* * * * *

The reef before the Head stretches out a quarter of a mile, looking bold
in the dead low-water that then was, and showing to what extent the sea
has pushed back this coast, three wrecks impaled on them, and a big
steamer quite near, waiting for the first movements of the already
strewn sea to perish. All along the cliff-wall to the bluff crowned by
Scarborough Castle northward, and to the low vanishing coast of
Holderness southward, appeared those cracks and caves which had brought
me here, though there seemed no attempts at barricades; however, I got
down a rough slope on the south side to a rude wild beach, strewn with
wave-worn masses of chalk: and never did I feel so paltry and short a
thing as there, with far-outstretched bays of crags about me, their
bluffs encrusted at the base with stale old leprosies of shells and
barnacles, and crass algae-beards, and, higher up, the white cliff all
stained and weather-spoiled, the rock in some parts looking quite
chalky, and elsewhere gleaming hard and dull like dirty marbles, while
in the huge withdrawals of the coast yawn darksome gullies and caverns.
Here, in that morning's walk, I saw three little hermit-crabs, a limpet,
and two ninnycocks in a pool of weeds under a bearded rock. What
astonished me here, and, indeed, above, and everywhere, in London even,
and other towns, was the incredible number of birds that strewed the
ground, at some points resembling a real rain, birds of nearly every
sort, including tropic specimens: so that I had to conclude that they,
too, had fled before the cloud from country to country, till conquered
by weariness and grief, and then by death.

By climbing over rocks thick with periwinkles, and splashing through
great sloppy stretches of crinkled sea-weed, which give a raw stench of