of the race is not proceeding in such wholesale fashion--in the country
districts, at any rate--as the pessimists would have us believe.

At the northern extremity of Druridge Bay is the little fishing village
of Hauxley, with the chimneys and pit-head engines of Ratcliffe and
Broomhill Collieries darkening the sky to the south-west. Passing the
Bondicar rocks and rounding the point we enter the "fairway" for
Warkworth Harbour and Amble, where a brisk exportation of the coal of
the neighbourhood is carried on.

Lying out at sea, opposite Amble coastguard station, the white
lighthouse on Coquet Island keeps watch over the entrance to the
harbour. Some of the walls of the monastery, which stood on the island
in Saxon days, can now be seen forming part of the dwelling of the
lighthouse keeper. For many generations, too, hermit after hermit went
to dwell on this tiny islet, and St. Cuthbert himself is said to have
inhabited the little cell at one time. The island was captured by the
Scots in the Civil Wars of King Charles's reign, and held by them for a
time.

The situation of Amble, at the mouth of the Coquet, has been looked upon
as convenient from very early days, for there are signs which tell us of
a population here at an early period. Several cist-vaens, or ancient
stone coffins, have been found near the town, and a broken Roman altar
was unearthed in the neighbourhood. The monastery which stood here, like
that on Holy Island, was, in later times, inhabited by Benedictine
monks, who were under the authority of the Prior of Tynemouth. William
the Conqueror gave the then Prior the right to collect the tithes of the
little town.