A Message from the Sea

*Captain Jorgan had to look high to look at it, for the village ftffThwas built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff. There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level ffyard in it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting here and there, and there and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession of stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed down the village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and Thmade of sharp irregular stones. The old pack-saddle, long laid aside in most parts of England as one of the appendages of its infancy, flflourished here intact. Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeys toiled slowly up the staves of the ladders, bearing fish, and coal, and such other cargo as was unshipping at the pier from the dancing flfleet of village boats, and from two or three little coasting traders.*