One Sunday morning in 1685 about three hundred soldiers arrived in the town from Lyme Regis, where the Duke of Monmouth had landed on his unfortunate expedition to seize the crown of his uncle James II.  They were opposed by the Dorset Militia and fired upon from the windows of the “Bull Inn,” where we were now staying, being eventually forced to retire.

In still later years Bridport was kept alive in anticipation of the hourly-expected invasion of England by the great Napoleon, who had prepared a large camp at Boulogne, the coast of Dorset being considered the most likely place for him to land.

(Distance walked thirty miles.)

Friday, November 10th.

We left the “Bull Hotel” a little before daylight this morning, as we had a long walk before us, and in about half an hour we reached Bridport Quay, where the river Brit terminates in the sea, now lying before us in all its beauty.  There were a few small ships here, with the usual knot of sailors on the quay; but the great object of interest was known as the Chesil Bank, “one of the most wonderful natural formations in the world.”  Nothing of the kind approaching its size existed elsewhere in Europe, for it extended from here to Portland, a distance of sixteen miles, and we could see it forming an almost straight line until it reached Portland, from which point it had been described as a rope of pebbles holding Portland to the mainland.  The Bank was composed of white flint pebbles, and for half its distance from the Portland end, an inlet from the sea resembling a canal, and called “the Fleet,” passed between the land and the Bank, which was here only 170 to 200 yards wide:  raised in the centre and sloping down to the water on either side.  The pebbles at the Bridport end of the Bank were very small, but at the Portland end they were about three inches in diameter, increasing in size so gradually that in the dark the fishermen could tell where they had landed by the size of the pebbles.  The presence of these stones had long puzzled both British and foreign savants, for there were no rocks of that nature near them on the sea-coast, and the trawlers said there were no pebbles like them in the sea.  Another mystery was why they varied in size in such a remarkable manner.  One thing was certain:  they had been washed up there by the gigantic waves that rolled in at times with terrific force from the Atlantic; and after the great storms had swept over the Bank many curious things had been found, including a large number of Roman coins of the time of Constantine, mediaeval coins and antique rings, seals, plates, and ingots of silver and gold—­possibly some of them from the treasure-ships of the Spanish Armada, which were said to have been sunk in the Bay.  Geologists will explain anything.  They now assert that the Bank is the result of tidal currents which sweep along the coast eastwards—­that they have destroyed beds in the cliff containing such pebbles, and as the current loses strength so the bigger and heavier stones are dropped first and the smaller only reach the places where the current disappears.