From nursery days Dorsetshire had always been connected, íor me, with memories of a special brand of salt butter "the best Dosset," supplied in tubs, economical for large families on small incomes, and exceedingly nasty. Now after a fortnight's roaming about the delectable country the grievance of childhood is effaced by pictures of one of the world's loveliest spots, comparatively unknown and wholly unspoilt. Too many of our old towns and villages have thrown out an ugly, ragged fringe of garish bungalows and gimcrack villas, the worst contribution which any age has made to posterity.
In Dorsetshire even the big. towns have escaped this desecration, beginning and ending on clear boundaries between the high rounded hills chequered with an enchanting pattern of woods and fields, and the deep warm valleys between. And when new houses have been built, they are for the most part well and simply designed to harmonize with the landscape and their older neighbours. One understands the pride with which a friend in Shanghai once said, when birthplaces were being discussed, "I in Dorset."
At Bridport, about a mile and a half from the sea, there is a hotel which may have begun life as a smuggler's cottage a century or two ago, right on the beach, but sheltered from the southwest gales by banks of fine single, the beginnings of that curious high Chesil Bank which runs straight as a ruler for 20 miles to Portland. There is a tiny harbour with a narrow entrance between two little piers from which industrious anglers angle perpetually for whiting and mackerel, but nothing larger than small coasters ever enter, and they only when the sea is calm.
It is said that, whether from Bridport, Seaton or Sidmouth, you never sight a big steamship. The tremendous depth of the bay between Portland Bill and Start Point explains that. But West Bay is dangerous water in southwest storms, and many a boat has come to grief on the Chesil Bank. There is an undertow too, when the sea is rough, of which swimmers must be wary.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.