The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

78
THE BEITISH ISLES.
the cliffs, and into these the waves rush with great noise. Isolated pinnacles,
washed by the ocean's foam, rise beyond the line of cliffs, whilst sunken rocks, the
remains of ancient promontories, still break the force of the waves, above which
they formerly rose. Old chronicles tell us of hills and tracts of coast which have
been swallowed up by the sea. Mount St. Michael, in Mount's Bay, rose formerly,
like its namesake off the coast of Normandy, in the midst of a wooded plain, which
Fig. i'2.—The "Akmed Kxiguts," near Land's End, Cornwall.
has disappeared beneath the waves. The church which crowns its summit is
referred to in ancient documents as " Hoar Kirk in the Wood," but the famous
Mount is now alternately a peninsula and an island, according to the state of the
tide. The wind, more esjjecially along the north coast, has likewise aided in
changing the form of the littoral region, for it has piled up dunes, or " towans,"
which travel towards the interior of the country until " fixed " by plantations, or
consolidated into sandstone through the agency of the oxide of iron which the