The Lighthouse – text excerpts
Jan 1 — 1796. This day — my first on the light-house — I make this entry in my Diary, as agreed on with De Grät. As regularly as I can keep the journal, I will — but there is no telling what may happen to a man all alone as I am — I may get sick, or worse… So far well! […] My spirits are beginning to revive already, at the mere thought of being — for once in my life at least — thoroughly alone […].
I could half fancy there was some peculiarity in the echo of these cylindrical walls — but oh, no! — this is all nonsense.
Jan.2. I have passed this day in a species of ecstasy that I find impossible to describe. […] The wind lulled about day-break, and by the afternoon the sea had gone down materially… Nothing to be seen, with the telescope even, but ocean and sky, with an occasional gull.
Jan. 3. A dead calm all day. Towards evening, the sea looked very much like glass. A few sea-weeds came in sight; but besides them absolutely nothing all day — not even the slightest speck of cloud…
Occupied myself in exploring the light-house… It is a very lofty one — as I find to my cost when I have to ascend its interminable stairs — not quite 160 feet, I should say, from the low-water mark to the top of the lantern. From the bottom inside the shaft, however, the distance to the summit is 180 feet at least: — thus the floor is 20 feet below the surface of the sea, even at low-tide…
I should feel myself secure in it during the fiercest hurricane that ever raged — and yet I have heard seamen say occasionally, with a wind at South-West, the sea has been known to run higher here than any where with the single exception of the Western opening of the Straits of Magellan.
The basis on which the structure rests seems to me to be chalk…