The Island, as its people are in the way of styling it, while not going so far as to deny existence to the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland—the Wight, as it is sometimes called by old writers—has for the first fact in its history that it was not always an island. It once made a promontory of Dorset, cut off from the mainland by a channel, whose rush of encountering tides seems still wearing away the shores so as to broaden a passage of half a dozen miles at the most, narrowed to abo

We need not cast about for the spot at which to make our landing on the shores of Wight. Lying opposite Portsmouth, with a crossing of half-an-hour or so, Ryde is the chief gateway of the Island and knot of its railways to every part, Cowes being more in touch with Southampton, and Yarmouth at the west end coming closest to the mainland port of Lymington. With its suburbs and dependencies, Ryde is considerably the largest place, having outgrown Newport, the titular capital, by a population large

Before holding on by road, rail, or boat along the coast, let us take a course through the centre of the Island, on which we can pay due respect to its capital. From Ryde, Cowes, and Freshwater run railways that meet at Newport, where the Medina begins to be navigable, and thence go off branches to Ventnor and Sandown. This junction, then, makes the radiating point of the Isle of Wight’s communications; and all its main roads converge at Newport, which, though not quite so large as Ryde, and not

The more direct route from Ryde to Ventnor is by road, rail, or boat along the east coast. From the Newport line diverges the old Ventnor railway, at Brading sending off a branchlet for Bembridge, then holding on behind Sandown and Shanklin. Thus on this side are strung together the oldest and one of the youngest settlements of the Isle of Wight. Brading, an hour’s walk from Ryde, seems an insignificant place now; but it claims to have been the ancient metropolis of the Island in days when St He

The “Back of the Island” is a familiar name given locally to the south coast, its eastern end more widely famed as the Undercliff. All this side is marked by sterner features and sharper outlines than the shallow creeks and flats of the northern shore; and through its geological history the Undercliff makes a peculiar exhibition of picturesqueness, while by its winter climate it is one of England’s most favoured nooks. Here a narrow strip of shore lies for miles walled in to the north by a steep

Our Pisgah for this stage is St Catherine’s Down, once held the highest point of the Island, but now dethroned, like Ben Macdhui, in favour of the Ben Nevis of St Boniface. It appears that in Georgian days Week Down was charged with hiding Shanklin Down from the view of St Catherine’s, as is no longer the case, the moral being that one or other of these heights has been raised or depressed, as may well have happened to superstructures upon so slippery foundation. In such a question of measuremen

At the south-western corner of the Island comes a cleft in the Central Downs, through which the little Yar flows across the narrowed end from Freshwater Gate, or Gap, whose name seems to denote the peculiar fact of a river having its source by the seashore, so near that in rough weather salt water is said to be washed into the stream. Through that hollow the spray of the waves can from north and south meet across the three miles of land; and unless something be done to protect such a weak spot,

Among its other misfortunes this little Yarmouth has had that of being over-crowed by the bloated renown of Great Yarmouth, which trumpets forth many high notes of interest, from its cathedral-like church and its ancient “Rows,” to its herring fleet and its Cockney paradises. The author of David Copperfield himself might not find much to say about the Isle of Wight Yarmouth, which yet, by its past dignity, seems to demand a chapter, where it must play at least the part of text like that blessed

We now come to one of the most important places in the Island, a place that holds up its double head for second to none in the way of dignity and fashion, though it began life as two small castles built by Henry VIII. at the Medina’s mouth to protect the harbour of Newport. “I knew when there was not above three or four houses at Cowes,” says Sir John Oglander, who yet had counted three hundred ships at anchor there; “and I was and am persuaded that if our wars and troubles had not unfortunately

Before turning away from the Solent, we may take a look at its northern shores, and the mainland ports making gateways of the strait and island that serve their populations as playground. Cowes lies opposite Southampton, with which it has direct communication up the long inlet of Southampton Water, the least expeditious passage to the Island, but the pleasantest in fine weather, most of the hour’s voyage being by that wooded arm of the Solent, where on one side stretch the heaths and copses of t