I had seen a good many colonies of this
gull before at various breeding stations on the coast--south,
west, and east--but never in conditions so singularly favourable
as at this spot. From the vale where the Branscombe pours its
clear waters through rough masses of shingle into the sea the
ground to the east rises steeply to a height of nearly five
hundred feet; the cliff is thus not nearly so high as many
another, but it has features of peculiar interest. Here, in
some former time, there has been a landslip, a large portion
of the cliff at its highest part falling below and forming a
sloping mass a chalky soil mingled with huge fragments of rock,
which lies like a buttress against the vertical precipice and
seems to lend it support. The fall must have occurred a very
long time back, as the vegetation that overspreads the rude
slope--hawthorn, furze, and ivy--has an ancient look. Here
are huge masses of rock standing isolated, that resemble in
their forms ruined castles, towers, and churches, some of them
completely overgrown with ivy. On this rough slope, under the
shelter of the cliff, with the sea at its feet, the villagers
have formed their cultivated patches. The patches, wildly
irregular in form, some on such steeply sloping ground as to
suggest the idea that they must have been cultivated on all
fours, are divided from each other by ridges and by masses of
rock, deep fissures in the earth, strips of bramble and thorn
and furze bushes.
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