Description

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"And a mighty sing'lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days of my life " said CaptainJorgan, looking up at it.Captain Jorgan had to look high to look at it, for the village was built sheer up the face of a steepand lofty cliff. There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yardin it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to oneanother, and twisting here and there, and there and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession ofstages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed down the village by the stavesbetween, some six feet wide or so, and made of sharp irregular stones. The old pack-saddle, longlaid aside in most parts of England as one of the appendages of its infancy, flourished hereintact. Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeys toiled slowly up the staves of the ladders, bearingfish, and coal, and such other cargo as was unshipping at the pier from the dancing fleet of villageboats, and from two or three little coasting traders. As the beasts of burden ascended laden, ordescended light, they got so lost at intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke, that they seemedto dive down some of the village chimneys, and come to the surface again far off, high aboveothers. No two houses in the village were alike, in chimney, size, shape, door, window, gable, rooftree, anything. The sides of the ladders were musical with water, running clear and bright. Thestaves were musical with the clattering feet of the pack-horses and pack-donkeys, and the voices ofthe fishermen urging them up, mingled with the voices of the fishermen's wives and their manychildren. The pier was musical with the wash of the sea, the creaking of capstans and windlasses, and the airy fluttering of little vanes and sails. The rough, sea-bleached boulders of which the pierwas made, and the whiter boulders of the shore, were brown with drying nets. The red-brown cliffs, richly wooded to their extremest verge, had their softened and beautiful forms reflected in the bluestwater, under the clear North Devonshire sky of a November day without a cloud. The village itselfwas so steeped in autumnal foliage, from the houses lying on the pier to the topmost round of thetopmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird's-nesting, and was (as indeed it was) awonderful climber. And mentioning birds, the place was not without some music from them too;for the rook was very busy on the higher levels, and the gull with his flapping wings was fishing inthe bay, and the lusty little robin was hopping among the great stone blocks and iron rings of thebreakwater, fearless in the faith of his ancestors, and the Children in the Woo.