do it
thoroughly; for what one wants is green fields and pastures new and a
breadth of sea and sky.

Chapter III
Land's End To John O'Groats

[Illustration: Land's End]

We had already done a bit of conventional touring in England, and we
thought we knew quite all of the charms and fascinations of the
idyllic countryside of most of Britain, not omitting even Ireland.

The cathedral towns had appealed to us in our youthful days, and we
had rediscovered a good portion of Dickens's England on another
occasion, had lived for a fortnight on a house-boat on the Thames,
and had cruised for ten days on the Norfolk Broads, and besides had
played golf in Scotland, and _attempted_ to shoot grouse on a
Scottish moor. All this had furnished at least variety, and, when it
came to automobiling through Britain, it was merely going over
well-worn ground that we had known in our cycling days, and usually
we went merely where fancy willed.

Conditions had changed considerably, in fact all things had changed,
we ourselves no less than certain aspects of the country which we had
pictured as always being (in England) of that idyllic tenor of which
the poet sings. This comes of living too much in London, and with too
frequent week-ends at Brighton, Bournemouth, or Cromer.

For years, ever since we had first set foot in England in the days
when cy