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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rambles Beyond Railways;, by Wilkie Collins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Rambles Beyond Railways;
+       or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot
+
+Author: Wilkie Collins
+
+Release Date: March 20, 2009 [EBook #28367]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS; ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Barbara Kosker and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS.
+
+[Illustration: LAMORNA COVE.]
+
+
+
+
+  RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS;
+
+  OR,
+
+  Notes in Cornwall taken A-Foot.
+
+
+
+
+  BY WILKIE COLLINS,
+
+  AUTHOR OF
+  "ANTONINA," "THE WOMAN IN WHITE," ETC.
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: The Land's End, Cornwall.]
+
+
+
+  _NEW EDITION._
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  RICHARD BENTLEY: NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
+  Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
+  1861.
+
+
+
+
+  DEDICATED TO
+
+  THE COMPANION OF MY WALK THROUGH CORNWALL,
+
+  HENRY C. BRANDLING.
+
+
+
+
+  PREFACE
+
+  TO
+
+  THE PRESENT EDITION.
+
+
+I visited Cornwall, for the first time, in the summer and autumn of
+1850; and in the winter of the same year, I wrote this book.
+
+At that time, the title attached to these pages was strictly descriptive
+of the state of the county, when my companion and I walked through it.
+But when, little more than a year afterwards, a second edition of this
+volume was called for, the all-conquering railway had invaded Cornwall
+in the interval, and had practically contradicted me on my own
+title-page.
+
+To rechristen my work was out of the question--I should simply have
+destroyed its individuality. Ladies may, and do, often change their
+names for the better; but books enjoy no such privilege. In this
+embarrassing position, I ended by treating the ill-timed intrusion of
+the railway into my literary affairs, as a certain Abbe (who was also an
+author,) once treated the overthrow of the Swedish Constitution, in the
+reign of Gustavus the Third. Having written a profound work, to prove
+that the Constitution, as at that time settled, was secure from all
+political accidents, the Abbe was surprised in his study, one day, by
+the appearance of a gentleman, who disturbed him over the correction of
+his last proof-sheet. "Sir!" said the gentleman; "I have looked in to
+inform you that the Constitution has just been overthrown." To which the
+Abbe replied:--"Sir! they may overthrow the Constitution, but they can't
+overthrow MY BOOK"--and he quietly went on with his work.
+
+On precisely similar principles, I quietly went on with MY
+TITLE-PAGE.
+
+So much for the name of the book. For the book itself, as published in
+its present form, I have a last word to say, before these prefatory
+lines come to an end.
+
+Cornwall no longer offers the same comparatively untrodden road to the
+literary traveller which it presented when I went there. Many writers
+have made the journey successfully, since my time. Mr. Walter White, in
+his "Londoner's Walk to the Land's End," has followed me, and rivalled
+me, on my own ground. Mr. Murray has published "The Handbook to Cornwall
+and Devon"--and detached essays on Cornish subjects, too numerous to
+reckon up, have appeared in various periodical forms. Under this change
+of circumstances, it is not the least of the debts which I owe to the
+encouraging kindness of my readers, that they have not forgotten
+"Rambles Beyond Railways," and that the continued demand for the book is
+such as to justify the appearance of the present edition. I have, as I
+believe, to thank the unambitious purpose with which I originally
+wrote, for thus keeping me in remembrance. All that my book attempts is
+frankly to record a series of personal impressions; and, as a necessary
+consequence--though my title is obsolete, and my pedestrian adventures
+are old-fashioned--I have a character of my own still left, which
+readers can recognise; and the homely travelling narrative which I
+brought from Cornwall, eleven years since, is not laid on the shelf yet.
+
+I have spared no pains to make these pages worthy of the approval of new
+readers. The book has been carefully revised throughout; and certain
+hastily-written passages, which my better experience condemns as
+unsuited to the main design, have been removed altogether. Two of the
+lithographic illustrations, (now no longer in existence) with which my
+friend and fellow-traveller, Mr. Brandling, adorned the previous
+editions, have been copied on wood, as accurately as circumstances would
+permit; and a "Postscript" has been added, which now appears in
+connexion with the original narrative, for the first time.
+
+The little supplementary sketch thus presented, describes a cruise to
+the Scilly Islands, (taken five years after the period of my visit to
+Cornwall), and completes the round of my travelling experiences in the
+far West of England. These newly-added pages are written, I am afraid,
+in a tone of somewhat boisterous gaiety--which I have not, however, had
+the heart to subdue, because it is after all the genuine offspring of
+the "harum-scarum" high spirits of the time. The "Cruise of the Tomtit"
+was, from first to last, a practical burlesque; and the good-natured
+reader will, I hope, not think the worse of me, if I beg him to stand on
+no ceremony and to laugh his way through it as heartily as he can.
+
+ HARLEY STREET, LONDON,
+
+ _March, 1861_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                     PAGE
+
+     I. A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION                        1
+
+    II. A CORNISH FISHING TOWN                          5
+
+   III. HOLY WELLS AND DRUID RELICS                    23
+
+    IV. CORNISH PEOPLE                                 55
+
+     V. LOO-POOL                                       86
+
+    VI. THE LIZARD                                     97
+
+   VII. THE PILCHARD FISHERY                          120
+
+  VIII. THE LAND'S END                                139
+
+    IX. BOTALLACK MINE                                155
+
+     X. THE MODERN DRAMA IN CORNWALL                  180
+
+    XI. THE ANCIENT DRAMA IN CORNWALL                 197
+
+   XII. THE NUNS OF MAWGAN                            216
+
+  XIII. LEGENDS OF THE NORTHERN COAST                 231
+
+
+  POSTSCRIPT.
+
+  THE CRUISE OF THE TOMTIT TO THE SCILLY ISLANDS      253
+
+
+
+
+RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+  DEAR READER,
+
+When any friend of yours or mine, in whose fortunes we take an interest,
+is about to start on his travels, we smooth his way for him as well as
+we can, by giving him a letter of introduction to such connexions of
+ours as he may find on his line of route. We bespeak their favourable
+consideration for him by setting forth his good qualities in the best
+light possible; and then leave him to make his own way by his own
+merit--satisfied that we have done enough in procuring him a welcome
+under our friend's roof, and giving him at the outset a claim to our
+friend's estimation.
+
+Will you allow me, reader (if our previous acquaintance authorizes me
+to take such a liberty), to follow the custom to which I have just
+adverted; and to introduce to your notice this Book, as a friend of mine
+setting forth on his travels, in whose well-being I feel a very lively
+interest. He is neither so bulky nor so distinguished a person as some
+of the predecessors of his race, who may have sought your attention in
+years gone by, under the name of "Quarto," and in magnificent clothing
+of Morocco and Gold. All that I can say for his outside is, that I have
+made it as neat as I can--having had him properly thumped into wearing
+his present coat of decent cloth, by the most competent book-tailor I
+could find. As for his intrinsic claims to your kindness, he has only
+two that I shall venture to advocate. In the first place he is able to
+tell you something about a part of your own country which is still too
+rarely visited and too little known. He will speak to you of one of the
+remotest and most interesting corners of our old English soil. He will
+tell you of the grand and varied scenery; the mighty Druid relics; the
+quaint legends; the deep, dark mines; the venerable remains of early
+Christianity; and the pleasant primitive population of the county of
+CORNWALL. You will inquire, can we believe him in all that he
+says? This brings me at once to his second qualification--he invariably
+speaks the truth. If he describes scenery to you, it is scenery that he
+saw and noted on the spot; and if he adds some little sketches of
+character, I answer for him, on my own responsibility, that they are
+sketches drawn from the life.
+
+Have I said enough about my friend to interest you in his fortunes, when
+you meet him wandering hither and thither over the great domain of the
+Republic of Letters--or, must I plead more warmly in his behalf? I can
+only urge on you that he does not present himself as fit for the top
+seats at the library table,--as aspiring to the company of those above
+him,--of classical, statistical, political, philosophical, historical,
+or antiquarian high dignitaries of his class, of whom he is at best but
+the poor relation. Treat him not, as you treat such illustrious guests
+as these! Toss him about anywhere, from hand to hand, as good-naturedly
+as you can; stuff him into your pocket when you get into the railway;
+take him to bed with you, and poke him under the pillow; present him to
+the rising generation, to try if he can amuse _them_; give him to the
+young ladies, who are always predisposed to the kind side, and may make
+something of him; introduce him to "my young masters" when they are
+idling away a dull morning over their cigars. Nay, advance him if you
+will, to the notice of the elders themselves; but take care to ascertain
+first that they are people who only travel to gratify a hearty
+admiration of the wonderful works of Nature, and to learn to love their
+neighbour better by seeking him at his own home--regarding it, at the
+same time, as a peculiar privilege, to derive their satisfaction and
+gain their improvement from experiences on English ground. Take care of
+this; and who knows into what high society you may not be able to
+introduce the bearer of the present letter! In spite of his habit of
+rambling from subject to subject in his talk, much as he rambled from
+place to place in his travels, he may actually find himself, one day,
+basking on Folio Classics beneath the genial approval of a Doctor of
+Divinity, or trembling among Statutes and Reports under the learned
+scrutiny of a Sergeant at Law!
+
+  W. C.
+
+  HARLEY STREET, LONDON,
+
+  _March, 1861._
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A CORNISH FISHING TOWN.
+
+
+The time is ten o'clock at night--the scene, a bank by the roadside,
+crested with young fir-trees, and affording a temporary place of repose
+to two travellers, who are enjoying the cool night air, picturesquely
+extended flat on their backs--or rather, on their knapsacks, which now
+form part and parcel of their backs. These two travellers are, the
+writer of this book, and an artist friend who is the companion of his
+rambles. They have long desired to explore Cornwall together, on foot;
+and the object of their aspirations has been at last accomplished, in
+the summer-time of the year eighteen hundred and fifty.
+
+In their present position, the travellers are (to speak geographically)
+bounded towards the east by a long road winding down the side of a rocky
+hill; towards the west, by the broad half-dry channel of a tidal river;
+towards the north, by trees, hills, and upland valleys; and towards the
+south, by an old bridge and some houses near it, with lights in their
+windows faintly reflected in shallow water. In plainer words, the
+southern boundary of the prospect around them represents a place called
+Looe--a fishing-town on the south coast of Cornwall, which is their
+destination for the night.
+
+They had, by this time, accomplished their initiation into the process
+of walking under a knapsack, with the most complete and encouraging
+success. You, who in these days of vehement bustle, business, and
+competition, can still find time to travel for pleasure alone--you, who
+have yet to become emancipated from the thraldom of railways, carriages,
+and saddle-horses--patronize, I exhort you, that first and
+oldest-established of all conveyances, your own legs! Think on your
+tender partings nipped in the bud by the railway bell; think of crabbed
+cross-roads, and broken carriage-springs; think of luggage confided to
+extortionate porters, of horses casting shoes and catching colds, of
+cramped legs and numbed feet, of vain longings to get down for a moment
+here, and to delay for a pleasant half hour there--think of all these
+manifold hardships of riding at your ease; and the next time you leave
+home, strap your luggage on your shoulders, take your stick in your
+hand, set forth delivered from a perfect paraphernalia of incumbrances,
+to go where you will, how you will--the free citizen of the whole
+travelling world! Thus independent, what may you not accomplish?--what
+pleasure is there that you cannot enjoy? Are you an artist?--you can
+stop to sketch every point of view that strikes your eye. Are you a
+philanthropist?--you can go into every cottage and talk to every human
+being you pass. Are you a botanist, or geologist?--you may pick up
+leaves and chip rocks wherever you please, the live-long day. Are you a
+valetudinarian?--you may physic yourself by Nature's own simple
+prescription, walking in fresh air. Are you dilatory and
+irresolute?--you may dawdle to your heart's content; you may change all
+your plans a dozen times in a dozen hours; you may tell "Boots" at the
+inn to call you at six o'clock, may fall asleep again (ecstatic
+sensation!) five minutes after he has knocked at the door, and may get
+up two hours later, to pursue your journey, with perfect impunity and
+satisfaction. For, to you, what is a time-table but waste-paper?--and a
+"booked place" but a relic of the dark ages? You dread, perhaps,
+blisters on your feet--sponge your feet with cold vinegar and water,
+change your socks every ten miles, and show me blisters after that, if
+you can! You strap on your knapsack for the first time, and five minutes
+afterwards feel an aching pain in the muscles at the back of your
+neck--walk _on_, and the aching will walk _off_! How do we overcome our
+first painful cuticular reminiscences of first getting on horseback?--by
+riding again. Apply the same rule to carrying the knapsack, and be
+assured of the same successful result. Again I say it, therefore--walk,
+and be merry; walk, and be healthy; walk, and be your own master!--walk,
+to enjoy, to observe, to improve, as no riders can!--walk, and you are
+the best peripatetic impersonation of holiday enjoyment that is to be
+met with on the surface of this work-a-day world!
+
+How much more could I not say in praise of travelling on our own
+neglected legs? But it is getting late; dark night-clouds are marching
+slowly over the sky, to the whistling music of the wind; we must leave
+our bank by the roadside, pass one end of the old bridge, walk along a
+narrow winding street, and enter our hospitable little inn, where we are
+welcomed by the kindest of landladies, and waited on by the fairest of
+chambermaids. If Looe prove not to be a little sea-shore paradise
+to-morrow, then is there no virtue in the good omens of to-night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first point for which we made in the morning, was the old bridge;
+and a most picturesque and singular structure we found it to be. Its
+construction dates back as far as the beginning of the fifteenth
+century. It is three hundred and eighty-four feet long, and has fourteen
+arches, no two of which are on the same scale. The stout buttresses
+built between each arch, are hollowed at the top into curious triangular
+places of refuge for pedestrians, the roughly paved roadway being just
+wide enough to allow the passage of one cart at a time. On some of these
+buttresses, towards the middle, once stood an oratory, or chapel,
+dedicated to St. Anne; but no vestiges of it now remain. The old bridge
+however, still rises sturdily enough on its ancient foundations; and,
+whatever the point from which its silver-grey stones and quaint arches
+of all shapes and sizes may be beheld, forms no mean adjunct to the
+charming landscape around it.
+
+Looe is known to have existed as a town in the reign of Edward I.; and
+it remains to this day one of the prettiest and most primitive places
+in England. The river divides it into East and West Looe; and the view
+from the bridge, looking towards the two little colonies of houses thus
+separated, is in some respects almost unique.
+
+At each side of you rise high ranges of beautifully wooded hills; here
+and there a cottage peeps out among the trees, the winding path that
+leads to it being now lost to sight in the thick foliage, now visible
+again as a thin serpentine line of soft grey. Midway on the slopes
+appear the gardens of Looe, built up the acclivity on stone terraces one
+above another; thus displaying the veritable garden architecture of the
+mountains of Palestine magically transplanted to the side of an English
+hill. Here, in this soft and genial atmosphere, the hydrangea is a
+common flower-bed ornament, the fuchsia grows lofty and luxuriant in the
+poorest cottage garden, the myrtle flourishes close to the sea-shore,
+and the tender tamarisk is the wild plant of every farmer's hedge.
+Looking lower down the hills yet, you see the houses of the town
+straggling out towards the sea along each bank of the river, in mazes of
+little narrow streets; curious old quays project over the water at
+different points; coast-trade vessels are being loaded and unloaded,
+built in one place and repaired in another, all within view; while the
+prospect of hills, harbour, and houses thus quaintly combined together,
+is beautifully closed by the English Channel, just visible as a small
+strip of blue water, pent in between the ridges of two promontories
+which stretch out on either side to the beach.
+
+Such is Looe as beheld from a distance; and it loses none of its
+attractions when you look at it more closely. There is no such thing as
+a straight street in the place. No martinet of an architect has been
+here, to drill the old stone houses into regimental regularity.
+Sometimes you go down steps into the ground floor, sometimes you mount
+an outside staircase to get to the bed-rooms. Never were such places
+devised for hide and seek since that exciting nursery pastime was first
+invented. No house has fewer than two doors leading into two different
+lanes; some have three, opening at once into a court, a street, and a
+wharf, all situated at different points of the compass. The shops, too,
+have their diverting irregularities, as well as the town. Here you might
+call a man a Jack of all trades, as the best and truest compliment you
+could pay him--for here one shop combines in itself a drug-mongering,
+cheese-mongering, stationery, grocery, and oil and Italian line of
+business; to say nothing of such cosmopolitan miscellanies as wrinkled
+apples, dusty nuts, cracked slate pencils and fly-blown mock jewellery.
+The moral good which you derive, in the first pane of a window, from the
+contemplation of memoirs of murdered missionaries and serious tracts
+against intemperance and tight-lacing, you lose in the second, before
+such worldly temptations as gingerbread, shirt-studs, and fascinating
+white hats for Sunday wear, at two and ninepence apiece. Let no man
+rashly say he has seen all that British enterprise can do for the
+extension of British commerce, until he has carefully studied the
+shop-fronts of the tradesmen of Looe.
+
+Then, when you have at last threaded your way successfully through the
+streets, and have got out on the beach, you see a pretty miniature bay,
+formed by the extremity of a green hill on the right, and by fine jagged
+slate-rocks on the left. Before this seaward quarter of the town is
+erected a strong bulwark of rough stones, to resist the incursion of
+high tides. Here, the idlers of the place assemble to lounge and gossip,
+to look out for any outward-bound ships that are to be seen in the
+Channel, and to criticise the appearance and glorify the capabilities of
+the little fleet of Looe fishing-boats, riding snugly at anchor before
+them at the entrance of the bay.
+
+The inhabitants number some fourteen hundred; and are as good-humoured
+and unsophisticated a set of people as you will meet with anywhere. The
+Fisheries and the Coast Trade form their principal means of subsistence.
+The women take a very fair share of the hard work out of the men's
+hands. You constantly see them carrying coals from the vessels to the
+quay in curious hand-barrows: they laugh, scream, and run in each
+other's way incessantly: but these little irregularities seem to assist,
+rather than impede them, in the prosecution of their tasks. As to the
+men, one absorbing interest appears to govern them all. The whole day
+long they are mending boats, painting boats, cleaning boats, rowing
+boats, or, standing with their hands in their pockets, looking at boats.
+The children seem to be children in size, and children in nothing else.
+They congregate together in sober little groups, and hold mysterious
+conversations, in a dialect which we cannot understand. If they ever do
+tumble down, soil their pinafores, throw stones, or make mud pies, they
+practise these juvenile vices in a midnight secrecy which no stranger's
+eye can penetrate.
+
+In that second period of the dark ages, when there were High Tories and
+rotten boroughs in the land, Looe (containing at that time nothing like
+the number of inhabitants which it now possesses) sent Four Members to
+Parliament! The ceremony by which two of these members were elected, as
+it was described to me by a man who remembered witnessing it, must have
+been an impressive sight indeed to any foreigner interested in studying
+the representative system of this country. On the morning of the "Poll,"
+one division of the borough sent _six_ electors, and another _four_, to
+record their imposing aggregate of votes in favour of any two smiling
+civil gentlemen, who came, properly recommended, to ask for them. This
+done, the ten electors walked quietly home in one direction, and the two
+members walked quietly off in another, to perform the fatiguing duty of
+representing their constituents' interests in Imperial Parliament. The
+election was quite a snug little family affair, in these "good old
+times." The ten gentlemen who voted, and the other two gentlemen who
+took their votes, just made up a comfortable compact dozen, all
+together!
+
+But this state of things was too harmonious to last in such a world of
+discord as ours. The day of innovation came: turbulent Whigs and
+Radicals laid uncivil hands on the Looe polling-booth, and politically
+annihilated the pleasant party of twelve. Since that disastrous period
+the town has sent no members to Parliament at all; and very little,
+indeed, do the townspeople appear to care about so serious a
+deprivation. In case the reader should be disposed to attribute this
+indifference to municipal privileges to the supineness rather than the
+philosophy of the inhabitants, I think it necessary to establish their
+just claims to be considered as possessing public spirit, prompt
+decision, and wise fertility of resource in cases of emergency, by
+relating in this place the true story of how the people of Looe got rid
+of the rats.
+
+About a mile out at sea, to the southward of the town, rises a green
+triangular shaped eminence, called Looe Island. Here, many years ago, a
+ship was wrecked. Not only were the sailors saved, but several free
+passengers of the rat species, who had got on board, nobody knew how,
+where, or when, were also preserved by their own strenuous exertions,
+and wisely took up permanent quarters for the future on the terra firma
+of Looe Island. In process of time, and in obedience to the laws of
+nature, these rats increased and multiplied exceedingly; and, being
+confined all round within certain limits by the sea, soon became a
+palpable and dangerous nuisance. Destruction was threatened to the
+agricultural produce of all the small patches of cultivated land on the
+island--it seemed doubtful whether any man who ventured there by
+himself, might not share the fate of Bishop Hatto, and be devoured by
+rats. Under these pressing circumstances, the people of Looe determined
+to make one united and vehement effort to extirpate the whole colony of
+invaders. Ordinary means of destruction had been tried already, and
+without effect. It was said that rats left for dead on the ground had
+mysteriously revived faster than they could be picked up and skinned, or
+flung into the sea. Rats desperately wounded had got away into their
+holes, and become convalescent, and increased and multiplied again more
+productively than ever. The great problem was, not how to kill the rats,
+but how to annihilate them so effectually as to place the re-appearance
+even of one of them altogether out of the question. This was the
+problem, and it was solved in the following manner:--
+
+All the available inhabitants of the town were called to join in a great
+hunt. The rats were caught by every conceivable artifice; and, once
+taken, were instantly and ferociously _smothered in onions_; the
+corpses were then decently laid out on clean china dishes, and
+straightway eaten with vindictive relish by the people of Looe. Never
+was any invention for destroying rats so complete and so successful as
+this! Every man, woman, and child, who could eat, could swear to the
+extirpation of all the rats they had eaten. The local returns of dead
+rats were not made by the bills of mortality, but by the bills of fare:
+it was getting rid of a nuisance by the unheard-of process of stomaching
+a nuisance! Day after day passed on, and rats disappeared by hundreds,
+never to return. What could all their cunning and resolution avail them
+now? They had resisted before, and could have resisted still, the
+ordinary force of dogs, ferrets, traps, sticks, stones, and guns,
+arrayed against them; but when to these engines of assault were added,
+as auxiliaries, smothering onions, scalding stew-pans, hungry mouths,
+sharp teeth, good digestions, and the gastric juice, what could they do
+but give in? Swift and sure was the destruction that now overwhelmed
+them--everybody who wanted a dinner had a strong personal interest in
+hunting them down to the very last. In a short space of time the island
+was cleared of the usurpers. Cheeses remained entire: ricks rose
+uninjured. And this is the true story of how the people of Looe got rid
+of the rats!
+
+It will not much surprise any reader who has been good-natured enough to
+peruse the preceding pages with some attention, to hear that we idly
+delayed the day of departure from the pleasant fishing-town on the south
+coast, which was now the place of our sojourn. The smiles of our fair
+chambermaid and the cookery of our excellent hostess, addressed us in
+Siren tones of allurement which we had not the virtue to resist. Then,
+it was difficult to leave unexplored any of the numerous walks in the
+neighbourhood--all delightfully varied in character, and each possessing
+its own attractive point of view. Even when we had made our
+determination and fixed our farewell day, a great boat-race and a great
+tea-drinking, which everybody declared was something that everybody else
+ought to see, interfered to detain us. We delayed yet once more, to
+partake in the festivities, and found that they supplied us with all the
+necessary resolution to quit Looe which we had hitherto wanted. We had
+remained to take part in a social failure on a very large scale.
+
+As, in addition to the boat-race, there was to be a bazaar on the beach;
+and as fine weather was therefore an essential requisite on the
+occasion, it is scarcely necessary to premise that we had an unusually
+large quantity of rain. In the forenoon, however, the sun shone with
+treacherous brilliancy; and all the women in the neighbourhood fluttered
+out in his beams, gay as butterflies. What dazzling gowns, what flaring
+parasols, what joyous cavalcades on cart-horses, did we see on the road
+that led to the town! What a mixture of excitement, confusion, anxiety,
+and importance, possessed everybody! What frolic and felicity attended
+the popular gatherings on the beach, until the fatal moment when the gun
+fired for the first race! Then, as if at that signal, the clouds began
+to muster in ominous blackness; the deceitful sunlight disappeared; the
+rain came down for the day--a steady, noiseless, malicious rain, that at
+once forbade all hope of clear weather. Dire was the discomfiture of the
+poor ladies of Looe. They ran hither and thither for shelter, in lank
+wet muslin and under dripping parasols, displaying, in the lamentable
+emergency of the moment, all sorts of interior contrivances for
+expanding around them the exterior magnificence of their gowns, which we
+never ought to have seen. Deserted were the stalls of the bazaar for the
+parlours of the alehouses; unapplauded and unobserved, strained at the
+oar the stout rowers in the boat-race. Everybody ran to cover, except
+some seafaring men who cared nothing for weather, some inveterate
+loungers who would wander up and down in spite of the rain, and three
+unhappy German musicians, who had been caught on their travels, and
+pinned up tight against the outer wall of a house, in a sort of cage of
+canvas, boards, and evergreens, which hid every part of them but their
+heads and shoulders. Nobody interfered to release these unfortunates.
+There they sat, hemmed in all round by dripping leaves, blowing grimly
+and incessantly through instruments of brass. If the reader can imagine
+the effect of three phlegmatic men with long bottle noses, looking out
+of a circle of green bushes, and playing waltzes unintermittingly on
+long horns, in a heavy shower--he will be able to form a tolerably
+correct estimate of the large extra proportion of gloom which the German
+musicians succeeded in infusing into the disastrous proceedings of the
+day.
+
+The tea-drinking was rather more successful. The room in which it was
+held was filled to the corners, and exhaled such an odour of wet
+garments and bread and butter (to say nothing of an incessant clatter of
+china and bawling of voices) that we found ourselves, as uninitiated
+strangers, unequal to the task of remaining in it to witness the
+proceedings. Descending the steps which led into the street from the
+door--to the great confusion of a string of smartly dressed ladies who
+encountered us, rushing up with steaming teakettles and craggy lumps of
+plumcake--we left the inhabitants to conclude their festivities by
+themselves, and went out to take a farewell walk on the cliffs of Looe.
+
+We ascended the heights to the westward, losing sight of the town among
+the trees as we went; and then, walking in a southerly direction through
+some cornfields, approached within a few hundred yards of the edge of
+the cliffs, and looked out on the sea. The sky had partially cleared,
+and the rain had ceased; but huge fantastic masses of cloud, tinged with
+lurid copper-colour by the setting sun, still towered afar off over the
+horizon, and were reflected in a deeper hue on the calm surface of the
+sea, with a perfectness and grandeur that I never remember to have
+witnessed before. Not a ship was in sight; but out on the extreme line
+of the wilderness of grey waters there shone one red, fiery spark--the
+beacon of the Eddystone Lighthouse. Before us, the green fields of Looe
+Island rose high out of the ocean--here, partaking the red light on the
+clouds; there, half lost in cold shadow. Closer yet, on the mainland, a
+few cattle were feeding quietly on a long strip of meadow bordering the
+edge of the cliff; and, now and then, a gull soared up from the sea, and
+wheeled screaming over our heads. The faint sound of the small
+shore-waves (invisible to us in the position we occupied) beating dull
+and at long intervals on the beach, augmented the dreary solemnity of
+the evening prospect. Light, shade, and colour, were all before us,
+arranged in the grandest combinations, and expressed by the simplest
+forms. If Michael Angelo had painted landscape, he might have
+represented such a scene as we now beheld.
+
+This was our last excursion at Looe. The next morning we were again on
+the road, walking inland on our way to the town of Liskeard.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+HOLY WELLS AND DRUID RELICS.
+
+
+Fresh from the quaint old houses, the delightfully irregular streets,
+and the fragrant terrace-gardens of Looe, we found ourselves, on
+entering Liskeard, suddenly introduced to that "abomination of
+desolation," a large agricultural country town. Modern square houses,
+barren of all outer ornament; wide, dusty, deserted streets;
+misanthropical-looking shopkeepers, clad in rusty black, standing at
+their doors to gaze on the solitude around them--greeted our eyes on all
+sides. Such samples of the population as we accidentally encountered
+were not promising. We were unlucky enough to remark, in the course of
+two streets, a nonagenarian old woman with a false nose, and an idiot
+shaking with the palsy.
+
+But harder trials were in reserve for us. We missed the best of the many
+inns at Liskeard, and went to the very worst. What a place was our house
+of public entertainment for a great sinner to repent in, or for a
+melancholy recluse to retreat to! Not a human being appeared in the
+street where this tavern of despair frowned amid congenial desolation.
+Nobody welcomed us at the door--the sign creaked dolefully, as the wind
+swung it on its rusty hinges. We walked in, and discovered a
+low-spirited little man sitting at an empty "bar," and hiding himself,
+as it were, from all mortal inspection behind the full sheet of a dirty
+provincial newspaper. Doleful was our petition to this secluded publican
+for shelter and food; and doubly doleful was his answer to our appeal.
+Beds he believed he had--food there was none in the house, saving a
+piece of _corned beef_, which the family had dined on, and which he
+proposed that we should partake of before it got quite cold. Having said
+thus much, he suddenly retired behind his newspaper, and spoke no word
+more.
+
+In a few minutes the landlady appeared, looking very thin and care-worn,
+and clad in mourning weeds. She smiled sadly upon us; and desired to
+know how we liked corned beef? We acknowledged a preference for fresh
+meat, especially in large market towns like Liskeard, where butchers'
+shops abounded. The landlady was willing to see what she could get; and
+in the meantime, begged to be allowed to show us into a private room.
+She succeeded in incarcerating us in the most thoroughly private room
+that could be found out of a model prison. It was situated far away at
+the back of the house, and looked out upon a very small yard entirely
+circumscribed by empty stables. The one little window was shut down
+tight, and we were desired not to open it, for fear of a smell from
+these stables. The ornaments of the place consisted of hymn-books,
+spelling-books, and a china statue of Napoleon in a light green
+waistcoat and a sky-blue coat. There was not even a fly in the room to
+intrude on us in our privacy; there were no cocks and hens in the yard
+to cackle on us in our privacy; nobody walked past the outer passage, or
+made any noise in any part of the house, to startle us in our privacy;
+and a steady rain was falling propitiously to keep us in our privacy. We
+dined in our retired situation on some rugged lumps of broiled flesh,
+which the landlady called chops, and the servant steaks. We broke out of
+prison after dinner, and roamed the streets. We returned to solitary
+confinement in the evening, and were instantly conducted to another
+cell.
+
+This second private apartment appeared to be about forty feet long; six
+immense wooden tables, painted of a ghastly yellow colour, were ranged
+down it side by side. Nothing was placed on any of them--they looked
+like dissecting-tables waiting for "subjects." There was yet another and
+a seventh table--a round one, half lost in a corner, to which we
+retreated for refuge--it was covered with crape and bombazine, half made
+up into mourning garments proper to the first and intensest stage of
+grief. The servant brought us one small candle to cheer the scene; and
+desired to be informed whether we wanted _two_ sheets apiece to our
+beds, or whether we could do with a sheet at top and a blanket at
+bottom, as other people did? This question cowed us at once into gloomy
+submission to our fate. We just hinted that we had contracted bad habits
+of sleeping between two sheets, and left the rest to chance; reckless
+how we slept, or where we slept, whether we passed the night on the top
+of one of the six dissecting-tables, or with a blanket at bottom, as
+other people passed it. Soon the servant returned to tell us that we had
+got our two sheets each, and to send us to bed--snatching up the
+landlady's mourning garments, while she spoke, with a scared, suspicious
+look, as if she thought that the next outrageous luxury we should
+require would be a nightgown apiece of crape and bombazine.
+
+Reflecting on our lamentable situation the last thing at night, we
+derived some consolation from remembering that we should leave our
+quarters early the next morning. It was not Liskeard that we had come to
+see, but the country around Liskeard--the famous curiosities of Nature
+and Art that are to be found some six or eight miles away from the town.
+Accordingly, we were astir betimes on the morrow. The sky was fair; the
+breeze was exhilarating. Once past the doleful doorway of the inn, we
+found ourselves departing under the fairest auspices for a pilgrimage to
+the ruins of St. Cleer's Well, and to the granite piles and Druid
+remains, now entitled the "Cheese-Wring" and "Hurler" rocks.
+
+On leaving the town, our way lay to the northward, up rising ground. For
+the first two miles, the scenery differed little from what we had
+already beheld in Cornwall. The lanes were still sunk down between high
+banks, like dry ditches; all varieties of ferns grew in exquisite beauty
+and luxuriance on either side of us; the trees were small in size, and
+thickly clothed with leaves; and the views were generally narrowed to a
+few well-cultivated fields, with sturdy little granite-built cottages
+now and then rising beyond. It was only when we had reached what must
+have been a considerable elevation, that any change appeared in the face
+of the country. Five minutes more of walking, and a single turn in the
+road, brought us suddenly to the limits of trees, meadows, and cottages;
+and displayed before us, with almost startling abruptness, the
+magnificent prospect of a Cornish Moor.
+
+The expanse of open plain that we now beheld stretched away
+uninterruptedly on the right hand, as far as the distant hills. Towards
+the left, the view was broken and varied by some rough stone walls, a
+narrow road, and a dip in the earth beyond. Wherever we looked, far or
+near, we saw masses of granite of all shapes and sizes, heaped
+irregularly on the ground among dark clusters of heath. An old
+furze-cutter was the only human figure that appeared on the desolate
+scene. Approaching him to ask our way to St. Cleer's Well--no signs of
+which could be discerned on the wilderness before us--we found the old
+fellow, though he was eighty years of age, working away with all the
+vigour of youth. On this wild moor he had lived and laboured from
+childhood; and he began to talk proudly of its great length and breadth,
+and of the wonderful sights that were to be seen on different parts of
+it, the moment we addressed him. He described to us, in his own homely
+forcible way, the awful storms that he had beheld, the fearful rattling
+and roaring of thunder over the great unsheltered plain before us--the
+hail and sleet driven so fiercely before the hurricane, that a man was
+half-blinded if he turned his face towards it for a moment--the forked
+lightning shooting from pitch-dark clouds, leaping and running fearfully
+over the level ground, blackening, splitting, tearing from their places
+the stoutest rocks on the moor. Three masses of granite lay heaped
+together near the spot where we had halted--the furze-cutter pointed to
+them with his bill-hook, and told us that what we now looked on was once
+one great rock, which he had seen riven in an instant by the lightning
+into the fragmentary form that it now presented. If we mounted the
+highest of these three masses, he declared that we might find out our
+own way to St. Cleer's Well by merely looking around us. We followed his
+directions. Towards the east, far away over the magnificent sweep of
+moorland, and on the slope of the hill that bounded it, appeared the
+tall chimneys and engine-houses of the Great Caraton Copper Mine--the
+only objects raised by the hand of man that were to be seen on this
+part of the view. Towards the west, much nearer at hand, four grey
+turrets were just visible beyond some rising ground. These turrets
+belonged to the tower of St. Cleer's Church, and the Well was close by
+it.
+
+Taking leave of the furze-cutter, we followed the path at once that led
+to St. Cleer's. Half an hour's walking brought us to the village, a
+straggling, picturesque place, hidden in so deep a hollow as to be quite
+invisible from any distance. All the little cottage-girls whom we met,
+carrying their jugs and pitchers of water, curtseyed and wished us good
+morning with the prettiest air of bashfulness and good humour
+imaginable. One of them, a rosy, beautiful child, who proudly informed
+us that she was six years old, put down her jug at a cottage-gate and
+ran on before to show us the way, delighted to be singled out from her
+companions for so important an office. We passed the grey walls of the
+old church, walked down a lane, and soon came in sight of the Well, the
+position of which was marked by a ruined Oratory, situated on some open
+ground close at the side of the public pathway.
+
+St. Cleer, or--as the name is generally spelt out of Cornwall--St.
+Clare, the patron saint of the Well, was born in Italy, in the twelfth
+century--and born to a fair heritage of this world's honours and this
+world's possessions. But she voluntarily abandoned, at an early age, all
+that was alluring in the earthly career awaiting her, to devote herself
+entirely to the interests of her religion and the service of Heaven. She
+was the first woman who sat at the feet of St. Francis as his disciple,
+who humbly practised the self-mortification, and resolutely performed
+the vow of perpetual poverty, which her preceptor's harshest doctrines
+imposed on his followers. She soon became Abbess of the Benedictine Nuns
+with whom she was associated by the saint; and afterwards founded an
+order of her own--the order of "Poor Clares." The fame of her piety and
+humility, of her devotion to the cause of the sick, the afflicted, and
+the poor, spread far and wide. The most illustrious of the ecclesiastics
+of her time attended at her convent as at a holy shrine. Pope Innocent
+the Fourth visited her, as a testimony of his respect for her virtues;
+and paid homage to her memory when her blameless existence had closed,
+by making one among the mourners who followed her to the grave. Her name
+had been derived from the Latin word that signifies _purity_; and from
+first to last, her life had kept the promise of her name.
+
+Poor St. Clare! If she could look back, with the thoughts and interests
+of the days of her mortality, to the world that she has quitted for
+ever, how sadly would she now contemplate the Holy Well which was once
+hallowed in her name and for her sake! But one arched wall, thickly
+overgrown with ivy, still remains erect in the place that the old
+Oratory occupied. Fragments of its roof, its cornices, and the mouldings
+of its windows lie scattered on the ground, half hidden by the grasses
+and ferns twining prettily around them. A double cross of stone stands,
+sloping towards the earth, at a little distance off--soon perhaps to
+share the fate of the prostrate ruins about it. How changed the scene
+here, since the time when the rural christening procession left the
+church, to proceed down the quiet pathway to the Holy Well--when
+children were baptized in the pure spring; and vows were offered up
+under the roof of the Oratory, and prayers were repeated before the
+sacred cross! These were the pious usages of a past age; these were the
+ceremonies of an ancient church, whose innocent and reverent custom it
+was to connect closer together the beauty of Nature and the beauty of
+Religion, by such means as the consecration of a spring, or the erection
+of a roadside cross. There has been something of sacrifice as well as of
+glory, in the effort by which we, in our time, have freed ourselves from
+what was superstitious and tyrannical in the faith of the times of
+old--it has cost us the loss of much of the better part of that faith
+which was not superstition, and of more which was not tyranny. The
+spring of St. Clare is nothing to the cottager of our day but a place to
+draw water from; the village lads now lounge whistling on the fallen
+stones, once the consecrated arches under which their humble ancestors
+paused on the pilgrimage, or knelt in prayer. Wherever the eye turns,
+all around it speaks the melancholy language of desolation and
+decay--all but the water of the Holy Well. Still the little pool remains
+the fitting type of its patron saint--pure and tranquil as in the bygone
+days, when the name of St. Clare was something more than the title to a
+village legend, and the spring of St. Clare something better than a
+sight for the passing tourist among the Cornish moors.[1]
+
+We happened to arrive at the well at the period when the villagers were
+going home to dinner. After the first quarter of an hour, we were left
+almost alone among the ruins. The only person who approached to speak to
+us was a poor old woman, bent and tottering with age, who lived in a
+little cottage hard by. She brought us a glass, thinking we might wish
+to taste the water of the spring; and presented me with a rose out of
+her garden. Such small scraps of information as she had gathered
+together about the well, she repeated to us in low, reverential tones,
+as if its former religious uses still made it an object of veneration in
+her eyes. After a time, she too quitted us; and we were then left quite
+alone by the side of the spring.
+
+It was a bright, sunshiny day; a pure air was abroad; nothing sounded
+audibly but the singing of birds at some distance, and the rustling of
+the few leaves that clothed one or two young trees in a neighbouring
+garden. Unoccupied though I was, the minutes passed away as quickly and
+as unheeded with me, as with my companion who was busily engaged in
+sketching. The ruins of the ancient Oratory, viewed amid the pastoral
+repose of all things around them, began imperceptibly to exert over me
+that mysterious power of mingling the impressions of the present with
+the memories of the past, which all ruins possess. While I sat looking
+idly into the water of the well, and thinking of the groups that had
+gathered round it in years long gone by, recollections began to rise
+vividly on my mind of other ruins that I had seen in other countries,
+with friends, some scattered, some gone now--of pleasant pilgrimages, in
+boyish days, along the storied shores of Baiae, or through the desolate
+streets of the Dead City under Vesuvius--of happy sketching excursions
+to the aqueducts on the plains of Rome, or to the temples and villas of
+Tivoli; during which, I had first learned to appreciate the beauties of
+Nature under guidance which, in this world, I can never resume; and had
+seen the lovely prospects of Italian landscape pictured by a hand now
+powerless in death. Remembrances such as these, of pleasures which
+remembrance only can recall as they were, made time fly fast for me by
+the brink of the holy well. I could have sat there all day, and should
+not have felt, at night, that the day had been ill spent.
+
+But the sunlight began to warn us that noon was long past. We had some
+distance yet to walk, and many things more to see. Shortly after my
+friend had completed his sketch, therefore, we reluctantly left St.
+Clare's Well, and went on our way briskly, up the little valley, and out
+again on the wide surface of the moor.
+
+It was now our object to steer a course over the wide plain around us,
+leading directly to the "Cheese-Wring" rocks (so called from their
+supposed resemblance to a Cornish cheese-press or "_wring_"). On our
+road to this curiosity, about a mile and a half from St. Clare's Well,
+we stopped to look at one of the most perfect and remarkable of the
+ancient British monuments in Cornwall. It is called Trevethey Stone, and
+consists of six large upright slabs of granite, overlaid by a seventh,
+which covers them in the form of a rude, slanting roof. These slabs are
+so irregular in form as to look quite unhewn. They all vary in size and
+thickness. The whole structure rises to a height, probably, of fourteen
+feet; and, standing as it does on elevated ground, in a barren country,
+with no stones of a similar kind erected near it, presents an appearance
+of rugged grandeur and aboriginal simplicity, which renders it an
+impressive, almost a startling object to look on. Antiquaries have
+discovered that its name signifies The Place of Graves; and have
+discovered no more. No inscription appears on it; the date of its
+erection is lost in the darkest of the dark periods of English history.
+
+Our path had been gradually rising all the way from St. Clare's Well;
+and, when we left Trevethey Stone, we still continued to ascend,
+proceeding along the tram-way leading to the Caraton Mine. Soon the
+scene presented another abrupt and extraordinary change. We had been
+walking hitherto amid almost invariable silence and solitude; but now,
+with each succeeding minute, strange, mingled, unintermitting noises
+began to grow louder and louder around us. We followed a sharp curve in
+the tram-way, and immediately found ourselves saluted by an entirely new
+prospect, and surrounded by an utterly bewildering noise. All about us
+monstrous wheels were turning slowly; machinery was clanking and
+groaning in the hoarsest discords; invisible waters were pouring onward
+with a rushing sound; high above our heads, on skeleton platforms, iron
+chains clattered fast and fiercely over iron pulleys, and huge steam
+pumps puffed and gasped, and slowly raised and depressed their heavy
+black beams of wood. Far beneath the embankment on which we stood, men,
+women, and children were breaking and washing ore in a perfect marsh of
+copper-coloured mud and copper-coloured water. We had penetrated to the
+very centre of the noise, the bustle, and the population on the surface
+of a great mine.
+
+When we walked forward again, we passed through a thick plantation of
+young firs; and then, the sounds behind us became slowly and solemnly
+deadened the further we went on. When we had arrived at the extremity of
+the line of trees, they ceased softly and suddenly. It was like a change
+in a dream.
+
+We now left the tram-way, and stood again on the moor--on a wilder and
+lonelier part of it than we had yet beheld. The Cheese-Wring and its
+adjacent rocks were visible a mile and a half away, on the summit of a
+steep hill. Wherever we looked, the horizon was bounded by the long,
+dark, undulating edges of the moor. The ground rose and fell in little
+hillocks and hollows, tufted with dry grass and furze, and strewn
+throughout with fragments of granite. The whole plain appeared like the
+site of an ancient city of palaces, overthrown and crumbled into atoms
+by an earthquake. Here and there, some cows were feeding; and sometimes
+a large crow winged his way lazily before us, lessening and lessening
+slowly in the open distance, until he was lost to sight. No human beings
+were discernible anywhere; the majestic loneliness and stillness of the
+scene were almost oppressive both to eye and ear. Above us, immense
+fleecy masses of brilliant white cloud, wind-driven from the Atlantic,
+soared up grandly, higher and higher over the bright blue sky.
+Everywhere, the view had an impressively stern, simple, aboriginal look.
+Here were tracts of solitary country which had sturdily retained their
+ancient character through centuries of revolution and change; plains
+pathless and desolate even now, as when Druid processions passed over
+them by night to the place of the secret sacrifice, and skin-clad
+warriors of old Britain halted on them in council, or hurried across
+them to the fight.
+
+On we went, up and down, in a very zig-zag course, now looking forward
+towards the Cheese-Wring from the top of a rock, now losing sight of it
+altogether in the depths of a hollow. By the time we had advanced about
+half way over the distance it was necessary for us to walk, we
+observed, towards the left hand, a wide circle of detached upright
+rooks. These we knew, from descriptions and engravings, to be the
+"Hurlers"--so we turned aside at once to look at them from a nearer
+point of view.
+
+There are two very different histories of these rocks; the antiquarian
+account of them is straightforward and practical enough, simply
+asserting that they are the remains of a Druid temple, the whole region
+about them having been one of the principal stations of the Druids in
+Cornwall. The popular account of the Hurlers (from which their name is
+derived) is very different. It is contended, on the part of the people,
+that once upon a time (nobody knows how long ago), these rocks were
+Cornish men, who profanely went out (nobody knows from what place), to
+enjoy the national sport of hurling the ball on one fine "Sabbath
+morning," and were suddenly turned into pillars of stone, as a judgment
+on their own wickedness, and a warning to all their companions as well.
+
+Having to choose between the antiquarian hypothesis and the popular
+legend on the very spot to which both referred, a common susceptibility
+to the charms of romance at once determined us to pin our faith on the
+legend. Looking at the Hurlers, therefore, in the peculiar spirit of the
+story attached to them, as really and truly petrified ball-players, we
+observed, with great interest, that some of them must have been a little
+above, and others a little below our own height, in their lifetime; that
+some must have been very corpulent, and others very thin persons; that
+one of them, having a protuberance on his head remarkably like a
+night-cap in stone, was possibly a sluggard as well as a
+Sabbath-breaker, and might have got out of his bed just in time to
+"hurl;" that another, with some faint resemblance left of a fat grinning
+human face, leaned considerably out of the perpendicular, and was, in
+all probability, a hurler of intemperate habits. At some distance off we
+remarked a high stone standing entirely by itself, which, in the absence
+of any positive information on the subject, we presumed to consider as
+the petrified effigy of a tall man who ran after the ball. In the
+opposite direction other stones were dotted about irregularly, which we
+could only imagine to represent certain misguided wretches who had
+attended as spectators of the sports, and had therefore incurred the
+same penalty as the hurlers themselves. These humble results of
+observations taken on the spot, may possibly be useful, as tending to
+offer some startling facts from ancient history to the next pious layman
+in the legislature who gets up to propose the next series of Sabbath
+prohibitions for the benefit of the profane laymen in the nation.
+
+Abandoning any more minute observation of the Hurlers than that already
+recorded, in order to husband the little time still left to us, we soon
+shaped our course again in the direction of the Cheese-Wring. We arrived
+at the base of the hill on which it stands, in a short time and without
+any difficulty; and beheld above us a perfect chaos of rocks piled up
+the entire surface of the eminence. All the granite we had seen before
+was as nothing compared with the granite we now looked on. The masses
+were at one place heaped up in great irregular cairns--at another,
+scattered confusedly over the ground; poured all along in close, craggy
+lumps; flung about hither and thither, as if in reckless sport, by the
+hands of giants. Above the whole, rose the weird fantastic form of the
+Cheese-Wring, the wildest and most wondrous of all the wild and wondrous
+structures in the rock architecture of the scene.
+
+If a man dreamt of a great pile of stones in a nightmare, he would dream
+of such a pile as the Cheese-Wring. All the heaviest and largest of the
+seven thick slabs of which it is composed are at the top; all the
+lightest and smallest at the bottom. It rises perpendicularly to a
+height of thirty-two feet, without lateral support of any kind. The
+fifth and sixth rocks are of immense size and thickness, and overhang
+fearfully, all round, the four lower rocks which support them. All are
+perfectly irregular; the projections of one do not fit into the
+interstices of another; they are heaped up loosely in their
+extraordinary top-heavy form, on slanting ground half-way down a steep
+hill. Look at them from whatever point you choose, there is still all
+that is heaviest, largest, strongest, at the summit, and all that is
+lightest, smallest, weakest, at the base. When you first see the
+Cheese-Wring, you instinctively shrink from walking under it. Beholding
+the tons on tons of stone balanced to a hair's breadth on the mere
+fragments beneath, you think that with a pole in your hand, with one
+push against the top rocks, you could hurl down the hill in an instant a
+pile which has stood for centuries, unshaken by the fiercest hurricane
+that ever blew, rushing from the great void of an ocean over the naked
+surface of a moor.
+
+Of course, theories advanced by learned men are not wanting to explain
+such a phenomenon as the Cheese-Wring. Certain antiquaries have
+undertaken to solve this curious problem of Nature in a very off-hand
+manner, by asserting that the rocks were heaped up as they now appear,
+by the Druids, with the intention of astonishing their contemporaries
+and all posterity by a striking exhibition of their architectural skill.
+(If any of these antiquarian gentlemen be still living, I would not
+recommend them to attempt a practical illustration of their theory by
+building miniature Cheese-Wrings out of the contents of their
+coal-scuttles!) The second explanation of the extraordinary position of
+the rocks is a geological explanation, and is apparently the true one.
+It is assumed on this latter hypothesis, that the Cheese-Wring, and all
+the adjacent masses of stone, were once covered, or nearly covered, by
+earth, and were thus supported in an upright form; that the wear and
+tear of storms gradually washed away all this earth, from between the
+rocks, down the hill, and then left such heaps of stones as were
+accidentally complete in their balance on each other, to stand erect,
+and such as were not, to fall flat on the surface of the hill in all the
+various positions in which they now appear. Accepting this theory as the
+right one, it still seems strange that there should be only one
+Cheese-Wring on the hill--but so it is. Plenty of rocks are to be seen
+there piled one on another; but none of them are piled in the same
+extraordinary manner as the Cheese-Wring, which stands alone in its
+grandeur, a curiosity that even science may wonder at, a sight which is
+worth a visit to Cornwall, if Cornwall presented nothing else to see.
+
+Besides the astonishment which the rock scenery on the hill was
+calculated to excite, we found in its neighbourhood an additional cause
+for surprise of a very different description. Just as we were preparing
+to ascend the eminence, the silence of the great waste around us was
+broken by a long and hearty cheer. The Hurlers themselves, if they had
+suddenly returned to a state of flesh and blood, and resumed their
+interrupted game, could hardly have made more noise, or exhibited a
+greater joviality of disposition, than did some three or four tradesmen
+of the town of Liskeard, who had been enjoying a pic-nic under the
+Cheese-Wring, had seen us approaching over the plain, and now darted out
+of their ambush to welcome us, flourishing porter-bottles in their hands
+as olive branches of peace, amity, and good-will. My companion skilfully
+contrived to make his escape; but I was stopped and surrounded in an
+instant. One benevolent stranger held a glass in a very slanting
+position, while a brother philanthropist violently uncorked a bottle and
+directed half of its contents in a magnificent jet of light brown froth
+all over everybody, before he found the way into the tumbler. It was of
+no use to decline imbibing the remainder of the light brown
+froth--"_There_ was the Cheese-Wring (cried all the benevolent strangers
+in chorus), and _here_ was the porter--_I_ must drink all their good
+healths, and _they_ would all drink mine--this was Cornish hospitality,
+and Cornish hospitality was notoriously the finest thing in the world!
+As for my friend there, who was drawing, they bore him no ill-will
+because he wouldn't drink--they would buy his drawing, and one of the
+commercial gentlemen, who was a stationer, would publish a hundred, two
+hundred, five hundred, a thousand copies of it, on sheets of
+letter-paper, price one penny! What had I got to say to that?--If that
+wasn't hospitality, what the devil was?"
+
+All this might have been very amusing, and our new friends might have
+proved excellent companions, under a different set of circumstances.
+But, as things were, we neither of us felt at all sorry when their
+manners subsequently exhibited a slight change, under the influence of
+further potations of porter. Soon, they began to look stolid and
+suspicious--suddenly, they discovered that we were not quite such good
+company as they had thought us at first--finally, they took their
+departure in solemn silence, leaving us free at last to mount the hill,
+and look out uninterruptedly on the glorious view from the summit, which
+extended over a circumference of a hundred miles.
+
+Turning our faces towards the north-east, and standing now on the
+topmost rock of one of the most elevated situations in Cornwall, we were
+able to discern the sea on either side of us. Two faint lines of the
+softest, haziest blue, indicated the Bristol Channel on the one hand,
+and the English Channel on the other. Before us lay a wide region of
+downs and fields, all mapped out in every variety of form by their
+different divisions of wall and hedge-row--while, farther away yet,
+darker and more indefinite, appeared the Dartmoor forest and the
+Dartmoor hills. It was just that hour before the evening, at which the
+atmosphere acquires a more mellow purity, a more perfect serenity and
+warmth, than at earlier periods of the day. The shadows of great clouds
+lay in vast lovely shapes of purple blue over the whole visible tract of
+country, contrasting in exquisite beauty with the sunny glimpses of
+landscape shining between them. Beneath us, the picturesque confusion of
+rocks, topped by the quaint form of the Cheese-Wring, seemed to fade
+away mysteriously into the grass of the moorland; beyond which, high up
+where the hills rose again, a little lake, called Dosmery Pool, shone in
+the sunlight with dazzling, diamond brightness. In the opposite
+direction, towards the west, the immediate prospect was formed by the
+rugged granite ridges, towering one behind the other, of Sharp Torr and
+Kilmarth--the long hazy outlines of the plains and hill-tops of southern
+and inland Cornwall closing grandly the distant view.
+
+All that we had hitherto seen on and around the spot where we now stood,
+had not yet exhausted its objects of attraction for strangers.
+Descending the rocks in a new direction, after taking a last look at the
+noble prospect visible from their summit, we proceeded to a particular
+spot near the base of the hill, where the granite was scattered in
+remarkable abundance. Our purpose here was to examine some stones which
+are well known to all the quarrymen in the district, as associated with
+an extraordinary story and an extraordinary man.
+
+During the earlier half of the last century, there lived in one of the
+villages on the outskirts of the moor on which the Cheese-Wring stands,
+a stonecutter named Daniel Gumb. This man was noted among his companions
+for his taciturn eccentric character, and for his attachment to
+mathematical studies. Such leisure time as he had at his command he
+devoted to pondering over the problems of Euclid: he was always drawing
+mysterious complications of angles, triangles, and parallelograms, on
+pieces of slate, and on the blank leaves of such few books as he
+possessed. But he made very slow progress in his studies. Poverty and
+hard work increased with the increase of his family, and obliged him to
+give up his mathematics altogether. He laboured early and laboured late;
+he hacked and hewed at the hard material out of which he was doomed to
+cut a livelihood, with unremitting diligence; but times went so ill with
+him, that in despair of ever finding them better, he took a sudden
+resolution of altering his manner of living, and retreating from the
+difficulties that he could not overcome. He went to the hill on which
+the Cheese-Wring stands, and looked about among the rocks until he
+found some that had accidentally formed themselves into a sort of rude
+cavern. He widened this recess; he propped up a great wide slab, to make
+its roof: he cut out in a rock that rose above this, what he called his
+bed-room--a mere longitudinal slit in the stone, the length and breadth
+of his body, into which he could roll himself sideways when he wanted to
+enter it. After he had completed this last piece of work, he scratched
+the date of the year of his extraordinary labours (1735) on the rock;
+and then removed his wife and family from their cottage, and lodged them
+in the cavity he had made--never to return during his lifetime to the
+dwellings of men!
+
+Here he lived and here he worked, when he could get work. He paid no
+rent now: he wanted no furniture; he struggled no longer to appear to
+the world as his equals appeared; he required no more money than would
+procure for his family and himself the barest necessaries of life; he
+suffered no interruptions from his fellow-workmen, who thought him a
+madman, and kept out of his way; and--most precious privilege of his new
+position--he could at last shorten his hours of labour, and lengthen his
+hours of study, with impunity. Having no temptations to spend money, no
+hard demands of an inexorable landlord to answer, he could now work with
+his brains as well as his hands; he could toil at his problems,
+scratching them upon the tops of rocks, under the open sky, amid the
+silence of the great moor. Henceforth, nothing moved, nothing depressed
+him. The storms of winter rushed over his unsheltered dwelling, but
+failed to dislodge him. He taught his family to brave solitude and cold
+in the cavern among the rocks, as _he_ braved them. In the cell that he
+had scooped out for his wife (the roof of which has now fallen in) some
+of his children died, and others were born. They point out the rock
+where he used to sit on calm summer evenings, absorbed over his tattered
+copy of Euclid. A geometrical "puzzle," traced by his hand, still
+appears on the stone. When he died, what became of his family, no one
+can tell. Nothing more is known of him than that he never quitted the
+wild place of his exile; that he continued to the day of his death to
+live contentedly with his wife and children, amid a civilized nation,
+under such a shelter as would hardly serve the first savage tribes of
+the most savage country--to live, starving out poverty and want on a
+barren wild; forsaking all things enduring all things for the love of
+Knowledge, which he could still nobly follow through trials and
+extremities, without encouragement of fame or profit, without vantage
+ground of station or wealth, for its own dear sake. Beyond this, nothing
+but conjecture is left. The cell, the bed-place, the lines traced on the
+rocks, the inscription of the year in which he hewed his habitation out
+of them, are all the memorials that remain of Daniel Gumb.
+
+We lingered about the wild habitation of the stonemason and his family,
+until sunset. Long shadows of rocks lay over the moor, the breeze had
+freshened and was already growing chill, when we set forth, at last, to
+trace our way back to Liskeard. It was too late now to think of
+proceeding on our journey, and sleeping at the next town on our line of
+route.
+
+Returning in a new direction, we found ourselves once more walking on a
+high road, just as the sun had gone down, and the grey twilight was
+falling softly over the landscape. Stopping near a lonely farm-house, we
+went into a field to look at another old British monument to which our
+attention had been directed. We saw a square stone column--now broken
+into two pieces--ornamented with a curiously carved pattern, and
+exhibiting an inscription cut in irregular, mysterious characters. Those
+who have deciphered them, have discovered that the column is nearly a
+thousand years old; that it was raised as a sepulchral monument over the
+body of Dungerth King of Cornwall; and that the letters carved on it
+form some Latin words, which may be thus translated:--"PRAY FOR THE
+SOUL OF DUNGERTH." Seen in the dim light of the last quiet hour of
+evening, there was something solemn and impressive about the appearance
+of the old tombstone--simple though it was. After leaving it, we soon
+entered once more into regions of fertility. Cottages, cornfields, and
+trees surrounded us again. We passed through pleasant little valleys;
+over brooks crossed by quaint wooden bridges; up and down long lanes,
+where tall hedges and clustering trees darkened the way--where the
+stag-beetle flew slowly by, winding "his small but sullen horn," and
+glow-worms glimmered brightly in the long, dewy grass by the roadside.
+The moon, rising at first red and dull in a misty sky, brightened as we
+went on, and lighted us brilliantly along all that remained of our
+night-walk back to the town.
+
+I have only to add, that, when we arrived at Liskeard, the lachrymose
+landlady of the inn benevolently offered us for supper the identical
+piece of cold "_corned beef_" which she had offered us for dinner the
+day before; and further proposed that we should feast at our ease in the
+private dungeon dining-room at the back of the house. But one mode of
+escape was left--we decamped at once to the large and comfortable hotel
+of the town; and there our pleasant day's pilgrimage to the moors of
+Cornwall concluded as agreeably as it had begun.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] I visited St. Cleer's Well, for the second time, ten years after the
+above lines were written; and I am happy to say that two gentlemen,
+interested in this beautiful ruin, are about to restore it--using the
+old materials for the purpose, and exactly following the original
+design. (March, 1861.)
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+CORNISH PEOPLE.
+
+
+It is my purpose, in this place, to communicate some few facts relating
+to the social condition of the inhabitants of Cornwall, which were
+kindly furnished to me by friends on the spot; adding to the statement
+thus obtained, such anecdotes and illustrations of popular character as
+I collected from my own observations in the capacity of a tourist on
+foot.
+
+If the reader desires to compare at a glance the condition of the
+Cornish people with the condition of their brethren in other parts of
+England, one small particle of practical information will enable him to
+do so at once. In the Government Tables of Mortality for Cornwall there
+are no returns of death from starvation.
+
+Many causes combine to secure the poor of Cornwall from that last worst
+consequence of poverty to which the poor in most of the other divisions
+of England are more or less exposed. The number of inhabitants in the
+county is stated by the last census at 341,269--the number of square
+miles that they have to live on, being 1327.[2]--This will be found on
+proper computation and comparison, to be considerably under the average
+population of a square mile throughout the rest of England. Thus, the
+supply of men for all purposes does not appear to be greater than the
+demand in Cornwall. The remote situation of the county guarantees it
+against any considerable influx of strangers to compete with the natives
+for work on their own ground. We met a farmer there, who was so far from
+being besieged in harvest time by claimants for labour on his land, that
+he was obliged to go forth to seek them himself at a neighbouring town,
+and was doubtful whether he should find men enough left him unemployed
+at the mines and the fisheries, to gather in his crops in good time at
+two shillings a day and as much "victuals and drink" as they cared to
+have.
+
+Another cause which has contributed, in some measure, to keep Cornwall
+free from the burthen of a surplus population of working men must not be
+overlooked. Emigration has been more largely resorted to in that county,
+than perhaps in any other in England. Out of the population of the
+Penzance Union alone, nearly five per cent. left their native land for
+Australia, or New Zealand, in 1849. The potato-blight was, at that time,
+assigned as the chief cause of the readiness to emigrate; for it damaged
+seriously the growth of a vegetable, from the sale of which, at the
+London markets, the Cornish agriculturalists derived large profits, and
+on which (with their fish) the Cornish poor depend as a staple article
+of food.
+
+It is by the mines and fisheries (of both of which I shall speak
+particularly in another place) that Cornwall is compensated for a soil,
+too barren in many parts of the county, to be ever well cultivated
+except at such an expenditure of capital as no mere farmer can afford.
+From the inexhaustible mineral treasures in the earth, and from the
+equally inexhaustible shoals of pilchards which annually visit the
+coast, the working population of Cornwall derive their regular means of
+support, where agriculture would fail them. At the mines, the regular
+rate of wages is from forty to fifty shillings a month; but miners have
+opportunities of making more than this. By what is termed "working on
+tribute," that is, agreeing to excavate the mineral lodes for a per
+centage on the value of the metal they raise, some of them have been
+known to make as much as six and even ten pounds each, in a month. When
+they are unlucky in their working speculations, or perhaps thrown out of
+employment altogether by the shutting up of a mine, they still have a
+fair opportunity of obtaining farm labour, which is paid for (out of
+harvest time) at the rate of nine shillings a week. But this is a
+resource of which they are rarely obliged to take advantage. A plot of
+common ground is included with the cottages that are let to them; and
+the cultivation of this, helps to keep them and their families, in bad
+times, until they find an opportunity of resuming work; when they may
+perhaps make as much in one month, as an agricultural labourer can in
+twelve.
+
+The fisheries not only employ all the inhabitants of the coast, but, in
+the pilchard season, many of the farm work-people as well. Ten thousand
+persons--men, women, and children--derive their regular support from the
+fisheries; which are so amazingly productive, that the "drift," or
+deep-sea fishing, in Mount's Bay alone, is calculated to realize, on the
+average, 30,000_l._ per annum.
+
+To the employment thus secured for the poor in the mines and fisheries
+is to be added, as an advantage, the cheapness of rent and living in
+Cornwall. Good cottages are let at from fifty shillings, to between
+three and four pounds a-year--turf for firing grows in plenty on the
+vast tracts of common land overspreading the country--all sorts of
+vegetables are abundant and cheap, with the exception of potatoes, which
+so decreased in 1849, in consequence of the disease, that the winter
+stock was imported from France, Belgium, and Holland. The early
+potatoes, however, grown in May and June, are cultivated in large
+quantities, and realize on exportation a very high price. Corn generally
+sells a little above the average. Fish is always within the reach of the
+poorest people. In a good season, a dozen pilchards are sold for one
+penny. Happily for themselves, the poor in Cornwall do not partake the
+senseless prejudice against fish, so obstinately adhered to by the poor
+in many other parts of England. A Cornishman's national pride is in his
+pilchards--he likes to talk of them, and boast about them to strangers;
+and with reason, for he depends for the main support of life on the
+tribute of these little fish which the sea yields annually in almost
+countless shoals.
+
+The workhouse system in Cornwall is said, by those who are well
+qualified to form an opinion on the subject, to be generally well
+administered; the Unions in the eastern part of the county being the
+least stringent in their regulations, and the most liberal in giving
+out-of-door relief.
+
+Such, briefly, but I think not incorrectly stated, is the condition of
+the poor in Cornwall, in relation to their means of subsistence as a
+class. Looking to the fact that the number of labourers there is not too
+much for the labour; comparing the rate of wages with rent and the price
+of provisions; setting the natural advantages of the county fairly
+against its natural disadvantages, it is impossible not to conclude that
+the Cornish poor suffer less by their poverty, and enjoy more
+opportunities of improving their social position, than the majority of
+their brethren in many other counties of England. The general demeanour
+and language of the people themselves amply warrant this conclusion.
+The Cornish are essentially a cheerful, contented race. The views of the
+working men are remarkably moderate and sensible--I never met with so
+few grumblers anywhere.
+
+My opportunities of correctly estimating the state of education among
+the people, were not sufficiently numerous to justify me in offering to
+the reader more than a mere opinion on the subject. Such few
+observations as I was able to make, inclined me to think that, in
+education, the mass of the population was certainly below the average in
+England, with one exception--that of the classes employed in the mines.
+All of these men with whom I held any communication, would not have been
+considered badly-informed persons in a higher condition of life. They
+possessed much more than a common mechanical knowledge of their own
+calling, and even showed a very fair share of information on the subject
+of the history and antiquities of their native county. As usual, the
+agricultural inhabitants appeared to rank lowest in the scale of
+education and general intelligence. Among this class, and among the
+fishermen, the strong superstitious feelings of the ancient days of
+Cornwall still survive, and promise long to remain, handed down from
+father to son as heirlooms of tradition, gathered together in a remote
+period, and venerable in virtue of their antiquity. The notion, for
+instance, that no wound will fester as long as the instrument by which
+it was inflicted is kept bright and clean, still prevails extensively
+among them. But a short time since, a boy in Cornwall was placed under
+the care of a medical man (who related the anecdote to me) for a wound
+in the back from a pitchfork; his relatives--cottagers of
+respectability--firmly believe that his cure was accelerated by the
+pains they took to keep the prongs of the pitchfork in a state of the
+highest polish, night and day, throughout the whole period of his
+illness, and down to the last hour of his complete restoration to
+health.
+
+Another and a more remarkable instance of the superstitions prevailing
+among the least educated classes of the people, was communicated to me
+by the same informant--a gentleman whose life had been passed in
+Cornwall, and who was highly and deservedly respected by all those among
+whom he resided.[3]
+
+A small farmer living in one of the most western districts of the
+county, died some years back of what was supposed at the time to be
+"English Cholera." A few weeks after his decease, his wife married
+again. This circumstance excited some attention in the neighbourhood. It
+was remembered that the woman had lived on very bad terms with her late
+husband, that she had on many occasions exhibited strong symptoms of
+possessing a very vindictive temper, and that during the farmer's
+lifetime she had openly manifested rather more than a Platonic
+preference for the man whom she subsequently married. Suspicion was
+generally excited: people began to doubt whether the first husband had
+died fairly. At length the proper order was applied for, and his body
+was disinterred. On examination, enough arsenic to have poisoned three
+men was found in his stomach. The wife was accused of murdering him, was
+tried, convicted on the clearest evidence, and hanged. Very shortly
+after she had suffered capital punishment, horrible stories of a ghost
+were widely circulated. Certain people declared that they had seen a
+ghastly resemblance of the murderess, robed in her winding-sheet, with
+the black mark of the rope round her swollen neck, standing on stormy
+nights upon her husband's grave, and digging there with a spade in
+hideous imitation of the actions of the men who had disinterred the
+corpse for medical examination. This was fearful enough--nobody dared go
+near the place after nightfall. But soon, another circumstance was
+talked of, in connexion with the poisoner, which affected the
+tranquillity of people's minds in the village where she had lived, and
+where it was believed she had been born, more seriously than even the
+ghost-story itself.
+
+Near the church of this village there was a well, celebrated among the
+peasantry of the district for one remarkable property--every child
+baptized in its water (with which the church was duly supplied on
+christening occasions) was secure from ever being hanged. No one doubted
+that all the babies fortunate enough to be born and baptized in the
+parish, though they might live to the age of Methuselah, and might
+during that period commit all the capital crimes recorded in the
+"Newgate Calendar," were still destined to keep quite clear of the
+summary jurisdiction of Jack Ketch--no one doubted this, until the story
+of the apparition of the murderess began to be spread abroad. Then,
+awful misgivings arose in the popular mind. A woman who had been born
+close by the magical well, and who had therefore in all probability been
+baptized in its water like her neighbours of the parish, had
+nevertheless been publicly and unquestionably hanged. However,
+probability was not always truth--everybody determined that the
+baptismal register of the poisoner should be sought for, and that it
+should be thus officially ascertained whether she had been christened
+with the well water, or not. After much trouble, the important document
+was discovered--not where it was first looked after, but in a
+neighbouring parish vestry. A mistake had been made about the woman's
+birthplace--she had not been baptized in the local church, and had
+therefore not been protected by the marvellous virtue of the local
+water. Unutterable was the joy and triumph of this discovery throughout
+the village--the wonderful character of the parish well was wonderfully
+vindicated--its celebrity immediately spread wider than ever. The
+peasantry of the neighbouring districts began to send for the renowned
+water before christenings; and many of them actually continue, to this
+day, to bring it corked up in bottles to their churches, and to beg
+particularly that it may be used whenever they present their children
+to be baptized.
+
+Such instances of superstition as this--and others equally true might be
+quoted--afford, perhaps, of themselves, the best evidence of the low
+state of education among the people from whom they are produced. It is,
+however, only fair to state, that children in Cornwall are now enabled
+to partake of advantages which were probably not offered to their
+parents. Good National Schools are in operation everywhere, and are--as
+far as my own inquiries authorize me to report--well attended by pupils
+recruited from the ranks of the poorest classes.
+
+Of the social qualities of the Cornish all that can be written may be
+written conscientiously in terms of the highest praise. Travelling as my
+companion and I did--in a manner which (whatever it may be now) was, ten
+years since, perfectly new to the majority of the people--we found
+constant opportunities of studying the popular character in its every
+day aspects. We perplexed some, we amused others: here, we were welcomed
+familiarly by the people, as travelling pedlars with our packs on our
+backs; there, we were curiously regarded at an awful distance, and
+respectfully questioned in circumlocutory phrases as to our secret
+designs in walking through the country. Thus, viewing us sometimes as
+their equals, sometimes as mysteriously superior to them, the peasantry
+unconsciously exhibited many of their most characteristic peculiarities
+without reserve. We looked at the spectacle of their social life from
+the most searching point of view, for we looked at it from behind the
+scenes.
+
+The manners of the Cornish of all ranks, down to the lowest, are
+remarkably distinguished by courtesy--a courtesy of that kind which is
+quite independent of artificial breeding, and which proceeds solely from
+natural motives of kindness and from an innate anxiety to please. Few of
+the people pass you without a salutation. Civil questions are always
+answered civilly. No propensity to jeer at strangers is exhibited--on
+the contrary, great solicitude is displayed to afford them any
+assistance that they may require; and displayed, moreover, without the
+slightest appearance of a mercenary motive. Thus, if you stop to ask
+your way, you are not merely directed for a mile or two on, and then
+told to ask again; but directed straight to the end of your destination,
+no matter how far off. Turnings to the right, and turnings to the left,
+short cuts across moors five miles away, churches that you must keep on
+this hand, and rocks that you must keep on that, are impressed upon
+your memory with the most laborious minuteness, and shouted after you
+over and over again as long as you are within hearing. If the utmost
+anxiety to give the utmost quantity of good advice could always avail
+against accident or forgetfulness, no traveller in Cornwall who asks his
+way as he goes, need ever lose himself.
+
+When people possess the virtue of natural courtesy they are seldom found
+wanting in other higher virtues that are akin to it. Household
+affection, ready hospitality, and great gratitude for small rewards of
+services rendered, are all to be found among the Cornish peasantry.
+Their fondness for their children is very pleasant to see. A word of
+inquiry or praise addressed to the mother makes her face glow with
+delight, and sends her away at once in search of the missing members of
+her little family, who are ranged before you triumphantly, with smoothed
+hair and carefully wiped faces, ready to be reviewed in a row. Both
+father and mother often wish you, at parting, a good wife and a large
+family (if you are not married already), just as they wish you a
+pleasant journey and a prosperous return home again.
+
+Of Cornish hospitality we experienced many proofs, one of which may be
+related as a sample. Arriving late at a village, in the far west of the
+county, we found some difficulty in arousing the people of the inn.
+While we were waiting at the door, we heard a man who lived in a cottage
+near at hand, and of whom we had asked our way on the road, inquiring of
+some female member of his family, whether she could make up a spare bed.
+We had met this man proceeding in our direction, and had so far
+outstripped him in walking, that we had been waiting outside the inn
+about a quarter of an hour before he got home. When the woman answered
+his question in the negative, he directed her to put clean sheets on his
+own bed, and then came out to tell us that if we failed to obtain
+admission at the public-house, a lodging for the night was ready for us
+under his own roof. We found on inquiry, afterwards, that he had looked
+out of window, after getting home, while we were still disturbing the
+village by a continuous series of assaults on the inn door; had
+recognised us in the moonlight; and had thereupon not only offered us
+his bed, but had got out of it himself to do so. When we finally
+succeeded in gaining admittance to the inn, he declined an invitation to
+sup with us, and wishing us a good night's rest, returned to his home. I
+should mention, at the same time, that another bed was offered to us at
+the vicarage, by the clergyman of the parish; and that after this
+gentleman had himself seen that we were properly accommodated by our
+landlady, he left us with an invitation to breakfast with him the next
+morning. Thus is hospitality practised in Cornwall--a county where, it
+must be remembered, a stranger is doubly a stranger, in relation to
+provincial sympathies; where the national feeling is almost entirely
+merged in the local feeling; where a man speaks of himself as _Cornish_
+in much the same spirit as a Welshman speaks of himself as Welsh.
+
+In like manner, another instance drawn from my own experience, will best
+display the anxiety which we found generally testified by the Cornish
+poor to make the best and most grateful return in their power for
+anything which they considered as a favour kindly bestowed. Such little
+anecdotes as I here relate in illustration of popular character, cannot,
+I think, be considered trifling; for it is by trifles, after all, that
+we gain our truest appreciation of the marking signs of good or evil in
+the dispositions of our fellow-beings; just as in the beating of a
+single artery under the touch, we discover an indication of the strength
+or weakness of the whole vital frame.
+
+On the granite cliffs at the Land's End I met with an old man,
+seventy-two years of age, of whom I asked some questions relative to the
+extraordinary rocks scattered about this part of the coast. He
+immediately opened his whole budget of local anecdotes, telling them in
+a quavering high-treble voice, which was barely audible above the dash
+of the breakers beneath, and the fierce whistling of the wind among the
+rocks around us. However, the old fellow went on talking incessantly,
+hobbling along before me, up and down steep paths and along the very
+brink of a fearful precipice, with as much coolness as if his sight was
+as clear and his step as firm as in his youth. When he had shown me all
+that he could show, and had thoroughly exhausted himself with talking, I
+gave him a shilling at parting. He appeared to be perfectly astonished
+by a remuneration which the reader will doubtless consider the reverse
+of excessive; thanked me at the top of his voice; and then led me, in a
+great hurry, and with many mysterious nods and gestures, to a hollow in
+the grass, where he had spread on a clean pocket-handkerchief a little
+stock-in-trade of his own, consisting of barnacles, bits of rock and
+ore, and specimens of dried seaweed. Pointing to these, he told me to
+take anything I liked, as a present in return for what I had given him.
+He would not hear of my buying anything; he was not, he said, a regular
+guide, and I had paid him more already than such an old man was
+worth--what I took out of his handkerchief I must take as a present
+only. I saw by his manner that he would be really mortified if I
+contested the matter with him, so as a present I received one of his
+pieces of rock--I had no right to deny him the pleasure of doing a kind
+action, because there happened to be a few more shillings in my pocket
+than in his.
+
+Nothing can be much better adapted to show how simple and
+unsophisticated the Cornish character still remains in many respects,
+than Cornish notions of organizing a public festival, and Cornish
+enjoyment of that festival when it is organized. We had already seen how
+they managed a public boat-race at Looe, and we saw again how they
+conducted the preparations for the same popular festival, on a larger
+scale, at the coast town of Fowey.
+
+In the first place, the dormant public enthusiasm was stimulated by
+music at an uncomfortably early hour in the morning. Two horn players
+and a clarionet player; a fat musician who blew through a very small
+fife and kept time with his head; and a withered little man who beat
+furiously on a mighty drum--drew up in martial array, one behind the
+other, before the principal inn. Two boys, staring about them in a
+stolidly important manner, and carrying flags which bore a suspicious
+resemblance to India pocket handkerchiefs sewn together, formed in front
+of the musicians. Two corpulent, solemn, elderly gentlemen in black
+(belonging, apparently, to the churchwarden-type of the human species),
+formed in their turn on each side of the boys--and then the procession
+started; walking briskly up and down, and in and out, and round and
+round the same streets, over and over again; the musicians playing on
+all their instruments at once (drum included), without a moment's
+intermission on the part of any one of them. Nothing could exceed the
+gravity and silence of the popular concourse which followed this
+grotesque procession. The solemn composure on the countenances of the
+two corpulent civil officers who went before it, was reflected on the
+features of the smallest boy who followed humbly behind. Profound
+musical amateurs in attendance at a classical quartet concert, could
+have exhibited no graver or more breathless attention than that
+displayed by the inhabitants of Fowey, as they marched at the heels of
+the peripatetic town band.
+
+But, while the music was proceeding, another adjunct to the dignity of
+the festival was in course of preparation, which appealed more strongly
+to popular sympathy even than the band and procession. A quantity of
+young trees--miserable little saplings cut short in their early
+infancy--were brought into the town, curiously sharpened at the stems.
+Holes were rapidly drilled in the ground, here, there, and everywhere,
+for their reception, at corners of house walls. While men outside set
+them up, women in a high state of excitement appeared at first-floor
+windows with long pieces of string, which they fastened to the branches
+to steady the trees at the top, hauling them about this way and that
+most unmercifully during the operation, and then vanishing to tie the
+loose ends of the lines to bars of grates and legs of tables. Mazes of
+long tight strings ran all across our room at the inn; broken twigs and
+drooping leaves peered in sadly at us through the three windows that
+lighted it. We were driven about from corner to corner out of the way of
+this rigging by an imperious old woman, who fastened and fettered the
+wretched trees with as fierce an air as if they were criminals whom she
+was handcuffing, and who at last fairly told us that she thought we had
+better leave the room, and see how beautiful things looked from the
+outside. On obeying this intimation, we found that the trees had
+absorbed the whole public attention to themselves. The band marched by,
+playing furiously; but the boys deserted it. The people from the
+country, hastening into the town, hot and eager, paused, reckless of the
+music, reckless of the flags, reckless of the procession, to look forth
+upon the streets "with verdure clad." The popularity of the Sons of
+Apollo was a thing of the past already! Nothing can well be imagined
+more miserably ugly than the appearance of the trees, standing strung
+into unnatural positions, and looking half dead already; but they
+evidently inspired the liveliest public satisfaction. Women returned to
+the windows to give a last perfecting tug to their branches; men patted
+approvingly with spades the loose earth round their stems. Spectators,
+one by one, took a near view and a distant view, and then walked gently
+by and took an occasional view, and lastly gathered together in little
+groups and took a general view. As connoisseurs look at their pictures,
+as mothers look at their children, as lovers look at their
+mistresses--so did the people of Fowey assemble with one accord and look
+at their trees.
+
+After all, however, I shall perhaps best illustrate the simplicity of
+character displayed by the Cornish country-people, if I leave the less
+amusing preparations for inaugurating the Fowey boat-race untold, and
+describe some of the peculiarities of behaviour and remark which the
+appearance of my companion and myself called forth in all parts of
+Cornwall. The mere sight of two strangers walking with such appendages
+as knapsacks strapped on their shoulders, seemed of itself to provoke
+the most unbounded wonder. We were stared at with almost incredible
+pertinacity and good humour. People hard at work, left off to look at
+us; while groups congregated at cottage doors, walked into the middle of
+the road when they saw us approach, looked at us in front from that
+commanding point of view until we passed them, and then wheeled round
+with one accord and gazed at us behind as long as we were within sight.
+Little children ran in-doors to bring out large children, as we drew
+near. Farmers, overtaking us on horseback, pulled in, and passed at a
+walk, to examine us at their ease. With the exception of bedridden
+people and people in prison, I believe that the whole population of
+Cornwall looked at us all over--back view and front view--from head to
+foot!
+
+This staring was nowhere accompanied, either on the part of young or
+old, by a jeering word or an impertinent look. We evidently astonished
+the people, but we never tempted them to forget their natural
+good-nature, forbearance, and self-restraint. On our side, the attentive
+scrutiny to which we were subjected, was at first not a little
+perplexing. It was difficult not to doubt occasionally whether some
+unpleasantly remarkable change had not suddenly taken place in our
+personal appearance--whether we might not have turned green or blue on
+our travels, or have got noses as long as the preposterous nose of the
+traveller through Strasburgh, in the tale of Slawkenbergius. It was not
+until we had been some days in the county that we began to discover, by
+some such indications as the following, that we owed the public
+attention to our knapsacks, and not to ourselves.
+
+We enter a small public-house by the roadside to get a draught of beer.
+In the kitchen, we behold the landlord and a tall man who is a customer.
+Both stare as a matter of course; the tall man especially, after taking
+one look at our knapsacks, fixes his eyes firmly on us and sits bolt
+upright on the bench without saying a word--he is evidently prepared for
+the worst we can do. We get into conversation with the landlord, a
+jovial, talkative fellow, who desires greatly to know what we are, if we
+have no objection. We ask him, what he thinks we are?--"Well," says the
+landlord, pointing to my friend's knapsack, which has a square ruler
+strapped to it, for architectural drawing--"well, I think you are both
+of you _mappers_--mappers who come here to make new roads--you may be
+coming to make a railroad, I dare say--we've had mappers in the country
+before this--I know a mapper myself--here's both your good healths!" We
+drink the landlord's good health in return, and disclaim the honour of
+being "mappers;" we walk through the country (we tell him) for pleasure
+alone, and take any roads we can get, without wanting to make new ones.
+The landlord would like to know, if that is the case, why we carry those
+weights at our backs?--Because we want to take our luggage about with
+us. Couldn't we pay to ride?--Yes, we could. And yet we like walking
+better?--Yes we do. This last answer utterly confounds the tall
+customer, who has been hitherto listening intently to the dialogue. It
+is evidently too much for his credulity--he pays his reckoning, and
+walks out in a hurry without uttering a word. The landlord appears to be
+convinced, but it is only in appearance. We leave him standing at his
+door, keeping his eye on us as long as we are in sight, still evidently
+persuaded that we are "mappers," but "mappers" of a bad order whose
+presence is fraught with some unknown peril to the security of the
+Queen's highway.
+
+We get on into another district. Here, public opinion is not flattering.
+Some of the groups, gathered together in the road to observe us, begin
+to speculate on our characters before we are quite out of hearing. Then,
+this sort of dialogue, spoken in serious, subdued tones, just reaches
+us: Question--What can they be? Answer--"_Trodgers!_"
+
+This is particularly humiliating, because it happens to be true. We
+certainly do trudge, and are therefore properly, though rather
+unceremoniously, called trudgers, or "trodgers." But we sink to a lower
+depth yet, a little further on. We are viewed as objects for pity. It is
+a fine evening; we stop and lean against a bank by the roadside to look
+at the sunset. An old woman comes tottering by on high pattens, very
+comfortably and nicely clad. She sees our knapsacks, and instantly stops
+in front of us, and begins to moan lamentably. Not understanding at
+first what this means, we ask respectfully if she feels at all ill?
+"Ah, poor fellows! poor fellows!" she sighs in answer, "obliged to carry
+all your baggage on your own backs!--very hard! poor lads! very hard,
+indeed!" And the good old soul goes away groaning over our evil plight,
+and mumbling something which sounds very like an assurance that she has
+got no money to give us.
+
+In another part of the county we rise again gloriously in worldly
+consideration. We pass a cottage; a woman looks out after us, over the
+low garden wall, and rather hesitatingly calls us back. I approach her
+first, and am thus saluted: "If you please, sir, what have you got to
+sell?" Again, an old man meets us on the road, stops, cheerfully taps
+our knapsacks with his stick, and says: "Aha! you're tradesmen, eh?
+things to sell? I say, have you got any tea" (pronounced _tay_); "I'll
+buy some _tay_!" Further on, we approach a group of miners breaking ore.
+As we pass by, we hear one asking amazedly, "What have they got to sell
+in those things on their backs?" and another answering, in the prompt
+tones of a guesser who is convinced that he guesses right,
+"Guinea-pigs!"
+
+It is unfortunately impossible to convey to the reader an adequate idea,
+by mere description, of the extraordinary gravity of manner, the looks
+of surprise and the tones of conviction which accompanied these various
+popular conjectures as to our calling and station in life, and which
+added immeasurably at the time to their comic effect. Curiously enough,
+whenever they took the form of questions, any jesting in returning an
+answer never seemed either to be appreciated or understood by the
+country people. Serious replies shared much the same fate as jokes.
+Everybody asked whether we could pay for riding, and nobody believed
+that we preferred walking, if we could. So we soon gave up the idea of
+affording any information at all; and walked through the country
+comfortably as mappers, trodgers, tradesmen, guinea-pig-mongers, and
+poor back-burdened vagabond lads, altogether, or one at a time, just as
+the peasantry pleased.
+
+I have not communicated to the reader all the conjectures formed about
+us, for the simple reason that many of them, when they ran to any
+length, were by no means so intelligible as could be desired. It will
+readily be imagined, that in a county which had a language of its own
+(something similar to the Welsh) down to the time of Edward VI., if not
+later--in a county where this language continued to be spoken among the
+humbler classes until nearly the end of the seventeenth century, and
+where it still gives their names to men, places, and implements--some
+remnants of it must attach themselves to the dialect of English now
+spoken by the lower orders. This is enough of itself to render Cornish
+talk not very easy to be understood by ordinary strangers; but the
+difficulty of comprehending it is still further increased by the manner
+in which the people speak. They pronounce rapidly and indistinctly,
+often running separate syllables into one another through a sentence,
+until the whole sounds like one long fragmentary word. To the student in
+philology a series of conversations with the Cornish poor would, I
+imagine, afford ample matter for observation of the most interesting
+kind. Some of their expressions have a character that is quite
+patriarchal. Young men, for instance, are addressed by their elders as,
+"my son"--everything eatable, either for man or beast, is commonly
+denominated, "meat."
+
+It may be expected, before I close this hasty sketch of the Cornish
+people, that I should touch on the dark side of the picture--unfinished
+though it is--which I have endeavoured to draw. But I have nothing to
+communicate on the subject of offences in Cornwall, beyond a few words
+about "wrecking" and smuggling.
+
+Opinions have been divided among well-informed persons, as to the truth
+or falsehood of those statements of travellers and historians, which
+impute the habitual commission of outrages and robberies on sufferers by
+shipwreck to the Cornish of former generations. Without entering into
+this question of the past, which can only be treated as a matter for
+discussion, I am happy, in proceeding at once to the present, to be able
+to state, as a matter of fact, that "wrecking" is a crime unknown in the
+Cornwall of our day. So far from maltreating shipwrecked persons, the
+inhabitants of the sea-shore risk their lives to save them. I make this
+assertion, on the authority of a gentleman whose life has been passed in
+the West of Cornwall; whose avocations take him much among the poor of
+all ranks and characters; and who has himself seen wrecked sailors
+rescued from death by the courage and humanity of the population of the
+coast.
+
+In reference to smuggling, many years have passed without one of those
+fatal encounters between smugglers and revenue officers which, in other
+days, gave a dark and fearful character to the contraband trade in
+Cornwall. So well is the coast watched, that no smuggling of any
+consequence can now take place. It is only the oldest Cornish men who
+can give you any account, from personal experience, of adventures in
+"running a cargo;" and those that I heard described were by no means of
+the romantic or interesting order.
+
+Beyond this, I have nothing further to relate regarding criminal
+matters. It may not unreasonably be doubted whether a subject so serious
+and so extensive as the Statistics of Crime, is not out of the scope of
+a book like the present, whose only object is to tell a simple fireside
+story which may amuse an idle, or solace a mournful hour. Moreover,
+remembering the assistance and the kindness that my companion and I met
+with throughout Cornwall--and those only who have travelled on foot can
+appreciate how much the enjoyment of exploring a country may be
+heightened or decreased, according to the welcome given to the stranger
+by the inhabitants--remembering, too, that we walked late at night,
+through districts inhabited only by the roughest and poorest classes,
+entirely unmolested; and that we trusted much on many occasions to the
+honesty of the people, and never found cause to repent our trust--I
+cannot but feel that it would be an ungracious act to ransack newspapers
+and Reports to furnish materials for recording in detail, the vices of a
+population whom I have only personally known by their virtues. Let you
+and I, reader, leave off with the same pleasant impressions of the
+Cornish people--you, whose only object is to hear, and I whose only
+object is to tell, the story of a holiday walk. There is enough to be
+found in them that is good, amply to justify a little inattention to
+whatever we may discover that is bad.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] It may be necessary to remind the reader that this statement
+respecting the population of Cornwall was written in the year 1850. I
+have no means at my disposal of ascertaining what the increase in
+numbers may have been during the last ten years.--(March, 1861.)
+
+[3] The gentleman here referred to--whose kind assistance while I was
+writing these pages I can never forget--was Mr. Richard Moyle, long
+resident as a medical man at Penzance. Since my first visit to Cornwall,
+death has removed Mr. Moyle from the scene of his labours, to the
+lasting and sincere regret of all who knew him.--(March, 1861.)
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+LOO-POOL
+
+
+"Now, I think it very much amiss," remarks Sterne, in 'Tristram Shandy,'
+"that a man cannot go quietly through a town and let it alone, when it
+does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about, and drawing
+his pen at every kennel he crosses over, merely, o' my conscience, for
+the sake of drawing it." I quote this wise and witty observation on a
+bad practice of some travel-writers, as containing the best reason that
+I can give the reader for transporting him at once over some sixty miles
+of Cornish high-roads and footpaths, without stopping to drop one word
+of description by the way. Having left off the record of our travels at
+Liskeard, and taking it up again--as I mean to do here--at Helston, I
+skip over five intermediate market-towns and two large villages, with a
+mere dash of the pen. Lostwithiel, Fowey, St. Austell, Grampound,
+Probus, Truro, Falmouth, are all places of mark and note, and have all
+certain curiosities and sights of their own to interest the inquisitive
+tourist; but, nevertheless, not one of them "meddled" with me in the
+course of my rambles, and acting on Sterne's excellent principle, I
+purpose "letting them alone" now. In other words, the several towns and
+villages that I have enumerated, though presenting much that was
+generally picturesque and attractive in the way of old buildings and
+pretty scenery, exhibited little that was distinctive or original in
+character; produced therefore rather pleasant than vivid impressions;
+and would by no means suggest any very original series of descriptions
+to fill the pages of a book which is confined to such subjects only as
+are most exclusively and strikingly Cornish.
+
+The town of Helston, where we now halt for the first time since we left
+the Cheese-Wring and St. Cleer's Well, might, if tested by its own
+merits alone, be passed over as unceremoniously as the towns already
+passed over before it. Its principal recommendation, in the opinion of
+the inhabitants, appeared to be that it was the residence of several
+very "genteel families," who have certainly not communicated much of
+their gentility to the lower orders of the population--a riotous and
+drunken set, the only bad specimens of Cornish people that I met with in
+Cornwall. The streets of Helston are a trifle larger and a trifle duller
+than the streets of Liskeard; the church is comparatively modern in
+date, and superlatively ugly in design. A miserable altar-piece, daubed
+in gaudy colours on the window above the communion-table, is the only
+approach to any attempt at embellishment in the interior. In short, the
+town has nothing to offer to attract the stranger, but a public
+festival--a sort of barbarous carnival--held there annually on the 8th
+of May. This festival is said to be of very ancient origin, and is
+called "The Furry"--an old Cornish word, signifying a gathering; and, at
+Helston particularly, a gathering in celebration of the return of
+spring. The Furry begins early in the morning with singing, to an
+accompaniment of drums and kettles. All the people in the town
+immediately leave off work and scamper into the country; having reached
+which, they scamper back again, garlanded with leaves and flowers, and
+caper about hand-in-hand through the streets, and in and out of all the
+houses, without let or hindrance. Even the "genteel" resident families
+allow themselves to be infected with the general madness, and wind up
+the day's capering consistently enough by a night's capering at a grand
+ball. A full account of these extraordinary absurdities may be found in
+Polwhele's "History of Cornwall."
+
+But, though thus uninteresting in itself, Helston must be visited by
+every tourist in Cornwall for the sake of the grand, the almost
+unrivalled scenery to be met with near it. The town is not only the best
+starting-point from which to explore the noble line of coast rocks which
+ends at the Lizard Head; but possesses the further recommendation of
+lying in the immediate vicinity of the largest lake in Cornwall--Loo
+Pool.
+
+The banks of Loo Pool stretch on either side to the length of two miles;
+the lake, which in summer occupies little more than half the space that
+it covers in winter, is formed by the flow of two or three small
+streams. You first reach it from Helston, after a walk of half a mile;
+and then see before you, on either hand, long ranges of hills rising
+gently from the water's edge, covered with clustering trees, or occupied
+by wide cornfields and sloping tracts of common land. So far, the
+scenery around Loo Pool resembles the scenery around other lakes; but as
+you proceed, the view changes in the most striking and extraordinary
+manner. Walking on along the winding banks of the pool, you taste the
+water and find it soft and fresh, you see ducks swimming about in it
+from the neighbouring farm-houses, you watch the rising of the fine
+trout for which it is celebrated--every object tends to convince you
+that you are wandering by the shores of an inland lake--when suddenly at
+a turn in the hill slope, you are startled by the shrill cry of the
+gull, and the fierce roar of breakers thunders on your ear--you look
+over the light grey waters of the lake, and behold, stretching
+immediately above and beyond them, the expanse of the deep blue ocean,
+from which they are only separated by a strip of smooth white sand!
+
+You hurry on, and reach this bar of sand which parts the great English
+Channel and the little Loo Pool--a child might run across it in a
+minute! You stand in the centre. On one side, close at hand, water is
+dancing beneath the breeze in glassy, tiny ripples; on the other,
+equally close, water rolls in mighty waves, precipitated on the ground
+in dashing, hissing, writhing floods of the whitest foam--here,
+children are floating mimic boats on a mimic sea; there, the stateliest
+ships of England are sailing over the great deep--both scenes visible in
+one view. Rocky cliffs and arid sands appear in close combination with
+rounded fertile hills, and long grassy slopes; salt spray leaping over
+the first, spring-water lying calm beneath the last! No fairy vision of
+Nature that ever was imagined is more fantastic, or more lovely than
+this glorious reality, which brings all the most widely contrasted
+characteristics of a sea view and an inland view into the closest
+contact, and presents them in one harmonious picture to the eye.
+
+The ridge of sand between Loo Pool and the sea, which, by impeding the
+flow of the inland streams spreads them in the form of a lake over the
+valley-ground between two hills, is formed by the action of storms from
+the south-west. Such, at least, is the modern explanation of the manner
+in which Loo Bar has been heaped up. But there is an ancient legend in
+connexion with it, which, tells a widely different story.
+
+It is said that the terrible Cornish giant, or ogre, Tregeagle, was
+trudging homewards one day, carrying a huge sack of sand on his back,
+which--being a giant of neat and cleanly habits--he designed should
+serve him for sprinkling his parlour floor. As he was passing along the
+top of the hills which now overlook Loo Pool, he heard a sound of
+scampering footsteps behind him; and, turning round, saw that he was
+hotly pursued by no less a person than the devil himself. Big as he was,
+Tregeagle lost heart and ignominiously took to his heels: but the devil
+ran nimbly, ran steadily, ran without losing breath--ran, in short,
+_like_ the devil. Tregeagle was fat, short-winded, had a load on his
+back, and lost ground at every step. At last, just as he reached the
+seaward extremity of the hills, he determined in despair to lighten
+himself of his burden, and thus to seize the only chance of escaping his
+enemy by superior fleetness of foot. Accordingly, he opened his huge
+sack in a great hurry, shook out all his sand over the precipice,
+between the sea and the river which then ran into it, and so formed in a
+moment the Bar of Loo Pool.
+
+In the winter time, the lake is the cause and the scene of an
+extraordinary ceremony. The heavy incessant rains which then fall (ice
+is almost unknown in the moist climate of Cornwall), increase day by day
+the waters of the Pool, until they encroach over the whole of the low
+flat valley between Helston and the sea. Then, the smooth paths of
+turf, the little streams that run by their side--so pleasant to look on
+in the summer time--are hidden by the great overflow. Mill-wheels are
+stopped; cottages built on the declivities of the hill are threatened
+with inundation. Out on the bar, at high tide, but two or three feet of
+sand appear between the stormy sea on the one hand, and the stagnant
+swollen lake on the other. If Loo Pool were measured now, it would be
+found to extend to a circumference of seven miles.
+
+When the flooding of the lake has reached its climax, the millers, who
+are the principal sufferers by the overflow, prepare to cut a passage
+through the Bar for the superabundant waters of the Pool. Before they
+can do this, however, they must conform to a curious old custom which
+has been practised for centuries, and is retained down to the present
+day. Procuring two stout leathern purses, they tie up three halfpence in
+each, and then set off with them in a body to the Lord of the Manor.
+Presenting him with their purses, they state their case with all due
+formality, and request permission to cut their trench through the sand.
+In consideration of the threepenny recognition of his rights, the Lord
+of the Manor graciously accedes to the petition; and the millers, armed
+with their spades and shovels, start for the Bar.
+
+Their projected labour is of the slightest kind. A mere ditch suffices
+to establish the desired communication: and the water does the rest for
+itself. On one occasion, so high was the tide on one side, and so full
+the lake on the other, that a man actually scraped away sand enough with
+his stick, to give vent to the waters of the Pool. Thus, after no very
+hard work, the millers achieve their object; and the spectators watching
+on the hill, behold a startling and magnificent scene.
+
+Tearing away the sand on either side, floods of fresh water rush out
+furiously against floods of salt water leaping in, upheaved into mighty
+waves by the winter gale. A foaming roaring battle between two opposing
+forces of the same element takes place. The noise is terrific--it is
+heard like thunder, at great distances off. At last, the heavy, smooth,
+continuous flow of the fresh water prevails even over the power of the
+ocean. Farther and farther out, rushing through a wider and wider
+channel every minute, pour the great floods from the land, until the
+salt water is stained with an ochre colour, over a surface of twenty
+miles. But their force is soon spent: soon, the lake sinks lower and
+lower away from the slope of the hills. Then, with the high tide, the
+sea reappears triumphantly, dashing and leaping, in clouds of spray,
+through the channel in the sand--making the waters of the Pool
+brackish--now, threatening to swell them anew to overflowing--and now,
+at the ebb, leaving them to empty themselves again, in the manner of a
+great tidal river. No new change takes place, until a storm from the
+south-west comes on; and then, fresh masses of sand and shingle are
+forced up--the channel is refilled--the bar is reconstructed as if by a
+miracle. Again, the scene resumes its old features--again, there is a
+sea on one side, and a lake on the other. But now, the Pool occupies
+only its ordinary limits--now, the mill-wheels turn busily once more,
+and the smooth paths and gliding streams reappear in their former
+beauty, until the next winter rains shall come round, and the next
+winter floods shall submerge them again.
+
+At the time when I visited the lake, its waters were unusually low.
+Here, they ran calm and shallow, into little, glassy, flowery creeks,
+that looked like fairies' bathing places. There, out in the middle, they
+hardly afforded depth enough for a duck to swim in. Near to the Bar,
+however, they spread forth wider and deeper; finely contrasted, in
+their dun colour and perfect repose, with the flashing foaming breakers
+on the other side. The surf forbade all hope of swimming; but, standing
+where the spent waves ran up deepest, and where the spray flew highest
+before the wind, I could take a natural shower-bath from the sea, in one
+direction; and the next moment, turning round in the other, could wash
+the sand off my feet luxuriously in the soft, fresh waters of Loo Pool.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE LIZARD.
+
+
+We had waited throughout one long rainy day at Helston--"remote,
+unfriended, melancholy, slow"--for a chance of finer weather before we
+started to explore the Lizard promontory. But our patience availed us
+little. The next morning, there was the soft, thick, misty Cornish rain
+still falling, just as it had already fallen without cessation for
+twenty-four hours. To wait longer, in perfect inactivity, and in the
+dullest of towns--doubtful whether the sky would clear even in a week's
+time--was beyond mortal endurance. We shouldered our knapsacks, and
+started for the Lizard in defiance of rain, and in defiance of our
+landlady's reiterated assertions that we should lose our way in the
+mist, when we walked inland; and should slip into invisible holes, and
+fall over fog-veiled precipices among the rocks, if we ventured to
+approach the coast.
+
+What sort of scenery we walked through, I am unable to say. The rain was
+above--the mud was below--the mist was all around us. The few objects,
+near at hand, that we did now and then see, dripped with wet, and had a
+shadowy visionary look. Sometimes, we met a forlorn cow steaming
+composedly by the roadside--or an old horse, standing up to his fetlocks
+in mire, and sneezing vociferously--or a good-humoured peasant, who
+directed us on our road, and informed us with a grin, that this sort of
+"fine rain" often lasted for a fortnight. Sometimes we passed little
+villages built in damp holes, where trees, cottages, women scampering
+backwards and forwards peevishly on domestic errands, big boys with
+empty sacks over their heads and shoulders, gossiping gloomily against
+barn walls, and ill-conditioned pigs grunting for admission at closed
+kitchen doors, all looked soaked through and through together. Nothing,
+in short, could be more dreary and comfortless than our walk for the
+first two hours. But, after that, as we approached "Lizard Town," the
+clouds began to part to seaward; layer after layer of mist drove past
+us, rolling before the wind; peeps of faint greenish-blue sky appeared
+and enlarged apace. By the time we had arrived at our destination, a
+white, watery sunlight was falling over the wet landscape. The
+prognostications of our Cornish friends were pleasantly falsified. A
+fine day was in store for us after all.
+
+The man who first distinguished the little group of cottages that we now
+looked on, by the denomination of Lizard _Town_, must have possessed
+magnificent ideas indeed on the subject of nomenclature. If the place
+looked like anything in the world, it looked like a large collection of
+farm out-buildings without a farm-house. Muddy little lanes intersecting
+each other at every possible angle; rickety little cottages turned about
+to all the points of the compass; ducks, geese, cocks, hens, pigs, cows,
+horses, dunghills, puddles, sheds, peat-stacks, timber, nets, seemed to
+be all indiscriminately huddled together where there was little or no
+room for them. To find the inn amid this confusion of animate and
+inanimate objects, was no easy matter; and when we at length discovered
+it, pushed our way through the live stock in the garden, and opened the
+kitchen door, this was the scene which burst instantaneously on our
+view:--
+
+We beheld a small room literally full of babies, and babies' mothers.
+Interesting infants of the tenderest possible age, draped in long
+clothes and short clothes, and shawls and blankets, met the eye
+wherever it turned. We saw babies propped up uncomfortably on the
+dresser, babies rocking snugly in wicker cradles, babies stretched out
+flat on their backs on women's knees, babies prone on the floor toasting
+before a slow fire. Every one of these Cornish cherubs was crying in
+every variety of vocal key. Every one of their affectionate parents was
+talking at the top of her voice. Every one of their little elder
+brothers was screaming, squabbling, and tumbling down in the passage
+with prodigious energy and spirit. The mothers of England--and they
+only--can imagine the deafening and composite character of the noise
+which this large family party produced. To describe it is impossible.
+
+Ere long, while we looked on it, the domestic scene began to change.
+Even as porters, policemen, and workmen of all sorts, gathered together
+on the line of rails at a station, move aside quickly and with one
+accord out of the way of the heavy engine slowly starting on its
+journey--so did the congregated mothers in the inn kitchen now move back
+on either hand with their babies, and clear a path for the great bulk of
+the hostess leisurely advancing from the fireside, to greet us at the
+door. From this most corpulent and complaisant of women, we received a
+hearty welcome, and a full explanation of the family orgies that were
+taking place under her roof. The great public meeting of all the babies
+in Lizard Town and the neighbouring villages, on which we had intruded,
+had been convened by the local doctor, who had got down from London,
+what the landlady termed a "lot of fine fresh matter," and was now about
+to strike a decisive blow at the small-pox, by vaccinating all the
+babies he could lay his hands on at "one fell swoop." The surgical
+ceremonies were expected to begin in a few minutes.
+
+This last piece of information sent us out of the house without a
+moment's delay. The sunlight had brightened gloriously since we had last
+beheld it--the rain was over--the mist was gone. But a short distance
+before us, rose the cliffs at the Lizard Head--the southernmost land in
+England--and to this point we now hastened, as the fittest spot from
+which to start on our rambles along the coast.
+
+On our way thither, short as it was, we observed a novelty. In the South
+and West of Cornwall, the footpaths, instead of leading through or round
+the fields, are all on the top of the thick stone walls--some four feet
+high--which divide them. This curious arrangement for walking gives a
+startling and picturesque character to the figures of the country
+people, when you see them at a distance, striding along, not on the
+earth but above it, and often relieved throughout the whole length of
+their bodies against the sky. Preserving our equilibrium, on these
+elevated pathways, with some difficulty against the strong south-west
+wind that was now blowing in our faces, we soon reached the topmost
+rocks that crown the Lizard Head: and then, the whole noble line of
+coast and the wild stormy ocean opened grandly into view.
+
+On each side of us, precipice over precipice, cavern within cavern, rose
+the great cliffs protecting the land against the raging sea. Three
+hundred feet beneath, the foam was boiling far out over a reef of black
+rocks. Above and around, flocks of sea-birds flew in ever lengthening
+circles, or perched flapping their wings and sunning their plumage, on
+ledges of riven stone below us. Every object forming the wide sweep of
+the view was on the vastest and most majestic scale. The wild varieties
+of form in the jagged line of rocks stretched away eastward and
+westward, as far as the eye could reach; black shapeless masses of mist
+scowled over the whole landward horizon; the bright blue sky at the
+opposite point was covered with towering white clouds which moved and
+changed magnificently; the tossing and raging of the great bright sea
+was sublimely contrasted by the solitude and tranquillity of the desert,
+overshadowed land--while ever and ever, sounding as they first sounded
+when the morning stars sang together, the rolling waves and the rushing
+wind pealed out their primeval music over the whole scene!
+
+And now, when we began to examine the coast more in detail, inquiring
+the names of remarkable objects as we proceeded, we found ourselves in a
+country where each succeeding spot that the traveller visited, was
+memorable for some mighty convulsion of Nature, or tragically associated
+with some gloomy story of shipwreck and death. Turning from the Lizard
+Head towards a cliff at some little distance, we passed through a field
+on our way, overgrown with sweet-smelling wild flowers, and broken up
+into low grassy mounds. This place is called "Pistol Meadow," and is
+connected with a terrible event which is still spoken of by the country
+people with superstitious awe.
+
+Some hundred years since, a transport-ship, filled with troops, was
+wrecked on the reef off the Lizard Head. Two men only were washed ashore
+alive. Out of the fearful number that perished, two hundred corpses
+were driven up on the beach below Pistol Meadow; and there they were
+buried by tens and twenties together in great pits, the position of
+which is still revealed by the low irregular mounds that chequer the
+surface of the field. The place was named, in remembrance of the
+quantity of fire-arms,--especially pistols--found about the wreck of the
+ill-fated ship, at low tide, on the reef below the cliffs. To this day,
+the peasantry continue to regard Pistol Meadow with feelings of awe and
+horror, and fear to walk near the graves of the drowned men at night.
+Nor have many of the inhabitants yet forgotten a revolting circumstance
+connected by traditional report with the burial of the corpses after the
+shipwreck. It is said, that when dead bodies were first washed ashore,
+troops of ferocious, half-starved dogs suddenly appeared from the
+surrounding country, and could with difficulty be driven from preying on
+the mangled remains that were cast up on the beach. Ever since that
+period, the peasantry have been reported as holding the dog in
+abhorrence. Whether this be true or not, it is certainly a rare
+adventure to meet with a dog in the Lizard district. You may walk
+through farm-yard after farm-yard, you may enter cottage after cottage,
+and never hear any barking at your heels;--you may pass, on the road,
+labourer after labourer, and yet never find one of them accompanied, as
+in other parts of the country, by his favourite attendant cur.
+
+Leaving Pistol Meadow, after gathering a few of the wild herbs growing
+fragrant and plentiful over the graves of the dead, we turned our steps
+towards the Lizard Lighthouse. As we passed before the front of the
+large and massive building, our progress was suddenly and startlingly
+checked by a hideous chasm in the cliff, sunk to a perpendicular depth
+of seventy feet, and measuring more than a hundred in circumference.
+Nothing prepares the stranger for this great gulf; no railing is placed
+about it; it lies hidden by rising land, and the earth all around is
+treacherously smooth. The first moment when you see it, is the moment
+when you start back instinctively from its edge, doubtful whether the
+hole has not yawned open in that very instant before your feet.
+
+This chasm--melodramatically entitled by the people, "The Lion's
+Den"--was formed in an extraordinary manner, not many years since. In
+the evening the whole surface of the down above the cliff was smooth to
+the eye, and firm to the foot--in the morning it had opened into an
+enormous hole. The men who kept watch at the Lighthouse, heard no sounds
+beyond the moaning of the sea--felt no shock--looked out on the night,
+and saw that all was apparently still and quiet. Nature suffered her
+convulsion and effected her change in silence. Hundreds on hundreds of
+tons of soil had sunk down into depths beneath them, none knew in how
+long, or how short a time; but there the Lion's Den was in the morning,
+where the firm earth had been the evening before.
+
+The explanation of the manner in which this curious landslip occurred,
+is to be found by descending the face of the cliff, beyond the Lion's
+Den, and entering a cavern in the rocks, called "Daw's Hugo" (or Cave).
+The place is only accessible at low water. Passing from the beach
+through the opening of the cavern, you find yourself in a lofty,
+tortuous recess, into the farthest extremity of which, a stream of light
+pours down from some eighty or a hundred feet above. This light is
+admitted through the Lion's Den, and thus explains by itself the nature
+of the accident by which that chasm was formed. Here, the weight of the
+upper soil broke through the roof of the cave; and the earth which then
+fell into it, was subsequently washed away by the sea, which fills Daw's
+Hugo at every flow of the tide. It has lately been noticed that the
+loose particles of ground at the bottom of the Lion's Den, still
+continue to sink gradually through the narrow, slanting passage into the
+cave already formed; and it is expected that in no very long time the
+lower extremity of the chasm will widen so far, as to make the sea
+plainly visible through it from above. At present, the effect of the two
+streams of light pouring into Daw's Hugo from two opposite
+directions--one from the Lion's Den, the other from the seaward opening
+in the rocks--and falling together, in cross directions on the black
+rugged walls of the cave and the beautiful marine ferns growing from
+them, is supernaturally striking and grand. Here, Rembrandt would have
+loved to study; for here, even _his_ sublime perception of the poetry of
+light and shade might have received a new impulse, and learned from the
+teaching of Nature one immortal lesson more.
+
+Daw's Hugo and the Lion's Den may be fairly taken as characteristic
+types of the whole coast scenery about the Lizard Head, in its general
+aspects. Great caves and greater landslips are to be seen both eastward
+and westward. In calm weather you may behold the long prospects of riven
+rock, in their finest combination, from a boat. At such times, you may
+row into vast caverns, always filled by the sea, and only to be
+approached when the waves ripple as calmly as the waters of a lake.
+Then, you may see the naturally arched roof high above you, adorned in
+the loveliest manner by marine plants waving to and fro gently in the
+wind. Rocky walls are at each side of you, variegated in dark red and
+dark green colours--now advancing, now receding, now winding in and out,
+now rising straight and lofty, until their termination is hid in a
+pitch-dark obscurity which no man has ever ventured to fathom to its
+end. Beneath, is the emerald-green sea, so still and clear that you can
+behold the white sand far below, and can watch the fish gliding swiftly
+and stealthily out and in: while, all around, thin drops of moisture are
+dripping from above, like rain, into the deep quiet water below, with a
+monotonous echoing sound which half oppresses and half soothes the ear,
+at the same time.
+
+On stormy days your course is different. Then, you wander along the
+summits of the cliffs; and looking down, through the hedges of tamarisk
+and myrtle that skirt the ends of the fields, see the rocks suddenly
+broken away beneath you into an immense shelving amphitheatre, on the
+floor of which the sea boils in fury, rushing through natural archways
+and narrow rifts. Beyond them, at intervals as the waves fall, you catch
+glimpses of the brilliant blue main ocean, and the outer reefs
+stretching into it. Often, such wild views as these are relieved from
+monotony by the prospect of smooth cornfields and pasture-lands, or by
+pretty little fishing villages perched among the rocks--each with its
+small group of boats drawn up on a slip of sandy beach, and its modest,
+tiny gardens rising one above another, wherever the slope is gentle, and
+the cliff beyond rises high to shelter them from the winter winds.
+
+But the place at which the coast scenery of the Lizard district arrives
+at its climax of grandeur is Kynance Cove. Here, such gigantic specimens
+are to be seen of the most beautiful of all varieties of rock--the
+"serpentine"--as are unrivalled in Cornwall; perhaps, unrivalled
+anywhere. A walk of two miles along the westward cliffs from Lizard
+Town, brought us to the top of a precipice of three hundred feet.
+Looking forward from this, we saw the white sand of Kynance Cove
+stretching out in a half circle into the sea.
+
+What a scene was now presented to us! It was a perfect palace of rocks!
+Some rose perpendicularly and separate from each other, in the shapes of
+pyramids and steeples--some were overhanging at the top and pierced with
+dark caverns at the bottom--some were stretched horizontally on the
+sand, here studded with pools of water, there broken into natural
+archways. No one of these rocks resembled another in shape, size, or
+position--and all, at the moment when we looked on them, were wrapped in
+the solemn obscurity of a deep mist; a mist which shadowed without
+concealing them, which exaggerated their size, and, hiding all the
+cliffs beyond, presented them sublimely as separate and solitary objects
+in the sea-view.
+
+It was now necessary, however, to occupy as little time as possible in
+contemplating Kynance Cove from a distance; for if we desired to explore
+it, immediate advantage was to be taken of the state of the tide, which
+was already rapidly ebbing. Hurriedly descending the cliffs, therefore,
+we soon reached the sand: and here, leaving my companion to sketch, I
+set forth to wander among the rocks, doubtful whither to turn my steps
+first. While still hesitating, I was fortunate enough to meet with a
+guide, whose intelligence and skill well deserve such record as I can
+give of them here; for, to the former I was indebted for much local
+information and anecdote, and to the latter, for quitting Kynance Cove
+with all my limbs in as sound a condition as when I first approached it.
+
+The guide introduced himself to me by propounding a sort of stranger's
+catechism. 1st. "Did I want to see everything?"--"Certainly." 2nd. "Was
+I giddy on the tops of high places?"--"No." 3rd. "Would I be so good, if
+I got into a difficulty anywhere, as to take it easy, and catch hold of
+him tight?"--"Yes, very tight!" With these answers the guide appeared to
+be satisfied. He gave his hat a smart knock with one hand, to fix it on
+his head; and pointing upwards with the other, said, "We'll try that
+rock first, to look into the gulls' nests, and get some wild asparagus."
+And away we went accordingly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We mount the side of an immense rock which projects far out into the
+sea, and is the largest of the surrounding group. It is called Asparagus
+Island, from the quantity of wild asparagus growing among the long grass
+on its summit. Half way up, we cross an ugly chasm. The guide points to
+a small chink or crevice, barely discernible in one side of it, and says
+"Devil's Bellows!" Then, first courteously putting my toes for me into a
+comfortable little hole in the perpendicular rock side, which just fits
+them, he proceeds to explain himself. Through the base of the opposite
+extremity of the island there is a natural channel, into which the sea
+rushes furiously at high tide: and finding no other vent but the little
+crevice we now look down on, is expelled through it in long, thin jets
+of spray, with a roaring noise resembling the sound of a gigantic
+bellows at work. But the sea is not yet high enough to exhibit this
+phenomenon, so the guide takes my toes out of the hole again for me,
+just as politely as he put them in; and forthwith leads the way up
+higher still--expounding as he goes, the whole art and mystery of
+climbing, which he condenses into this axiom:--"Never loose one hand,
+till you've got a grip with the other; and never scramble your toes
+about, where toes have no business to be."
+
+At last we reach the topmost ridge of the island, and look down upon the
+white restless water far beneath, and peep into one or two deserted
+gulls' nests, and gather wild asparagus--which I can only describe as
+bearing no resemblance at all, that I could discover, to the garden
+species. Then, the guide points to another perpendicular rock, farther
+out at sea, looming dark and phantom-like in the mist, and tells me that
+he was the man who built the cairn of stones on its top: and then he
+proposes that we shall go to the opposite extremity of the ridge on
+which we stand, and look down into "The Devil's Throat."
+
+This desirable journey is accomplished with the greatest ease on his
+part, and with considerable difficulty and delay on mine--for the wind
+blows fiercely over us on the height; our rock track is narrow, rugged,
+and slippery; the sea roars bewilderingly below; and a single false step
+would not be attended with agreeable consequences. Soon, however, we
+begin to descend a little from our "bad eminence," and come to a halt
+before a wide, tunnelled opening, slanting sharply downwards in the very
+middle of the island--a black, gaping hole, into the bottom of which the
+sea is driven through some unknown subterranean channel, roaring and
+thundering with a fearful noise, which rises in hollow echoes through
+the aptly-named "Devil's Throat." About this hole no grass grew: the
+rocks rose wild, jagged, and precipitous, all around it. If ever the
+ghastly imagery of Dante's terrible "Vision" was realized on earth, it
+was realized here.
+
+At this place, close to the mouth of the hole, the guide suggests that
+we shall sit down and have a little talk!--and very impressive talk it
+is, when he begins the conversation by bawling into my ear (and down the
+Devil's Throat at the same time) to make himself heard above the fierce
+roaring beneath us. Now, his tale is of tremendous jets of water which
+he has seen, during the storms of winter, shot out of the hole before
+which we sit, into the creek of the sea below--now, he tells me of a
+shipwreck off Asparagus Island, of half-drowned sailors floating ashore
+on pieces of timber, and dashed out to sea again just as they touched
+the strand, by a jet from the Devil's Throat--now, he points away in the
+opposite direction, under one of the steeple-shaped rocks, and speaks of
+a chase after smugglers that began from this place; a desperate chase,
+in which some of the smugglers' cargo, but not one of the smugglers
+themselves, was seized--now, he talks of another great hole in the
+landward rocks, where the sea may be seen boiling within: a hole into
+which a man who was fishing for fragments of a wreck fell and was
+drowned; his body being sucked away through some invisible channel,
+never to be seen again by mortal eyes.
+
+Anon, the guide's talk changes from tragedy to comedy. He begins to
+recount odd adventures of his own with strangers. He tells me of a huge
+fat woman who was got up to the top of Asparagus Island, by the easiest
+path, and by the exertions of several guides; who, left to herself,
+gasped, reeled, and fell down immediately; and was just rolling off,
+with all the momentum of sixteen stone, over the precipice below her,
+when she was adroitly caught, and anchored fast to the ground, by the
+ankle of one leg and the calf of the other. Then he speaks of an elderly
+gentleman, who, while descending the rocks with him, suddenly stopped
+short at the most dangerous point, giddy and panic-stricken, pouring
+forth death-bed confessions of all his sins, and wildly refusing to move
+another inch in any direction. Even this man the guide got down in
+safety at last, by making stepping places of his hands, on which the
+elderly gentleman lowered himself as on a ladder, ejaculating
+incoherently all the way, and trembling in great agony long after he had
+been safely landed on the sands.
+
+This last story ended, it is settled that we shall descend again to the
+beach. Stimulated by the ease with which my worthy leader goes down
+beneath me, I get over-confident in my dexterity, and begin to slip
+here, and slide there, and come to awkward pauses at precipitous
+places, in what would be rather an alarming manner, but for the potent
+presence of the guide, who is always beneath me, ready to be fallen
+upon. Sometimes, when I am holding on with all the necessary tenacity of
+grip, as regards my hands, but, "scrambling my toes about" in a very
+disorderly and unworkmanlike fashion, he pops his head up from below for
+me to sit on; and puts my feet into crevices for me, with many apologies
+for taking the liberty! Sometimes, I fancy myself treading on what feels
+like soft turf; I look down, and find that I am standing like an acrobat
+on his shoulders, and hear him civilly entreating me to take hold of his
+jacket next, and let myself down over his body to the ledge where he is
+waiting for me. He never makes a false step, never stumbles, scrambles,
+hesitates, or fails to have a hand always at my service. The nautical
+metaphor of "holding on by your eyelids" becomes a fact in his case. He
+really views his employer, as porters are expected to view a package
+labelled "_glass with care_." I am firmly persuaded that he could take a
+drunken man up and down Asparagus Island, without the slightest risk
+either to himself or his charge; and I hold him in no small admiration,
+when, after landing on the sand with something between a tumble and a
+jump, I find him raising me to my perpendicular almost before I have
+touched the ground, and politely hoping that I feel quite satisfied,
+hitherto, with his conduct as a guide.
+
+We now go across the beach to explore some caves--dry at low water--on
+the opposite side. Some of these are wide, lofty, and well-lighted from
+without. We walk in and out and around them, as if in great, irregular,
+Gothic halls. Some are narrow and dark. Now, we crawl into them on hands
+and knees; now, we wriggle onward a few feet, serpent-like, flat on our
+bellies; now, we are suddenly able to stand upright in pitch darkness,
+hearing faint moaning sounds of pent-up winds, when we are silent, and
+long reverberations of our own voices, when we speak. Then, as we turn
+and crawl out again, we soon see before us one bright speck of light
+that may be fancied miles and miles away--a star shining in the earth--a
+diamond sparkling in the bosom of the rock. This guides us out again
+pleasantly; and, on gaining the open air, we find that while we have
+been groping in the darkness, a change has been taking place in the
+regions of light, which has altered and is still altering the aspect of
+the whole scene.
+
+It is now two o'clock. The tide is rising fast; the sea dashes, in
+higher and higher waves, on the narrowing beach. Rain and mist are both
+gone. Overhead, the clouds are falling asunder in every direction,
+assuming strange momentary shapes, quaint airy resemblances of the forms
+of the great rocks among which we stand. Height after height along the
+distant cliffs dawns on us gently; great golden rays shoot down over
+them; far out on the ocean, the waters flash into a streak of fire; the
+sails of ships passing there, glitter bright; yet a moment more, and the
+glorious sunlight bursts out over the whole view. The sea changes soon
+from dull grey to bright blue, embroidered thickly with golden specks,
+as it rolls and rushes and dances in the wind. The sand at our feet
+grows brighter and purer to the eye; the sea-birds flying and swooping
+above us, look like flashes of white light against the blue firmament;
+and, most beautiful of all, the wet serpentine rocks now shine forth in
+full splendour beneath the sun; every one of their exquisite varieties
+of colour becomes plainly visible--silver grey and bright yellow, dark
+red, deep brown, and malachite green appear, here combined in thin
+intertwined streaks, there outspread in separate irregular
+patches--glorious ornaments of the sea-shore, fashioned by no human
+art!--Nature's own home-made jewellery, which the wear of centuries has
+failed to tarnish, and the rage of tempests has been powerless to
+destroy!
+
+But the hour wanes while we stand and admire; the surf dashes nearer and
+nearer to our feet; soon, the sea will cover the sand, and rush swiftly
+into the caves where we have slowly crawled. Already the Devil's Bellows
+is at work--the jets of spray spout forth from it with a roar. The sea
+thunders louder and louder in the Devil's Throat--we must gain the
+cliffs while we have yet time. The guide takes his leave; my companion
+unwillingly closes his sketch-book; and we slowly ascend on our inland
+way together--looking back often and often, with no feigned regret, on
+all that we are leaving behind us at KYNANCE COVE.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THE PILCHARD FISHERY.
+
+
+If it so happened that a stranger in Cornwall went out to take his first
+walk along the cliffs towards the south of the county, in the month of
+August, that stranger could not advance far in any direction without
+witnessing what would strike him as a very singular and alarming
+phenomenon.
+
+He would see a man standing on the extreme edge of a precipice, just
+over the sea, gesticulating in a very remarkable manner, with a bush in
+his hand; waving it to the right and the left, brandishing it over his
+head, sweeping it past his feet--in short, apparently acting the part of
+a maniac of the most dangerous character. It would add considerably to
+the startling effect of this sight on the stranger, if he were told,
+while beholding it, that the insane individual before him was paid for
+flourishing the bush at the rate of a guinea a week. And if he,
+thereupon, advanced a little to obtain a nearer view of the madman, and
+then observed on the sea below (as he certainly might) a well-manned
+boat, turning carefully to right and left exactly as the bush turned
+right and left, his mystification would probably be complete, and the
+right time would arrive to come to his rescue with a few charitable
+explanatory words. He would then learn that the man with the bush was an
+important agent in the Pilchard Fishery of Cornwall; that he had just
+discovered a shoal of pilchards swimming towards the land; and that the
+men in the boat were guided by his gesticulations alone, in securing the
+fish on which they and all their countrymen on the coast depend for a
+livelihood.
+
+To begin, however, with the pilchards themselves, as forming one of the
+staple commercial commodities of Cornwall. They may be, perhaps, best
+described as bearing a very close resemblance to the herring, but as
+being rather smaller in size and having larger scales. Where they come
+from before they visit the Cornish coast--where those that escape the
+fishermen go to when they quit it, is unknown; or, at best, only vaguely
+conjectured. All that is certain about them is, that they are met with,
+swimming past the Scilly Isles, as early as July (when they are caught
+with a drift-net). They then advance inland in August, during which
+month the principal, or "in-shore," fishing begins; visit different
+parts of the coast until October or November; and after that disappear
+until the next year. They may be sometimes caught off the south-west
+part of Devonshire, and are occasionally to be met with near the
+southernmost coast of Ireland; but beyond these two points they are
+never seen on any other portion of the shores of Great Britain, either
+before they approach Cornwall, or after they have left it.
+
+The first sight from the cliffs of a shoal of pilchards advancing
+towards the land, is not a little interesting. They produce on the sea
+the appearance of the shadow of a dark cloud. This shadow comes on and
+on, until you can see the fish leaping and playing on the surface by
+thousands at a time, all huddled close together, and all approaching so
+near to the shore, that they can be always caught in some fifty or sixty
+feet of water. Indeed, on certain occasions, when the shoals are of
+considerable magnitude, the fish behind have been known to force the
+fish before, literally up to the beach, so that they could be taken in
+buckets, or even in the hand with the greatest ease. It is said that
+they are thus impelled to approach the land by precisely the same
+necessity which impels the fishermen to catch them as they appear--the
+necessity of getting food.
+
+With the discovery of the first shoal, the active duties of the
+"look-out" on the cliffs begin. Each fishing-village places one or more
+of these men on the watch all round the coast. They are called "huers,"
+a word said to be derived from the old French verb, _huer_, to call out,
+to give an alarm. On the vigilance and skill of the "huer" much depends.
+He is, therefore, not only paid his guinea a week while he is on the
+watch, but receives, besides, a perquisite in the shape of a per-centage
+on the produce of all the fish taken under his auspices. He is placed at
+his post, where he can command an uninterrupted view of the sea, some
+days before the pilchards are expected to appear; and, at the same time,
+boats, nets, and men are all ready for action at a moment's notice.
+
+The principal boat used is at least fifteen tons in burden, and carries
+a large net called the "seine," which measures a hundred and ninety
+fathoms in length, and costs a hundred and seventy pounds--sometimes
+more. It is simply one long strip, from eleven to thirteen fathoms in
+breadth, composed of very small meshes, and furnished, all along its
+length, with lead at one side and corks at the other. The men who cast
+this net are called the "shooters," and receive eleven shillings and
+sixpence a week, and a perquisite of one basket of fish each out of
+every haul.
+
+As soon as the "huer" discerns the first appearance of a shoal, he waves
+his bush. The signal is conveyed to the beach immediately by men and
+boys watching near him. The "seine" boat (accompanied by another small
+boat, to assist in casting the net) is rowed out where he can see it.
+Then there is a pause, a hush of great expectation on all sides.
+Meanwhile, the devoted pilchards press on--a compact mass of thousands
+on thousands of fish, swimming to meet their doom. All eyes are fixed on
+the "huer;" he stands watchful and still, until the shoal is thoroughly
+embayed, in water which he knows to be within the depth of the "seine"
+net. Then, as the fish begin to pause in their progress, and gradually
+crowd closer and closer together, he gives the signal; the boats come
+up, and the "seine" net is cast, or, in the technical phrase "shot,"
+overboard.
+
+The grand object is now to enclose the entire shoal. The leads sink one
+end of the net perpendicularly to the ground; the corks buoy up the
+other to the surface of the water. When it has been taken all round the
+fish, the two extremities are made fast, and the shoal is then
+imprisoned within an oblong barrier of network surrounding it on all
+sides. The great art is to let as few of the pilchards escape as
+possible, while this process is being completed. Whenever the "huer"
+observes from above that they are startled, and are separating at any
+particular point, to that point he waves his bush, thither the boats are
+steered, and there the net is "shot" at once. In whatever direction the
+fish attempt to get out to sea again, they are thus immediately met and
+thwarted with extraordinary readiness and skill. This labour completed,
+the silence of intense expectation that has hitherto prevailed among the
+spectators on the cliff, is broken. There is a great shout of joy on all
+sides--the shoal is secured!
+
+The "seine'" is now regarded as a great reservoir of fish. It may remain
+in the water a week or more. To secure it against being moved from its
+position in case a gale should come on, it is warped by two or three
+ropes to points of land in the cliff, and is, at the same time,
+contracted in circuit, by its opposite ends being brought together, and
+fastened tight over a length of several feet. While these operations are
+in course of performance, another boat, another set of men, and another
+net (different in form from the "seine") are approaching the scene of
+action.
+
+This new net is called the "tuck;" it is smaller than the "seine,"
+inside which it is now to be let down for the purpose of bringing the
+fish closely collected to the surface. The men who manage this net are
+termed "regular seiners." They receive ten shillings a week, and the
+same perquisite as the "shooters." Their boat is first of all rowed
+inside the seine-net, and laid close to the seine-boat, which remains
+stationary outside, and to the bows of which one rope at one end of the
+"tuck-net" is fastened. The "tuck" boat then slowly makes the inner
+circuit of the "seine," the smaller net being dropped overboard as she
+goes, and attached at intervals to the larger. To prevent the fish from
+getting between the two nets during this operation, they are frightened
+into the middle of the enclosure by beating the water, at proper places,
+with oars, and heavy stones fastened to ropes. When the "tuck" net has
+at length travelled round the whole circle of the "seine," and is
+securely fastened to the "seine" boat, at the end as it was at the
+beginning, everything is ready for the great event of the day, the
+hauling of the fish to the surface.
+
+Now, the scene on shore and sea rises to a prodigious pitch of
+excitement. The merchants, to whom the boats and nets belong, and by
+whom the men are employed, join the "huer" on the cliff; all their
+friends follow them; boys shout, dogs bark madly; every little boat in
+the place puts off, crammed with idle spectators; old men and women
+hobble down to the beach to wait for the news. The noise, the bustle,
+and the agitation, increase every moment. Soon the shrill cheering of
+the boys is joined by the deep voices of the "seiners." There they
+stand, six or eight stalwart sunburnt fellows, ranged in a row in the
+"seine" boat, hauling with all their might at the "tuck" net, and
+roaring the regular nautical "Yo-heave-ho!" in chorus! Higher and higher
+rises the net, louder and louder shout the boys and the idlers. The
+merchant forgets his dignity, and joins them; the "huer," so calm and
+collected hitherto, loses his self-possession and waves his cap
+triumphantly; even you and I, reader, uninitiated spectators though we
+are, catch the infection, and cheer away with the rest, as if our bread
+depended on the event of the next few minutes. "Hooray! hooray! Yo-hoy,
+hoy, hoy! Pull away, boys! Up she comes! Here they are! Here they are!"
+The water boils and eddies; the "tuck" net rises to the surface, and one
+teeming, convulsed mass of shining, glancing, silvery scales; one
+compact crowd of tens of thousands of fish, each one of which is madly
+endeavouring to escape, appears in an instant!
+
+The noise before was as nothing compared with the noise now. Boats as
+large as barges are pulled up in hot haste all round the net; baskets
+are produced by dozens: the fish are dipped up in them, and shot out,
+like coals out of a sack, into the boats. Ere long, the men are up to
+their ankles in pilchards; they jump upon the rowing benches and work
+on, until the boats are filled with fish as full as they can hold, and
+the gunwales are within two or three inches of the water. Even yet, the
+shoal is not exhausted; the "tuck" net must be let down again and left
+ready for a fresh haul, while the boats are slowly propelled to the
+shore, where we must join them without delay.
+
+As soon as the fish are brought to land, one set of men, bearing
+capacious wooden shovels, jump in among them; and another set bring
+large hand-barrows close to the side of the boat, into which the
+pilchards are thrown with amazing rapidity. This operation proceeds
+without ceasing for a moment. As soon as one barrow is ready to be
+carried to the salting-house, another is waiting to be filled. When this
+labour is performed by night, which is often the case, the scene becomes
+doubly picturesque. The men with the shovels, standing up to their knees
+in pilchards, working energetically; the crowd stretching down from the
+salting-house, across the beach, and hemming in the boat all round; the
+uninterrupted succession of men hurrying backwards and forwards with
+their barrows, through a narrow way kept clear for them in the throng;
+the glare of the lanterns giving light to the workmen, and throwing red
+flashes on the fish as they fly incessantly from the shovels over the
+side of the boat--all combine together to produce such a series of
+striking contrasts, such a moving picture of bustle and animation, as
+not even the most careless of spectators could ever forget.
+
+Having watched the progress of affairs on the shore, we next proceed to
+the salting-house, a quadrangular structure of granite, well-roofed in
+all round the sides, but open to the sky in the middle. Here, we must
+prepare ourselves to be bewildered by incessant confusion and noise; for
+here are assembled all the women and girls in the district, piling up
+the pilchards on layers of salt, at three-pence an hour; to which
+remuneration, a glass of brandy and a piece of bread and cheese are
+hospitably added at every sixth hour, by way of refreshment. It is a
+service of some little hazard to enter this place at all. There are men
+rushing out with empty barrows, and men rushing in with full barrows, in
+almost perpetual succession. However, while we are waiting for an
+opportunity to slip through the doorway, we may amuse ourselves by
+watching a very curious ceremony which is constantly in course of
+performance outside it.
+
+As the filled barrows are going into the salting-house, we observe a
+little urchin running by the side of them, and hitting their edges with
+a long cane, in a constant succession of smart strokes, until they are
+fairly carried through the gate, when he quickly returns to perform the
+same office for the next series that arrive. The object of this
+apparently unaccountable proceeding is soon practically illustrated by a
+group of children, hovering about the entrance of the salting-house, who
+every now and then dash resolutely up to the barrows, and endeavour to
+seize on as many fish as they can take away at one snatch. It is
+understood to be their privilege to keep as many pilchards as they can
+get in this way by their dexterity, in spite of a liberal allowance of
+strokes aimed at their hands; and their adroitness richly deserves its
+reward. Vainly does the boy officially entrusted with the administration
+of the cane, strike the sides of the barrow with malignant smartness and
+perseverance--fish are snatched away with lightning rapidity and
+pickpocket neatness of hand. The hardest rap over the knuckles fails to
+daunt the sturdy little assailants. Howling with pain, they dash up to
+the next barrow that passes them, with unimpaired resolution; and often
+collect their ten or a dozen fish a piece, in an hour or two. No
+description can do justice to the "Jack-in-Office" importance of the boy
+with the cane, as he flourishes it about ferociously in the full
+enjoyment of his vested right to castigate his companions as often as he
+can. As an instance of the early development of the tyrannic tendencies
+of human nature, it is, in a philosophical point of view, quite unique.
+
+But now, while we have a chance, while the doorway is accidentally clear
+for a few moments, let us enter the salting-house, and approach the
+noisiest and most amusing of all the scenes which the pilchard fishery
+presents. First of all we pass a great heap of fish lying in one recess
+inside the door, and an equally great heap of coarse, brownish salt
+lying in another. Then we advance farther, get out of the way of
+everybody, behind a pillar, and see a whole congregation of the fair sex
+screaming, talking, and--to their honour be it spoken--working at the
+same time, round a compact mass of pilchards which their nimble hands
+have already built up to a height of three feet, a breadth of more than
+four, and a length of twenty. Here we have every variety of the "fairer
+half of creation" displayed before us, ranged round an odoriferous heap
+of salted fish. Here we see crones of sixty and girls of sixteen; the
+ugly and the lean, the comely and the plump; the sour-tempered and the
+sweet--all squabbling, singing, jesting, lamenting, and shrieking at the
+very top of their very shrill voices for "more fish," and "more salt;"
+both of which are brought from the stores, in small buckets, by a long
+train of children running backwards and forwards with unceasing activity
+and in bewildering confusion. But, universal as the uproar is, the work
+never flags; the hands move as fast as the tongues; there may be no
+silence and no discipline, but there is also no idleness and no delay.
+Never was three-pence an hour more joyously or more fairly earned than
+it is here!
+
+The labour is thus performed. After the stone floor has been swept
+clean, a thin layer of salt is spread on it, and covered with pilchards
+laid partly edgewise, and close together. Then another layer of salt,
+smoothed fine with the palm of the hand, is laid over the pilchards; and
+then more pilchards are placed upon that; and so on until the heap rises
+to four feet or more. Nothing can exceed the ease, quickness, and
+regularity with which this is done. Each woman works on her own small
+area, without reference to her neighbour; a bucketful of salt and a
+bucketful of fish being shot out in two little piles under her hands,
+for her own especial use. All proceed in their labour, however, with
+such equal diligence and equal skill, that no irregularities appear in
+the various layers when they are finished--they run as straight and
+smooth from one end to the other, as if they were constructed by
+machinery. The heap, when completed, looks like a long, solid,
+neatly-made mass of dirty salt; nothing being now seen of the pilchards
+but the extreme tips of their noses or tails, just peeping out in rows,
+up the sides of the pile.
+
+Having now inspected the progress of the pilchard fishery, from the
+catching to the curing, we have seen all that we can personally observe
+of its different processes, at one opportunity. What more remains to be
+done, will not be completed until after an interval of several weeks. We
+must be content to hear about this from information given to us by
+others. Yonder, sitting against the outside wall of the salting-house,
+is an intelligent old man, too infirm now to do more than take care of
+the baby that he holds in his arms, while the baby's mother is earning
+her three-pence an hour inside. To this ancient we will address all our
+inquiries; and he is well qualified to answer us, for the poor old
+fellow has worked away all the pith and marrow of his life in the
+pilchard fishery.
+
+The fish--as we learn from our old friend, who is mightily pleased to be
+asked for information--will remain in salt, or, as the technical
+expression is, "in bulk," for five or six weeks. During this period, a
+quantity of oil, salt, and water drips from them into wells cut in the
+centre of the stone floor on which they are placed. After the oil has
+been collected and clarified, it will sell for enough to pay off the
+whole expense of the wages, food, and drink given to the
+"seiners"--perhaps defraying other incidental charges besides. The salt
+and water left behind, and offal of all sorts found with it, furnish a
+valuable manure. Nothing in the pilchard itself, or in connexion with
+the pilchard, runs to waste--the precious little fish is a treasure in
+every part of him.
+
+After the pilchards have been taken out of "bulk," they are washed clean
+in salt water, and packed in hogsheads, which are then sent for
+exportation to some large sea-port--Penzance for instance--in coast
+traders. The fish reserved for use in Cornwall, are generally cured by
+those who purchase them. The export trade is confined to the shores of
+the Mediterranean--Italy and Spain providing the two great foreign
+markets for pilchards. The home consumption, as regards Great Britain,
+is nothing, or next to nothing. Some variation takes place in the prices
+realized by the foreign trade--their average, wholesale, is stated to be
+about fifty shillings per hogshead.
+
+As an investment for money, on a small scale, the pilchard fishery
+offers the first great advantage of security. The only outlay necessary,
+is that for providing boats and nets, and for building salting-houses--an
+outlay which, it is calculated, may be covered by a thousand pounds. The
+profits resulting from the speculation are immediate and large.
+Transactions are managed on the ready money principle, and the markets of
+Italy and Spain (where pilchards are considered a great delicacy) are
+always open to any supply. The fluctuation between a good season's
+fishing and a bad season's fishing is rarely, if ever, seriously great.
+Accidents happen but seldom; the casualty most dreaded, being the
+enclosure of a large fish along with a shoal of pilchards. A "ling," for
+instance, if unfortunately imprisoned in the seine, often bursts through
+its thin meshes, after luxuriously gorging himself with prey, and is of
+course at once followed out of the breach by all the pilchards. Then, not
+only is the shoal lost, but the net is seriously damaged, and must be
+tediously and expensively repaired. Such an accident as this, however,
+very seldom happens; and when it does, the loss occasioned falls on those
+best able to bear it, the merchant speculators. The work and wages of the
+fishermen go on as usual.
+
+Some idea of the almost incalculable multitude of pilchards caught on
+the shores of Cornwall, may be formed from the following _data_. At the
+small fishing cove of Trereen, 600 hogsheads were taken in little more
+than one week, during August, 1850. Allowing 2,400 fish only to each
+hogshead--3,000 would be the highest calculation--we have a result of
+1,440,000 pilchards, caught by the inhabitants of one little village
+alone, on the Cornish coast, at the commencement of the season's
+fishing.
+
+At considerable sea-port towns, where there is an unusually large supply
+of men, boats, and nets, such figures as those quoted above, are far
+below the mark. At St. Ives, for example, 1,000 hogsheads were taken in
+the first three seine nets cast into the water. The number of hogsheads
+exported annually, averages 22,000. In 1850, 27,000 were secured for the
+foreign markets. Incredible as these numbers may appear to some readers,
+they may nevertheless be relied on; for they are derived from
+trustworthy sources--partly from local returns furnished to me; partly
+from the very men who filled the baskets from the boat-side, and who
+afterwards verified their calculations by frequent visits to the
+salting-houses.
+
+Such is the pilchard fishery of Cornwall--a small unit, indeed, in the
+vast aggregate of England's internal sources of wealth: but yet neither
+unimportant nor uninteresting, if it be regarded as giving active
+employment to a hardy and honest race who would starve without it; as
+impartially extending the advantages of commerce to one of the remotest
+corners of our island; and, more than all, as displaying a wise and
+beautiful provision of Nature, by which the rich tribute of the great
+deep is most generously lavished on the land most in need of a
+compensation for its own sterility.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THE LAND'S END.
+
+
+Something like what Jerusalem was to the pilgrim in the Holy Land, the
+Land's End is--comparing great things with small--to the tourist in
+Cornwall. It is the Ultima Thule where his progress stops--the shrine
+towards which his face has been set, from the first day when he started
+on his travels--the main vent, through which all the pent-up enthusiasm
+accumulated along the line of route is to burst its way out, in one long
+flow of admiration and delight.
+
+The Land's End! There is something in the very words that stirs us all.
+It was the name that struck us most, and was best remembered by us, as
+children, when we learnt our geography. It fills the minds of
+imaginative people with visions of barrenness and solitude, with dreams
+of some lonely promontory, far away by itself out in the sea--the sort
+of place where the last man in England would be most likely to be found
+waiting for death, at the end of the world! It suggests even to the most
+prosaically constituted people, ideas of tremendous storms, of flakes of
+foam flying over the land before the wind, of billows in convulsion, of
+rocks shaken to their centre, of caves where smugglers lurk in ambush,
+of wrecks and hurricanes, desolation, danger, and death. It awakens
+curiosity in the most careless--once hear of it, and you long to see
+it--tell your friends that you have travelled in Cornwall, and ten
+thousand chances to one, the first question they ask is:--"Have you been
+to the Land's End?"
+
+And yet, strange to say, this spot so singled out and set apart by our
+imaginations as something remarkable and even unique of its kind, is as
+a matter of fact, not distinguishable from any part of the coast on
+either side of it, by any local peculiarity whatever. If you desire
+really and truly to stand on the Land's End itself, you must ask your
+way to it, or you are in danger of mistaking any one of the numerous
+promontories on the right hand and the left, for your actual place of
+destination. But I am anticipating. Before I say more about the Land's
+End, it is necessary to relate how my companion and I got there, and
+what we saw that was interesting and characteristic on our road.
+
+The reader may perhaps remember that he last left us scrambling out of
+reach of the tide, up the cliffs overlooking Kynance Cove. From that
+place we got back to Helston in mist and rain, just as we had left it.
+From Helston we proceeded to Marazion,--stopping there to visit St.
+Michael's Mount, so well known to readers of all classes by innumerable
+pictures and drawings, and by descriptions scarcely less plentiful, that
+they will surely be relieved rather than disappointed, if these pages
+exhibit the distinguished negative merit of passing the Mount without
+notice. From Marazion we walked to Penzance, from Penzance to the
+beautiful coast scenery at Lamorna Cove, and thence to Trereen,
+celebrated as the halting place for a visit to one of Cornwall's
+greatest curiosities--the Loggan Stone.
+
+This far-famed rock rises on the top of a bold promontory of granite,
+jutting far out into the sea, split into the wildest forms, and towering
+precipitously to a height of a hundred feet. When you reach the Loggan
+Stone, after some little climbing up perilous-looking places, you see a
+solid, irregular mass of granite, which is computed to weigh eighty
+five tons, supported by its centre only, on a flat, broad rock, which,
+in its turn, rests on several others stretching out around it on all
+sides. You are told by the guide to turn your back to the uppermost
+stone; to place your shoulders under one particular part of its lower
+edge, which is entirely disconnected, all round, with the supporting
+rock below; and in this position to push upwards slowly and steadily,
+then to leave off again for an instant, then to push once more, and so
+on, until after a few moments of exertion, you feel the whole immense
+mass above you moving as you press against it. You redouble your
+efforts--then turn round--and see the massy Loggan Stone, set in motion
+by nothing but your own pair of shoulders, slowly rocking backwards and
+forwards with an alternate ascension and declension, at the outer edges,
+of at least three inches. You have treated eighty-five tons of granite
+like a child's cradle; and, like a child's cradle, those eighty-five
+tons have rocked at your will!
+
+The pivot on which the Loggan Stone is thus easily moved, is a small
+protrusion in its base, on all sides of which the whole surrounding
+weight of rock is, by an accident of Nature, so exactly equalized, as
+to keep it poised in the nicest balance on the one little point in its
+lower surface which rests on the flat granite slab beneath. But perfect
+as this balance appears at present, it has lost something, the merest
+hair's-breadth, of its original faultlessness of adjustment. The rock is
+not to be moved now, either so easily or to so great an extent, as it
+could once be moved. Six-and-twenty years since, it was overthrown by
+artificial means; and was then lifted again into its former position.
+This is the story of the affair, as it was related to me by a man who
+was an eyewitness of the process of restoring the stone to its proper
+place.
+
+In the year 1824, a certain Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, then in
+command of a cutter stationed off the southern coast of Cornwall, was
+told of an ancient Cornish prophecy, that no human power should ever
+succeed in overturning the Loggan Stone. No sooner was the prediction
+communicated to him, than he conceived a mischievous ambition to falsify
+practically an assertion which the commonest common sense might have
+informed him had sprung from nothing but popular error and popular
+superstition. Accompanied by a body of picked men from his crew, he
+ascended to the Loggan Stone, ordered several levers to be placed under
+it at one point, gave the word to "heave"--and the next moment had the
+miserable satisfaction of seeing one of the most remarkable natural
+curiosities in the world utterly destroyed, for aught he could foresee
+to the contrary, under his own directions!
+
+But Fortune befriended the Loggan Stone. One edge of it, as it rolled
+over, became fixed by a lucky chance in a crevice in the rocks
+immediately below the granite slab from which it had been started. Had
+this not happened, it must have fallen over a sheer precipice, and been
+lost in the sea. By another accident, equally fortunate, two labouring
+men at work in the neighbourhood, were led by curiosity secretly to
+follow the Lieutenant and his myrmidons up to the Stone. Having
+witnessed, from a secure hiding-place, all that occurred, the two
+workmen, with great propriety, immediately hurried off to inform the
+lord of the manor of the wanton act of destruction which they had seen
+perpetrated.
+
+The news was soon communicated throughout the district, and thence,
+throughout all Cornwall. The indignation of the whole county was
+aroused. Antiquaries, who believed the Loggan Stone to have been
+balanced by the Druids; philosophers who held that it was produced by
+an eccentricity of natural formation; ignorant people, who cared nothing
+about Druids, or natural formations, but who liked to climb up and rock
+the stone whenever they passed near it; tribes of guides who lived by
+showing it; innkeepers in the neighbourhood, to whom it had brought
+customers by hundreds; tourists of every degree who were on their way to
+see it--all joined in one general clamour of execration against the
+overthrower of the rock. A full report of the affair was forwarded to
+the Admiralty; and the Admiralty, for once, acted vigorously for the
+public advantage, and mercifully spared the public purse.
+
+The Lieutenant was officially informed that his commission was in
+danger, unless he set up the Loggan Stone again in its proper place. The
+materials for compassing this achievement were offered to him, _gratis_,
+from the Dock Yards; but he was left to his own resources to defray the
+expense of employing workmen to help him. Being by this time awakened to
+a proper sense of the mischief he had done, and to a tolerably strong
+conviction of the disagreeable position in which he was placed with the
+Admiralty, he addressed himself vigorously to the task of repairing his
+fault. Strong beams were planted about the Loggan Stone, chains were
+passed round it, pulleys were rigged, and capstans were manned. After a
+week's hard work and brave perseverance on the part of every one
+employed in the labour, the rock was pulled back into its former
+position, but not into its former perfection of balance: it has never
+moved since as freely as it moved before.
+
+It is only fair to the Lieutenant to add to this narrative of his
+mischievous frolic the fact, that he defrayed, though a poor man, all
+the heavy expenses of replacing the rock. Just before his death, he paid
+the last remaining debt, and paid it with interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leaving the Loggan Stone, we next shaped our course for the Land's End.
+We stopped on our way, to admire the desolate pile of rocks and caverns
+which form the towering promontory, called "Tol-Peden-Penwith," or, "The
+Holed Headland on the Left." Thence, turning a little inland--passing
+over wild, pathless moors; occasionally catching distant glimpses of the
+sea, with the mist sometimes falling thick down to the very edges of the
+waves, sometimes parting mysteriously and discovering distant crags of
+granite rising shadowy out of the foaming waters,--we reached, at last,
+the limits of our outward journey, and saw the Atlantic before us,
+rolling against the westernmost extremity of the shores of England.
+
+I have already said, that the stranger must ask his way before he can
+find out the particular mass of rocks, geographically entitled to the
+appellation of the "Land's End." He may, however, easily discover when
+he has reached the _district_ of the "Land's End," by two rather
+remarkable indications that he will meet with on his road. He will
+observe, at some distance from the coast, an old milestone marked "I,"
+and will be informed that this is the real original first mile in
+England; as if all measurement of distances began strictly from the
+West! A little further on he will come to a house, on one wall of which
+he will see written in large letters, "This is the first Inn in
+England," and on the other: "This is the last Inn in England;" as if the
+recognised beginning, and end too, of the Island of Britain were here,
+and here only! Having pondered a little on the slightly exclusive view
+of the attributes of their locality, taken by the inhabitants, he will
+then be led forward, about half a mile, by his guide, will descend some
+cliffs, will walk out on a ridge of rocks till he can go no
+farther--and will then be told that he is standing on the Land's End!
+
+Here, as elsewhere, there are certain "sights" which a stranger is
+required to examine assiduously, as a duty if not as a pleasure, by
+guide-book law, rigidly administered by guides. There is, first of all,
+the mark of a horse's hoof, which is with great care kept _sharply
+modelled_ (to borrow the painter's phrase), in the thin grass at the
+edge of a precipice. This mark commemorates the narrow escape from death
+of a military man who, for a wager, rode a horse down the cliff to the
+extreme verge of the Land's End; where the poor animal, seeing its
+danger, turned in affright, reared, and fell back into the sea raging
+over the rocks beneath. The foolhardy rider had just sense enough left
+to throw himself off in time--he tumbled on the ground, within a few
+inches of the precipice, and so barely saved the life which he had
+richly deserved to lose.
+
+After the mark of the hoof, the traveller is next desired to look at a
+natural tunnel in the outer cliff, which pierces it through from one end
+to the other. Then his attention is directed to a lighthouse built on a
+reef of rocks detached from the land; and he is told of the great waves
+which break over the top of the building during the winter storms.
+Lastly, he is requested to inspect a quaint protuberance in a pile of
+granite at a little distance off, which bears a remote resemblance to a
+gigantic human face, adorned with a short beard; and which, he is
+informed, is considered quite a portrait (of all the people in the world
+to liken it to!) of Dr. Johnson! It is, therefore, publicly known as
+"Johnson's Head." If it can fairly be compared with any of the
+countenances of any remarkable characters that ever existed, it may be
+said to exhibit, in violent exaggeration, the worst physiognomical
+peculiarities of Nero and Henry the Eighth, combined in one face!
+
+These several local curiosities duly examined, you are at last left free
+to look at the Land's End in your own way. Before you, stretches the
+wide, wild ocean; the largest of the Scilly Islands being barely
+discernible on the extreme horizon, on clear days. Tracts of heath;
+fields where corn is blown by the wind into mimic waves; downs, valleys,
+and crags, mingle together picturesquely and confusedly, until they are
+lost in the distance, on your left. On your right is a magnificent bay,
+bounded at either extremity by far-stretching promontories rising from a
+beach of the purest white sand, on which the yet whiter foam of the
+surf is ever seething, as waves on waves break one behind the other. The
+whole bold view possesses all the sublimity that vastness and space can
+bestow; but it is that sublimity which is to be seen, not described,
+which the heart may acknowledge and the mind contain, but which no mere
+words may delineate--which even painting itself may but faintly reflect.
+
+However, it is, after all, the walk to the Land's End along the southern
+coast, rather than the Land's End itself, which displays the grandest
+combinations of scenery in which this grandest part of Cornwall abounds.
+There, Nature appears in her most triumphant glory and beauty--there,
+every mile as you proceed, offers some new prospect, or awakens some
+fresh impression. All objects that you meet with, great and small,
+moving and motionless, seem united in perfect harmony to form a scene
+where original images might still be found by the poet; and where
+original pictures are waiting, ready composed, for the painter's eye.
+
+On approaching the wondrous landscapes between Trereen and the Land's
+End, the first characteristic that strikes you, is the change that has
+taken place in the forms of the cliffs since you left the Lizard Head.
+You no longer look on variously shaped and variously coloured
+"serpentine" rocks; it is granite, and granite alone, that appears
+everywhere--granite, less lofty and less eccentric in form than the
+"serpentine" cliffs and crags; but presenting an appearance of
+adamantine solidity and strength, a mighty breadth of outline and an
+unbroken vastness of extent, nobly adapted to the purpose of protecting
+the shores of Cornwall, where they are most exposed to the fury of the
+Atlantic waves. In these wild districts, the sea rolls and roars in
+fiercer agitation, and the mists fall thicker, and at the same time fade
+and change faster, than elsewhere. Vessels pitching heavily in the
+waves, are seen to dawn, at one moment, in the clearing atmosphere--and
+then, at another, to fade again mysteriously, as it abruptly thickens,
+like phantom ships. Up on the top of the cliffs, furze and heath in
+brilliant clothing of purple and yellow, cluster close round great
+white, weird masses of rock, dotted fantastically with patches of
+grey-green moss. The solitude on these heights is unbroken--no houses
+are to be seen--often, no pathway is to be found. You go on, guided by
+the _sight_ of the sea, when the sky brightens fitfully: and by the
+_sound_ of the sea, when you stray instinctively from the edge of the
+cliff, as mist and darkness gather once more densely and solemnly all
+around you.
+
+Then, when the path appears again--a winding path, that descends
+rapidly--you gradually enter on a new scene. Old horses startle you,
+scrambling into perilous situations, to pick dainty bits by the
+hillside; sheep, fettered by the fore and hind leg, hobble away
+desperately as you advance. Suddenly, you discern a small strip of beach
+shut in snugly between protecting rocks. A spring bubbles down from an
+inland valley; while not far off, an old stone well collects the water
+into a calm, clear pool. Sturdy little cottages, built of rough granite,
+and thickly thatched, stand near you, with gulls' and cormorants' eggs
+set in their loop-holed windows for ornament; great white sections of
+fish hang thickly together on their walls to dry, looking more like many
+legs of many dirty duck trousers, than anything else; pigsties are
+hard-by the cottages, either formed by the Cromlech stones of the
+Druids, or excavated like caves in the side of the hill. Down on the
+beach, where the rough old fishing-boats lie, the sand is entirely
+formed by countless multitudes of the tiniest, fairy-like shells, often
+as small as a pin's head, and all exquisitely tender in colour and
+wonderfully varied in form. Up the lower and flatter parts of the hills
+above, fishing nets are stretched to dry. While you stop to look forth
+over the quiet, simple scene, wild little children peep out at you in
+astonishment; and hard-working men and women greet you with a hearty
+Cornish salutation, as you pass near their cottage doors.
+
+You walk a few hundred yards inland, up the valley, and discover in a
+retired, sheltered situation, the ancient village church, with its
+square grey tower surmounted by moss-grown turrets, with its venerable
+Saxon stone cross in the churchyard--where the turf graves rise humbly
+by twos and threes, and where the old coffin-shaped stone stands midway
+at the entrance gates, still used, as in former times, by the bearers of
+a rustic funeral. Appearing thus amid the noblest scenery, as the simple
+altar of the prayers of a simple race, this is a church which speaks of
+religion in no formal or sectarian tone. Appealing to the heart of every
+traveller be his creed what it may, in loving and solemn accents, it
+sends him on his way again, up the mighty cliffs and through the mist
+driving cloud-like over them, the better fitted for his journey forward
+here; the better fitted, it may be, even for that other dread journey
+of one irrevocable moment--the last he shall ever take--to his
+abiding-place among the spirits of the dead!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These are some of the attractions which home rambles can offer to tempt
+the home traveller; for these are the impressions produced, and the
+incidents presented during a walk to the Land's End.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+BOTALLACK MINE.
+
+
+I have little doubt that the less patient among the readers of this
+narrative have already, while perusing it, asked themselves some such
+questions as these:--"Is not Cornwall a celebrated mineral country? Why
+has the author not taken us below the surface yet? Why have we heard
+nothing all this time about the mines?"
+
+Readers who have questioned thus, may be assured that their impatience
+to go down a mine, in this book, was fully equalled by our impatience to
+go down a mine, in the county of which this book treats. Our anxiety,
+however, when we mentioned it to Cornish friends, was invariably met by
+the same answer. "Wait"--they all said--"until you have turned your
+backs on the Land's End; and then go to Botallack. The mine there is the
+most extraordinary mine in Cornwall; go down that, and you will not
+want to go down another--wait for Botallack." And we did wait for
+Botallack, just as the reader has waited for it in these pages. May he
+derive as much satisfaction from the present description of the mine, as
+we did from visiting the mine itself!
+
+We left the Land's End, feeling that our homeward journey had now begun
+from that point; and walking northward, about five miles along the
+coast, arrived at Botallack. Having heard that there was some
+disinclination in Cornwall to allow strangers to go down the mines, we
+had provided ourselves--through the kindness of a friend--with a proper
+letter of introduction, in case of emergency. We were told to go to the
+counting-house to present our credentials; and on our road thither, we
+beheld the buildings and machinery of the mine, literally stretching
+down the precipitous face of the cliff, from the land at the top, to the
+sea at the bottom.
+
+This sight was, in its way, as striking and extraordinary as the first
+view of the Cheese-Wring itself. Here, we beheld a scaffolding perched
+on a rock that rose out of the waves--there, a steam-pump was at work
+raising gallons of water from the mine every minute, on a mere ledge of
+land half way down the steep cliff side. Chains, pipes, conduits,
+protruded in all directions from the precipice; rotten-looking wooden
+platforms, running over deep chasms, supported great beams of timber and
+heavy coils of cable; crazy little boarded houses were built, where
+gulls' nests might have been found in other places. There did not appear
+to be a foot of level space anywhere, for any part of the works of the
+mine to stand upon; and yet, there they were, fulfilling all the
+purposes for which they had been constructed, as safely and completely
+on rocks in the sea, and down precipices in the land, as if they had
+been cautiously founded on the tracts of smooth solid ground above!
+
+The counting-house was built on a projection of earth about midway
+between the top of the cliff and the sea. When we got there, the agent,
+to whom our letter was addressed, was absent; but his place was supplied
+by two miners who came out to receive us; and to one of them we
+mentioned our recommendation, and modestly hinted a wish to go down the
+mine forthwith.
+
+But our new friend was not a person who did anything in a hurry. He was
+a grave, courteous, and rather melancholy man, of great stature and
+strength. He looked on us with a benevolent, paternal expression, and
+appeared to think that we were nothing like strong enough, or cautious
+enough to be trusted down the mine. "Did we know," he urged, "that it
+was dangerous work?" "Yes; but we didn't mind danger!"--"Perhaps we were
+not aware that we should perspire profusely, and be dead tired getting
+up and down the ladders?" "Very likely; but we didn't mind that,
+either!"--"Surely we shouldn't like to strip and put on miners'
+clothes?" "Yes, we should, of all things!" and pulling off coat and
+waistcoat, on the spot, we stood half-undressed already, just as the big
+miner was proposing another objection, which, under existing
+circumstances, he good-naturedly changed into a speech of acquiescence.
+"Very well, gentlemen," he said, taking up two suits of miners' clothes,
+"I see you are determined to go down; and so you shall! You'll be wet
+through with the heat and the work before you come up again; so just put
+on these things, and keep your own clothes dry."
+
+The clothing consisted of a flannel shirt, flannel drawers, canvas
+trousers, and a canvas jacket--all stained of a tawny copper colour; but
+all quite clean. A white night-cap and a round hat, composed of some
+iron-hard substance, well calculated to protect the head from any loose
+stones that might fall on it, completed the equipment; to which, three
+tallow-candles were afterwards added, two to hang at the buttonhole, one
+to carry in the hand.
+
+My friend was dressed first. He had got a suit which fitted him
+tolerably, and which, as far as appearances went, made a miner of him at
+once. Far different was my case.
+
+The same mysterious dispensation of fate, which always awards tall wives
+to short men, decreed that a suit of the big miner's should be reserved
+for me. He stood six feet two inches--I stand five feet six inches. I
+put on his flannel shirt--it fell down to my toes, like a bedgown; his
+drawers--and they flowed in Turkish luxuriance over my feet. At his
+trousers I helplessly stopped short, lost in the voluminous recesses of
+each leg. The big miner, like a good Samaritan as he was, came to my
+assistance. He put the pocket button through the waist buttonhole, to
+keep the trousers up in the first instance; then, he pulled steadily at
+the braces until my waistband was under my armpits; and then he
+pronounced that I and my trousers fitted each other in great perfection.
+The cuffs of the jacket were next turned up to my elbows--the white
+night-cap was dragged over my ears--the round hat was jammed down over
+my eyes. When I add to all this, that I am so nearsighted as to be
+obliged to wear spectacles, and that I finished my toilet by putting my
+spectacles on (knowing that I should see little or nothing without
+them), nobody, I think, will be astonished to hear that my companion
+seized his sketch-book, and caricatured me on the spot; and that the
+grave miner, polite as he was, shook with internal laughter, when I took
+up my tallow-candles and reported myself ready for a descent into the
+mine.
+
+We left the counting-house, and ascended the face of the cliff--then,
+walked a short distance along the edge, descended a little again, and
+stopped at a wooden platform built across a deep gully. Here, the miner
+pulled up a trap-door, and disclosed a perpendicular ladder leading down
+to a black hole, like the opening of a chimney. "This is the shaft; I
+will go down first, to catch you in case you tumble; follow me and hold
+tight;" saying this, our friend squeezed himself through the trap-door,
+and we went after him as we had been bidden.
+
+The black hole, when we entered it, proved to be not quite so dark as it
+had appeared from above. Rays of light occasionally penetrated it
+through chinks in the outer rock. But by the time we had got some little
+way farther down, these rays began to fade. Then, just as we seemed to
+be lowering ourselves into total darkness, we were desired to stand on a
+narrow landing-place opposite the ladder, and wait there while the miner
+went below for a light. He soon reascended to us, bringing, not only the
+light he had promised, but a large lump of damp clay with it. Having
+lighted our candles he stuck them against the front of our hats with the
+clay--in order, as he said, to leave both our hands free to us to use as
+we liked. Thus strangely accoutred, like Solomon Eagles in the Great
+Plague, with flame on our heads, we resumed the descent of the shaft;
+and now at last began to penetrate beneath the surface of the earth in
+good earnest.
+
+The process of getting down the ladders was not very pleasant. They were
+all quite perpendicular, the rounds were placed at irregular distances,
+were many of them much worn away, and were slippery with water and
+copper-ooze. Add to this, the narrowness of the shaft, the dripping wet
+rock shutting you in, as it were, all round your back and sides against
+the ladder--the fathomless darkness beneath--the light flaring
+immediately above you, as if your head was on fire--the voice of the
+miner below, rumbling away in dull echoes lower and lower into the
+bowels of the earth--the consciousness that if the rounds of the ladder
+broke, you might fall down a thousand feet or so of narrow tunnel in a
+moment--imagine all this, and you may easily realize what are the first
+impressions produced by a descent into a Cornish mine.
+
+By the time we had got down seventy fathoms, or four hundred and twenty
+feet of perpendicular ladders, we stopped at another landing-place, just
+broad enough to afford standing room for us three. Here, the miner,
+pointing to an opening yawning horizontally in the rock at one side of
+us, said that this was the first gallery from the surface; that we had
+done with the ladders for the present; and that a little climbing and
+crawling were now to begin.
+
+Our path was a strange one, as we advanced through the rift. Rough
+stones of all sizes, holes here, and eminences there, impeded us at
+every yard. Sometimes, we could walk on in a stooping position--sometimes,
+we were obliged to crawl on our hands and knees. Occasionally, greater
+difficulties than these presented themselves. Certain parts of the
+gallery dipped into black, ugly-looking pits, crossed by thin planks,
+over which we walked dizzily, a little bewildered by the violent contrast
+between the flaring light that we carried above us, and the pitch darkness
+beneath and before us. One of these places terminated in a sudden rising
+in the rock, hollowed away below, but surmounted by a narrow projecting
+wooden platform, to which it was necessary to climb by cross-beams
+arranged at wide distances. My companion ascended to this awkward
+elevation, without hesitating; but I came to an "awful pause" before it.
+Fettered as I was by my Brobdingnag jacket and trousers, I felt a
+humiliating consciousness that any extraordinary gymnastic exertion was
+altogether out of my power.
+
+Our friend the miner saw my difficulty, and extricated me from it at
+once, with a promptitude and skill which deserve record. Descending half
+way by the beams, he clutched with one hand that hinder part of my too
+voluminous nether garments, which presented the broadest superficies of
+canvas to his grasp (I hope the delicate reader appreciates my ingenious
+indirectness of expression, when I touch on the unmentionable subject of
+trousers!). Grappling me thus, and supporting himself by his free hand,
+he lifted me up as easily as if I had been a small parcel; then carried
+me horizontally along the loose boards, like a refractory little boy
+borne off by the usher to the master's birch; or--considering the candle
+burning on my hat, and the necessity of elevating my position by as
+lofty a comparison as I can make--like a flying Mercury with a star on
+his head; and finally deposited me safely upon my legs again, on the
+firm rock pathway beyond. "You are but a light and a little man, my
+son," says this excellent fellow, snuffing my candle for me before we go
+on; "only let me lift you about as I like, and you shan't come to any
+harm while I am with you!"
+
+Speaking thus, the miner leads us forward again. After we have walked a
+little farther in a crouching position, he calls a halt, makes a seat
+for us by sticking a piece of old board between the rocky walls of the
+gallery, and then proceeds to explain the exact subterranean position
+which we actually occupy.
+
+We are now four hundred yards out, _under the bottom of the sea_; and
+twenty fathoms or a hundred and twenty feet below the sea level.
+Coast-trade vessels are sailing over our heads. Two hundred and forty
+feet beneath us men are at work, and there are galleries deeper yet,
+even below that! The extraordinary position down the face of the cliff,
+of the engines and other works on the surface, at Botallack, is now
+explained. The mine is not excavated like other mines under the land,
+but under the sea!
+
+Having communicated these particulars, the miner next tells us to keep
+strict silence and listen. We obey him, sitting speechless and
+motionless. If the reader could only have beheld us now, dressed in our
+copper-coloured garments, huddled close together in a mere cleft of
+subterranean rock, with flame burning on our heads and darkness
+enveloping our limbs--he must certainly have imagined, without any
+violent stretch of fancy, that he was looking down upon a conclave of
+gnomes.
+
+After listening for a few moments, a distant, unearthly noise becomes
+faintly audible--a long, low, mysterious moaning, which never changes,
+which is _felt_ on the ear as well as _heard_ by it--a sound that might
+proceed from some incalculable distance, from some far invisible
+height--a sound so unlike anything that is heard on the upper ground, in
+the free air of heaven; so sublimely mournful and still; so ghostly and
+impressive when listened to in the subterranean recesses of the earth,
+that we continue instinctively to hold our peace, as if enchanted by
+it, and think not of communicating to each other the awe and
+astonishment which it has inspired in us from the very first.
+
+At last, the miner speaks again, and tells us that what we hear is the
+sound of the surf, lashing the rocks a hundred and twenty feet above us,
+and of the waves that are breaking on the beach beyond. The tide is now
+at the flow, and the sea is in no extraordinary state of agitation: so
+the sound is low and distant just at this period. But, when storms are
+at their height, when the ocean hurls mountain after mountain of water
+on the cliffs, then the noise is terrific; the roaring heard down here
+in the mine is so inexpressibly fierce and awful, that the boldest men
+at work are afraid to continue their labour. All ascend to the surface,
+to breathe the upper air and stand on the firm earth: dreading, though
+no such catastrophe has ever happened yet, that the sea will break in on
+them if they remain in the caverns below.
+
+Hearing this, we get up to look at the rock above us. We are able to
+stand upright in the position we now occupy; and flaring our candles
+hither and thither in the darkness, can see the bright pure copper
+streaking the dark ceiling of the gallery in every direction. Lumps of
+ooze, of the most lustrous green colour, traversed by a natural network
+of thin red veins of iron, appear here and there in large irregular
+patches, over which water is dripping slowly and incessantly in certain
+places. This is the salt water percolating through invisible crannies in
+the rock. On stormy days it spirts out furiously in thin, continuous
+streams. Just over our heads we observe a wooden plug of the thickness
+of a man's leg; there is a hole here, and the plug is all that we have
+to keep out the sea.
+
+Immense wealth of metal is contained in the roof of this gallery,
+throughout its whole length; but it remains, and will always remain,
+untouched. The miners dare not take it, for it is part, and a great
+part, of the rock which forms their only protection against the sea; and
+which has been so far worked away here, that its thickness is limited to
+an average of three feet only between the water and the gallery in which
+we now stand. No one knows what might be the consequence of another
+day's labour with the pickaxe on any part of it.
+
+This information is rather startling when communicated at a depth of
+four hundred and twenty feet under ground. We should decidedly have
+preferred to receive it in the counting-house! It makes us pause for an
+instant, to the miner's infinite amusement, in the very act of knocking
+away a tiny morsel of ore from the rock, as a memento of Botallack.
+Having, however, ventured on reflection to assume the responsibility of
+weakening our defence against the sea, by the length and breadth of an
+inch, we secure our piece of copper, and next proceed to discuss the
+propriety of descending two hundred and forty feet more of ladders, for
+the sake of visiting that part of the mine where the men are at work.
+
+Two or three causes concur to make us doubt the wisdom of going lower.
+There is a hot, moist, sickly vapour floating about us, which becomes
+more oppressive every moment; we are already perspiring at every pore,
+as we were told we should; and our hands, faces, jackets, and trousers
+are all more or less covered with a mixture of mud, tallow, and
+iron-drippings, which we can feel and smell much more acutely than is
+exactly desirable. We ask the miner what there is to see lower down. He
+replies, nothing but men breaking ore with pickaxes; the galleries of
+the mine are alike, however deep they may go; when you have seen one
+you have seen all.
+
+The answer decides us--we determine to get back to the surface.
+
+We returned along the gallery, just as we had advanced, with the same
+large allowance of scrambling, creeping, and stumbling on our way. I was
+charitably carried along and down the platform over the pit, by my
+trousers, as before; our order of procession only changing when we
+gained the ladders again. Then, our friend the miner went last instead
+of first, upon the same principle of being ready to catch us if we fell,
+which led him to precede us on our descent. Except that one of the
+rounds cracked under his weight as we went up, we ascended without
+casualties of any kind. As we neared the mouth of the shaft, the
+daylight atmosphere looked dazzlingly white, after the darkness in which
+we had been groping so long; and when we once more stood out on the
+cliff, we felt a cold, health-giving purity in the sea breeze, and, at
+the same time, a sense of recovered freedom in the power that we now
+enjoyed of running, jumping, and stretching our limbs in perfect
+security, and with full space for action, which it was almost a new
+sensation to experience. Habit teaches us to think little of the light
+and air that we live and breathe in, or, at most, to view them only as
+the ordinary conditions of our being. To find out that they are more
+than this, that they are a luxury as well as a necessity of life, go
+down into a mine, and compare what you _can_ exist in there, with what
+you _do_ exist in, on upper earth!
+
+On re-entering the counting-house, we were greeted by the welcome
+appearance of two large tubs of water, with soap and flannel placed
+invitingly by their sides. Copious ablutions and clean clothes are
+potent restorers of muscular energy. These, and a half hour of repose,
+enabled us to resume our knapsacks as briskly as ever, and walk on
+fifteen miles to the town of St. Ives--our resting place for the night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While we were sitting in the counting-house, we had some talk with our
+good-humoured and intelligent guide, on the subject of miners and mining
+at Botallack. Some of the local information that he gave us, may
+interest the reader--to whom I do not pretend to offer more here than a
+simple record of a half hour's gossip. I could only write elaborately
+about the Cornish mines, by swelling my pages with extracts on the
+subject from Encyclopaedias and Itineraries which are within easy reach
+of every one, and on the province of which, it is neither my business
+nor my desire to intrude.
+
+Botallack mine is a copper mine; but tin, and occasionally iron, are
+found in it as well. It is situated at the western extremity of the
+great strata of copper, tin, and lead, running eastward through
+Cornwall, as far as the Dartmoor Hills. According to the statement of my
+informant in the counting-house, it has been worked for more than a
+century. In former times, it produced enormous profits to the
+speculators; but now the case is altered. The price of copper has fallen
+of late years; the lodes have proved neither so rich nor so extensive,
+as at past periods; and the mine, when we visited Cornwall, had failed
+to pay the expenses of working it.
+
+The organization of labour at Botallack, and in all other mines
+throughout the county, is thus managed:--The men work eight hours
+underground, out of the twenty-four; taking their turn of night duty
+(for labour proceeds in the mines by night as well as by day), in
+regular rotation. The different methods on which their work is
+undertaken, and the rates of remuneration that they receive, have been
+already touched on, in the chapter on the "Cornish People." It will be
+found that ordinary wages for mine labour, are there stated as ranging
+from forty to fifty shillings a month--mention being made at the same
+time, of the larger remuneration which may be obtained by working "on
+tribute," or, in other words, by agreeing to excavate the lodes of metal
+for a per-centage which varies with the varying value of the mineral
+raised. It is, however, necessary to add here, that, although men who
+labour on this latter plan, occasionally make as much as six or ten
+pounds each, in a month, they are on the other hand liable to heavy
+losses from the speculative character of the work in which they engage.
+The lode may, for instance, be poor when they begin to work it, and may
+continue poor as they proceed farther and farther. Under these
+circumstances, the low value of the mineral they have raised, realizes a
+correspondingly low rate of per-centage; and when this happens, the best
+workmen cannot make more than twenty shillings a month.
+
+Another system on which the men are employed, is the system of
+"contract." A certain quantity of ore in the rock is mapped out by the
+captain of the mine; and put up to auction among the miners thus:--One
+man mentions a sum for which he is willing to undertake excavating the
+ore, upon the understanding that he is himself to pay for the
+assistance, candles, &c., out of the price he asks. Another man, who is
+also anxious to get the contract, then offers to accept it on lower
+terms; a third man's demand is smaller still; and so they proceed until
+the piece of work is knocked down to the lowest bidder. By this sort of
+labour the contracting workman--after he has paid his expenses for
+assistance--seldom clears more than twelve shillings a week.
+
+Upon the whole, setting his successful and his disastrous speculations
+fairly against each other, the Cornish miner's average gains, year by
+year, may be fairly estimated at about ten shillings a week. "It's hard
+work we have to do, sir," said my informant, summing up, when we parted,
+the proportions of good and evil in the social positions of his brethren
+and himself--"harder work than people think, down in the heat and
+darkness under ground. We may get a good deal at one time, but we get
+little enough at another; sometimes mines are shut up, and then we are
+thrown out altogether--but, good work or bad work, or no work at all,
+what with our bits of ground for potatoes and greens, and what with
+cheap living, somehow we and our families make it do. We contrive to
+keep our good cloth coat for Sundays, and go to chapel in the
+morning--for we're most of us Wesleyans--and then to church in the
+afternoon; so as to give 'em both their turn like! We never go near the
+mine on Sundays, except to look after the steam-pump: our rest, and our
+walk in the evening once a week, is a good deal to us. That's how we
+live, sir; whatever happens, we manage to work through, and don't
+complain!"
+
+Although the occupation of smelting the copper above ground is, as may
+well be imagined, unhealthy enough, the labour of getting it from the
+mine (by blasting the subterranean rock in the first place, and then
+hewing and breaking the ore out of the fragments), seems to be attended
+with no bad effect on the constitution. The miners are a fine-looking
+race of men--strong and well-proportioned. The fact appears to be, that
+they gain more, physically, by the pure air of the cliffs and moors on
+which their cottages are built, and the temperance of their lives (many
+of them are "teetotallers"), than they lose by their hardest exertions
+in the underground atmosphere in which they work.
+
+Serious accidents are rare in the mines of Cornwall. From the horrors of
+such explosions as take place in coal mines, they are by their nature
+entirely free. The casualties that oftenest occur are serious falls,
+generally produced by the carelessness of inexperienced or foolhardy
+people. Of these, and of extraordinary escapes from death with which
+they are associated, many anecdotes are told in mining districts, which
+would appear to the reader exaggerated, or positively untrue, if I
+related them on mere hearsay evidence. There was, however, one instance
+of a fall down the shaft of a mine, unattended with fatal consequences,
+which occurred while I was in Cornwall; and which I may safely adduce,
+for I can state some of the facts connected with the affair as an
+eyewitness. I attended an examination of the sufferer by a medical man,
+and heard the story of the accident from the parents of the patient.
+
+On the 7th of August 1850, a boy fourteen years of age, the son of a
+miner, slipped into the shaft of Boscaswell Down Mine, in the
+neighbourhood of Penzance. He fell to the depth of thirteen fathoms, or
+seventy-eight feet. Fifty-eight feet down, he struck his left side
+against a board placed across the shaft, snapped it in two, and then
+falling twenty feet more, pitched on his head. He was of course taken
+up insensible; the doctor was sent for; and on examining him, found, to
+his amazement, that there was actually a chance of the boy's recovery
+after this tremendous fall!
+
+Not a bone in his body was broken. He was bruised and scratched all
+over, and there were three cuts--none of them serious--on his head. The
+board stretched across the shaft, twenty feet from the bottom, had saved
+him from being dashed to pieces; but had inflicted at the same time,
+where his left side had struck it, the only injury that appeared
+dangerous to the medical man--a large, hard lump that could be felt
+under the bruised skin. The boy showed no symptoms of fever; his pulse,
+day after day, was found never varying from eighty-two to the minute;
+his appetite was voracious; and the internal functions of his body only
+required a little ordinary medicine to keep them properly at work. In
+short, nothing was to be dreaded but the chance of the formation of an
+abscess in his left side, between the hip and ribs. He had been under
+medical care exactly one week, when I accompanied the doctor on a visit
+to him.
+
+The cottage where he lived with his parents, though small, was neat and
+comfortable. We found him lying in bed, awake. He looked languid and
+lethargic; but his skin was moist and cool; his face displayed no
+paleness, and no injury of any kind. He had just eaten a good dinner of
+rabbit-pie, and was anxious to be allowed to sit up in a chair, and
+amuse himself by looking out of the window. His left side was first
+examined. A great circular bruise discoloured the skin, over the whole
+space between the hip and ribs; but on touching it, the doctor
+discovered that the lump beneath had considerably decreased in size, and
+was much less hard than it had felt during previous visits. Next we
+looked at his back and arms--they were scratched and bruised all over;
+but nowhere seriously. Lastly, the dressings were taken off his head,
+and three cuts were disclosed, which even a non-medical eye could easily
+perceive to be of no great importance. Such were all the results of a
+fall of seventy-eight feet.
+
+The boy's father reiterated to me the account of the accident, just as I
+had already heard it from the doctor. How it happened, he said, could
+only be guessed, for his son had completely forgotten all the
+circumstances immediately preceding the fall; neither could he
+communicate any of the sensations which must have attended it. Most
+probably, he had been sitting dangling his legs idly over the mouth of
+the shaft, and had so slipped in. But however the accident really
+happened, there the sufferer was before us--less seriously hurt than
+many a lad who has trodden on a piece of orange peel as he was walking
+along the street.
+
+We left him (humanly speaking) certain of recovery, now that the
+dangerous lump in his side had begun to decrease. I heard afterwards
+from his medical attendant, that in two months from the date of the
+accident, he was at work again as usual in the mine; at that very part
+of it, too, where his fall had taken place!
+
+It was not the least interesting part of my visit to the cottage where
+he lay ill, to observe the anxious affection displayed towards him by
+both his parents. His mother left her work in the kitchen to hold him in
+her arms, while the old dressings were being taken off and the new ones
+applied--sighing bitterly, poor creature, every time he winced or cried
+out under the pain of the operation. The father put several questions to
+the doctor, which were always perfectly to the point; and did the
+honours of his little abode to his stranger visitor, with a natural
+politeness and a simple cordiality of manner which showed that he
+really meant the welcome that he spoke. Nor was he any exception to the
+rest of his brother-workmen with whom I met. As a body of men, they are
+industrious and intelligent; sober and orderly; neither soured by hard
+work, nor easily depressed by harder privations. No description of
+personal experiences in the Cornish mines can be fairly concluded,
+without a collateral testimony to the merits of the Cornish miners--a
+testimony which I am happy to accord here; and to which my readers would
+cheerfully add their voices, if they ever felt inclined to test its
+impartiality by their own experience.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE MODERN DRAMA IN CORNWALL.
+
+
+Our walk from Botallack Mine to St. Ives, led us almost invariably
+between moors and hills on one side, and cliffs and sea on the other;
+and displayed some of the dreariest views that we had yet beheld in
+Cornwall. About nightfall, we halted for a short time at a place which
+was certainly not calculated to cheer the traveller along his onward
+way.
+
+Imagine three or four large, square, comfortless-looking, shut-up
+houses, all apparently uninhabited; add some half-dozen miserable little
+cottages standing near the houses, with the nasal notes of a Methodist
+hymn pouring disastrously through the open door of one of them; let the
+largest of the large buildings be called an inn, but let it make up no
+beds, because nobody ever stops to sleep there: place in the kitchen of
+this inn a sickly little girl, and a middle-aged, melancholy woman, the
+first staring despondently on a wasting fire, the second offering to the
+stranger a piece of bread, three eggs, and some sour porter corked down
+in an earthenware jar, as all that her larder and cellar can afford;
+fancy next an old, grim, dark church, with two or three lads leaning
+against the churchyard wall, looking out together in gloomy silence on a
+solitary high road; conceive a thin, slow rain falling, a cold twilight
+just changing into darkness, a surrounding landscape wild, barren, and
+shelterless--imagine all this, and you will have the picture before you
+which presented itself to me and my companion, when we found ourselves
+in the village of Morvah.
+
+Late that night, we got to the large sea-port town of St. Ives; and
+stayed there two or three days to look at the pilchard fishery, which
+was then proceeding with all the bustle and activity denoting the
+commencement of a good season. Leaving St. Ives, on our way up the
+northern coast, we now passed through the central part of the mining
+districts of Cornwall. Chimneys and engine-houses chequered the surface
+of the landscape; the roads glittered with metallic particles; the walls
+at their sides were built with crystallized stones; towns showed a
+sudden increase in importance; villages grew large and populous; inns
+disappeared, and hotels arose in their stead; people became less curious
+to know who we were, stared at us less, gossiped with us less; gave us
+information, but gave us nothing more--no long stories, no invitations
+to stop and smoke a pipe, no hospitable offers of bed and board. All
+that we saw and heard tended to convince us that we had left the
+picturesque and the primitive, with the streets of Looe and the
+fishermen at the Land's End; and had got into the commercial part of the
+county, among sharp, prosperous, business like people--it was like
+walking out of a painter's studio into a merchant's counting-house!
+
+As we were travelling, like the renowned Doctor Syntax, in search of the
+picturesque, we hurried through this populous and highly-civilized
+region of Cornwall as rapidly as possible. I doubt much whether we
+should not have passed as unceremoniously through the large town of
+Redruth--the capital city of the mining districts--as we passed through
+several towns and villages before it, had not our attention been
+attracted and our departure delayed by a public notice, printed on
+rainbow-coloured paper, and pasted up in the most conspicuous part of
+the market-place.
+
+The notice set forth, that "the beautiful drama of The Curate's
+Daughter" was to be performed at night, in the "unrivalled Sans Pareil
+Theatre," by "the most talented company in England," before "the most
+discerning audience in the world." As far as we were individually
+concerned, this theatrical announcement was remarkably tempting and
+well-timed. We were now within one day's journey of Piran Round, the
+famous amphitheatre where the old Cornish Miracle Plays used to be
+performed. Anything connected with the stage was, therefore, a subject
+of particular interest in our eyes. The bill before us seemed to offer a
+curious opportunity of studying the dramatic tastes of the modern
+Cornish, on the very day before we were about to speculate on the
+dramatic tastes of the ancient Cornish, among the remains of their
+public theatre. Such an occasion was too favourable to be neglected; we
+ordered our beds at Redruth, and joined the "discerning audience"
+assembled to sit in judgment on "The Curate's Daughter."
+
+The Sans Pareil Theatre was not of that order of architecture in which
+outward ornament is studied. There was nothing "florid" about it;
+canvas, ropes, scaffolding-poles, and old boards, threw an air of Saxon
+simplicity over the whole structure. Admitted within, we turned
+instinctively towards the stage. On each side of the proscenium boards
+was painted a knight in full armour, with powerful calves, weak knees,
+and an immense spear. Tallow candles, stuck round two hoops, threw a
+mysterious light on the green curtain, in front of which sat an
+orchestra of four musicians, playing on a trombone, an ophicleide, a
+clarionet, and a fiddle, as loudly as they could--the artist on the
+trombone, especially, performing prodigies of blowing, though he had not
+room enough to develop the whole length of his instrument. Every now and
+then great excitement was created among the expectant audience by the
+vehement ringing of a bell behind the scenes, and by the occasional
+appearance of a youth who gravely snuffed the candles all round, with a
+skill and composure highly creditable to him, considering the
+pertinacity with which he was stared at by everybody while he pursued
+his occupation.
+
+At last, the bell was rung furiously for the twentieth time; the curtain
+drew up, and the drama of "The Curate's Daughter" began.
+
+Our sympathies were excited at the outset. We beheld a lady-like woman
+who answered to the name of "Grace;" and an old gentleman, dressed in
+dingy black, who personated her father, the Curate; and who was, on this
+occasion (I presume through unavoidable circumstances), neither more nor
+less than--drunk. There was no mistaking the cause of the fixed leer in
+the reverend gentleman's eye; of the slow swaying in his gait; of the
+gruff huskiness in his elocution. It appeared, from the opening
+dialogue, that a pending law-suit, and the absence of his daughter Fanny
+in London, combined to make him uneasy in his mind just at present. But
+he was by no means so clear on this subject as could be desired--in
+fact, he spoke through his nose, put in and left out his _hs_ in the
+wrong places, and involved his dialogue in a long labyrinth of
+parentheses whenever he expressed himself at any length. It was not
+until the entrance of his daughter Fanny (just arrived from London:
+nobody knew why or wherefore), that he grew more emphatic and
+intelligible. We now observed with pleasure that he gave his children
+his blessing and embraced them both at once; and we were additionally
+gratified by hearing from his own lips, that his "daughters were the
+h'all on which his h'all depended--that they would watch h'over his
+'ale autumn; and that whatever happened the whole party must invariably
+trust in heabben's obdipotent power!"
+
+Grateful for this clerical advice, Fanny retired into the garden to
+gather her parent some flowers; but immediately returned shrieking. She
+was followed by a Highwayman with a cocked hat, mustachios, bandit's
+ringlets, a scarlet hunting-coat, and buff boots. This gentleman had
+shown his extraordinary politeness--although a perfect stranger--by
+giving Miss Fanny a kiss in the garden; conduct for which the Curate
+very properly cursed him, in the strongest language. Apparently a quiet
+and orderly character, the Highwayman replied by beginning a handsome
+apology, when he was interrupted by the abrupt entrance of another
+personage, who ordered him (rather late in the day, as we ventured to
+think) to "let go his holt, and beware how he laid his brutal touch on
+the form of innocence!" This newcomer, the parson informed us, was "good
+h'Adam Marle, the teacher of the village school." We found "h'Adam," in
+respect of his outward appearance, to be a very short man, dressed in a
+high-crowned modern hat, with a fringed vandyck collar drooping over his
+back and shoulders, a modern frock-coat, buttoned tight at the waist,
+and a pair of jack-boots of the period of James the Second. Aided by his
+advantages of costume, this character naturally interested us; and we
+regretted seeing but little of him in the first scene, from which he
+retired, following the penitent Highwayman out, and lecturing him as he
+went. No sooner were their backs turned, than a waggoner, in a clean
+smock-frock and high-lows, entered with an offer of a situation in
+London for Fanny, which the unsuspicious Curate accepted immediately. As
+soon as he had committed himself, it was confided to the audience that
+the waggoner was a depraved villain, in the employ of that notorious
+profligate, Colonel Chartress, who had commissioned a second myrmidon
+(of the female sex) to lure Fanny from virtue and the country, to vice
+and the metropolis. By the time the plot had "thickened" thus far, the
+scene changed, and we got to London at once.
+
+We now beheld the Curate, Chartress's female accomplice, Fanny, and the
+vicious waggoner, all standing in a row, across the stage. The Curate,
+in a burst of amiability, had just lifted up his hands to bless the
+company, when Colonel Chartress (dressed in an old _naval_ uniform, with
+an opera-hat of the year 1800), suddenly rushed in, followed by the
+Highwayman, who having relapsed from penitence to guilt, had, as a
+necessary consequence, determined to supplant Chartress in the favour of
+Miss Fanny. These two promptly seized each other by the throat; vehement
+shouting, scuffling, and screaming ensued; and the Curate, clasping his
+daughter round the waist, frantically elevated his walking-stick in the
+air. Was he about to inflict personal chastisement on his innocent
+child? Who could say? Before there was time to ask the question, the
+curtain fell with a bang, on the crisis of the first act.
+
+In act the second, the first scene was described in the bills as Temple
+Bar by moonlight. Neither Bar nor moonlight appeared when the curtain
+rose--so we took both for granted, and fixed our minds on the story. The
+first person who now confronted us, was "good h'Adam Marle." The paint
+was all washed off his face; his immense spread of collar looked
+grievously in want of washing; and he leaned languidly on an oaken
+stick. He had been walking--he informed us--through the streets of
+London for six consecutive days and nights, without sustenance, in
+search of Miss Fanny, who had disappeared since the skirmish at the end
+of act the first, and had never been heard of since. Poor dear Marle!
+how eloquent he was with his white handkerchief, when he fairly opened
+his heart, and confided to us that he was madly attached to Fanny; that
+he knew he "was nothink" to her; and that, under existing circumstances,
+he felt inclined to rest himself on a door step! Just as he had
+comfortably settled down, the valet of the profligate Chartress entered,
+in the communicative stage of intoxication; and immediately mentioned
+all his master's private affairs to "h'Adam." It appeared that the
+Colonel had carried off Miss Fanny, had then got tired of her, and had
+coolly handed her over to a Jew, in part payment of "a little bill."
+Having ascertained the Jew's address, the indefatigable Marle left us
+(still without sustenance) to rescue the Curate's daughter, or die in
+the attempt.
+
+The next scene disclosed Fanny, sitting conscience-stricken and
+inconsolable, in a red polka jacket and white muslin slip. Mr. Marle,
+having discovered her place of refuge, now stepped in to lecture and
+reclaim. Vain proceeding! The Curate's daughter looked at him with a
+scream, exclaimed, "Cuss me, h'Adam! cuss me!" and rushed out.
+"H'Adam," after a despondent soliloquy, followed with his eloquent
+handkerchief to his eyes; but, while he had been talking to himself, our
+old friend the Highwayman had been on the alert, and had picked Fanny
+up, fainting in the street. And what did he do with her after that? He
+handed her over to his "comrades in villany." And who were his comrades
+in villany? They were the trombone and ophicleide players from the
+orchestra, and the "Miss Grace," of act first, disguised as a bad
+character, in a cloak, with a red pocket-handkerchief over her head. And
+what happened next? A series of events happened next. Miss Fanny
+recovered on a sudden, perceived what sort of company she had about her,
+rushed out a second time into the street, fell fainting a second time on
+the pavement, and was picked up on this occasion by Colonel
+Chartress--in the interests, it is to be presumed, of his friend, the
+Jew money-lender. Before, however, he could get clear off with his
+prize, the indefatigably vicious Highwayman, and the indefatigably
+virtuous Marle, precipitated themselves on the stage, assaulting
+Chartress, assaulting each other, assaulting everybody. Fanny fell
+fainting a third time in the street; and before we could find out who
+was the third person who picked her up, down came the curtain in the
+midst of the catastrophe.
+
+Act the third was opened by the heroine, still injured, still
+inconsolable, and still clad in the polka jacket and white slip. We
+thought her a very nice little woman, with a melodious,
+genteel-comedy-voice, trim ankles, and a habit of catching her breath in
+the most pathetic manner, at least a dozen times in the course of one
+soliloquy. While she was still assuring us that she felt the most
+forlorn creature on the face of the earth, she was suddenly interrupted
+by the entrance of no less a person than the Curate himself. We had seen
+nothing of the reverend gentleman throughout the second act; but
+"h'Adam" had casually informed us that his time had been passed at his
+parsonage, "sittun with his 'ed between his knees, sobbun!" Having now
+wearied of this gymnastic method of indulging in parental grief, he had
+set forth to seek his lost daughter, and had accidentally stopped at the
+very inn where she had taken refuge. Nothing could be more piteous than
+his present appearance; he was infinitely more tipsy, infinitely more
+dignified, and infinitely more parenthetical in his mode of expressing
+himself, than when we last beheld him. A streak of burnt cork running
+down each side of his venerable nose, showed us how deeply grief had
+increased the wrinkles of age; and our pity for him reached its climax
+when he cast his clerical hat on the floor, sank drowsily into a chair,
+and began to pray in these words: "Oh heabben! hear a solemn and a solid
+prayer--hear a solemn heart who wants to embrace his darling Fanny!"
+
+All this time, the lost daughter was hiding behind the forlorn father's
+chair; an awful and convenient darkness being thrown on the stage by the
+introduction of a plank between the actors and the tallow candles. In
+this striking situation, Miss Fanny told her sad story, and pleaded her
+own cause as a stranger, under disguise of the darkness. Useless--quite
+useless! The reverend gentleman, having never turned round to see who it
+was that was speaking to him, and having therefore no idea that it was
+his own daughter, received in dignified silence the advances of a young
+person unknown to him. What course was now left to the unhappy Fanny?
+The old course--a rush off the stage, and a swoon in the street. As soon
+as her back was turned, the Parson, forgetting to take away his hat
+with him, staggered out at the opposite side to continue his journey. He
+uttered as he went the following moral observation:--"No soul so lost to
+Nature, but must be lost eternally--my 'art is broken!"
+
+The next moment, we were startled by a long and elaborate trampling of
+feet behind the scenes, and the villain Chartress, ran panic-stricken
+across the stage, hotly pursued by "good h'Adam Marle." In the eloquent
+language of virtue, thus did Adam address him:--"Stay, ruffian, stay!
+Inquiring for Chartress at the bar of this inn, I found indeed that you
+was the very identical. You foul, venomous, treacherous, voluptuous
+liar, where is the un'appy Fanny? where is the victim of your prey?--Ha!
+'oary-'edded ruffian, I have yer!" (_Collars Chartress._) "But no! I
+will not _strike_ yer; I will _drag_ yer!" It was interesting to see
+Adam exemplify the peculiar distinction in the science of assault
+implied in his last words, by hauling Chartress all round the stage. It
+was awful to observe that the Colonel lost his temper at the second
+round, murderously snapped a pistol in "h'Adam's" face, and rushed off
+in hot homicidal triumph. We waited breathless for the fall of Marle.
+Nothing of the sort happened. He started, frowned, paused, laughed
+fiercely, exclaimed,--"The villain 'as missed!" and followed in pursuit.
+
+In the interim, Miss Fanny had been picked up in the street, for the
+fourth time, by a benevolent "washerwoman," who happened to be passing
+by at the moment; had been conveyed to the said washerwoman's lodgings;
+and now appeared before us, despoiled, at last, of all the glories of
+the red polka, enveloped from head to foot in clouds of white muslin,
+and dying with frightful rapidity in an armchair. In the next and last
+scene, all that remained to represent the unhappy heroine was a coffin
+decently covered with a white sheet. With slow and funereal steps, the
+Curate, Miss Grace, "h'Adam," the Highwayman, and the "venomous and
+voluptuous liar," Chartress, approached to weep over it. The Curate had
+gone raving mad since we saw him last. His wig was set on wrong side
+foremost; the ends of his clerical cravat floated wildly, a yard long at
+least over his shoulders; his eyes rolled in frenzy; he swooned at the
+sight of the coffin; recovered convulsively; placed Marle's hand in the
+hand of Miss Grace (telling him that now one daughter was dead, nothing
+was left for him but to marry the other); and then fell flat on his
+back, with a thump that shook the stage and made the audience start
+unanimously. Marle--well-bred to the last--politely offered his arm to
+Grace; and pointing to the coffin, asked Chartress, reproachfully,
+whether that was not _his_ work. The Colonel took off his opera-hat,
+raised his hand to his eyes, and doggedly answered, "Indeed, it is!" The
+Tableau thus formed, was completed by the Highwayman, the coffin, and
+the defunct Curate; and the curtain fell to slow music.
+
+Such was the plot of this remarkable dramatic work, exactly as I took it
+down in the theatre, between the acts; noting also in my pocket-book
+such scraps of dialogue as I have presented to the reader, while they
+fell from the actors' lips. There were plenty of comic scenes in the
+play which I leave unmentioned; for their humour was of the dreariest,
+and their morality of the lowest order that can possibly be conceived. I
+can only say, as the result of my own experience at Redruth, that if the
+dramatic reforms which are now being attempted in the theatrical by-ways
+of the metropolis succeed, there would be no harm in extending the
+experiment as far as the locomotive stage of Cornwall. Good plays are
+good missionaries; and, like missionaries, let them travel to teach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, having seen enough of the modern drama in Cornwall, without
+waiting for the songs, the dances, and the farces which are to follow
+the "Curate's Daughter," let us go on to Piranzabuloe, and look at the
+theatre in which the Cornish of former days assembled; endeavouring to
+discover, at the same time, by what sort of performances the people were
+instructed or amused some two hundred and fifty years ago.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE ANCIENT DRAMA IN CORNWALL.
+
+
+We found the modern Cornish theatre situated in a populous town; built
+up, as a temporary structure, with old canvas and boards; and opened to
+audiences only at night. We found the ancient Cornish theatre placed in
+a perfect desert; constructed permanently, though rudely, of mounds of
+turf--the sky forming its only roof, the flat plain its only stage, the
+broad daylight its only means of illumination. Nothing of the kind could
+be more strongly marked than the difference between the theatre of the
+past, and the theatre of the present day, in the far West of England.
+
+In like manner, the country about Piran Round (such is the name of the
+Old Cornish amphitheatre) offers a startling contrast to the country
+about Redruth. You are at once powerfully impressed by its barren
+solitude, its dreary repose, after the fertility and populousness of the
+great mining districts through which you have just passed. Now, the
+large towns and busy villages disappear, the mines grow rarer, the roads
+look deserted, the wide pathways dwindle to the merest foot-track. Again
+you behold the spacious moor rolling away in alternate hill and dale to
+the far horizon; again you pass though the quaint coast villages; and
+see the few simple cottages, the few old boats, the little groups
+talking quietly at the inn door, as they have already presented
+themselves along the southern and western shores of Cornwall. Soon,
+however, your onward road towards Piran Round becomes yet more desolate.
+Ere long, not even a solitary cottage is in sight, not a living being
+appears: you find yourself wandering along the uneven boundary of a
+wilderness of sand-hills heaped up from the seashore by the wind. You
+look over a perfect desert of miniature mountains and valleys, in some
+places overgrown with thin, dry grass; in others, dotted with little
+pools of mud and stagnant water. Year by year, this invasion of sand
+encroaches on the moorland--year by year, it is ever shifting, ever
+increasing, ever assuming newer and more fantastic forms, now in one
+direction and now in another, with each fresh storm.
+
+When you leave this dreary scene, you only leave it for the wild flat
+heath, the open naked country once more. You follow your long road,
+visible miles on before you, winding white and serpent-like over the
+dark ground, until you suddenly observe in the distance an object which
+rises strangely above the level prospect. You approach nearer, and
+behold a circular turf embankment; a wide, lonesome, desolate enclosure,
+looking like a witches' dancing-ring that has sprung up in the midst of
+the open moor. This is Piran Round. Here, the old inhabitants of
+Cornwall assembled to form the audience of the drama of former days.
+
+A level area of grassy ground, one hundred and thirty feet in diameter,
+is enclosed by the embankment. There are two entrances to this area cut
+through the boundary circle of turf and earth, which rises to a height
+of nine or ten feet, and narrows towards the top, where it is seven feet
+wide. All round the inside of the embankment steps were formerly cut;
+but their traces are now almost obliterated by the growth of the grass.
+They were originally seven in number; the spectators stood on them in
+rows, one above another--a closely packed multitude, all looking down at
+the dramatic performances taking place on the wide circumference of the
+plain. When it was well filled, the amphitheatre must have contained
+upwards of two thousand people.
+
+Such is this rude, yet extraordinary structure, in our time. It has not
+lost its patriarchal simplicity since the far distant period when the
+populace thronged its turf steps to welcome the strolling players of
+their age. The antiquity of Piran Round dates back beyond the period of
+the earliest and rudest dramatic performances on English ground. It was
+first used for popular sports, for single combats, for rustic councils.
+Then, plays were acted in it--miracle plays--some translated into the
+ancient Cornish language, some originally written in it. The oldest of
+these are lost; but one of a comparatively late date has been preserved
+and translated into English. We will examine this book while we sit
+within the deserted amphitheatre; and thus, in imagination at least,
+people the simple stage before us with the rough country actors who once
+trod it--thus pry behind the scenes at all that is left to us of the
+ancient drama in Cornwall.
+
+The play which we now open is called by the comprehensive title of "The
+Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood." It was translated in 1611,
+from a drama of much earlier date, for performance in Cornish, by
+William Jordan; was then rendered into English by John Keygwyn, in 1691;
+and was finally corrected and published by Mr. Davies Gilbert, in 1827.
+The Cornish and English versions are printed on opposite pages, so we
+can compare the two throughout, as we go on.
+
+The play is in five acts, and is written in poetry--in a rambling
+octosyllabic metre, often varied by the introduction of longer or
+shorter lines, and sometimes interspersed (in the Cornish version) with
+a word or two of English. It occupies a hundred and eighty pages,
+containing on the average about twenty-five lines each. This would be
+thought rather a lengthy manner of developing a dramatic story in our
+days; but we must remember that the time embraced in the plot of the old
+playwright extends from the Creation to the Flood, and must be
+astonished and thankful that he has not been more diffuse.
+
+The _dramatis personae_ muster by the legion. In the first act, we have
+the whole heavenly host: in the second, are superadded Adam, Eve,
+"Torpen, a devil," Beelzebub, the Serpent, and Michael the Archangel; in
+the third, besides these, Death, Cain and his wife, Abel and Seth; in
+the fourth, we have the addition of Lamech, a servant, a Cherubim, and a
+first and second devil; and in the fifth, Enoch, Noah and his wife,
+Shem, Ham, Japhet, Seth, Jaball, and Tubal Cain.
+
+The author manages this tremendous list of mortal and immortal
+characters with infinite coolness and dexterity. Nothing appears to
+embarrass him. He follows history in a negligent, sauntering way,
+passing over a hundred years or so, whenever it is convenient; and
+giving all his personages their turn of talking in orderly and impartial
+rotation. His speeches are wonderfully moral and long; even his worst
+characters have, for the most part, a temperate and logical way of
+uttering the most violent language, which must have read an excellent
+lesson to the roistering young gentlemen among the audiences of the
+time.
+
+We will now examine the play a little in detail, quoting the stage
+directions (the most extraordinary part of it) exactly as they occur;
+and occasionally presenting a line or two of the dialogue from the old
+English translation wherever it best illustrates the author's style.
+
+The first act comprehends the fall of the angels--the introductory stage
+direction commanding that the theatrical clouds, and the whole sky to
+boot, shall open when Heaven is named! All is harmony at the outset of
+the play, until it is Lucifer's turn to speak. He declares that he alone
+is great, and that all allegiance must be given to him. Some of the
+angels glorify him accordingly; others remain true to their celestial
+service; the debate grows warm, and some of the disputants give each
+other the lie (but very calmly). At length, the scene is closed by
+Lucifer's condemnation to Hell, which, as the directions provide, "shall
+gape when it is named." The faithful angels are then told to "have
+swords and staves ready for Lucifer," who, we are informed, "voideth and
+goeth down to Hell apparelled foul, with fire about him, turning to
+Hell, with every degree of devils and lost spirits on cords running into
+the plain." With this stirring scene the act ends.
+
+The second act comprises the creation and fall of man. Here, again, we
+will consult the stage directions, as giving the best idea of the
+incidents and scenes. We find that Adam and Eve are to be "apparelled in
+white leather in a place appointed by the conveyor" (probably the
+person we term stage-manager now); "and are not to be seen until they be
+called; and then each rises." After this, we read:--"Let Paradise be
+finely made, with fair trees in it, and apples upon a tree, and other
+fruit on the others. A fountain, too, in Paradise, and fine flowers
+painted. Put Adam into Paradise--let flowers appear in Paradise--let
+Adam lie down and sleep where Eve is, and she, by the conveyor, must be
+taken from Adam's side--let fishes of all sorts, birds and beasts, as
+oxen, kyne, sheep, and such like, appear."
+
+Then, we have the preparations for the temptation, ordered thus:--"A
+fine serpent to be made with a virgin's face, and yellow hair on her
+head. Let the serpent appear, and also geese and hens." Lucifer enters
+immediately afterwards, and goes into the serpent, which is then
+directed to be "seen singing in a tree" (the actor who personated
+Lucifer must have had some gymnastic difficulties to contend with in his
+part!)--"Eve looketh strange on the serpent;" then, "talketh familiarly
+and cometh near him;" then, "doubteth and looketh angrily;" and then
+eats part of the apple, shows it to Adam, and insists on his eating
+part of it too, in the following lines:--
+
+  "Sir, in a few words,
+  Taste them part of the apple,
+    Or my love thou shalt lose!
+  See, take this fair apple,
+  Or surely between thee and thy wife
+  The love shall utterly fail,
+    If thou wilt not eat of it!"[4]
+
+The stage direction now proceeds:--"Adam receiveth the apple and tasteth
+it, and so repenteth and casteth it away. Eve looketh on Adam very
+strangely and speaketh not anything." During this pause, the "conveyor"
+is told "to get the fig-leaves ready." Then Lucifer is ordered to "come
+out of the serpent and creep on his belly to hell;" Adam and Eve receive
+the curse, and depart out of Paradise, "showing a spindle and
+distaff"--no badly-conceived emblem of the labour to which they are
+henceforth doomed. And thus the second act terminates.
+
+The third act treats of Cain and Abel; and is properly opened by an
+impersonation of Death. After which Cain and Abel appear to sacrifice.
+
+Cain makes his offering of the first substance that comes to hand--"dry
+cow-dung"(!); and tells Abel that he is a "dolthead" and "a frothy fool"
+for using anything better. "Abel is stricken with a jawbone and dieth;
+Cain casteth him into a ditch." The effect of the first murder on the
+minds of our first parents, is delineated in some speeches exhibiting a
+certain antique simplicity of thought, which almost rises to the
+poetical by its homely adherence to nature, and its perfect innocence of
+effort, artifice, or display. The banishment of Cain, still glorying in
+his crime, follows the lamentations of Adam and Eve for the death of
+Abel; and the act is closed by Adam's announcement of the birth of Seth.
+
+The fourth act relates the deaths of Cain and Adam, and contains some of
+the most eccentric, and also, some of the most elevated writing in the
+play. Lamech opens the scene, candidly and methodically exposing his own
+character in these lines:--
+
+    "Sure I am the first
+  That ever yet had two wives!
+  And maidens in sufficient plenty
+  They are to me. I am not dainty,
+  I can find them where I will;
+  Nor do I spare of them
+    In anywise one that is handsome.
+  But I am wondrous troubled,
+  Scarce do I see one glimpse
+    What the devil shall be done!"
+
+In this vagabond frame of mind Lamech goes out hunting, with bow and
+arrow, and shoots Cain, accidentally, in a bush. When Cain falls, Lamech
+appeals to his servant, to know what is it that he has shot. The servant
+declares that it is "hairy, rough, ugly, and a buck-goat of the night."
+Cain, however, discovers himself before he dies. There is something
+rudely dreary and graphic about his description of his loneliness, bare
+as it is of any recommendation of metaphors or epithets:
+
+  "Deformed I am very much,
+  And overgrown with hair;
+  I do live continually in heat or cold frost,
+        Surely night and day;
+  Nor do I desire to see the son of man,
+  With my will at any time;
+  But accompany most time with all the beasts."
+
+Lamech, discovering the fatal error that he has committed, kills his
+servant in his anger; and the scene ends with "the devils carrying them
+away with great noise to hell."
+
+The second scene is between Adam and his son Seth; and here, the old
+dramatist often rises to an elevation of poetical feeling, which,
+judging from the preceding portions of the play, we should not have
+imagined he could reach. Barbarous as his execution may be, the simple
+beauty of his conception often shines through it faintly, but yet
+palpably, in this part of the drama.
+
+Adam is weary of life and weary of the world; he sends Seth to the gates
+of Paradise to ask mercy and release for him, telling his son that he
+will find the way thither by his father's foot-prints, burnt into the
+surface of the earth which was cursed for Adam's transgression. Seth
+finds and follows the supernatural marks, is welcomed by the angel at
+the gate of Paradise, and is permitted to look in. He beholds there, an
+Apocalypse of the redemption of the world. On the tree of life sit the
+Virgin and Child; while on the tree from which Eve plucked the apple,
+"the woman" is seen, having power over the serpent. The vision changes,
+and Cain is shown in hell, "sorrowing and weeping." Then the angel
+plucks three kernels from the tree of life, and gives them to Seth for
+his father's use, saying that they shall grow to another tree of life,
+when more than five thousand years are ended; and that Adam shall be
+redeemed from his pains when that period is fulfilled. After this, Seth
+is dismissed by the angel and returns to communicate to his father the
+message of consolation which he has received.
+
+Adam hears the result of his son's mission with thankfulness; blesses
+Seth; and speaks these last words, while he is confronted by Death:--
+
+  "Old and weak, I am gone!
+  To live longer is not for me:
+  Death is come,
+  Nor will here leave me
+      To live one breath!
+
+  I see him now with his spear,
+  Ready to pierce me on every side,
+  There is no escaping from him!
+  The time is welcome with, me--
+      I have served long in the world!"
+
+So, the patriarch dies, trusting in the promise conveyed through his
+son; and is buried by Seth "in a fair tomb, with some Church sonnet."
+
+After this impressive close to the fourth act--impressive in its
+intention, however clumsy the appliances by which that intention is
+worked out--it would be doing the old author no kindness to examine his
+fifth act in detail. Here, he sinks again in many places, to puerility
+of conception and coarseness of dialogue. It is enough to say that the
+history of the Flood closes the drama, and that the spectators are
+dismissed with an epilogue, directing them to "come to-morrow, betimes,
+and see very great matters"--the minstrels being charged, at the
+conclusion to "pipe," so that all may dance together, as the proper
+manner of ending the day's amusements.
+
+And now, let us close the book, look forth over this lonesome country
+and lonesome amphitheatre, and imagine what a scene both must have
+presented, when a play was to be acted on a fine summer's morning in the
+year 1611.
+
+Fancy, at the outset, the arrival of the audience--people dressed in the
+picturesque holiday costume of the time, which varied with every varying
+rank, hurrying to their daylight play from miles off; all visible in
+every direction on the surface of the open moor, and all converging from
+every point of the compass to the one common centre of Piran Round.
+Then, imagine the assembling in the amphitheatre; the running round the
+outer circle of the embankment to get at the entrances; the tumbling and
+rushing up the steps inside; the racing of hot-headed youngsters to get
+to the top places; the sly deliberation of the elders in selecting the
+lower and safer positions; the quarrelling when a tall man chanced to
+stand before a short one; the giggling and blushing of buxom peasant
+wenches when the gallant young bachelors of the district happened to be
+placed behind them; the universal speculations on the weather; the
+universal shouting for pots of ale--and finally, as the time of the
+performance drew near and the minstrels appeared with their pipes, the
+gradual hush and stillness among the multitude; the combined stare of
+the whole circular mass of spectators on one point in the plain of the
+amphitheatre, where all knew that the actors lay hidden in a pit,
+properly covered in from observation--the mysterious "green-room" of
+the strolling players of old Cornwall!
+
+And the play!--to see the play must have been a sight indeed! Conceive
+the commencement of it; the theatrical sky which was to open awfully
+whenever Heaven was named; the mock clouds coolly set up by the
+"property-man" on an open-air stage, where the genuine clouds appeared
+above them to expose the counterfeit; the hard fighting of the angels
+with swords and staves; the descent of the lost spirits along cords
+running into the plain; the thump with which they must have come down;
+the rolling off of the whole troop over the grass, to the infernal
+regions, amid shouts of applause from the audience as they rolled! Then
+the appearance of Adam and Eve, packed in white leather, like our modern
+dolls--the serpent with the virgin's face and the yellow hair, climbing
+into a tree, and singing in the branches--Cain falling out of the bush
+when he was struck by the arrow of Lamech, and his blood appearing,
+according to the stage directions, when he fell--the making of the Ark,
+the filling it with live stock, the scenery of the Deluge, in the fifth
+act! What a combination of theatrical prodigies the whole performance
+must have presented! How the actors must have ranted to make themselves
+heard in the open air; how often the machinery must have gone wrong, and
+the rude scenery toppled and tumbled down! Could we revive at will, for
+mere amusement, any of the bygone performances of the theatre, since the
+first days of barbaric acting in a cart, assuredly the performances at
+Piran Round would be those which, without hesitation, we should select
+from all others to call back to life.
+
+The end of the play, too--how picturesque, how striking all the
+circumstances attending it must have been! Oh that we could hear again
+the merry old English tune piped by the minstrels, and see the merry old
+English dancing of the audience to the music! Then, think of the
+separation and the return home of the populace, at sunset; the fishing
+people strolling off towards the seashore; the miners walking away
+farther inland; the agricultural labourers spreading in all directions,
+wherever cottages and farm-houses were visible in the far distance over
+the moor. And then the darkness coming on, and the moon rising over the
+amphitheatre, so silent and empty, save at one corner, where the poor
+worn-out actors are bivouacking gipsy-like in their tents, cooking
+supper over the fire that flames up red in the moonlight, and talking
+languidly over the fatigues and the triumphs of the play. What a moral
+and what a beauty in the quiet night view of the old amphitheatre, after
+the sight that it must have presented during the noise, the bustle, and
+the magnificence of the day!
+
+Shall we dream over our old play any longer? Shall we delay a moment
+more, ere we proceed on our journey, to compare the modern with the
+ancient drama in Cornwall, as we have already compared the theatre of
+Redruth with the theatre of Piran Round? If we set them fairly against
+one another as we now know them, would it be rash to determine which
+burnt purest--the new light that flared brilliantly in our eyes when we
+last saw it, or the old light that just flickered in the socket for an
+instant, as we tried to trim it afresh? Or, if we rather inquire which
+audience had the advantage of witnessing the worthiest performance,
+should we hesitate to decide at once? Between the people at Redruth, and
+the people at Piran Round, there was certainly a curious resemblance in
+one respect--they failed alike to discern the barbarisms and absurdities
+of the plays represented before them; but were they also equally
+uninstructed by what they beheld? Which was likeliest to send them away
+with something worth thinking of, and worth remembering--the drama about
+knaves and fools, at the modern theatre, or the drama about Scripture
+History at the ancient? Let the reader consider and determine.
+
+For our parts, let us honestly confess that though we took up the old
+play (not unnaturally) to laugh over the clumsiness and eccentricity of
+the performance, we now lay it down (not inconsistently), recognising
+the artless sincerity and elevation of the design--just as in the
+earliest productions of the Italian School of Painting we first perceive
+the false perspective of a scene or the quaint rigidity of a figure, and
+only afterwards discover that these crudities and formalities enshrine
+the germs of deep poetic feeling, and the first struggling perceptions
+of grace, beauty, and truth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] In case any of my readers should feel desirous of seeing a specimen
+of the Cornish language at the date of the play, I subjoin the original
+text of the seven lines of John Keygwyn's translation, quoted above.
+
+  "Syr, war nebas lavarow,
+  Tast gy part an avallow,
+    Po ow harenga ty a gyll!
+  Meir, Kymar an avail teake,
+  Po sure inter te ha'th wreage
+  An garenga quyt a fyll
+    Mar ny vynyth y thebbry!"
+
+Some of this looks like a very polyglot language. But the ancient
+Cornish tongue had altered and deteriorated; and was indeed changing
+into English at the period of our play. Why the author should have
+helped himself, in his literary emergency, to the two Latin words in the
+fifth line (_inter te_) when English would have served his turn as well,
+it is difficult to discover, unless he wished to show his learning
+before the rustic audiences of Piran Round.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+THE NUNS OF MAWGAN.
+
+
+About three miles from the large market-town of St. Columb Major, in the
+direction of the coast, is situated the Vale of Mawgan. The village of
+the same name occupies the lower part of the valley, and includes a few
+cottages, an old church, a yet older manor-house, and a clear running
+stream, crossed by a little stone bridge, all nestling close together on
+a few hundred yards of ground enclosed by some of the most luxuriant
+wood foliage in Cornwall. The trees bound each side of the stream,
+tinging it in deep places where it eddies smoothly, with hues of
+lustrous green; and dipping their lower branches into it, where it
+ripples on white pebbles or glides fast over grey sand. They cluster
+thickly about the old church-yard, as if to keep the place secret,
+throwing deep shadows over the graves, and hiding all outer objects from
+the eye. The small cottage garden and the spacious manor-house enjoy
+their verdant shelter alike; the bye-roads leading in and out of the
+village, are soon lost to view amid outspread branches; and not even a
+peep of the land that leads on to the sea in one direction, and back to
+the town in the other, is to be obtained through the natural screen of
+leaves above, and mosses, ferns, and high grass below, which closely
+shut in this part of the Vale of Mawgan from the open country around.
+
+There is an unbroken, unworldly tranquillity about this secluded place,
+which communicates itself mysteriously to the stranger's thoughts;
+making him unconsciously slacken in his walk, and look and listen in
+silence, when he enters it, as if he had penetrated into a new sphere.
+Slight noises, rarely noticed elsewhere, are always audible here. The
+dull fall of the latch, when an idle child carelessly opens the
+churchyard wicket, sounds from one end of the village to the other. The
+curious traveller who wanders round the walls of the old church, peering
+through its dusty lattice windows at the dark religious solitude within,
+can hear the lightest flap of a duck's wing in the stream below; or the
+gentlest rustle of distant leaves, as the faint breeze moves them in the
+upland woods above. But these, and all other sounds, never break the
+peaceful charm of the place--they only deepen its unearthly stillness.
+
+Within the church-yard, the bright colour of the turf, and the quiet
+grey hues of the mouldering tombstones, are picturesquely intermingled
+all over the uneven surface of the ground, save in one remote corner,
+where the graves are few and the grass grows rank and high. Here, the
+eye is abruptly attracted by the stern of a boat, painted white, and
+fixed upright in the earth. This strange memorial, little suited though
+it be to the old monuments around, has a significance of its own which
+gives it a peculiar claim to consideration. Inscribed on it, appear the
+names of ten fishermen of the parish who went out to sea to pursue their
+calling, on one wintry night in 1846. It was unusually cold on land--on
+the sea, the frosty bitter wind cut through to the bones. The men were
+badly provided against the weather; and hardy as they were, the weather
+killed them that night. In the morning, the boat drifted on shore,
+manned like a spectre bark, by the ghastly figures of the
+dead--freighted horribly with the corpses of ten men all frozen to
+death. They are now buried in Mawgan church-yard; and the stern of the
+boat they died in tells their fatal story, and points to the last home
+which they share together.
+
+But it is not from such a village tragedy as this; it is not from its
+retired situation, its Arcadian peacefulness, its embowering trees and
+hidden hermit-like beauties of natural scenery, that the vale of Mawgan
+derives its peculiar interest. It possesses an additional attraction,
+stronger than any of these, to fix our attention--it is the scene of a
+romance which we may still study, of a mystery which is of our own time.
+Even to this little hidden nook, even to this quiet bower of Nature's
+building, that vigilant and indestructible Papal religion, which defies
+alike hidden conspiracy and open persecution, has stretched its stealthy
+and far-spreading influence. Even in this remote corner of the remote
+west of England, among the homely cottages of a few Cornish peasants,
+the imperial Christianity of Rome has set up its sanctuary in triumph--a
+sanctuary not thrown open to dazzle and awe the beholder, but veiled in
+deep mystery behind gates that only open, like the fatal gates of the
+grave, to receive, but never to dismiss again to the world without.
+
+It is this attribute of the vale of Mawgan which leads the stranger away
+from the cool, clear stream, and the pleasant, shadowy recesses among
+the trees, to an ancient building near the church, which he knows to
+have been once an old English manorial hall--to be now a convent of
+Carmelite nuns.
+
+The House of Lanhearne, so it is named, comprises an ancient and a
+modern portion; the first dating back before the time of the Conquest,
+the second added probably not more than a century and a half ago. The
+place formerly belonged to the old Cornish family of the Arundels; but
+about the year 1700, their race became extinct, and the property passed
+into the possession of the present Lord Arundel. However, although the
+manor-house has changed masters, there is one peculiar circumstance
+connected with it, which has remained unaltered down to the present
+time--it has never had a Protestant owner.
+
+Thus, whatever religious traditions are connected with it, are Roman
+Catholic traditions. A secret recess remains in the wall of the old
+house, where a priest was hidden from his pursuers, during the reign of
+Elizabeth, for eighteen months; the place being only large enough to
+allow a man to stand upright in it. The skull of another priest who was
+burnt at the same period, is also preserved with jealous care, as one
+of the important relics of the ancient history of Lanhearne.
+
+About the commencement of this century, the manor-house entirely changed
+its character. It was at that time given to the Carmelite nuns, who now
+inhabit it, by Lord Arundel. The sisterhood was originally settled in
+France, and was removed thence to Antwerp, at the outbreak of the first
+French Revolution. Shortly afterwards, when the affairs of the Continent
+began to assume a threatening and troubled aspect, the nuns again
+migrated, and sought in England, at Lanhearne House, the last asylum
+which they still occupy.
+
+The strictness of their order is preserved with a severity of discipline
+which is probably without parallel anywhere else in Europe. It is on our
+free English ground, in one of our simplest and prettiest English
+villages, that the austerities of a Carmelite convent are now most
+resolutely practised, and the seclusion of a Carmelite convent most
+vigilantly preserved, by the nuns of Mawgan! They are at present twenty
+in number: two of them are Frenchwomen, the rest are all English. They
+are of every age, from the very young to the very old. The eldest of the
+sisterhood has long passed the ordinary limits of human life--she has
+attained ninety-five years.
+
+The nuns never leave the convent, and no one even sees them in it. Women
+even are not admitted to visit them: the domestic servants, who have
+been employed in the house for years, have never seen their faces, have
+never heard them speak. It is only in cases of severe and dangerous
+illness, when their own skill and their own medicines do not avail them,
+that they admit, from sheer necessity, the only stranger who ever
+approaches them--the doctor; and on these occasions, whenever it is
+possible, the face of the patient is concealed from the medical man.
+
+The nuns occupy the modern part of the house, which is entirely built
+off, inside, from the ancient. Their only place for exercise is a garden
+of two acres, enclosed by lofty walls, and surrounded by trees. Their
+food and other necessaries are conveyed to them through a turning door;
+all personal communition with the servants' offices being carried on
+through the medium of lay sisters. The nuns have a private way, known
+only to themselves, to the chapel choir, which is constructed in the
+form of a gallery, boarded in at the sides and concealed by a curtain
+and close grating in front. The chapel itself is in the old part of the
+house, and occupies what was formerly the servants' hall. The
+officiating priest who undertakes the duties here, lives in this portion
+of the building, and leads a life of complete solitude, until he is
+relieved by a successor. He never sees the face of one of the nuns; he
+cannot even ask one of his own profession to dine with him, without
+first of all obtaining (by letter) the express permission of the Abbess;
+and when his visitor is at length admitted, it is impossible to gain for
+him--let him be who he may--the additional indulgence of being allowed
+to sleep in the house.[5]
+
+The chapel is the only part of the whole interior of the building to
+which strangers can be admitted: those who desire to do so can attend
+mass there on Sundays. The casual visitor, when permitted to enter it,
+is not allowed to pass beyond the pillars which support the gallery of
+the choir above him; for if he advanced farther, the nuns who might
+then be occupying it, might see him while they were engaged at their
+devotions. The chapel exhibits nothing in the way of ornament, beyond
+the altar furniture and a few copies from pictures on sacred subjects by
+the old masters. Some of the more valuable objects devoted to its
+service are not shown. These consist of the sacred vestments and the
+sacramental plate, which are said to be of extraordinary beauty and
+value, and are preserved in the keeping of the Abbess. The worth of one
+of the jewelled chalices alone has been estimated at a thousand pounds.
+
+Much of the land in the neighbourhood belongs to the convent, which has
+been enriched by many valuable gifts. The nuns make a good use of their
+wealth. Neither the austerities and mortifications to which their lives
+are devoted, nor their rigid and terrible self-exclusion from all
+intercourse with their fellow-beings in the world around them, have
+diminished their sympathy for affliction, or their readiness in
+ministering to the wants of the poor. Any assistance of any kind that
+they can render, is always at the service of those who require it,
+without distinction of rank or religion. No wandering beggar who rings
+at the convent bell, ever leaves the door without a penny and a piece of
+bread to help him on his way.
+
+But the charities of the nuns of Mawgan do not stop short at the first
+good work of succouring the afflicted; they extend also to a generous
+sympathy for those human weaknesses of impatience and irresolution in
+others, which they have surmounted, but not forgotten themselves. Rather
+more than twelve years since, a young girl of eighteen applied to be
+admitted to share the dreary life-in-death existence of the Carmelite
+sisterhood. She was received for her year of probation: it expired, and
+she still held firmly to her first determination. But the nuns, in pity
+to her youth, and perhaps mournfully remembering, even in their
+life-long seclusion of mind and body, how strong are the ties which bind
+together the beings of this world and the things of this world, gave her
+more time yet to search her own motives, to look back on what she was
+abandoning, to look forward on what she desired to obtain. Mercifully
+refusing to grant her her own wishes, they forebore the performance of
+the fatal ceremony which irrevocably took her from earth to give her up
+only to Heaven, until she had undergone an additional year of
+probation. This last solemn period of delay which Christian charity and
+sisterly love had piously granted, expired, and found her still
+determined to adhere to her resolution. She took the veil; and the
+dreary gates of Lanhearne have closed on all that is mortal of her for
+ever!
+
+The convent has two burial places. The first is in an ancient recess
+within the village church, and was given to the nuns with the
+manor-house. Those among them who first expired on English ground, lie
+buried here--the Catholic dead have returned to the once Catholic
+edifice, where the Protestant living now worship! When the Carmelite
+funeral procession entered this place, it entered at the dead of night,
+to avoid the chance of any intrusion. But as the nuns have no private
+entrance to their burial-vault, and have been by law prohibited from
+making one; as they are obliged to pass through the public door of the
+church and walk up the nave, they are at the mercy of any stranger who
+can gain admittance to the building, and who may be led by idle
+curiosity to watch the ceremonies which accompany their midnight service
+for the dead. Feeling this, they have of late years abandoned their
+burial place, after first carefully boarding it off from all
+observation. No inquisitive eyes can now behold, no intruding footsteps
+can now approach, the tombs of the nuns of Mawgan.
+
+The second cemetery, which they use at present, is situated in one of
+the convent-gardens, and can therefore be secured, whenever they please,
+from all observation. A wooden door at one corner of the ancient portion
+of the manor-house leads into it. The place is merely a small, square
+plot of ground, damp, shady, and overgrown with long grass. An old and
+elaborately carved stone cross stands in it; and about this appear the
+graves of the nuns, marked by plain slate tablets. But even here, the
+mystery which hangs darkly over the Carmelite household does not
+clear--the seclusion that has hidden the living in the Convent, is but
+the forerunner of the secrecy that veils from us on the tombstone the
+history of the dead. The saint's name once assumed by the nun, and the
+short yet beautiful supplication of the Roman Church for the repose of
+the soul of the departed, form the only inscriptions that appear over
+the graves.
+
+This is all--all of the lives, all of the deaths of the sisterhood at
+Lanhearne that we can ever know! The remainder must be conjecture. We
+have but the bare stern outline that has been already drawn--who shall
+venture, even in imagination, to colour and complete the picture which
+it darkly, yet plainly, indicates?
+
+Even if we only endeavour to image to ourselves the externals of the
+life which those massy walls keep secret, what have we to speculate on?
+Nothing but the day that in winter and summer, in sunshine and in storm,
+brings with it year after year, to young and to old alike, the same
+monotony of action and the same monotony of repose--the turning door in
+the wall (sole indication to those within, that there is a world
+without), moved in silence, ever at the same stated hour, by invisible
+hands--the prayer and penance in the chapel choir, always a solitude to
+its occupants, however many of their fellow-creatures may be standing
+beneath it--the short hours of exercise amid high garden walls, which
+shut out everything but the distant sky. Beyond this, what remains but
+that utter vacancy where even thought ends; that utter gloom in which
+the brightest fancy must cease to shine?
+
+Should we try to look deeper than the surface; to strip the inner life
+of the convent of all its mysteries and coverings, and anatomising it
+inch by inch, search it through down to the very heart? Should we pry
+into the dread and secret processes by which, among these women, one
+human emotion after another may be suffering, first ossification, then
+death? No!--this is a task which is beyond our power; an investigation
+which, of our own knowledge, we cannot be certain of pursuing aright. We
+may imagine grief that does not exist, remorse that is not felt, error
+that has not been committed. It is not for us to criticise the
+catastrophe of the drama, when we have no acquaintance with the scenes
+which have preceded it. It is not for us, guided by our own thoughts,
+moved by the impulses of the world we live in, to decide upon the
+measure of good or evil contained in an act of self-sacrifice at the
+altar of religion, which is in its own motive and result so utterly
+separated from all other motives and results, that we cannot at the
+outset even so much as sympathise with it. The purpose of the convent
+system is of those purposes which are conceived in this world, but which
+appeal for justification or condemnation only to the next.
+
+"Judge not, that ye be not judged!" Those words sink deep into our
+hearts, as we look our last upon the convent walls, and leave the
+living-dead at old Lanhearne.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] All the particulars here related of the convent discipline, were
+communicated to me by the resident priest. This gentleman was certainly
+not a prejudiced witness on the side of austerity--for he frankly
+complained of the lonely life which the rules of the Sisterhood
+inflicted on him, and unhesitatingly acknowledged that he was anxious
+for the time when his clerical successor would come to relieve him.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+LEGENDS OF THE NORTHERN COAST.
+
+
+From the time when we left St. Ives, we walked through the last part of
+our journey much faster than we walked through the first; faster,
+perhaps, than the reader may have perceived from these pages. When we
+stopped at the town of St. Columb Major, to visit the neighbouring vale
+of Mawgan, we had already advanced half way up the northern coast of
+Cornwall. Throughout this part of the county the towns lay wide asunder;
+and, as pedestrian tourists, we were obliged to lengthen our walks and
+hasten our pace accordingly.
+
+After we had quitted St. Columb Major, our rambles began to draw rapidly
+to their close. Little more was now left for us to examine than the
+different localities connected with certain interesting Cornish legends.
+The places thus associated with the quaint fancies of the olden time,
+were all situated close together, some fifteen or twenty miles farther
+on, along the coast. The first among them that we reached was Tintagel
+Castle, an ancient ruin magnificently situated on a precipice
+overhanging the sea, and romantically, if not historically, reputed as
+the birthplace of King Arthur.
+
+The date of the Castle of Tintagel is as much a subject of perplexity
+among modern antiquaries, as is the existence of King Arthur among
+modern historians. We may still see some ruins of the Castle; but when
+or by whom the building was erected which those ruins represent, we have
+no means of discovering: we only know that, after the Conquest, it was
+inhabited by some of our English princes, and that it was used as a
+state prison so late as the reign of Elizabeth. The rest is, for the
+most part, mere conjecture, raised upon the weak foundation of a few
+mouldering fragments of walls which must soon crumble and disappear as
+the rest of the Castle has crumbled and disappeared before them.
+
+The position of the old fortress was, probably, almost impregnable in
+the days of its strength and glory. The outer part of it was built on a
+precipitous projection of cliff, three hundred feet high, which must
+have been wrenched away from the mainland by some tremendous convulsion
+of Nature. The inner part stood on the opposite side of the chasm formed
+by this convulsion; and both divisions of the fortress were formerly
+connected by a draw-bridge. The most interesting portion of the few
+ruins now remaining, is that on the outermost promontory, which is
+almost entirely surrounded by the sea. The way up to this cliff is by a
+steep and somewhat perilous path; so narrow in certain places, where it
+winds along the verge of the precipice, that a single false step would
+be certain destruction. The difficulties of the ascent appear to have
+impressed the old historian of Cornwall, Norden, so vividly that he
+tries in his "Survey," to frighten all his readers from attempting it;
+warning "unstable man," if he will try to mount the cliff, that "while
+he respecteth his footinge he indaungers his head; and looking to save
+the head, indaungers the footinge, accordinge to the old proverbe:
+_Incidit in Scyllam qui vult vitare Charybdim_. He must have
+eyes,"--ominously adds the worthy Norden--"that will scale Tintagel."
+
+The ruins on the summit of the promontory only consist of a few
+straggling walls, loosely piled up, rather than built, with
+dark-coloured stone. Some still remain entire enough to show the square
+loopholes that were pierced in them for arrows; and, here and there,
+fragments of rough irregular arches, which might have been either
+doorways or windows, are still visible. Those parts of the building
+which have fallen, are concealed by long, thickly growing grass--the
+foot may sometimes strike against them, but the eye perceives them not.
+These are all the vestiges which remain of the once mighty castle; all
+the signs that are left to point out the site of the old halls, where
+the bold knights of Arthur gathered for the feast or prepared for the
+fight, at their royal master's command.
+
+The Cornish legends tell us that the British hero held his last court,
+solemnized his last feast, reviewed his last array of warriors, at
+Tintagel, before he went out to the fatal battle-field of Camelford, to
+combat his nephew Mordred, who had rebelled against his power. In the
+morning, the martial assemblage marched out of the castle in triumph,
+led by the king, with his death-dealing sword "Excalibur" slung at his
+shoulder, and his magic lance "Rou," in his hand. In the evening the
+warriors returned, fatally victorious, from the struggle. The rebel army
+had been routed and the rebel chief slain; but they brought back with
+them, their renowned leader--the favourite hero of martial adventure,
+the conqueror of the Saxons in twelve battles--mortally wounded, from
+the field which he had quitted a victor.
+
+That night, the wise and valiant king died in the castle of his birth;
+died among his followers who had feasted and sung around him at the
+festal table but a few hours before. The deep-toned bells of Tintagel
+rang his death peal; and the awe-stricken populace from the country
+round, gathering together hurriedly before the fortress, heard
+portentous wailings from supernatural voices, which mingled in ghostly
+harmony with the moaning of the restless sea, the dirging of the dreary
+wind, and the dull deep thunder of the funeral knell. About the heights
+of the castle, and in the caverns beneath it, these sounds ceased not
+night or day, until the corpse of the hero was conveyed to the ship
+destined to bear it to its burial-place in Glastonbury Abbey. Then,
+dirging winds, and moaning sea, and wailing voices, ceased; and in the
+intervals between the slow pealing of the funeral bells, clear
+child-like voices arose from the calmed waters, and told the mourning
+people that Arthur was gone from them but for a little time, to be
+healed of all his wounds in the Fairy Land; and that he would yet
+return to lead and to govern them, as of old.
+
+Such is the scene--strange compound of fiction and truth, of the typical
+and the real--which legends teach us to imagine in the Tintagel Castle
+of thirteen centuries ago! What is the scene that we look on now?--A
+solitude where the decaying works of man, and the enduring works of
+Nature appear mingled in beauty together. The grass grows high and
+luxuriant, where the rushes were strewn over the floor of Arthur's
+banqueting hall. Sheep are cropping the fresh pasture, within the walls
+which once echoed to the sweetest songs, or rang to the clash of the
+stoutest swords of ancient England! About the fortress nothing remains
+unchanged, but the sun which at evening still brightens it in its weak
+old age with the same glory that shone over its lusty youth; the sea
+that rolls and dashes, as at first, against its foundation rocks; and
+the wild Cornish country outspread on either side of it, as desolately
+and as magnificently as ever.
+
+The grandeur of the scenery at Tintagel, the romantic interest of the
+old British traditions connected with the castle, might well have
+delayed us many hours on these solitary heights; but we had other
+places still to visit, other and far different legends still to gossip
+over. Descending the cliff while the day gave us ample time to wander at
+our will; we strolled away inland to track the scene of a new romance as
+far as the waterfall called Nighton's Keive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A walk of little more than half-a-mile brings us to the entrance of a
+valley, bounded on either side by high, gently-sloping hills, with a
+small stream running through its centre, fed by the waterfall of which
+we are in search. We now follow a footpath a few hundred yards, pass by
+a mill, and looking up the valley, see one compact mass of vegetation
+entirely filling it to its remotest corners, and not leaving the
+slightest vestige of a path, the merest patch of clear ground, visible
+in any direction, far or near.
+
+It seems as if all the foliage which ought to have grown on the Cornish
+moorlands, had been mischievously crammed into this place, within the
+narrow limits of one Cornish valley. Weeds, ferns, brambles, bushes, and
+young trees, are flourishing together here, thickly intertwined in every
+possible position, in triumphant security from any invasion of bill-hook
+or axe. You win every step of your way through this miniature forest of
+vegetation, by the labour of your arms and the weight of your body.
+Tangled branches and thorny bushes press against you in front and
+behind, meet over your head, knock off your cap, flap in your face,
+twist about your legs, and tear your coat skirts; so obstructing you in
+every conceivable manner and in every conceivable direction, that they
+seem possessed with a living power of opposition, and commissioned by
+some evil genius of Fairy Mythology to prevent mortal footsteps from
+intruding into the valley. Whether you try a zig-zag or a straight
+course, whether you go up or down, it is the same thing--you must
+squeeze, and push, and jostle your way through the crowd of bushes, just
+as you would through a crowd of men--or else stand still, surrounded by
+leaves, like "a Jack-in-the-Green," and wait for the very remote chance
+of somebody coming to help you out.
+
+Forcing our road incessantly through these obstructions, for a full
+half-hour, and taking care to keep our only guide--the sound of the
+running-water--always within hearing, we came at last to a little break
+in the vegetation, crossed the stream at this place, and found, on the
+opposite side of the bank, a faintly-marked track, which might have been
+once a footpath. Following it as well as we could among the branches
+and brambles, and now ascending steep ground, we soon heard the dash of
+the waterfall. But to attempt to see it, was no easy undertaking. The
+trees, the bushes, and the wild herbage grew here thicker than ever,
+stretching in perfect canopies of leaves so closely across the
+overhanging banks of the stream, as entirely to hide it from view. We
+heard the monotonous, eternal splashing of the water, close at our ears,
+and yet vainly tried to obtain even a glimpse of the fall. Adverse Fate
+led us up and down, and round and round, and backwards and forwards,
+amid a labyrinth of overgrown bushes which might have bewildered an
+Australian settler; and still the nymph of the waterfall coyly hid
+herself from our eyes. Our ears informed us that the invisible object of
+which we were in search was of very inconsiderable height; our patience
+was evaporating; our time was wasting away--in short, to confess the
+truth here, as I have confessed it elsewhere in these pages, let me
+acknowledge that we both concurred in a sound determination to consult
+our own convenience, and give up the attempt to discover Nighton's
+Keive!
+
+Our wanderings, however, though useless enough in one direction,
+procured us this compensating advantage in another: they led us
+accidentally to the exact scene of the legend which we knew to be
+connected with this part of the valley, and which had, indeed, first
+induced us to visit it.
+
+We found ourselves standing before the damp, dismantled stone walls of a
+solitary cottage, placed on a plot of partially open ground, near the
+outskirts of the wood. Long dark herbage grew about the inside of the
+ruined little building; a toad was crawling where the leaves clustered
+thickest, on what had once been the floor of a room; in every direction
+corruption and decay were visibly battening on the lonesome place. Its
+aspect would repel rather than allure curiosity, but for the mysterious
+story associated with it, which gives it an attraction and an interest
+that are not its own.
+
+Years and years ago, when this desolate building was a neat comfortable
+cottage, it was inhabited by two ladies, of whose histories, and even
+names, all the people of the district were perfectly ignorant. One day
+they were accidentally found living in their solitary abode, before any
+one knew that they had so much as entered it, or that they existed at
+all. Both appeared to be about the same age, and both were inflexibly
+taciturn. One was never seen without the other; if they ever left the
+house, they only left it to walk in the most unfrequented parts of the
+wood; they kept no servant, and never had a visitor; no living souls but
+themselves ever crossed the door of their cottage. They procured their
+food and other necessaries from the people in the nearest village,
+paying for everything they received when it was delivered, and neither
+asking nor answering a single unnecessary question. Their manners were
+gentle, but grave and sorrowful as well. The people who brought them
+their household supplies, felt awed and uneasy, without knowing why, in
+their presence; and were always relieved when they had dispatched their
+errand and had got well away from the cottage and the wood.
+
+Gradually, as month by month passed on, and the mystery hanging over the
+solitary pair was still not cleared up, superstitious doubts spread
+widely through the neighbourhood. Harmless as the conduct of the ladies
+always appeared to be, there was something so sinister and startling
+about the unearthly seclusion and secrecy of their lives, that people
+began to feel vaguely suspicious, to whisper awful imaginary rumours
+about them, to gossip over old stories of ghosts and false accusations
+that had never been properly sifted to the end, whenever the inhabitants
+of the cottage were mentioned. At last they were secretly watched by the
+less scrupulous among the villagers, whom intense curiosity had endowed
+with a morbid courage and resolution. Even this proceeding led to no
+results whatever, but increased rather than diminished the mystery.
+
+The expertest eavesdroppers who had listened at the door, brought away
+no information with them for their pains. Some declared that when the
+ladies held any conversation together, they spoke in so low a tone that
+it was impossible to distinguish a word they said. Others, of more
+imaginative temperament, protested, on the contrary, that their voices
+were perfectly audible, but that the language they talked was some
+mysterious or diabolical language of their own, incomprehensible to
+everybody but themselves. One or two expert and daring spies had even
+contrived to look in at them through the window, unperceived; but had
+seen nothing uncommon, nothing supernatural,--nothing, in short, beyond
+the spectacle of two ladies sitting quietly and silently by their own
+fireside.
+
+So matters went on, until one day universal agitation was excited in
+the neighbourhood by a rumour that one of the ladies was dead. The
+rustic authorities immediately repaired to the cottage, accompanied by a
+long train of eager followers; and found that the report was true. The
+surviving lady was seated by her companion's bedside, weeping over a
+corpse. She spoke not a word; she never looked up at the villagers as
+they entered. Question after question was put to her without ever
+eliciting an answer; kind words were useless--even threats proved
+equally inefficient: the lady still remained weeping by the corpse, and
+still said nothing. Gradually her inexorable silence began to infect the
+visitors to the cottage. For a few moments nothing was heard in the room
+but the dash of the waterfall hard by, and the singing of birds in the
+surrounding wood. Bitterly as the lady was weeping, it was now first
+observed by everybody that she wept silently, that she never sobbed,
+never even sighed under the oppression of her grief.
+
+People began to urge each other, superstitiously, to leave the place. It
+was determined that the corpse should be removed and buried; and that
+afterwards some new expedient should be tried to induce the survivor of
+the mysterious pair to abandon her inflexible silence. It was
+anticipated that she would have made some sign, or spoken some few words
+when they lifted the body from the bed on which it lay; but even this
+proceeding produced no visible effect. As the villagers quitted the
+dwelling with their dead burden, the last of them who went out left her
+in her solitude, still speechless, still weeping, as they had found her
+at first.
+
+Days passed, and she sent no message to any one. Weeks elapsed, and the
+idlers who waited about the woodland paths where they knew that she was
+once wont to walk with her companion, never saw her, watch for her as
+patiently as they might. From haunting the wood, they soon got on to
+hovering round the cottage, and to looking in stealthily at the window.
+They saw her sitting on the same seat that she had always occupied, with
+a vacant chair opposite; her figure wasted, her face wan already with
+incessant weeping. It was a dismal sight to all who beheld it--a vision
+of affliction and solitude that sickened their hearts.
+
+No one knew what to do; the kindest-hearted people hesitated, the
+hardest-hearted people dreaded to disturb her. While they were still
+irresolute, the end was at hand. One morning a little girl, who had
+looked in at the cottage window in imitation of her elders, reported,
+when she returned home, that she had seen the lady still sitting in her
+accustomed place, but that one of her hands hung strangely over the arm
+of the chair, and that she never moved to pick up her pocket-handkerchief,
+which lay on the ground beside her. At these ominous tidings, the
+villagers summoned their resolution, and immediately repaired to the
+lonesome cottage in the wood.
+
+They knocked and called at the door--it was not opened to them. They
+raised the latch and entered. She still occupied her chair; her head was
+resting on one of her hands; the other hung down, as the little girl had
+told them. The handkerchief, too, was on the ground, and was wet with
+tears. Was she sleeping? They went round in front to look. Her eyes were
+wide open; her drooping hand, worn almost to mere bone, was cold to the
+touch as the waters of the valley-stream on a winter's day. She had died
+in her wonted place; died in mystery and in solitude as she had lived.
+
+They buried her where they had buried her companion. No traces of the
+real history of either the one or the other have ever been discovered
+from that time to this.
+
+Such is the tale that was related to us of the cottage in the valley of
+Nighton's Keive. It may be only imagination; but the stained roofless
+walls, the damp clotted herbage, and the reptiles crawling about the
+ruins, give the place a gloomy and disastrous look. The air, too, seems
+just now unusually still and heavy here--for the evening is at hand, and
+the vapours are rising in the wood. The shadows of the trees are
+deepening; the rustling music of the waterfall is growing dreary; the
+utter stillness of all things besides, becomes wearying to the ear. Let
+us pass on, and get into bright wide space again, where the down leads
+back to happier solitudes by the seashore.
+
+We now rapidly lose sight of the trees which have hitherto so closely
+surrounded us, and find ourselves treading the short scanty grass of the
+cliff-top once more. We still advance northward, walking along rough
+cart-roads, and skirting the extremities of narrow gullies leading down
+to the sea, until we enter the picturesque village of Boscastle. Then,
+descending a long street of irregular houses, of all sizes, shapes, and
+ages, we are soon conducted to the bottom of a deep hollow. Beyond this,
+the bare ground rises again abruptly up to the highest point of the
+high cliffs which overhang the shore; and here, where the site is most
+elevated, and where neither cottages nor cultivation appear, we descry
+the ancient walls and gloomy tower of Forrabury Church.
+
+The interior of the building still contains a part of the finely-carved
+rood-loft which once adorned it. Its rickety wooden pews are blackened
+with extreme old age, and covered with curiously-cut patterns and
+cyphers. The place is so dark that it is difficult to read the
+inscriptions on many of the mouldering monuments, fixed together without
+order or symmetry on the walls. Outside are some Saxon arches, oddly
+built of black slate-stone; and the window-mouldings are ornamented with
+rough carving, which at once proclaims its own antiquity. But it is in
+the tower that the interest attached to the church chiefly centres.
+Square, thick, and of no extraordinary height, it resembles in
+appearance most other towers in Cornwall--except in one particular, all
+the belfry windows are completely stopped up.
+
+This peculiarity is to be explained simply enough; the church has never
+had any bells; the old tower has been mute, and useless except for
+ornament, since it was first built. The congregation of the district
+must trust to their watches and their punctuality to get to service in
+good time on Sundays. At Forrabury the chimes have never sounded for a
+marriage: the knell has never been heard for a funeral.
+
+To know the reason of this; to discover why the church, though tower and
+belfry have always been waiting ready for them, has never had a peal of
+bells, we must seek instruction from another popular tradition, from a
+third legend of these legendary shores. Let us go down a little to the
+brink of the cliff, where the sea is rolling into a black, yawning,
+perpendicular pit of slate rock. The scene of our third story is the
+view over the waters from this place.
+
+In ancient times, when Forrabury Church was still regarded as a building
+of recent date, it was a subject of sore vexation to all the people of
+the neighbourhood that their tower had no bells, while the inhabitants
+of Tintagel still possessed the famous peal that had rung for King
+Arthur's funeral. For some years, this superiority of the rival village
+was borne with composure by the people of Forrabury; but, in process of
+time, they lost all patience, and it was publicly determined by the
+rustic council, that the honour of their church should be vindicated.
+Money was immediately collected, and bells of magnificent tones and
+dimensions were forthwith ordered from the best manufactory that London
+could supply.
+
+The bells were cast, blessed by high ecclesiastical authorities, and
+shipped for transportation to Forrabury. The voyage was one of the most
+prosperous that had ever been known. Fair winds and calm seas so
+expedited the passage of the ship, that she appeared in sight of the
+downs on which the church stood, many days before she had been expected.
+Great was the triumph of the populace on shore, as they watched her
+working into the bay with a steady evening breeze.
+
+On board, however, the scene was very different. Here there was more
+uproar than happiness, for the captain and the pilot were at open
+opposition. As the ship neared the harbour, the bells of Tintagel were
+faintly heard across the water, ringing for the evening service. The
+pilot, who was a devout man, took off his hat as he heard the sound,
+crossed himself, and thanked God aloud for a prosperous voyage. The
+captain, who was a reckless, vain-glorious fellow, reviled the pilot as
+a fool, and impiously swore that the ship's company had only to thank
+his skill as a navigator, and their own strong arms and ready wills, for
+bringing the ship safely in sight of harbour. The pilot, in reply,
+rebuked him as an infidel, and still piously continued to return thanks
+as before; while the captain, joined by the crew, tried to drown his
+voice by oaths and blasphemy. They were still shouting their loudest,
+when the vengeance of Heaven descended in judgment on them all.
+
+The clouds supernaturally gathered, the wind rose to a gale in a moment.
+An immense sea, higher than any man had ever beheld, overwhelmed the
+ship; and, to the horror of the people on shore, she went down in an
+instant, close to land. Of all the crew, the pilot only was saved.
+
+The bells were never recovered. They were heard tolling a muffled
+death-peal, as they sank with the ship; and even yet, on stormy days,
+while the great waves roll over them, they still ring their ghostly
+knell above the fiercest roaring of wind and sea.
+
+This is the ancient story of the bells--this is why the chimes are never
+heard from the belfry of Forrabury Church.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now that we have visited the scene of our third legend, what is it that
+keeps me and my companion still lingering on the downs? Why we are still
+delaying the hour of our departure long after the time which we have
+ourselves appointed for it?
+
+We both know but too well. At this point we leave the coast, not to
+return to it again: at Forrabury we look our last on the sea from these
+rocky shores. With this evening, our pleasant days of strolling travel
+are ended. To-morrow we go direct to Launceston, and from Launceston at
+once to Plymouth. To-morrow the adventures of the walking tourist are
+ours no longer; for on that day our rambles in Cornwall will have
+virtually closed!
+
+Rise, brother-traveller! We have lingered until twilight already; the
+seaward crags grow vast and dim around us, and the inland view narrows
+and darkens solemnly in the waning light. Shut up your sketch-book which
+you have so industriously filled, and pocket your pencils which you have
+worn down to stumps, even as I now shut up my dogs-eared old journal,
+and pocket my empty ink-bottle. One more of the few and fleeting scenes
+of life is fast closing, soon to leave us nothing but the remembrance
+that it once existed--a happy remembrance of a holiday walk in dear old
+England, which will always be welcome and vivid to the last, like other
+remembrances of home.
+
+Come! the night is drawing round us her curtain of mist; let us strap on
+our trusty old friends, the knapsacks for the last time, and turn
+resolutely from the shore by which we have delayed too long. Come! let
+us once again "jog on the footpath way" as contentedly, if not quite as
+merrily, as ever; and, remembering how much we have seen and learnt that
+must surely better us both, let us, as we now lose sight of the dark,
+grey waters, gratefully, though sadly, speak the parting word:--
+
+ FAREWELL TO CORNWALL!
+
+
+
+
+ POSTSCRIPT TO
+
+ RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS.
+
+
+
+ THE CRUISE OF THE TOMTIT
+
+ TO
+
+ The Scilly Islands.
+
+
+
+
+THE CRUISE OF THE TOMTIT.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+"At any other time of the year and for a shorter cruise, I should be
+delighted to join you. But as I prefer dying a dry death, I must decline
+accompanying you all the way to the Scilly Islands in a little pleasure
+boat of thirteen tons, just at the time of the autumnal equinox. You may
+meet with a gale that will blow you out of the water. You are running a
+risk, in my opinion, of the most senseless kind--and, if I thought my
+advice had any weight with you, I should say most earnestly, be warned
+in time, and give up the trip."--_Extract from the letter of A Prudent
+Friend._
+
+"If I were only a single man, there is nothing I should like better than
+to join you. But I have a wife and family, and I can't reconcile it to
+my conscience to risk being drowned."--_Report from the Personal
+Statement of a Married Friend._
+
+"Don't come back bottom upwards."--_Final Valedictory Blessing of a
+Facetious Friend._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My messmate and I, having absolutely made up our minds to go to the
+Scilly Islands, received the expressions of opinion quoted above, with
+the supreme composure which distinguishes all resolute men. In other
+words, we held fast to our original determination, engaged the boat and
+the crew, and put to sea on our appointed day, in the teeth of the wind
+and of our friends' objections. But before I float the present narrative
+into blue water, I have certain indispensable formalities to accomplish
+which will keep me and my readers for a little while yet on dry land.
+First of all, let me introduce our boat, our crew, and ourselves.
+
+Our boat is named the Tomtit. She is cutter-rigged. Her utmost length
+from stem to stern is thirty-six feet, and her greatest breadth on deck
+is ten feet. As her size does not admit of bulwarks, her deck, between
+the cabin-hatch and the stern, dips into a kind of well, with seats
+round three sides of it, which we call the Cockpit. Here we can stand
+up in rough weather without any danger of being rolled overboard;
+elsewhere, the sides of the vessel do not rise more than a few inches
+above the deck. The cabin of the Tomtit is twelve feet long, eight feet
+wide, and five feet six inches high. It has roomy lockers, and a snug
+little fireplace, and it leads into two recesses forward, which make
+capital storerooms for water, coals, firewood, and so forth. When I have
+added that the Tomtit has a bright red bottom, continued, as to colour,
+up her sides to a little above the watermark; and when I have further
+stated that she is a fast sailer, and that she proved herself on our
+cruise to be a capital little seaboat, I have said all that is needful
+at present on the subject of our yacht, and may get on to our crew and
+ourselves.
+
+Our crew is composed of three brothers: Sam Dobbs, Dick Dobbs, and Bob
+Dobbs; all active seamen, and as worthy and hearty fellows as any man in
+the world could wish to sail with. My friend's name is Mr. Migott, and
+mine is Mr. Jollins. Thus, we are five on board altogether. As for our
+characters, I shall leave them to come out as they may in the course of
+this narrative. I am going to tell things plainly just as they
+happened. Smart writing, comic colouring, and graphic description, are
+departments of authorship at which I snap my fingers in contempt.
+
+The port we sailed from was a famous watering-place on the western
+coast, called Mangerton-on-the-Mud; and our intention, as intimated at
+the beginning of these pages, was to go even farther than the Land's
+End, and to reach those last morsels of English ground called the Scilly
+Islands. But if the reader thinks he is now to get afloat at once, he is
+lamentably mistaken. One very important and interesting part of our
+voyage was entirely comprised in the preparations that we made for it.
+To this portion of the subject, therefore, I shall wholly devote myself
+in the first instance. On paper, or off it, neither Mr. Migott nor
+myself are men to be hurried.
+
+We left London with nothing but our clothes, our wrappers, some tobacco,
+some French novels, and some Egyptian cigars. Everything that was to be
+bought for the voyage was to be procured at Bristol. Everything that
+could be extracted from private benevolence, was to be taken in
+unlimited quantities from hospitable friends living more or less in the
+neighbourhood of our place of embarkation. At Bristol we plunged over
+head and ears in naval business immediately. After ordering a ham, and
+a tongue, marmalade, lemons, anchovy paste, and general groceries, we
+set forth to the quay to equip ourselves and our vessel.
+
+We began with charts, sailing directions, and a compass; we got on to a
+hammock apiece and a flag; and we rose to a nautical climax by buying
+tarpaulin-coats, leggings, and sou'-westers, at a sailors' public-house.
+With these sea-stores, and with a noble loaf of home-made bread (the
+offering of private benevolence) we left Bristol to scour the friendly
+country beyond, in search of further contributions to the larder of the
+Tomtit.
+
+The first scene of our ravages was a large country-house, surrounded by
+the most charming grounds. From the moment when we and our multifarious
+packages poured tumultuous into the hall, to the moment when we and the
+said packages poured out of it again into a carriage and a cart, I have
+no recollection, excepting meal-times and bedtime, of having been still
+for an instant. Escorted everywhere by two handsome, high-spirited boys,
+in a wild state of excitement about our voyage, we ranged the house from
+top to bottom, and laid hands on everything portable and eatable that we
+wanted in it. The inexhaustible hospitality of our hostess was proof
+against all the inroads that we could make on it. The priceless gift of
+packing perishable commodities securely in small spaces, possessed by a
+lady living in the house and placed perpetually at our disposal,
+encouraged our propensities for unlimited accumulation. We ravaged the
+kitchen garden and the fruit-garden; we rushed into the awful presence
+of the cook (with our ham and tongue from Bristol as an excuse) and
+ranged predatory over the lower regions. We scaled back-staircases, and
+tramped along remote corridors, and burst into secluded lumber-rooms,
+with accompaniment of shouting from the boys, and of operatic humming
+from Mr. Migott and myself, who happen, among other social
+accomplishments, to be both of us musical in a desultory way. We turned
+out, in these same lumber-rooms, plans of estates from their neat tin
+cases, and put in lemons and loaf-sugar instead. Mr. Migott pounced upon
+a stray telescope, and strapped it over my shoulders forthwith. The two
+boys found two japanned boxes, with the epaulettes and shako of an
+ex-military member of the family inside, which articles of martial
+equipment (though these are war-times, and nobody is meritorious or
+respectable now who does not wear a uniform) I, with my own irreverent
+hands, shook out on the floor; and straightway conveyed the empty cases
+down-stairs to be profaned by tea, sugar, Harvey's sauce, pickles,
+pepper, and other products of the arts of peace. In a word, and not to
+dwell too long on the purely piratical part of our preparations for the
+voyage, we doubled the number of our packages at this hospitable country
+house, before we left it for Mangerton-on-the-Mud, and the dangers of
+the sea that lay beyond.
+
+At Mangerton we made a second piratical swoop upon another
+long-suffering friend, the resident doctor. We let this gentleman off,
+however, very easily, only lightening him of a lanthorn, and two
+milk-cans to hold our freshwater. We felt strongly inclined to take his
+warmest cape away from him also; but Mr. Migott leaned towards the side
+of mercy, and Mr. Jollins was, as usual, only too ready to sacrifice
+himself on the altar of friendship--so the doctor kept his cape, after
+all.
+
+Not so fortunate was our next victim, Mr. Purler, the Port Admiral of
+Mangerton-on-the-Mud, and the convivial host of the Metropolitan Inn.
+Wisely entering his house empty-handed, we left it with sheets,
+blankets, mattresses, pillows, table-cloths, napkins, knives, forks,
+spoons, crockery, a frying-pan, a gridiron, and a saucepan. When to
+these articles of domestic use were added the parcels we had brought
+from Bristol, the packages we had collected at the country-house, the
+doctor's milk-cans, the personal baggage of the two enterprising
+voyagers, additions to the eating and drinking department in the shape
+of a cold curry in a jar, a piece of spiced beef, a side of bacon, and a
+liberal supply of wine, spirits, and beer--nobody can be surprised to
+hear that we found some difficulty in making only one cart-load of our
+whole collection of stores. The packing process was, in fact, not
+accomplished till after dark. The tide was then flowing; we were to sail
+the next morning; and it was necessary to get everything put on board
+that night, while there was water enough for the Tomtit to be moored
+close to the jetty.
+
+This jetty, it must be acknowledged, was nothing but a narrow stone
+causeway, sloping down from the land into the sea. Our cart, loaded with
+breakable things, was drawn up at the high end of the jetty; the Tomtit
+waiting to receive the contents of the cart at the low end, in the
+water. We had no moon, no stars, no lamp of any kind on shore; and the
+one small lanthorn on board the vessel just showed how dark it was, and
+did nothing more. Imagine the doctor, and the doctor's friend, and the
+doctor's two dogs, and Mr. Migott and Mr. Jollins, all huddled together
+in a fussy state of expectation, midway on the jetty, seeing nothing,
+doing nothing, and being very much in the way--and then wonder, as we
+wondered, at the marvellous dexterity of our three valiant sailors, who
+succeeded in transporting piecemeal the crockery, cookery, and general
+contents of the cart into the vessel, on that pitchy night, without
+breaking, dropping, or forgetting anything. When I hear of professional
+conjurors performing remarkable feats, I think of the brothers Dobbs,
+and the loading of the Tomtit in the darkness; and I ask myself if any
+landsman's mechanical legerdemain can be more extraordinary than the
+natural neat-handedness of a sailor?
+
+The next morning the sky was black, the wind was blowing hard against
+us, and the waves were showing their white frills angrily in the offing.
+A double row of spectators had assembled at the jetty, to see us beat
+out of the bay. If they had come to see us hanged, their grim faces
+could not have expressed greater commiseration. Our only cheerful
+farewell came from the doctor and his friend and the two dogs. The
+remainder of the spectators evidently felt that they were having a last
+long stare at us, and that it would be indecent and unfeeling, under the
+circumstances, to look happy. Produce me a respectable inhabitant of an
+English country town, and I will match him, in the matter of stolid and
+silent staring, against any other man, civilized or savage, over the
+whole surface of the globe.
+
+If we had felt any doubts of the sea-going qualities of the Tomtit, they
+would have been solved when we "went about," for the first time, after
+leaving the jetty. A livelier, stiffer, and drier little vessel of her
+size never was built. She jumped over the waves, as if the sea was a
+great play-ground, and the game for the morning, Leap-Frog. Though the
+wind was so high that we were obliged to lower our foresail, and to
+double-reef the mainsail, the only water we got on board was the spray
+that was blown over us from the tops of the waves. In the state of the
+weather, getting down Channel was out of the question. We were obliged
+to be contented, on this first day of our voyage, with running across to
+the Welsh coast, and there sheltering ourselves--amid a perfect fleet of
+outward-bound merchantmen driven back by the wind--in a snug roadstead,
+for the afternoon and the night.
+
+This delay, which might have been disagreeable enough later in our
+voyage, gave us just the time we wanted for setting things to rights on
+board.
+
+Our little twelve-foot cabin, it must be remembered, was bed-room,
+sitting-room, dining-room, storeroom, and kitchen, all in one.
+Everything we wanted for sleeping, reading, eating, and drinking, had to
+be arranged in its proper place. The butter and candles, the soap and
+cheese, the salt and sugar, the bread and onions, the oil-bottle and the
+brandy-bottle, for example, had to be put in places where the motion of
+the vessel could not roll them together, and where, also, we could any
+of us find them at a moment's notice. Other things, not of the eatable
+sort, we gave up all idea of separating. Mr. Migott and I mingled our
+stock of shirts as we mingled our sympathies, our fortunes, and our
+flowing punch-bowl after dinner. We both of us have our faults; but
+incapability of adapting ourselves cheerfully to circumstances is not
+among them. Mr. Migott, especially, is one of those rare men who could
+dine politely off blubber in the company of Esquimaux, and discover the
+latent social advantages of his position if he was lost in the darkness
+of the North Pole.
+
+After the arrangement of goods and chattels, came dinner (the curry
+warmed up with a second course of fried onions)--then the slinging of
+our hammocks by the neat hands of the Brothers Dobbs--and then the
+practice of how to get into the hammocks, by Messrs. Migott and Jollins.
+No landsman who has not tried the experiment can form the faintest
+notion of the luxury of the sailor's swinging bed, or of the
+extraordinary difficulty of getting into it for the first time. The
+preliminary action is to stand with your back against the middle of your
+hammock, and to hold by the edge of the canvas on either side. You then
+duck your head down, throw your heels up, turn round on your back, and
+let go with your hands, all at the same moment. If you succeed in doing
+this, you are in the most luxurious bed that the ingenuity of man has
+ever invented. If you fail, you measure your length on the floor. So
+much for hammocks.
+
+After learning how to get into bed, the writer of the present narrative
+tried his hand at the composition of whisky punch, and succeeded in
+imparting satisfaction to his intemperate fellow-creatures. When the
+punch and the pipes accompanying it had come to an end, a pilot-boat
+anchored alongside of us for the night. Once embarked on our own
+element, we old sea-dogs are, after all, a polite race of men. We asked
+the pilot where he had come from--and he asked us. We asked the pilot
+where he was bound to, to-morrow morning--and he asked us. We asked the
+pilot whether he would like a drop of rum--and the pilot, to encourage
+us, said Yes. After that, there was a little pause; and then the pilot
+asked us, whether we would come on board his boat--and we, to encourage
+the pilot, said Yes, and did go, and came back, and asked the pilot
+whether he would come on board our boat--and he said Yes, and did come
+on board, and drank another drop of rum. Thus in the practice of the
+social virtues did we while away the hours--six jolly tars in a
+twelve-foot cabin--till it was past eleven o'clock, and time, as we say
+at sea, to tumble in, or tumble out, as the case may be, when a jolly
+tar wants practice in the art of getting into his hammock.
+
+So began and ended our first day afloat.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The wind blew itself out in the night. As the morning got on, it fell
+almost to a calm; and the merchantmen about us began weighing anchor, to
+drop down Channel with the tide. The Tomtit, it is unnecessary to say,
+scorned to be left behind, and hoisted her sails with the best of them.
+Favoured by the lightness of the wind, we sailed past every vessel
+proceeding in our direction. Barques, brigs, and schooners, French
+luggers and Dutch galliots, we showed our stern to all of them; and when
+the weather cleared, and the breeze freshened towards the afternoon, the
+little Tomtit was heading the whole fleet.
+
+In the evening we brought up close to the high coast of Somersetshire,
+to wait for the tide. Weighed again, at ten at night, and sailed for
+Ilfracombe. Got becalmed towards morning, but managed to reach our port
+at ten, with the help of the sweeps, or long oars. Went ashore for more
+bread, beer, and fresh water; feeling so nautical by this time, that the
+earth was difficult to walk upon; and all the people we had dealings
+with presented themselves to us in the guise of unmitigated land-sharks.
+O, my dear eyes! what a relief it was to Mr. Migott and myself to find
+ourselves in our floating castle, boxing the compass, dancing the
+hornpipe, and splicing the mainbrace freely in our ocean-home.
+
+About noon we sailed for Clovelly. Our smooth passage across the
+magnificent Bay of Bideford is the recollection of our happy voyage
+which I find myself looking back on most admiringly while I now write.
+
+No cloud was in the sky. Far away, on the left, sloped inward the
+winding shore; so clear, so fresh, so divinely tender in its blue and
+purple hues, that it was the most inexhaustible of luxuries only to look
+at it. Over the watery horizon, to the right, the autumn sun hung
+grandly, with the fire-path below heaving on a sea of lustrous blue.
+Flocks of wild birds at rest, floated chirping on the water all around.
+The fragrant steady breeze was just enough to fill our sails. On and on
+we went, with the bubbling sea-song at our bows to soothe us; on and on,
+till the blue lustre of the ocean grew darker, till the sun sank redly
+towards the far water-line, till the sacred evening stillness crept over
+the sweet air, and hushed it with a foretaste of the coming night.
+
+What sight of mystery and enchantment rises before us now? Steep, solemn
+cliffs, bare in some places--where the dark-red rock has been rent away,
+and the winding chasms open grimly to the view--but clothed for the most
+part with trees, which soften their summits into the sky, and sweep all
+down them, in glorious masses of wood, to the very water's edge.
+Climbing from the beach, up the precipitous face of the cliff, a little
+fishing village coyly shows itself. The small white cottages rise one
+above another; now perching on a bit of rock, now peeping out of a clump
+of trees: sometimes two or three together; sometimes one standing alone;
+here, placed sideways to the sea, there, fronting it,--but rising always
+one over the other, as if, instead of being founded on the earth, they
+were hung from the trees on the top of the cliff. Over all this lovely
+scene the evening shadows are stealing. The last rays of the sun just
+tinge the quiet water, and touch the white walls of the cottages. From
+out at sea comes the sound of a horn--blown from the nearest
+fishing-vessel, as a signal to the rest to follow her to shore. From the
+land, the voices of children at play, and the still fall of the small
+waves on the beach, are the only audible sounds. This is Clovelly. If we
+had travelled a thousand miles to see it, we should have said that our
+journey had not been taken in vain.
+
+On getting to shore, we found the one street of Clovelly nothing but a
+succession of irregular steps, from the beginning at the beach, to the
+end half way up the cliffs. It was like climbing to the top of an old
+castle, instead of walking through a village. When we reached the
+summit of the cliff, the hour was too advanced to hope for seeing much
+of the country. We strayed away, however, to look for the church, and
+found ourselves, at twilight, near some ghastly deserted out-houses,
+approached by a half-ruinous gateway, and a damp dark avenue of trees.
+The church was near, but shut off from us by ivy-grown walls. No living
+creature appeared; not even a dog barked at us. We were surrounded by
+silence, solitude, darkness, and desolation; and it struck us both
+forcibly, that the best thing we could do was to give up the church, and
+get back to humanity with all convenient speed.
+
+The descent of the High Street of Clovelly, at night, turned out to be a
+matter of more difficulty than we had anticipated. There was no such
+thing as a lamp in the whole village; and we had to grope our way in the
+darkness down steps of irregular sizes and heights, paved with slippery
+pebbles, and ornamented with nothing in the shape of a bannister, even
+at the most dangerous places. Half-way down, my friend and I had an
+argument in the dark--standing with our noses against a wall, and with
+nothing visible on either side--as to which way we should turn next. I
+guessed to the left, and he guessed to the right; and I, being the more
+obstinate of the two, we ended in following my route, and at last
+stumbled our way down to the pier. Looking at the place the next
+morning, we found that the steps to the right led through a bit of
+cottage-garden to a snug little precipice, over which inquisitive
+tourists might fall quietly, without let or hindrance. Talk of the
+perils of the deep! what are they in comparison with the perils of the
+shore?
+
+The adventures of the night were not exhausted, so far as I was
+concerned, even when we got back to our vessel.
+
+I have already informed the reader that the cabin of the Tomtit was
+twelve feet long by eight feet wide--a snug apartment, but scarcely
+large enough, as it struck me, for five men to sleep in comfortably.
+Nevertheless, the experiment was to be tried in Clovelly harbour. I
+bargained, at the outset, for one thing--that the cabin hatch should be
+kept raised at least a foot all night. This ventilatory condition being
+complied with, I tumbled into my hammock; Mr. Migott rolled into his;
+and Sam Dobbs, Dick Dobbs, and Bob Dobbs cast themselves down
+promiscuously on the floor and the lockers under us. Out went the
+lights; and off went my friend and the Brothers Dobbs into the most
+intolerable concert of snoring that it is possible to imagine.
+
+No alternative was left for my unfortunate self but to lie awake
+listening, and studying the character of the snore in each of the four
+sleeping individuals. The snore of Mr. Migott I found to be superior to
+the rest in point of amiability, softness, and regularity--it was a kind
+of oily, long-sustained purr, amusing and not unmusical for the first
+five minutes. Next in point of merit to Mr. Migott, came Bob Dobbs. His
+note was several octaves lower than my friend's, and his tone was a
+grunt--but I will do him justice; I will not scruple to admit that the
+sounds he produced were regular as clockwork. Very inferior was the
+performance of Sam Dobbs, who, as owner of the boat, ought, I think, to
+have set a good example. If an idle carpenter planed a board very
+quickly at one time, and very slowly at another, and if he groaned at
+intervals over his work, he would produce the best imitation of Sam
+Dobbs's style of snoring that I can think of. Last, and worst of all,
+came Dick Dobbs, who was afflicted with a cold, and whose snore
+consisted of a succession of loud chokes, gasps, and puffs, all
+contending together, as it appeared to me, which should suffocate him
+soonest. There I lay, wide awake, suffering under the awful nose-chorus
+which I have attempted to describe, for nearly an hour. It was a dark
+night: there was no wind, and very little air. Horrible doubts about the
+sufficiency of our ventilation began to beset me. Reminiscences of early
+reading on the subject of the Black Hole at Calcutta came back vividly
+to my memory. I thought of the twelve feet by eight, in which we were
+all huddled together--terror and indignation overpowered me--and I
+roared for a light, before the cabin of the Tomtit became too mephitic
+for flame of any kind to exist in it. Uprose they then my Merry Merry
+Men, bewildered and grumbling, to grope for the match-box. It was found,
+the lantern was lit, the face of Mr. Migott appeared serenely over the
+side of his hammock, and the voice of Mr. Migott sweetly and sleepily
+inquired what was the matter?
+
+"Matter! The Black Hole at Calcutta is the matter. Poisonous, gaseous
+exhalation is the matter! Outrageous, ungentlemanly snoring is the
+matter! give me my bedding, and my drop of brandy, and my pipe, and let
+me go on deck. Let me be a Chaldean shepherd, and contemplate the stars.
+Let me be the careful watch who patrols the deck, and guards the ship
+from foes and wreck. Let me be anything but the companion of men who
+snore like the famous Furies in the old Greek play." While I am venting
+my indignation, and collecting my bedding, the smiling and sleepy face
+of Mr. Migott disappears slowly from the side of the hammock--and before
+I am on deck, I hear the oily purr once more, just as amiable, soft, and
+regular as ever.
+
+What a relief it was to have the sky to look up at, the fresh night air
+to breathe, the quiet murmur of the sea to listen to! I rolled myself up
+in my blankets; and, for aught I know to the contrary, was soon snoring
+on deck as industriously as my companions were snoring below.
+
+The first sounds that woke me in the morning were produced by the
+tongues of the natives of Clovelly, assembled on the pier, staring down
+on me in my nest of blankets, and shouting to each other incessantly. I
+assumed that they were making fun of the interesting stranger stretched
+in repose on the deck of the Tomtit; but I could not understand one word
+of the Devonshire language in which they spoke. Whatever they said of
+me, I forgive them, however, in consideration of their cream and fresh
+herrings. Our breakfast on the cabin-hatch in Clovelly harbour, after a
+dip in the sea, is a remembrance of gustatory bliss which I gratefully
+cherish. When we had reduced the herrings to skeletons, and the
+cream-pot to a whited sepulchre of emptiness, we slipped from our
+moorings, and sailed away from the lovely little village with sincere
+regret. By noon we were off Hartland Point.
+
+We had now arrived at the important part of our voyage--the part at
+which it was necessary to decide, once for all, on our future
+destination. Mr. Migott and I took counsel together solemnly, unrolled
+the charts, and then astonished our trusty crew by announcing that the
+end of the voyage was to be the Scilly Islands. Up to this time the
+Brothers Dobbs had been inclined to laugh at the notion of getting so
+far in so small a boat. But they began to look grave now, and to hint at
+cautious objections. The weather was certainly beautiful; but then the
+wind was dead against us. Our little vessel was stiff and sturdy enough
+for any service, but nobody on board knew the strange waters into which
+we were going--and, as for the charts, could any one of us study them
+with a proper knowledge of the science of navigation? Would it not be
+better to take a little cruise to Lundy Island, away there on the
+starboard bow? And another little cruise about the Welsh coast, where
+the Dobbses had been before? To these cautious questions, we replied by
+rash and peremptory negatives; and the Brothers, thereupon, abandoned
+their view of the case, and accepted ours with great resignation.
+
+For the Scilly Islands, therefore, we now shaped our course, alternately
+standing out to sea, and running in for the land, so as to get down
+ultimately to the Land's End, against the wind, in a series of long
+zig-zags, now in a westerly and now in an easterly direction. Our first
+tack from Hartland Point was a sail of six hours out to sea. At sunset,
+the little Tomtit had lost sight of land for the first time since she
+was launched, and was rising and falling gently on the long swells of
+the Atlantic. It was a deliciously calm, clear evening, with every
+promise of the fine weather lasting. The spirits of the Brothers Dobbs,
+when they found themselves at last in the blue water, rose amazingly.
+
+"Only give us decent weather, sir," said Bob Dobbs, cheerfully smacking
+the tiller of the Tomtit; "and we'll find our way to Scilly somehow, in
+spite of the wind."
+
+_How_ we found our way, remains to be seen.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+We were now fairly at sea, keeping a regular watch on deck at night, and
+never running nearer the Cornish coast than was necessary to enable us
+to compare the great headlands with the marks on our chart. Under
+present circumstances, no more than three of us could sleep in the cabin
+at one time--the combined powers of the snoring party were thus
+weakened, and the ventilation below could be preserved in a satisfactory
+state. Instead of chronicling our slow zig-zag progress to the Land's
+End--which is unlikely to interest anybody not familiar with Cornish
+names and nautical phrases--I will try to describe the manner in which
+we passed the day on board the Tomtit, now that we were away from land
+events and amusements. If there was to be any such thing as an alloy of
+dulness in our cruise, this was assuredly the part of it in which Time
+and the Hour were likely to run slowest through the day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the first place, let me record with just pride, that we have solved
+the difficult problem of a pure republic in our modest little craft. No
+man in particular among us is master--no man in particular is servant.
+The man who can do at the right time, and in the best way, the thing
+that is most wanted, is always the hero of the situation among us. When
+Dick Dobbs is frying the onions for dinner, he is the person most
+respected in the ship, and Mr. Migott and myself are his faithful and
+expectant subjects. When grog is to be made, or sauces are to be
+prepared, Mr. Jollins becomes in his turn the monarch of all he surveys.
+When musical entertainments are in progress, Mr. Migott is vocal king,
+and sole conductor of band and chorus. When nautical talk and
+sea-stories rule the hour, Bob Dobbs, who has voyaged in various
+merchantmen all over the world, and is every inch of him a thorough
+sailor, becomes the best man of the company. When any affairs connected
+with the internal management of the vessel are under consideration, Sam
+Dobbs is Chairman of the Committee in the cockpit. So we sail along; and
+such is the perfect constitution of society at which we mariners of
+England have been able to arrive.
+
+Our freedom extends to the smallest details. We have no stated hours,
+and we are well a-head of all rules and regulations. We have no
+breakfast hour, no dinner hour, no time for rising or for going to bed.
+We have no particular eatables at particular meals. We don't know the
+day of the month, or the day of the week; and never look at our watches,
+except when we wind them up. Our voice is frequently the voice of the
+sluggard; but we never complain, because nobody ever wakes us too soon,
+or thinks of interfering with our slumbering again. We wear each other's
+coats, smoke each other's pipes, poach on each other's victuals. We are
+a happy, dawdling, undisciplined, slovenly lot. We have no principles,
+no respectability, no business, no stake in the country, no knowledge of
+Mrs. Grundy. We are a parcel of Lotos-Eaters; and we know nothing,
+except that we are poking our way along anyhow to the Scilly Islands in
+the Tomtit.
+
+We rise when we have had sleep enough--any time you like between seven
+and ten. If I happen to be on deck first, I begin by hearing the news of
+the weather and the wind, from Sam, Dick, or Bob at the helm. Soon the
+face of Mr. Migott, rosy with recent snoring, rises from the cabin, and
+his body follows it slowly, clad in the blue Jersey frock which he
+persists in wearing night and day--in the heat of noon as in the cool of
+evening. He cannot be prevailed upon to give any reason for his violent
+attachment to this garment--only wagging his head and smiling
+mysteriously when we ask why, sleeping or waking, he never parts with
+it. Well, being up, the next thing is to make the toilette. We keep our
+fresh water, for minor ablutions, in an old wine cask from Bristol. The
+colour of the liquid is a tawny yellow: it is, in fact, weak sherry and
+water. For the major ablutions, we have the ship's bucket and the sea,
+and a good stock of rough towels to finish with. The next thing is
+breakfast on deck. When we can catch fish (which is very seldom, though
+we are well provided with lines and bait) we fall upon the spoil
+immediately. At other times we range through our sea stores, eating
+anything we like, cooked anyhow we like. After breakfast we have two
+words to say to our box of peaches, nectarines, and grapes, from the
+hospitable country-house. Then the bedding is brought up to air; the
+deck is cleaned; the breakfast things are taken away; the pipes, cigars,
+and French novels are produced from the cabin; Mr. Migott coils himself
+up in a corner of the cockpit, and I perch upon the taffrail; and the
+studies of the morning begin. They end invariably in small-talk, beer,
+and sleep. So the time slips away cosily till it is necessary to think
+about dinner.
+
+Now, all is activity on board the Tomtit. Except the man at the helm,
+every one is occupied with preparations for the banquet of the day. The
+potatoes, onions, and celery, form one department; the fire and solid
+cookery another; the washing of plates and dishes, knives and forks, a
+third; the laying of the cloth on deck a fourth; the concoction of
+sauces and production of bottles from the cellar a fifth. No man has any
+particular department assigned to him: the most active republican of the
+community, for the time being, plunges into the most active work, and
+the others follow as they please.
+
+The exercise we get is principally at this period of the day, and
+consists in incessant dropping down from the deck to the cabin, and
+incessant scrambling up from the cabin to the deck. The dinner is a long
+business; but what do we care for that? We have no appointments to keep,
+no visitors to interrupt us, and nothing in the world to do but to
+tickle our palates, wet our whistles, and amuse ourselves in any way we
+please. Dinner at last over, it is superfluous to say, that the pipes
+become visible again, and that the taking of forty winks is only a
+prohibited operation on the part of the man at the helm.
+
+As for tea-time, it is entirely regulated by the wants and wakefulness
+of Mr. Migott, who, since the death of Dr. Johnson, is the most
+desperate drinker of tea in all England. When the cups and saucers are
+cleared away, a conversazione is held in the cockpit. Sam Dobbs is the
+best listener of the company; Dick Dobbs, who has been a yachtsman, is
+the jester; Bob Dobbs, the merchant sailor, is the teller of adventures;
+and my friend and I keep the ball going smartly in all sorts of ways,
+till it gets dark, and a great drought falls upon the members of the
+conversazione. Then, if the mermaids are anywhere near us, they may
+smell the fragrant fumes which tell of sacrifice to Bacchus, and may
+hear, shortly afterwards, the muse of song invoked by cheerful topers.
+Thus the dark hours roll on jovial till the soft influences of sleep
+descend upon the tuneful choir, and the cabin receives its lodgers for
+the night.
+
+This is the general rule of life on board the Tomtit. Exceptional
+incidents of all kinds--saving sea-sickness, to which nobody on board is
+liable--are never wanting to vary existence pleasantly from day to day.
+Sometimes Mr. Migott gets on from taking a nap to having a dream, and
+records the fact by a screech of terror, which rings through the vessel
+and wakes the sleeper himself, who always asks, "What's that,
+eh?"--never believes that the screech has not come from somebody
+else--never knows what he has been dreaming of--and never fails to go to
+sleep again before the rest of the ship's company have half done
+expostulating with him.
+
+Sometimes a little interesting indigestion appears among us, by way of
+change. Dick Dobbs, for example (who is as bilious as an Indian nabob),
+is seen to turn yellow at the helm, and to steer with a glazed eye; is
+asked what is the matter; replies that he has "the boil terrible bad on
+his stomach;" is instantly treated by Jollins (M.D.) as follows:--Two
+teaspoonfuls of essence of ginger, two dessert-spoonfuls of brown
+brandy, two table spoonfuls of strong tea. Pour down patient's throat
+very hot, and smack his back smartly to promote the operation of the
+draught. What follows? The cure of Dick. How simple is medicine, when
+reduced to its first principles!
+
+Another source of amusement is provided by the ships we meet with.
+
+Whenever we get near enough, we hail the largest merchantmen in the most
+peremptory manner, as coolly as if we had three decks under us and an
+admiral on board. The large ships, for the most part paralysed by our
+audacity, reply meekly. Sometimes we meet with a foreigner, and get
+answered by inarticulate yelling or disrespectful grins. But this is a
+rare case; the general rule is, that we maintain our dignity unimpaired
+all down the Channel. Then, again, when no ships are near, there is the
+constant excitement of consulting our charts and wondering where we are.
+Every man of us has a different theory on this subject every time he
+looks at the chart; but no man rudely thrusts his theory on another, or
+aspires to govern the ideas of the rest in virtue of his superior
+obstinacy in backing his own opinion. Did I not assert a little while
+since that we were a pure republic? And is not this another and a
+striking proof of it?
+
+In such pursuits and diversions as I have endeavoured to describe, the
+time passes quickly, happily, and adventurously, until we ultimately
+succeed, at four in the morning on the sixth day of our cruise, in
+discovering the light of the Longship's Lighthouse, which we know to be
+situated off the Land's End. We are now only some seven-and-twenty miles
+from the Scilly Islands, and the discovery of the lighthouse enables us
+to set our course by the compass cleverly enough. The wind which has
+thus far always remained against us, falls, on the afternoon of this
+sixth day, to a dead calm, but springs up again in another and a
+favourable quarter at eleven o'clock at night. By daybreak we are all on
+the watch for the Scilly Islands. Not a sign of them. The sun rises; it
+is a magnificent morning; the favourable breeze still holds; we have
+been bowling along before it since eleven the previous night; and ought
+to have sighted the islands long since. But we sight nothing: no land is
+visible anywhere all round the horizon.
+
+Where are we? Have we overshot Scilly?--and is the next land we are
+likely to see Ushant or Finisterre? Nobody knows. The faces of the
+Brothers Dobbs darken; and they recall to each other how they deprecated
+from the first this rash venturing into unknown waters. We hail two
+ships piteously, to ask our way. The two ships can't tell us. We unroll
+the charts, and differ in opinion over them more remarkably than ever.
+The Dobbses grimly opine that it is no use looking at charts, when we
+have not got a pair of parallels to measure by, and are all ignorant of
+the scientific parts of navigation. Mr. Migott and I manfully cheer the
+drooping spirits of the crew with Guinness's stout, and put a smiling
+face upon it. But in our innermost hearts, we think of Columbus, and
+feel for him.
+
+The last resource is to post a man at the masthead (if so lofty an
+expression may be allowed in reference to so little a vessel as the
+Tomtit), to keep a look-out. Up the rigging swarms Dick the Bilious, in
+the lowest spirits--strains his eyes over the waters, and suddenly hails
+the gaping deck with a joyous shout. The runaway islands are caught at
+last--he sees them a-head of us--he has no objection to make to the
+course we are steering--nothing particular to say but "Crack on!"--and
+nothing in the world to do but slide down the rigging again. Contentment
+beams once more on the faces of Sam, Dick, and Bob. Mr. Migott and I say
+nothing; but we look at each other with a smile of triumph. We remember
+the injurious doubts of the crew when the charts were last unrolled--and
+think of Columbus again, and feel for him more than ever.
+
+Soon the islands are visible from the deck, and by noon we have run in
+as near them as we dare without local guidance. They are low-lying, and
+picturesque in an artistic point of view; but treacherous-looking and
+full of peril to the wary nautical eye. Horrible jagged rocks, and
+sinister swirlings and foamings of the sea, seem to forbid the approach
+to them. The Tomtit is hove to--our ensign is run up half-mast high--and
+we fire our double-barrelled gun fiercely for a pilot.
+
+The pilot arrives in a long, serviceable-looking boat, with a wild,
+handsome, dark-haired son, and a silent, solemn old man for his crew. He
+himself is lean, wrinkled, hungry-looking; his eyes are restless with
+excitement, and his tongue overwhelms us with a torrent of words, spoken
+in a strange accent, but singularly free from provincialisms and bad
+grammar. He informs us that we must have been set to the northward in
+the night by a current, and goes on to acquaint us with so many other
+things, with such a fidgety sparkling of the eyes and such a ceaseless
+patter of the tongue, that he fairly drives me to the fore part of the
+vessel out of his way. Smoothly we glide along, parallel with the jagged
+rocks and the swirling eddies, till we come to a channel between two
+islands; and, sailing through that, make for a sandy isthmus, where we
+see some houses and a little harbour. This is Hugh Town, the chief place
+in St. Mary's, which is the largest island of the Scilly group. We jump
+ashore in high glee, feeling that we have succeeded in carrying out the
+purpose of our voyage in defiance of the prognostications of all our
+prudent friends. At sea or on shore, how sweet is triumph, even in the
+smallest things!
+
+Bating the one fact of the wind having blown from an unfavourable
+quarter, unvarying good fortune had, thus far, accompanied our cruise,
+and our luck did not desert us when we got on shore at St. Mary's. We
+went, happily for our own comfort, to the hotel kept by the master of
+the packet plying between Hugh Town and Penzance. By our landlord and
+his cordial wife and family we were received with such kindness and
+treated with such care, that we felt really and truly at home before we
+had been half an hour in the house. And, by way of farther familiarizing
+us with Scilly at first sight, who should the resident medical man turn
+out to be but a gentleman whom I knew. These were certainly fortunate
+auspices under which to begin our short sojourn in one of the remotest
+and wildest places in the Queen's dominions.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+The Scilly Islands seem, at a rough glance, to form a great irregular
+circle, enclosing a kind of lagoon of sea, communicating by various
+channels with the main ocean all around.
+
+The circumference of the largest of the group is, as we heard, not more
+than thirteen miles. Five of the islands are inhabited; the rest may be
+generally described as masses of rock, wonderfully varied in shape and
+size. Inland, in the larger islands, the earth, where it is not planted
+or sown, is covered with heather and with the most beautiful ferns.
+Potatoes used to be the main product of Scilly; but the disease has
+appeared lately in the island crops, and the potatoes have suffered so
+severely that when we filled our sack for the return voyage, we were
+obliged to allow for two-thirds of our supply proving unfit for use. The
+views inland are chiefly remarkable as natural panoramas of land and
+sea--the two always presenting themselves intermixed in the loveliest
+varieties of form and colour. On the coast, the granite rocks, though
+not notably high, take the most wildly and magnificently picturesque
+shapes. They are rent into the strangest chasms and piled up in the
+grandest confusion; and they look down, every here and there, on the
+loveliest little sandy bays, where the sea, in calm weather, is as
+tenderly blue and as limpid in its clearness as the Mediterranean
+itself. The softness and purity of the climate may be imagined, when I
+state that in the winter none of the freshwater pools are strongly
+enough frozen to bear being skated on. The balmy sea air blows over each
+little island as freely as it might blow over the deck of a ship.
+
+The people have the same great merit which I had previously observed
+among their Cornish neighbours--the merit of good manners. We two
+strangers were so little stared at as we walked about, that it was
+almost like being on the Continent. The pilot who had taken us into Hugh
+Town harbour we found to be a fair specimen, as regarded his excessive
+talkativeness and the purity of his English, of the islanders generally.
+The longest tellers of very long stories, so far as my experience goes,
+are to be found in Scilly. Ask the people the commonest question, and
+their answer generally exhausts the whole subject before you can say
+another word. Their anxiety, whenever we had occasion to inquire our
+way, to guard us from the remotest chance of missing it, and the honest
+pride with which they told us all about local sights and marvels, formed
+a very pleasant trait in the general character. Wherever we went, we
+found the natural kindness and natural hospitality of the people always
+ready to welcome us.
+
+Strangely enough, in this softest and healthiest of climates consumption
+is a prevalent disease. If I may venture on an opinion, after a very
+short observation of the habits of the people, I should say that
+distrust of fresh air and unwillingness to take exercise were the chief
+causes of consumptive maladies among the islanders. I longed to break
+windows in the main street of Hugh Town as I never longed to break them
+anywhere else. One lovely afternoon I went out for the purpose of seeing
+how many of the inhabitants of the place had a notion of airing their
+bed-rooms. I found two houses with open windows--all the rest were fast
+closed from top to bottom, as if a pestilence were abroad instead of the
+softest, purest sea-breeze that ever blew. Then, again, as to walking,
+the people ask you seriously when you inquire your way on foot, whether
+you are aware that the destination you want to arrive at is three miles
+off! As for a pedestrian excursion round the largest island--a circuit
+of thirteen miles--when we talked of performing that feat in the hearing
+of a respectable inhabitant, he laughed at the idea as incredulously as
+if we had proposed a swimming match to the Cornish coast. When people
+will not give themselves the first great chance of breathing healthily
+and freely as often as they can, who can wonder that consumption should
+be common among them?
+
+In addition to our other pieces of good fortune, we were enabled to
+profit by a very kind invitation from the gentleman to whom the islands
+belong, to stay with him at his house, built on the site of an ancient
+abbey, and surrounded by gardens of the most exquisite beauty.
+
+To the firm and benevolent rule of the present proprietor of Scilly, the
+islanders are indebted for the prosperity which they now enjoy. It was
+not the least pleasant part of a very delightful visit, to observe for
+ourselves, under our host's guidance, all that he had done, and was
+doing, for the welfare and the happiness of the people committed to his
+charge. From what we had heard, and from what we had previously observed
+for ourselves, we had formed the most agreeable impressions of the
+social condition of the islanders; and we now found the best of these
+impressions more than confirmed. When the present proprietor first came
+among his tenantry he found them living miserably and ignorantly. He has
+succoured, reformed, and taught them; and there is now, probably, no
+place in England where the direr hardships of poverty are so little
+known as in the Scilly Islands.
+
+I might write more particularly on this topic; but I am unwilling to run
+the risk of saying more on the subject of these good deeds than the
+good-doer himself would sanction. And besides, I must remember that the
+object of this narrative is to record a holiday-cruise, and not to enter
+into details on the subject of Scilly; details which have already been
+put into print by previous travellers. Let me only add then, that our
+sojourn in the islands terminated with the close of our stay in the
+house of our kind entertainer. It had been blowing a gale of wind for
+two days before our departure; and we put to sea with a doubled-reefed
+mainsail, and with more doubts than we liked to confess to each other,
+about the prospects of the return voyage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However, lucky we had been hitherto, and lucky we were to continue to
+the end. Before we had been long at sea, the wind began to get
+capricious; then to diminish almost to a calm; then, towards evening, to
+blow again, steadily and strongly, from the very quarter of all others
+most favourable to our return voyage. "If this holds," was the sentiment
+of the Brothers Dobbs, as we were making things snug for the night, "we
+shall be back again at Mangerton before we have had time to get half
+through our victuals and drink."
+
+The wind did hold, and more than hold: and the Tomtit flew, in
+consequence, as if she was going to give up the sea altogether, and take
+to the sky for a change. Our homeward run was the most perfect contrast
+to our outward voyage. No tacking, no need to study the charts, no
+laggard luxurious dining on the cabin hatch. It was too rough for
+anything but picnicking in the cockpit, jammed into a corner, with our
+plates on our knees. I had to make the grog with one hand, and clutch at
+the nearest rope with the other--Mr. Migott holding the bowl while I
+mixed, and the man at the helm holding Mr. Migott. As for reading, it
+was hopeless to try it; for there was breeze enough to blow the leaves
+out of the book--and singing was not to be so much as thought of; for
+the moment you opened your mouth the wind rushed in, and snatched away
+the song immediately. The nearer we got to Mangerton, the faster we
+flew. My last recollection of the sea, dates at the ghostly time of
+midnight. The wind had been increasing and increasing, since sunset,
+till it contemptuously blew out our fire in the cabin, as if the stove
+with its artful revolving chimney had been nothing but a farthing
+rushlight. When I climbed on deck, we were already in the Bristol
+Channel.
+
+That last view at sea was the grandest view of the voyage. Ragged black
+clouds were flying like spectres all over the sky; the moonlight
+streaming fitful behind them. One great ship, shadowy and mysterious,
+was pitching heavily towards us from the land. Backward out at sea,
+streamed the red gleam from the lighthouse on Lundy Island; and marching
+after us magnificently, to the music of the howling wind, came the great
+rollers from the Atlantic, rushing in between Hartland Point and Lundy,
+turning over and over in long black hills of water, with the seething
+spray at their tops sparkling in the moonshine. It was a fine breathless
+sensation to feel our sturdy little vessel tearing along through this
+heavy sea--jumping stern up, as the great waves caught her--dashing the
+water gaily from her bows, at the return dip--and holding on her way as
+bravely and surely as the largest yacht that ever was built. After a
+long look at the sublime view around us, my friend and I went below
+again; and in spite of the noise of wind and sea, managed to fall
+asleep. The next event was a call from deck at half-past six in the
+morning, informing us that we were entering Mangerton Bay. By seven
+o'clock we were alongside the jetty again, after a run of only
+forty-three hours from the Scilly Islands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus our cruise ended; and thus we falsified the predictions of our
+prudent friends, and came back with our right side uppermost. "Here's
+luck to you, gentlemen!"--was the toast which our honest sailor-brothers
+proposed, when we met together later in the day, and pledged each other
+in a parting cup. "Here's luck," we answered, on our side--"luck to the
+Brothers Dobbs; and thanks besides for hearty companionship and faithful
+service." And here, in the last glass with one cheer more,--here's luck
+to the vessel that carried us, our lively little Tomtit! Tiny home of
+joyous days, may thy sea-fortunes be happy, and thy trim sails be set
+prosperously for many a year still, to the favouring breeze!
+
+With those good wishes, our holiday trip closed at the time--as the
+record of it closes here. With those last words, the book is shut up;
+the reader is released; and the writer drops his pen.
+
+
+
+
+ THE END.
+
+
+
+
+Savill and Edwards, Printers, Chandos Street, Covent Garden.
+
+
+
+
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+
+  ~~~~~~~~~~
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+  As revealed in Scripture.
+
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+
+  ~~~~~~~~~~
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+  Small 8vo, with a Map, 6s.,
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+
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+
+    "There is something of a Robinson Crusoe character about this
+    narrative, which, in spite of the sufferings which it
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+
+  ~~~~~~~~~~
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+
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+
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+
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+  Adapted as well for the Largest Establishments as for the use of Private
+  Families. By CHARLES ELME FRANCATELLI.
+
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+  THE ONLY UNABRIDGED EDITION.
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+
+  ~~~~~~~~~~
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+  a New Edition of
+
+  RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS; or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-Foot.
+
+  To which is now first added, THE CRUISE OF THE TOMTIT
+  TO THE SCILLY ISLANDS.
+
+  By W. WILKIE COLLINS, Author of "The Woman in White,"
+  "Antonina."
+
+  ~~~~~~~~~~
+
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+
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+
+  By the Author of "Salad for the Solitary."
+
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+
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+
+  ~~~~~~~~~~
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+
+  Chaplain of Lucknow. Edited by his Brothers.
+
+  ~~~~~~~~~~
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+  RECOLLECTIONS OF A LITERARY LIFE.
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+  MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.
+
+  ~~~~~~~~~~
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+  Third Edition, in post 8vo, 7s. 6d.,
+
+  LIVES OF THE ITALIAN POETS.
+
+  By the Rev. Dr. STEBBING.
+
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                           |
+    |                                               |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the  |
+    | original document have been preserved.        |
+    |                                               |
+    | Typographical errors corrected in the text:   |
+    |                                               |
+    | Page  73  quarteett changed to quartet        |
+    | Page 145  matetials changed to materials      |
+    | Page 163  Brobdignag changed to Brobdingnag   |
+    | Page 193  venimous changed to venomous        |
+    | Page 194  venimous changed to venomous        |
+    | Page 205  followin changed to following       |
+    | Page 207  is it changed to it is              |
+    | Page 216  Colomb changed to Columb            |
+    | Page 233  Tintagell changed to Tintagel       |
+    | Page 234  Excaliber changed to Excalibur      |
+    | Page 247  puctuality changed to punctuality   |
+    | Page 275  Miggott changed to Migott           |
+    | Page 286  recal changed to recall             |
+    +-----------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Rambles Beyond Railways;, by Wilkie Collins
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