extraordinary way in which its houses are built on the hillside, one
row of doorsteps and diminutive gardens being on a level with the next
row of roofs, so steep is the lie of the land. Above the village is
the great Verne Fort occupying fifty acres on the highest point of the
island and commanding all the approaches to the Roads.

[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO CHURCH OPE.]

The route now bears right and soon reaches a high and desolate plateau
littered with the debris of many years quarrying. The only saving
grace in the scenery is the magnificent rearward view along the vast
and slightly curving Chesil Bank which stretches away to Abbotsbury
and the highlands of the beautiful West Dorset coast. The prison is
still farther ahead to the left. There would be fewer visitors to
Portland were it not for a morbid desire to see the convicts. Parties
are often made up to arrive in time to watch the men as they leave the
quarries in the late afternoon. Soldiers and warders mount guard along
the walls and the depressing sight should be shunned as much for one's
own sake as for that of the prisoners. Good taste, however, is a
virtue that usually has to give way before curiosity.

The road now descends to Easton, a place of remarkably wide streets
and a number of well-built churches, not all of the Establishment,
however. The solid old houses, consisting entirely of the local stone,
are not uninteresting and are in keeping with the dour and bleak
scenery of the island. The mistake of importing alien red bricks of a
most aggressive hue has not been made here. Those that flame from the
hill slope above Portland station only succeed in emphasizing the
general bleakness of their surroundings. At Easton clock tower a
street called "Straits" turns left and east and presently a broad road