The interior of the island has many points of interest, but three or four days are sufficient for their exploration. A most interesting excursion is that to Newport and Carisbrooke Castle, so closely connected with the annals of Charles I. The visitor to Blackgang Chine will probably come to the conclusion that this and similar fissures in the chalk cliffs have been extolled beyond their deserts. There are combes in Devonshire, unknown to fame, far superior to either Blackgang or Shanklin, and at the latter especially, the elaborate artificiality of the whole scene is a little repellant, while the celebrated waterfall is commonly but a trickling rill. Blackgang is finer as a chasm, but the cascade is equally insignificant. The charm of "the Island" is, after all, in the climate, the colouring, and the glorious sea.
Few walks of richer or more luxuriant beauty can be found within the same compass than that from Blackgang Chine to Ventnor. First we reach the Sandrock Spring, a chalybeate fountain in a cliff; the water, it is said, contains alum and iron in an unexampled proportion. There is a cottage, hard by, displaying a few tumblers, but customers do not seem to be many. As a spa, Sandrock is too plainly a failure; and for real invigoration to health and spirits, we would rather try the pure ozone on the summit of St. Catherine's Cliff, than imbibe any quantity of the chalybeate. Let the visitor stay long and inhale the glorious sea-breeze. He will indeed have pure air below, that is, unless the breezes, as is their wont sometimes, are stirring the chalk in dust clouds--a kind of white simoom!
But at the best, the air of the Undercliffe is soft and languid, suggestive to the robust of delicate lungs; while yet those who are thus afflicted cannot be too thankful for a shelter where the atmosphere is as mild as it is pure, and the scene at every point, by land and sea, most beautiful.
We descend from St. Catherine's down to Niton, and thence pursue our way by Puckaster and Mirables Lawrence, where the church was once accounted the smallest in England (twelve by twenty feet in the interior), but is now enlarged by the addition of a chancel.
"Improvement" has been direfully at work since first we visited this little village and drank of the cool waters of "St. Lawrence's Well." The white, well-kept road is more level than the old picturesque path; instead of ivied cottages there are now shining villas with green blinds, walls for hedgerows, and, worst of all, the gushing spring flows somewhere in an inclosure to which there seems no access. It is a pity to have thus modernised so rustic and lovely a spot. But the flowers are still there, perfuming the air; and the myrtles and the fuchsias are not shrubs, but trees, and the luxuriance of southern climes surrounds us. As we walk along we speculate on the convulsions of nature that have prepared for us this little paradise. The undulating ground at our feet is evidently formed of vast masses of chalk and clay, which, at former periods, have broken bodily from the face of the cliff, slipped forward, and sunk down. The surface, disintegrated by aqueous and atmospheric action, has formed a kind of irregular terrace, the soil of which is most favourable to vegetation. The ground is now firm, the process of disintegration from above seems almost arrested; but there are even yet memories of landslips on a large scale, of which the traces are still visible.