ty from the feet of those resolute
and heroic explorers who go with camera, microscope, and theodolite,
against such forces of Nature as would daunt anything but the resolute
human heart--it is curious to come across small corners of the world
where the law of nations seemingly does not run, and the current of the
modern world sweeps by, leaving them in a backwater, strangely aloof
and undisturbed.

Such is the island of Herm, in the Channel Isles; such are one or two
volcanic rocks in the Greek Archipelago, which you may purchase for a
song, and live on if you can, though their barren waterlessness under
the midsummer suns will compel you to put out to sea again for all the
dangers of swift currents and black crags; such, too, I imagine, are
some of those enchanted small islands in the South Seas of which Conrad
writes: "It was as if the earth had gone on spinning, and had left that
crumb of its surface alone in space"; such, too, is Lundy.

But Lundy is only fourteen miles from the English coast, this populous
and organized England, and in the mouth of the Bristol Channel, in the
direct track of all the shipping of the West--sighted, it is estimated,
by at least a million vessels a year in their business up and down the
world--and yet, to within the last generation, it was almost as
inaccessible as in the days when the de Mariscos built their castle
there and defied the King and all his armies.

Even now, though in the summer pleasure steamers run from Ilfracombe
and Minehead, and land their noisy crowds on the south-eastern corner
of the island, the narrow peninsula of Lametor, it is during barely
three months of the year; they have ceased before the coming of the
October gales, and the island goes back to its solitude, and the wild
clamour of its innumerable sea-birds, while its few inhabitants wait
their bi-weekly post, and the coming of the Trinity boat on the 1st and
15th of the month, for news of the outside world.

For Lundy is a great rock, about three and a half miles long, and
averaging half a mile in depth, cutting the strong tidal stream which
runs round the south coast of Wales and up the Bristol Channel, with
steep cliffs and outlying crags and peaks of rock over which the surf
is flung ceaselessly, even on still summer days, and with a dangerous
tidal race at its northern end and the south-west and south-east
angles. It stands, too, in the highway of the winds as well as of the
waters, and is so sc