is certainly older than that date. However, the shock of
that great disturbance may have further rent the granite and displaced
the mighty boulders. It extends for about two miles from the southern
coast, running in a northerly direction, and where the slate formation
meets the granite it is fractured in the same sharp manner. Some
upheaval of the earth's crust in far-off prehistoric times must have
cracked the granite and made these mighty chasms; the wildness and
singularity of their appearance, and the confined locality in which
they occur--for there is no trace of such disturbance elsewhere in the
island--make one wonder if it were no imprisoned demon or angry god,
chained in the blackness under Lundy, who, stretching his mighty sinews
to be free, so contorted and rent the solid granite above him. The
absence of legend or ancient tradition (for the tradition of the Lisbon
earthquake is comparatively recent) about so arresting a spectacle I
ascribe to the condition of Lundy's history; there has been no
continued habitation of the simple people of the land to pass on, from
generation to generation, the ancient names and the ancient stories of
their dwelling-place, untouched by the changes of rule and ownership
which go over them.

For this reason another strange phenomenon of Lundy, about which the
imagination of an earlier people must have lingered, passes barely
remarked. There is a great promontory on the coast, opposite the reef
called the Hen and Chickens, which is pierced by a sort of tunnel about
eight hundred feet in length and sixty feet in height, through which a
boat can sail on calm days at high-water; and in the centre of the
tunnel, bubbling up through the sea, rises a perpetual spring of fresh
water. This is called the Virgin's Well, and I can discover no story
or legend with which it is connected, though the name may possibly
contain some earlier myth, not based upon Christian worship.

[Illustration: Lynton: The Devil's Cheesering]

The names of other remarkable features of the island, the great rocks
which are piled along its coasts, are all descriptive and not legendary
names--the Devil's Chimney, the Cheeses, the Templar's Rock, the
Gannett Rock, the Mousehole. These names will have been given in
comparatively recent times, at least since the Saxon invasion, for they
show a different mentality from the Celtic names which are found widely
in Cornwall, Devon, Wales, and Northumberland, and w