Читать книгу The Sea and Its Living Wonders - G. Hartwig - Страница 38

Effects of the Sea on Rocky Shores.—Fingal's Cave.—Beautiful Lines of Sir Walter Scott.—The Antro di Nettuno.—The Cave of Hunga.—Legend of its Discovery.—Marine Fountains.—The Skerries.—The Souffleur in Mauritius.—The Buffadero on the Mexican Coast.

Whoever has only observed the swelling of the tide on the flat coasts of the North Sea, has but a faint idea of the Titanic power which it develops on the rocky shores of the wide ocean. Even in fair weather, the growing flood, oscillating over the boundless expanse of waters, rises in tremendous breakers, so that it is impossible to behold their fury without feeling a conviction that the hardest rock must ultimately be ground to atoms by such irresistible forces.

Day after day, year after year, they renew their fierce attacks, and as in the high Alpine valleys the tumultuous torrents rushing from the glaciers tear deep furrows in the flanks of the mountains, thus it is here the sea which stamps the seal of its might on the vanquished rocks, corrodes them into fantastic shapes, scoops out wide portals in their projecting promontories, and hollows out deep caverns in their bosoms.

Here, also, water appears as the beautifying element, decorating inanimate nature with picturesque forms, and the sea nowhere exhibits more romantic scenes than on the rocky shores against which her waves have been beating for many a millennium. How manifold the shapes into which the rocky shores are worn! how numberless the changes which each varying season, nay, every hour of the day with its constant alternations of ebb and flood, of cloud and sunshine, of storm or calm, produces in their physiognomy! Our coasts abound in beauties such as these; but pre-eminent above all other specimens of Ocean's fantastic architecture is Fingal's Cave, which may well challenge the world to show its equal.

From afar, the small island of Staffa, rising precipitously from the sea, seems destitute of all romantic interest, but on approaching, the traveller is struck with the remarkable basaltic columns of which it is chiefly composed. Most of them rest upon a substratum of solid shapeless rock, and generally form colonnades upwards of fifty feet high, following the contours of the inlets or promontories, and overtopped with smaller hillocks. Along the west coast of the island they are tolerably irregular, but on the south side Staffa appears as an immense Gothic edifice, or rather as a forest of gigantic pillars seemingly arranged with all the regularity of art. The admiration they cause is, however, soon effaced when the vast cave to which the remote islet owes its world-wide celebrity bursts upon the view. Fancy a grotto measuring 250 feet in length by 53 in width at the entrance, and spanned by an arch 117 feet high, which, though gradually sloping towards the interior, still maintains a height of 70 feet at the farthest end of the cavern! The walls consist of rows of huge hexagonal basaltic pillars, which seem regularly to diminish according to the rules of perspective. The roof of the vault is formed of the remnants of similar columns, whose shafts have beyond a doubt been torn away by the sea, which, destroying them one after the other, has gradually excavated this magnificent temple of Nature. All their interstices, like those of the pillars, are cemented with a kind of pale yellow spar, which brings out all the angles and sides of their surfaces, and forms a pleasing contrast with the dark purple colour of the basalt.

The whole floor of the cave is occupied by the sea, the depth of which, even at its farthest end, is above six feet, during ebb-tide; but it is only in perfectly calm weather that a boat is able to venture into the interior, for when the sea is any way turbulent (and this is generally the case among the stormy Hebrides) it is in danger of being hurled against the walls of the grot and dashed to pieces. Under these circumstances, the only access into the cave is by a narrow dyke or ledge running along its eastern wall, about fifteen feet above the water. It is formed of truncated basaltic pillars, over which it is necessary to clamber with great caution and dexterity, as they are always moist and slippery from the dashing spray. Frequently there is only room enough for one foot, and while the left hand grasps that of the guide, it is necessary to hold fast with the right to a pillar of the wall. As this difficult path is most dangerous in the darkest part of the cave, but few tourists are bold enough to trust themselves to it, for the least false step must infallibly precipitate the adventurous explorer into the seething caldron below. Sometimes a cormorant, fearless of any accident of this kind, has built his nest upon the top of one of the truncated pillars, which form the pavement of the pathway, and betrays by a peevish hissing his ill humour at being disturbed in his solitary retreat by the intrusion of man.

Fingal's Cave.

The narrow path ultimately widens into a more roomy and slanting space formed of the remains of more than a thousand perpendicular truncated shafts. The back wall consists of a range of unequally sized pillars, arranged somewhat like the tubes of an organ. When the waves rush with tumultuous fury into the cave and dash their flakes of snow-white foam against its wall, it seems as if the gigantic instrument, touched by an invisible hand, were loudly singing the triumphs of ocean.

Among the beauties of this matchless cave, the clear light must not be forgotten, which, penetrating through the wide portal, produces an agreeable chiaro-oscuro even at its farthest end, so that the eye is able to seize at one glance the full majesty of the splendid hall; nor the pure air which, constantly renewed by the perpetual alternations of the tides, is very different from the chilly dampness which generally reigns in subterranean caverns.

When we consider the resemblance which from its regularity this magnificent work of nature bears to a production of human art, we cannot wonder at its having been ascribed to mortal architecture. But as men of ordinary stature seemed too weak for so colossal an enterprise, it was attributed to a race of giants, who constructed it for their chief and leader, Fingal, so renowned in Gaelic mythology. This belief still lingers among the primitive people of the neighbourhood, though some, being averse to pagan Goliahs, ascribe its workmanship to St. Columban.

The patriotic muse of Walter Scott, who visited the cave in 1810, rises to more than ordinary warmth while describing

"That wondrous dome,

Where, as to shame the temples deck'd

By skill of earthly architect,

Nature herself, it seemed, would raise

A minster to her Maker's praise!

Not for a meaner use ascend

Her columns, or her arches bend;

Nor of a theme less solemn, tells

That mighty surge that ebbs and swells,

And still between each awful pause

From the high vault an answer draws

In varied tones, prolonged and high,

That mocks the organ's melody.

Nor doth its entrance front in vain

To old Iona's holy fane,

That Nature's voice might seem to say,

'Well hast thou done, frail child of clay,

Thy humble powers that stately shrine

Task'd high and hard—but witness mine!'"

Lord of the Isles, canto iv. stanza 10.

The Mediterranean has likewise its marine grottoes of world-wide celebrity, its azure cave of Capri,[D] which I have previously described, and its Antro di Nettuno, in the island of Sardinia, about twelve miles from the small sea-port of Alghero. Unfortunately this superb grotto is very difficult of access, for any wind between the north-west and the south prevents an entry, so that the Algherese assert that 300 out of the 365 days it is impossible to enter it. The first vaulted cavern, forming an antechamber about thirty feet high, has no peculiar beauty, but on crossing a second cavern, in which are about twenty feet of beautifully clear water, and then turning to the left, one finds oneself in an intricate navigation among stalactites with surrounding walls and passages of stalagmites of considerable height. Having passed them and proceeding westerly, one reaches another cavern with a natural column in its centre, the shaft and capital of which, supporting the immense and beautifully fretted roof, reminds one of those in the chapter-house of the cathedral at Wells, and the staircase of the hall at Christ Church, Oxford. It stands, the growing monument of centuries, in all its massive and elegant simplicity with comparatively speaking few other stalagmites to destroy the effects of its noble solitude. In parts of the grotto are corridors and galleries, some 300 and 400 feet long, reminding one of the Moorish architecture of the Alhambra. One of them terminates abruptly in a deep cavern into which it is impossible to descend; but among many other interesting objects is a small chamber the access to which is through a very narrow aperture. After climbing and scrambling through it, one finds oneself in a room the ceiling of which is entirely covered with delicate stalactites, and the sides with fretted open work, so fantastical that one might almost imagine that it was a boudoir of the Oceanides, where they amused themselves with making lime lace. Some of the columns in different parts of the grotto are from seventy to eighty feet in circumference, and the masses of drapery drooping in exquisite elegance are of equally grand proportions.

[D] Chap. i. p. 18.

If a rare chance was required to discover the narrow opening in the cliffs of Capri, behind which one of the loveliest spectacles of nature lies concealed, we well may wonder how the famous cave of Hunga in the Tonga Archipelago ever became known, as its entrance even at low water is completely hidden under the surface of the sea. Mariner, to whom we owe our first knowledge of this wonderful play of nature, relates that while he was one day rat-hunting[E] in the island of Hunga with king Finow, who at that time reigned over Tonga, the barbarian monarch took a fancy to drink his kawa[F] in the cave. Mariner, who had absented himself for a few moments from the company, was very much astonished when, returning to the strand, he saw one chieftain after another dive and disappear. He had but just time to ask the last of them what they were about. "Follow me," answered the chieftain, "and I will show thee a place where thou hast never been before, and where Finow and his chieftains are at present assembled." Mariner immediately guessed that this must be the celebrated cave of which he had frequently heard, and, anxious to see it, he immediately followed the diving chieftain, and swimming close after him under the water, safely reached the opening in the rock through which he emerged into the cave. On ascending to the surface, he immediately heard the voices of the company, and still following his guide, climbed upon a projecting ledge on which he sat down. All the light of the cave was reflected from the sea beneath, but yet it was sufficient, as soon as the eye had become accustomed to the twilight, to distinguish the surrounding objects. A clearer light being, however, desirable, Mariner once more dived, swam to the strand, fetched his pistol, poured a good quantity of powder on the pan, wrapped it carefully up in tapa-cloth and leaves, and, providing himself with a torch, returned as quickly as possible to the cave. Here he removed the cloth, a great part of which was still quite dry, and igniting it by the flame of the powder made use of it to light his torch. This was probably the very first time since its creation that the cave had ever been illumined by artificial light. Its chief compartment, which on one side branched out into two smaller cavities, seemed to be about forty feet wide and the mean height above the water amounted to as much. The roof was ornamented in a remarkable manner by stalactites resembling the arches and fantastic ornaments of a Gothic hall. According to a popular tradition, the chieftain who first discovered this remarkable cave while diving after a turtle, used it subsequently as a place of refuge for his mistress to screen her from the persecutions of the reigning despot. The sea faithfully guarded his secret: after a few weeks of seclusion, he fled with his beloved to the Feejee Islands, and on his returning to his native home after the death of the tyrant, his countrymen heard with astonishment of the wonderful asylum that had been revealed to him by the beneficent sea-gods. Lord Byron adopted this graceful tale as the subject of his poem "The Island, or Christian and his Comrades," and has thus described the cave, no doubt largely adorning it from the stores of his brilliant fancy:

"Around she pointed to a spacious cave,

Whose only portal was the keyless wave

(A hollow archway, by the sun unseen,

Save through the billows' glassy veil of green,

On some transparent ocean holiday,

When all the finny people are at play).

"Wide it was and high;

And showed a self-born Gothic canopy.

The arch upreared by Nature's architect,

The architrave some earthquake might erect;

The buttress from some mountain's bosom hurl'd,

When the poles crash'd and water was the world;

Or harden'd from some earth-absorbing fire,

While yet the globe reek'd from its funeral pyre.

The fretted pinnacle, the aisle, the nave,

Were there, all scoop'd by darkness from her cave.

There, with a little tinge of fantasy,

Fantastic faces mopp'd and mow'd on high;

And then a mitre or a shrine would fix

The eye upon its seeming crucifix.

Thus Nature played with the stalactites,

And built herself a chapel of the seas."

[E] A favourite pastime of the Polynesian chiefs.

[F] An intoxicating beverage extracted from the Piper methysticum, a species of pepper plant.

On many rocky shores the ocean has worn out subterraneous channels in the cliffs against which it has been beating for ages, and then frequently emerges in water-spouts or fountains from the opposite end. Thus, in the Skerries, one of the Shetland Islands, a deep chasm or inlet, which is open overhead, is continued under ground and then again opens to the sky in the middle of the island. When the water is high, the waves rise up through this aperture like the blowing of a whale in noise and appearance.

A similar phenomenon is exhibited on the south side of the Mauritius, at a point called "The Souffleur," or "The Blower." "A large mass of rock," says Lieutenant Taylor,[G] "runs out into the sea from the mainland, to which it is joined by a neck of rock not two feet broad. The constant beating of the tremendous swell, which rolls in, has undermined it in every direction, till it has exactly the appearance of a Gothic building with a number of arches. In the centre of the rock, which is about thirty-five or forty feet above the sea, the water has forced two passages vertically upwards, which are worn as smooth and cylindrical as if cut by a chisel. When a heavy sea rolls in, it of course fills in an instant the hollow caverns underneath, and finding no other egress, and being borne in with tremendous violence, it rushes up these chimneys and flies, roaring furiously, to a height of full sixty feet. The moment the wave recedes, the vacuum beneath causes the wind to rush into the two apertures with a loud humming noise, which is heard at a considerable distance. My companion and I arrived there before high water, and, having climbed across the neck of rock, we seated ourselves close to the chimneys, where I proposed making a sketch, and had just begun when in came a thundering sea, which broke right over the rock itself and drove us back much alarmed.

"Our negro guide now informed us that we must make haste to recross our narrow bridge, as the sea would get up as the tide rose. We lost no time and got back dry enough; and I was obliged to make my sketches from the mainland. In about three-quarters of an hour the sight was truly magnificent. I do not exaggerate in the least when I say that the waves rolled in, long and unbroken, full twenty-five feet high, till, meeting the headland, they broke clear over it, sending the spray flying over to the mainland; while from the centre of this mass of foam, the Souffleur shot up with a noise, which we afterwards heard distinctly between two and three miles. Standing on the main cliff, more than a hundred feet above the sea, we were quite wet. All we wanted to complete the picture was a large ship going ashore."

[G] Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. iii. 1833.

THE SOUFFLEUR.

This plate shows the sea beating against some hollow rocks on the coast of the Mauritius, and producing the remarkable phenomenon called "The Souffleur," or "The Blower," water-spouts issuing from the wave-worn cavities of the cliff to a considerable height, and with a noise distinctly audible at a distance of three miles.

THE SOUFFLEUR ROCK, MAURITIUS.

Click on image to view larger version.

A similar phenomenon, on a still more grand and majestic scale, occurs near Huatulco, a small Mexican village on the coast of the Pacific. On sailing into the bay one hears a distant noise, which might be taken for the spouting of a gigantic whale, or the dying groans of a bull struck by the sharp steel of the matador, or the rolling of thunder. Anxious to know the cause, "It is the Buffadero," answer the boatmen, pointing to a fantastically-shaped rock towards which they are rowing. On approaching, a truly magnificent spectacle reveals itself; for a colossal fountain springs from an aperture in the rock to a height of 150 feet, and after having dissolved in myriads of gems, returns to the foaming element which gave it birth. This beautiful sight renews itself as often as the breakers rush against the rock, and must be of unequalled splendour when a tornado sweeps across the ocean and rolls its giant billows into the hollowed bosom of the cliff.