A by-road, a little over five miles long, runs under the face of Nine Barrows Down and Brenscombe Hill to Corfe.  It is a picturesque route and has some good views, but a much finer way, and but little longer, is along the top of the Downs themselves culminating at Challow Hill in a sudden sight of Corfe, backed by the imposing Knowle Hill.  This walk is even surpassed by that along the hills westwards from Corfe.  In this direction a similar by-road also runs under the long line of the Purbeck Hills, here so called, but on the south side of the range through Church Knowle which has an old cruciform church pulled about by “restorers” as far back as the early eighteenth century and several times since.  The village is pleasant in itself and beautifully situated.  A short distance farther is an ancient manor house dating from the fourteenth century.  Its name—­Barneston—­is said to perpetuate a Saxon landholder, Berne, so that the foundations of the house are far older than this period.  Over three miles from Corfe is the small church hamlet of Steeple; here a road bears upward to the right, and if the hill top has not been followed all the way from Corfe it should certainly be gained at this point.  Not far away and nearer Church Knowle is Creech Barrow, a cone-shaped hill commanding a most extensive and beautiful view, especially north-westwards over the heathy flats of the Frome valley to the distant Dorset-Somerset borderlands.  The narrow Purbeck range now makes obliquely for the coast, where it ends more than six miles from Corfe in the magnificent bluff of Flowers’ Barrow, or Ring’s Hill, above Worbarrow Bay.  This is without doubt the finest portion of the Dorset coast, not only for the striking outline of the cliffs and hills themselves but for the beautiful colouring of the strata and the contrasting emerald of the dells that break down to the purple-blue of the water.  Neither drawing nor photograph can give any idea of this exquisite blend of the stern and the beautiful.

[Illustration:  ARISH MEL.]

Eastwards, Gad Cliff guards the remote little village of Tyneham from the sea; certain portions of this precipice seem in imminent danger of falling into the water, so much do they overhang the beach.  At Kimmeridge Bay the cliff takes the sombre hue seen near Chapman’s Pool and the beach and water are discoloured by the broken shale that has fallen from the low cliff.  It is thought that a sort of jet jewellery was made here in Roman times; quantities of perforated discs have been found about the bay—­termed “coal money” by the fishermen.  The greasy nature of this curious form of clay is remarkable.  Naphtha has been obtained from it and various commercial enterprises have been started at Kimmeridge in connexion with the local product but all seem to have failed miserably because of the unendurable smell that emanates when combustion takes place.