Among these islands was planted one of the first beacons erected off the British coasts. At the outset it was merely a wood bonfire, then a brazier, and finally a lighthouse, which crowned St. Agnes’s height, to guide the mariner on his way. But to-day the St. Agnes light is no more than a memory. Two or three years ago the keepers quenched the light in the misty grey of the dawn for the last time. The vigil which had been maintained over shipping uninterruptedly through some 230 years was ended. On a neighbouring point a superior modern light had been planted which took up the sacred duty. Although established in 1680, the St. Agnes was not the oldest light in England. This distinction belongs to the North Foreland light on the East Kentish coast, which was set going as far back as 1636. This warning was shed from a tower of timber, lath, and plaster, built by Sir John Meldrum, but it fell a victim to fire forty-seven years later. The light was reconstructed promptly, and to-day throws a red and white gleam of 35,000 candle-power, which may be picked up twenty miles away.
THE “BISHOP,” THE WESTERN OUTPOST OF ENGLAND.
This tower marks a treacherous reef, rising from the depths of the Atlantic off the Scilly Islands. Its slim proportions are familiar to Transatlantic passengers.]
The south-western extremity of England, however, is far more to be dreaded than the south-eastern. Here Nature mixed land and water in an inextricable maze during her moulding process. Deep, tortuous, wide channels separate rugged granite islets, while long, ugly ridges creep stealthily out to sea beneath the pall of water, ready to trap the unsuspecting vessel which ventures too closely. If one were to take a map of this part of the country, were to dig one leg of a compass into the Lizard Head, stretching the other so as to reach the Eddystone light, and then were to describe a circle, the enclosed space would contain more famous sea-rock lights than a similar area on any other part of the globe. Within its circumference there would be the Eddystone, Bishop Rock, Wolf, and Longships, each of which lifts its cupola above a wave-swept ledge of rocks.
The need for an adequate indication of the Scillies was felt long before the Eddystone gained its ill fame. These scattered masses of granite, numbering about 140 in all, break up the expanse of the Atlantic about twenty miles south-west of the Cornish mainland. Now, the maritime traffic flowing in and out of the English Channel is divided into two broad classes--the coastal and the oversea trade respectively. The former is able to creep through the dangerous channel separating the Scillies from the mainland, but the latter has to make a détour to the south. One fringe of the broken cluster is as dangerous as the other, so that both streams of trade demand protection.