Читать книгу The Cambrian Tourist, or, Post-Chaise Companion through Wales: 1828 онлайн

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As a place of fashionable resort, not only for invalids, but for pleasure, its beautiful situation, both for walks and rides, the gentility of the company that frequent it, the easy and well regulated expence with which persons may with comfort and respectability reside here, must always ensure it an overflow of company in the season. The Avon below St. Vincent’s rocks is but little wider than it is at Bristol; but as the spring tides rise from 30 to 36 feet, the heaviest ships can navigate it at such times.

St. Vincent’s rocks, overhanging the Avon, afford to the pedestrian, and particularly to the botanist, an infinity of amusement; a great portion of the plants, if not peculiar to this spot, are but rarely to be met with elsewhere.

These rocks are chiefly composed of a species of chocolate-coloured marble, bearing a good polish; it is worked into chimney-pieces, &c., with good effect, the refuse burning into a strong and beautiful white lime. The reverberation of sound occasioned by the miners blasting these rocks, and the dreadful crash of the masses thus hurled from their native beds down the craggy precipices is grand and terrific; it is in the fissures of the rocks thus opened that those beautiful crystals, called Bristol stones, are found.