I--THE VILLAGE
"And a mighty sing\'lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the
days of my life!" said Captain Jorgan, looking up at it.
Captain Jorgan had to look high to look at it, for the village was 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 yard 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 made of sharp irregular stones.
The old pack- saddle, long laid aside in most parts of England as one of
the appendages of its infancy, flourished here intact.