ISLAND FOR SALE

Hokitika Guardian, 10 November 1932, Page 2

ISLAND FOR SALE

PART OF CHANNEL GROUP.

HISTORICAL associations

LONDON, November o. Broohou, smallest of the Channel Islands, was recently offered for sale. The purchaser may have a seat in the Parliament of Sark, a small British fuedal State, of which the island of Brechou is a. part, and a domain threequarters of a mile long and half a mile wide.

Victoy Hugo called the Channel Islands “Bits of France fallen into the sea and picked tm by England.” Considering that th e Channel Islands lie only a few miles off the coast of Normandy, and are separated from England by the entire width of the English Channel, Hugo was right—geographically. ,

But the Channel Islands have never been under French royal or French republican rule. They have been inherited continuously by the kings of England, as successors cf the dukes of Normandy, since 1204. The later days of the nineteenth century were marked by peace and prosperity for all the islands! In Jersey, potato farming brought great wealth to the inhabitants; in Guernsey granite quarries and tomato houses, though marring the island’s former picturesqueness and beauty, have increased its riches, The dairymen of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney have so increased 1 and improved their breeds of cattle that these are in demand everywhere, and are exported to the ends of the earth. RURAL JERSEY 'SCENERY.

Jersey, with its wooded valleys, its winding lanes, overarched with foliage; its orchards, its miles of glistening sand, its quaint old churches and picturesque granite farmhouses, and dominated always by the magnificent ruins of Mont Orgueil 'Castle, gives the impression of unbounded prosperity and fertility. Its lands having been owned always by a race of peasants proprietors the country shows that it has been cultivated for its own sake by men who loved it, and not by hirelings. . .

Naturally enough, so much beauty has bred a race of artists, the most famous being Monamy, Le Capelain, Jean the Miniaturist, Ouless, Sir John Millais, apd at the present day Messrs Lander, Le Maistre, and Blampied. , Guernsey, alas, is spoiled from a scenic standpoint by miles of greenhouses and acres of quarries. But its cliffs and are magnificent, and Moulin Huet is perhaps the most lovely spot in the islands. There are still to be found some wooden walks and lanes, old stone walls and arched gateways, which are yet unmarred by the utilitarian demands of modern agriculture and industry. - SAM peter, port.

Saint Peter Port, built on the eid'e of a hill, retains a certain amount of its former picturesqueness; it is traversed by a curious succession of Tong granite stairways, and, with its high red-roofed houses, has a foreign ap : pearance—“Oaudebeo ,@ur les epaulee de Harfleur,” as Vasqueri© described it when on a visit .to Victor Hugo, who was then living in the islands as an exile from France. It was during the Great Frenchman’s residence in Guernsey that he wrote much of his poetry and three of his best-known novels —“Les Miserables,” “The Man Who Laughs,” “The Toilers of the Sea.” In commemoration of his exile the French nation brought over ancl erected a statue to his memory in July, 1914. The lesser isles, Alderney, Sark Herm, and Jethou, are comprised in the bailiwick of Guernsey.

Alderney, described by Napoleon as the shield of England, was considered in the days before aircraft, submarines, and long-range guns revolutionised warfare, to be the key of the Channel. Consequently, during the Napoleonic wars, forts were erected here by the British Government at vast expense.

Inhospitable as the island looks to the wayfarer, it has a savage, untamed beauty denied to the other islands. It is surrounded by the most dangerous ourrents and the wildest seas in the English Channel. GRAVE FOR SHIPS.

Seven miles west of Alderney lie the famous Casquet rocks, “where the carcases of many a tall ship lie buried.” In spite of any petitions and numberless tragedies, it was not until 1723 that the British Government established a beacon light on these dangerous rocks, and then it was but a coal fire burning upon an armourer’s forge and kept alight by bellows.

Naturally, the fiercer the gale the more the light was extinguished by the spray, and the toll of ships so increased that in 1779 this primitive appliance was superseded by an oil light in a copper lantern. Nowadays there is a fog-signal station and a lighthouse with a brilliant revolving light.

No one can claim to have seen the Channel Islands until hqt has seen Sark, which is an epitome of the beauty of them all. It contains the wood valleys of Jersey, the brilliant lichen-covered cliffs of Guernsey, n nd its own carpet of wild flowers and seaanemones, while the natural magic of beauty is supplemented, to the initiate, by the magic-working powers of some of the old inhabitants.