Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
After breakfast I walked to the extremity of the cape, and dined with Mr. Robert Colman, the principal light-keeper. He was a most ingenious man, and an expert in the use of tools. The United States Light House Establishment selects its light-keepers from the retired army of wounded soldiers.
The year 1759 closed with a series of very stormy weather, and as this was the first winter’s trial of the lighthouse, it may be supposed that there was some anxiety among the more timid and doubting of those concerned in it. Especially was the courage of the light-keepers put to the test.
The tower on the South Farallon is, therefore, low; and this, no doubt, is an advantage also to the light-keepers, who are less exposed to the buffetings of the storm than if their labor and care lay at a higher elevation.
This room is fourteen feet in diameter and twenty-seven feet high; it is used as a watch-room by the light-keepers, and was probably intended as a place to which they could be admitted to hear prayers or mass on the occasion of a royal visit.
When only two light-keepers inhabited the building, it happened that some visitors, who had repaired thither to gratify their curiosity by an examination of the lighthouse, observed to one of the men, how very comfortably they might live there in a state of retirement. ‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘we might live comfortably enough, if we could have the use of our tongues; but it is now a full month since my partner and I have spoken to each other.’
Stevenson was desirous of protecting them, in hopes of taming them, so as to gain that facility of studying their habits which was afforded at Small’s Lighthouse, off the coast of Pembrokeshire, a favourite resort of seals, where, by gentle treatment, they had become so tame and familiar as to eat bread out of the hands of the light-keepers.
The light-keepers had been driven not only from all the rooms and the staircase, but to avoid the red hot timber, and the falling of the bolts upon them, they had been forced to creep into a hole or cave on the east side of the rock, where they were found almost in a state of stupefaction.
There is no shirking of the onerous duties of their position. Too much praise cannot be given to these light-keepers in their lonely towers, or to the intelligent heads which direct and govern their important work. As I was leaving the light-house, a young woman approached me, and introducing herself as a visitor to the keeper's family, said she had a favor to ask.
There are four lighthouse-keepers, three of whom are always on duty, while one is ashore. If the weather offers no impediment, the light-keepers are each six weeks at the rock and a fortnight ashore with their families.
No one lives here now but the light-keepers. When we feel the need of company, we look across to the village of Port Angeles and the Indian ranch. It is very striking to see how much more picturesque one is than the other, in the distance.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking