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Updated: June 14, 2025
We still thread our way close inshore through innumerable islands. One of them stands up stiff and straight, pointing like an obelisk to the sky. It is called the Finger Rock. We notice, too, very frequently, the white lighthouses, kept very clean. Then we go through a pass, two miles wide, called "Steep Island Pass," and are into the mouth of the Yangtsekiang River.
I never saw a more beautiful scene in any public building than on one of these bright sofas, fit for any parlor in New York, where lay a weary, plain, exhausted man resting sound asleep. Another triumph of Christianity that building is a Christianity that is erecting lighthouses on all the coasts, and planting its batteries on every hill-top, and spreading its banquets all the world over.
Last night we passed the narrow straits leading out of Shanghai harbor directly south. Two lighthouses blinked through the dusk of evening, the one to the north in short sharp notes, like a musician of the sea singing coasts, rapidly beating time. The light to the south seemed to count four in blinks and then hold its last count like a note of music.
This disaster attracted the notice of the Admiralty to the Isle of May light, when it was proposed to place it under the control of the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses. After many negotiations an Act of Parliament was passed in the session of 1814, empowering the commissioners to purchase the light duties and the Island of May, for the sum of sixty thousand pounds.
Some of the lighthouses and lightships on our coasts already have these submarine bells in addition to their lights, and in bad weather the bells send out their messages to warn ships of their proximity to a danger point.
There are five of them, the wicked Sirens, and three have lighthouses, but not very efficient ones, and apt to disappear in the fog, and there are reefs beneath on one of which we came to grief. The folk here think a wreck on these Maidens absolutely fatal, so we cannot be but most thankful for being alive, though it is a worse experience than the Rotuma earthquake.
Across the stream was another facade of piles, unbroken save for the little boatslips where the Life Saving men had their station. A strong sweet breeze came from the Lake. Far down ahead they could just make out the twin piers that, jutting into the Lake, continued artificially the course of the river. The lighthouses on their ends were dwarfed by distance.
"The years pass over the world, again the Giaours assemble in their myriads and threaten vengeance. But the Divan answers them: 'Olmaz! it cannot be. The Anatolian and the Rumelian lighthouses, at the entrance of the Bosphorus, will signal from their watch-towers the approach of the foreign war-ships.
How sweet and cool are these winding ways in the wonderful woods, overrun with vegetation, the bayberry, the sweet-fern, the wild roses, wood-lilies, and ferns! and it is ever a fresh surprise at a turn to find one's self so near the sea, and to open out an entrancing coast view, to emerge upon a promontory and a sight of summer isles, of lighthouses, cottages, villages Marblehead, Salem, Beverly.
In days of old, when men had neither heart nor head to erect lighthouses for the protection of their fellows, many a noble ship must have been dashed to pieces there, and many an awful shriek must have mingled with the hoarse roar of the surf round these rent and weatherworn rocks. A gentleman who visited the Longstone rock in 1838, describes it thus:
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