The cows are amiable creatures, and, as all the world knows, very pretty. They come up to be petted, instead of moving away like most cattle in England; but they make a virtue of necessity, since they are all fed chained or tethered, as in fact are all the animals in Jersey, the goats, and even the sheep, where sheep are found. There is one Jersey bull, in a field under Fort Regent, but he appears to be under sentence of excommunication.
The Jersey cabbages do not grow close to the ground like most cabbages, but from a kind of cabbage-tree, with a stalk six or seven feet long in some instances, from which very bad walking-sticks are made.
The cider is excellent, but very difficult to obtain from the inhabitants, for love or money, in any small quantity. During a residence of some months in Gorey we were unable to obtain any by the usual means. On one occasion our question as to the possibility of obtaining a gallon of cider being answered by a string of questions as to our own business: on another, a vendor of cider declaring that he had cider to sell, but that his house was very difficult to find in the labyrinth of lanes. We believed him, and gave up our search in despair.
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Mont Orgueil.
The crapauds are perhaps the most characteristic of all the island productions. The word is generally supposed to be the French for toad; but the Jersey crapaud is a distinct animal. Those who know old pictures, will remember certain imaginary creatures in the temptations of St. Anthony, and certain batrachian demons found only where no one would wish to go after death—such are the Jersey crapauds. We recollect mistaking one in the moonlight for a small dog lying in the road; to our surprise, instead of jumping up it waddled off. In the sister island of Guernsey they are said not to exist at all; hence the sobriquet of crapauds, as good-naturedly applied by the people of one island to that of the other.
THE SHAPE OF THE ISLAND,
as seen in the map, is that of some amphibious animal squatting on its hind-quarters, with the fore-feet, as the heralds would say, couped. A walrus would perhaps best represent it. Thus, Cape Grosnez would form the head, Noirmont Point and that next it the couped fore-legs, and La Rocq the os coxigis, or place where the tail ought to be. Geologically viewed, the island dips from north to south. On the northern side the rocks rise to the height of about three hundred feet; on the south they lose themselves in marshland and alluvium. It would appear as if the island at one time lay flat on the sea, with its inland springs bubbling up, and forming quagmires on its surface; then that some submarine force raised the northern part, and caused the springs to run southward, scooping themselves channels in their course, which form a most extraordinary ramification of valleys. There are few exceptions to this rule, amongst them are the lovely glens of Grêve de Lecq and Les Mouriers, which are watered by streams of about two miles in length; in the latter case a waterfall, very respectable for so small an island, being formed over the rocky escarpment.
Learned anatomists, or lovers of hot suppers,