[from Brown's Popular Guide, c.1887]

APPROACHING THE ISLAND.

What a magnificent bay, says Mr Cumming, is this of Douglas ! How deep the azure of its waters, and how picturesque the scene which fills up its back-ground! Few sights canbe more impressive than that which it presents to the stranger arriving on a clear summer eve. A deep inlet in a high rock-bound coast, it is guarded at its southern extremity by a lofty promontory with a tall lighthouse perched conspicuously on a rocky platform about half-way up its precipitous front, and crowned. with a large castellated building, the Douglas Head Hotel, which, from its position, commands one of the most magnificent marine views in the kingdom. Along the northern foot of this headland, which runs inland gradually increasing in height until it culminates in the dark peak of the Nunnery Howe, runs the estuary of the river Douglas and the inner harbour of the port, crowded with vessels of all sizes and many lands ; and from its seaward front, a little to the west of the Lighthouse, springs a noble breakwater, known as the Battery Pier, whose long, bent arm protects the eastern face of the outer harbour ; while its northern face is formed by the splendid Victoria Pier, towards which the steamer is rapidly approaching. The outer harbour is a broad expanse of water divided into two unequal portions by a smaller pier - the Old Red Pier, as it is called, built nearly a century ago by the Insular Government, at a cost of £26,000. To the north of the Landing Pier, standing upon a reef of rock in the centre of the southern half of the bay, known as the Conister Rock, is the picturesque Tower of Refuge, a small castellated building erected by Sir Wm. Hillary, the founder of the National Lifeboat Association, when resident at Fort Ann, Douglas, as a place of safety for the crews of vessels wrecked upon this dangerous rock. The headland at the northern extremity of the bay is Bank's Howe, a bluff promontory 400 feet high ; beyond stretches a long line of dark cliffs rent and fissured by the storms of countless ages, terminating in the tremendous precipices of Clay Head. In the foreground, along the margin of the semi-circular bay, and climbing the lofty grounds behind, is the Town of Douglas - the old town, with its narrow streets and mean buildings occupying the land at the mouth of the river ; and the new town, built expressly for visitors, lining the shore along the magnificent Loch Promenade and the Shore Road, and clustering in innumerable squares and terraces on the heights above. In the centre of the view, just to the south of the Iron Promenade Pier, is Villa Marina, the seat of H. B. Noble, Esq., the generous donor, in association with Mrs Noble, of the Noble Hospital and the Noble Orphanage ; and further to the north, the hill sides sweeping up from the shore are overhung with woods of the darkest, thickest verdure, forming a beautiful background for a grey, square, and massive building - Castle Mona, once the home of the Duke of Athol, but now the Castle Mona Hotel, so favourably known to visitors. A little to the north of Castle Mona the picturesque pile of buildings on the Falcon Cliff will remind the continental traveller of the Rhine Castles ; and, further still, nestling under the shadow of Bank's Howe, is Derby Castle, with its ornamental grounds, its enormous pavilion, and its elegant iron landing pier. On the hill above Derby Castle is the pretty village of Onchan, with the tapering spire of the Parish Church rising above a spur of the hill.

Such is a faint and very imperfect word picture of the beautiful Bay and Town or Douglas, with its more immediate surroundings. The more distant prospect is equally lovely. Above the town and the dark cliffs and headlands which guard its shores, the land rises in long gradual slopes, swell above swell, and ridge above ridge, until it culminates in a lofty mountain chain, which stretches along the background as far as the eye can reach, in a series of rocky peaks, whose wild rugged heads glimmer darkly through the golden summer haze. Far away to the right, at the extreme end of range, the huge mass of Maughold Head rises abruptly out of the sea ; and towering above it, the pointed head of North Barrule (1842 feet). Next in the giant brotherhood is Slieu Choar (1809 feet), and following it is Snaefell (2034 feet) the monarch of the Manx mountains, whose vast bulk, risings straight out of the deep cleft of the Laxey Glen, is seen almost from its summit to its base. South of Snaefell follow in succession the peak of Pen-y-Phot (1772 feet), and the blunt, rounded head of Garraghan (1520 feet), their point of Junction strongly marked by the deep furrow down which run the headwaters of the one of the main feeders of the Glas. Beyond Garraghan stands Colden Mountain, separated from it by the lovely mountain glen of Baldwin, through which flows the Glas, the principal branch of the Douglas river. Passing still southward, the eye next rests upon the double-headed mass of Greeba (1591 feet) connected with its more northern neighbour by a long wall-like ridge, and sinking to the south in a series of cliff-like precipices into the great central valley which crosses the Island from sea to sea between Douglas and Peel. This valley is very distinctly visible from our present point of view, the town of Douglas itself filling up its eastern opening, and climbing up the swelling slopes on either side, while beyond the lower hills between the sea and the mountains fall into the valley in soft harmonious sweeps. On the south side of the valley, opposite Greeba, stands the twin cliff-like hill of Creg Whallin, and beyondit, opposite Tynwald Mount at St. John's, is Slieuwhallin, nearly rising 1100 feet in one sweep out of the boggy Curragh Glas at its foot. Still further southward we catch a glimpse of the conical peak of South Barrule (1584), the Warfell of history, upon whose rugged sides and in the cyclopean entrenchments which they had formed upon its summit, and which remain almost perfect to the present day, the islanders were accustomed to take refuge from their invaders when unable to resist them in the open field. The intervening height of Mount Murray hides the lower part of Barrule, as it does also of the next great point, Cronk-ny-Irey-Lhaa - "the hill of the rising day" (1445 feet), but both are prominent and impressive: objects in the view of the southern half of the Island. The range is now continued at a rapidly decreasing height through Slieu-e-Carnane (900 feet) and the Bradda Hills (758 feet), separated from each other by the wild gorge of Fleshwick, and the Mull Hills, divided from Bradda by the lovely Bay of Port Erin, and it ends abruptly in the gigantic cliffs which form the southern extremity of the Calf Islet. A nobler background to a noble view could hardly be imagined; and the tout ensemble, as thus seen, is so perfect, so harmonious in form and colour, that the satisfied eye lingers upon it in rapt admiration, heedless of the lapse of time, until a cold shadow suddenly falls upon us, the shadow of the huge cliffs of Douglas Head, and the fairy-like scene vanishes away like a dream. Shaking ourselves together we look around to find ourselves passing the picturesque Lighthouse, and, as the roar of a gun resounds among the rocks and crags around, we moor alongside the Victoria Pier.