Now we open Rillage, and now Hillsborough, two of the most
picturesque of headlands; see how their round foreheads of glistening
grey shale sink down into two dark, jagged moles, running far out to
seaward, and tapering off, each into a long black horizontal line,
vanishing at last beneath its lace-fringe of restless hissing foam.
How grand the contrast of the lightness of those sea-lines, with the
solid mass which rests upon them! Look, too, at the glaring lights
and Tartarean shadows of those chasms and caves, which the tide never
leaves, or the foot of man explores; and listen how, at every rush of
the long ground-swell, mysterious mutterings, solemn sighs, sudden
thunders, as of a pent-up earthquake, boom out of them across the
glassy swell. Look at those blasts of delicate vapour that shoot up
from hidden rifts, and hang a moment, and vanish; and those green
columns of wave which rush mast-high up the perpendicular walls, and
then fall back and outward in a waterfall of foam, lacing the black
rocks with a thousand snowy streams. There they fall, and leap, and
fall again.
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