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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cornwall, by G. E. Mitton
+
+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: Cornwall
+
+Author: G. E. Mitton
+
+Illustrator: G. F. Nicholls
+
+Release Date: January 18, 2012 [EBook #38614]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORNWALL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anna Hall, Chris Curnow and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CORNWALL
+
+
+                   AGENTS
+
+  AMERICA      THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+                 64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK
+
+  AUSTRALASIA  OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+                 205 Flinders Lane, MELBOURNE
+
+  CANADA       THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
+                 St. Martin's House, 70 Bond Street, TORONTO
+
+  INDIA        MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
+                 MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
+                 309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  THE LAND'S END
+
+  CORNWALL
+
+  PAINTED BY
+  G. F. NICHOLLS
+
+  DESCRIBED BY
+  G. E. MITTON
+
+  WITH
+  TWENTY FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
+  IN COLOUR
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  A. & C. BLACK, LTD.
+  4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.
+  1915
+
+
+
+
+  Contents
+
+
+  CHAPTER I                                PAGE
+  POPULAR IDEAS OF CORNWALL                   1
+
+  CHAPTER II
+  THE GATEWAY OF THE DUCHY                   24
+
+  CHAPTER III
+  THE "TOE" OF CORNWALL                      34
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+  FURTHEST WEST AND FURTHEST SOUTH           51
+
+  CHAPTER V
+  KING ARTHUR'S LAND                         71
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+  THE SANDY BEACHES OF THE NORTHERN COAST    92
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+  THE INLETS OF THE SOUTH COAST             109
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+  CORNISH TOWNS                             124
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+  CORNISH CUSTOMS                           135
+
+  SOME BOOKS ON CORNWALL                    145
+
+  INDEX                                     147
+
+
+
+
+
+  List of Illustrations in Colour
+
+
+  1. The Land's End             _Frontispiece_
+                                  FACING PAGE
+  2. Carbis Bay                             6
+  3. Kynance Cove                          10
+  4. At Polperro                           14
+  5. The Coast near the Lizard             16
+  6. Old Bridge at Lostwithiel             28
+  7. St. Michael's Mount                   34
+  8. Newlyn                                38
+  9. Lamorna Cove                          42
+  10. Caerthilian Cove                     66
+  11. St. Ives                             92
+  12. A Street in St. Ives                 94
+  13. From Lelant to Godrevy               98
+  14. Fowey                               110
+  15. Bodinnick Ferry, Fowey              114
+  16. Looe                                118
+  17. Flushing--from Falmouth             122
+  18. Truro                               124
+  19. The Banks of the Fal, Falmouth      128
+  20. At Newlyn                           138
+
+  _Bird's-Eye View of Fowey Haven, pp._ 112 _and_ 113.
+  _Sketch-Map at end of volume_.
+
+
+
+
+CORNWALL
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+POPULAR IDEAS OF CORNWALL
+
+
+To the mind of the ordinary Briton there is a curious attraction in
+"getting as far as you can"--a streak in mentality which has accounted
+in no small degree for the world-wide Empire. In England you cannot in
+one direction get any farther than the extreme point of Cornwall. Owing
+to the geographical configuration of Cornwall, the idea is magnified
+very vigorously into a really gallant effort to "get there," such as
+might be made by an individual stretching out not only to his full
+stride, but indulging in a good kick! We feel in very truth we have "got
+there," on to the edge of something or somewhere. As Wilkie Collins
+expresses it, the Land's End is "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!"
+
+Thus it is that Cornwall holds a special magnet which steadily draws a
+never-ending succession of strangers. Look only at those who do the feat
+of cycling or motoring from John o' Groat's to Land's End. Picture them
+in an indomitable long-drawn-out line, wheel to wheel; shadowy forms
+flitting over that last--or first--piece of road, full of hope and
+exultation at the thought of the journey's end, or full of anticipation
+at the journey's beginning. No road in England has been so wheel-worn as
+that strip running out to the most westerly point of England.
+
+Some there are who are drawn by a similar magnet to the Lizard, the most
+southerly point of our land, but the attraction is not so potent. From
+time immemorial John o' Groat's to Land's End has formed the measure of
+Britain.
+
+For very many years Cornwall has been known for its fine coast scenery,
+but wild and desolate scenery was not the fashion in Early Victorian
+days, and there were comparatively few brave souls who penetrated so
+far. It is rather remarkable to notice how many books about the charm of
+Cornwall appeared in the sixties, doubtless due to the opening of the
+Cornwall Railway in 1859. There is Wilkie Collins's _Rambles Beyond
+Railways_, 1861; J. O. Halliwell's _Rambles in Western Cornwall_ and J.
+T. Blight's _Land's End_, the same year, followed by Richard Edmonds's
+_Land's End District_ the next year.
+
+But Cornwall really began to be known by hundreds of persons in place of
+tens about 1904, and since then the number of visitors has increased to
+thousands.
+
+This book is not written by a Cornishman, for the very obvious reason
+that no Cornishman could for one instant think impartially of his Duchy,
+any more than you could expect a Yorkshireman to believe that the "rest
+of England" was in any way to be compared with Yorkshire. The more
+individual and peculiar a person is, the more deeply is he loved by
+those who really know him, provided that he has lovable qualities. No
+characterless good soul ever wins the heartfelt devotion that is the
+meed of those who have unexpected kinks and corners in their
+personality, and in the same way a flat, featureless country, carefully
+cultivated and uninteresting, will never win to itself the true
+land-love felt for one that is varied, rough maybe, rugged a bit, and in
+a hundred ways surprising. Of all things human nature hates boredom, and
+the man or the country who can win free of any trace of boredom insures
+a reward. Cornwall has in a peculiar measure gained the devotion of its
+own people. Not only on account of its unexpectedness, but because it
+stands in some measure apart from the rest of England. The Celtic blood
+of its older inhabitants, while making them akin to the Welsh and Irish,
+cuts them off from the Saxons, whom so often and so heartily in the old
+days they fought.
+
+The geographical position of Cornwall, with three sides washed by the
+sea, and even the "land" boundary mainly marked by a river, has
+influenced its sons, who, never being far from the sound of the surging
+waves, have gained something of the robust aloofness of the sailor. They
+are friendly to all, but guarded nevertheless; and standing thus apart,
+marked out by their territory, with small chance to mingle with
+inhabitants of other counties, the clan feeling among them has grown to
+be analogous to that of the clans in Scotland. All other Britishers are
+to the true Cornishman "foreigners." How then could a man so imbued with
+his own and his Duchy's place in regard to the "rest of England" write a
+book which should convey in any way the real characteristics of his
+land?
+
+It would be a feat impossible.
+
+The rugged outlines of a well-known face lose meaning with years of
+familiarity, and are taken for granted; thus it is with landmarks in
+Cornwall, which would never figure in such a chronicle at all.
+
+Therefore, as this book is intended not so much for those who know
+Cornwall as for those who will know it sometime in that future which
+lies beyond the reading of it, the impressions of an outsider are most
+fitting.
+
+There are people who go to Cornwall once for a holiday and return to it
+ever and again, when they get the chance, unable to find satisfaction
+anywhere else; the "atmosphere" of the country has entered into their
+blood. They think with an ache of the coast in all its cruelty and
+glory, they picture the bright blue of the rain-washed skies in a burst
+of sunshine, and they recall the great "hedges" with a foundation or
+core of stone, generations old, overlaid by an ample covering of turf
+and grass, a hot-bed for the stonecrop and hart's-tongue, fern,
+primrose, or foxglove.
+
+But what is a catalogue of words? It conveys nothing, any more than a
+catalogue of the names of books. Unless one can conjure up feelings, the
+attempt to explain the grip of the Duchy on recollection is useless. The
+clammy sea-wind on the face, the sense of great spaces, the grandeur of
+the coast, with its solemn, immovable rampart of cliff, and the pulsing
+life of the cold spray, for ever beating and frilling against the hard,
+glistening surface--these enter into consciousness. Of all things
+living, the swing of the seagull on motionless wings over a cavernous
+hollow brings one nearest to the realization of a dream.
+
+Others again go to visit the Duchy and come away disappointed because
+they have not found exactly what they wanted or expected. They take
+small children to coast places of which they have only heard by name,
+and are dismayed to find there is no sand, no beach, no bathing--only
+hills steep as the blue slate-roofs; and a good deal in the "people's"
+part of the town, which is narrow, slatternly and disagreeable. But it
+is one of the traits of Cornwall that she embraces such wide variety and
+shows such startling contrasts close up against each other. There are
+certainly a great many places where there are no sands at all, nothing
+but sheer wild cliffs falling perpendicularly to the sea, pierced by
+gigantic caves, to be explored at low tide only, and a small strip of
+shingle on which bathers are warned to enter at their peril, for the
+huge breakers from the Atlantic roll in continually, and one moment
+you are over head and shoulders in the smother of their foam, and the
+next stand naked to the winds, with a villainous undertow sucking away
+the pebbles from beneath your twitching soles. Carew, Cornwall's
+best-known historian, speaks of the Duchy's "long, naked sides." The
+writer on geology in the _Victoria County History_ says: "It has been
+calculated that a single roller of the Atlantic ground-swell (20 feet
+high) falls with a pressure of about a ton on every square foot." Places
+where such forces are felt are the Poles apart from the usual English
+seaside resort, sarcastically described by "Q" as "A line of sea in
+front, a row of hotels and lodging-houses behind, all as flat as a
+painted cloth, with a brass band to help the morality." Yet even in
+Cornwall if you want sandy beach you can have it. There are sands that
+stretch for miles, firm and flat, such as the famous beaches at St.
+Ives; and in most places, even the rocky ones, there is some provision
+made for bathing of a sort.
+
+[Illustration: CARBIS BAY]
+
+I think the reason why a small proportion of people are disappointed in
+Cornwall is that the advertisements are focussed on one aspect only. In
+almost every one of them is the mildness of the climate insisted on, and
+this gives rise to semi-invalidish ideas. It is true that semi-invalids
+who go there in winter in search of warmth can find suitable places if
+they know where to go. Cornwall as a whole must have an equable climate,
+or we should not see the growth of exotic plants out of doors--myrtle,
+tree-geranium, aloes, palms, and camellias, to name only a few of the
+most abundant--but the whole county is by no means a hot-bed of warmth,
+and the winds are frequently very cold indeed. There are everywhere now
+first-class hotels, with the ample lounges which have superseded the
+shut-up drawing-room and smoking-room compartments of earlier days, and
+these hotels mostly have verandahs so placed that the glorious sun can
+flood them while the winds are kept at bay. There those who come to
+recuperate can bask in delight, and draw straight from the Atlantic the
+pure fresh air, which has a wonderfully tonic effect.
+
+    "The lungs with the living gas grow tight,
+    And the limbs feel the strength of ten.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    God's glorious oxygen."
+
+Two such verandahs come up before me as I write--that at Fowey, raised
+high, and overlooking the most lovely harbour along the whole coast,
+shut in by rising banks almost like a Norwegian fiord; the other, the
+verandah at Housel Bay Hotel, where, facing due south, you may sit in an
+atmosphere of summer which is indeed like a climate usually only to be
+looked for many degrees further south.
+
+But though this aspect is the keynote of almost every advertisement, or
+at any rate every winter advertisement, it is by no means the most
+prominent or characteristic one of Cornwall, which appeals far more to
+the hardy than the weak. When I think of Cornwall the vision that comes
+before me is not that of sheltered sun-bathed balconies, but rather of a
+high wind making the breakers frill around the jagged bases of the
+cliffs, while above, amid the towans or sandhills covered with bent
+grass, the golf-balls fly. The tang of the air seems once again in my
+nostrils, carrying with it an exhilaration that makes the blood race in
+the veins and entirely prevents tiredness. Only in one place elsewhere
+have I felt that exact stimulus, and that was far west in the
+neighbouring land of Brittany, near the Point du Raz, which stretches
+razor-like into the ocean, and in many respects strikingly resembles a
+bit of the Cornish coast. Many people will object that this is exactly
+what they understand Cornwall does not offer; on the contrary they have
+heard apologies for its stuffiness and the relaxing qualities of the
+air. Why yes, if one visits it in the height of summer, and goes to one
+of the many places situated in a hole or funnel and facing south, it
+might be very relaxing indeed; but the "advertisements for invalids," if
+one may so call them, usually refer to early spring and it is in early
+spring that the invigorating breezes may be found almost anywhere the
+whole way round, while the northern coasts are never stuffy even in
+summer.
+
+Besides unusual golf facilities another feature appealing to the hardy
+and sound are the cliff paths, mere coastguard tracks, unfenced and
+unspoilt, which circle the whole coast. Those who keep to roads will
+never see the real Cornwall and that is why so many motor-bound souls
+miss it. One may wander for days on these cliff paths, lured on from
+point to point and bay to bay, always rejoicing in something new or
+glorious, something which beckons onward. At the foot of the vertical
+walls of rock are tiny sandy bays for ever cut off from the foot of man
+even at low tide, and inaccessible to all save the sea-birds, who well
+know it! My mind brings back visions of great pieces of rock, torn and
+ripped from their hold, and apparently flung pell-mell on the beach.
+Except that they are usually three-cornered and not columnar, they are
+somewhat like the drongs of Shetland in their piercing sharpness.
+Remarkably fine specimens of these isolated rocks are seen at Kynance
+Cove, near the Lizard, and at Bedruthan Steps, in Watergate Bay; but
+almost everywhere some stand up aloof from the neighbouring cliff.
+
+[Illustration: KYNANCE COVE]
+
+Whoever loves the wild desolation of the northernmost Scottish coasts
+will feel at home in Cornwall. Of course the cliffs are not nearly so
+high--most of the Cornish cliffs could go four times into the finest
+specimens of Mull or Shetland--but there is not much lost by this. The
+human mind can only grasp up to a certain amount of size conveyed by the
+eye in vertical measure, and after the first awed glance down a
+1,000-foot cliff, when the mind is almost stunned, the impression
+rapidly wears off, and all the grandeur needed is equally well conveyed
+by 300 feet of sheer precipice, while the details of the natural carving
+and the play of the wild birds on its crevices are far better observed.
+
+The popular idea of Cornwall in the minds of those who have not been
+there is that there runs a long raised ridge down the middle like a
+spine, and that from this on each side the ground slopes away to the
+sea; but this is a very misleading idea. Cornwall is all hills, and yet
+has none to boast of. Brown Willy, not far from Launceston, reaching to
+1,375 feet, is the highest, but yet there is very little flat land
+anywhere. If you took a silk handkerchief, crumpled it up in your hand,
+and threw it on the table, it might fall somewhat as Cornwall is
+constituted. The people who live there are used to hills and not afraid
+of them. Why should they be? In most of the towns--and almost every
+small village is a "church-town," while every stream is a river--the
+streets are often at about the angle of an ordinary house-roof, and as a
+rule there are miles of hill to be negotiated in rising out of the towns
+for they lie in hollows or crevices, corresponding to the folds of the
+handkerchief. This is not wonderful considering the fact that the wind
+blows freely from the sea on both sides, and that it is in the hollows
+and sheltered nooks that vegetation flourishes. There are of course
+exceptions. Take such a town as Launceston. One main street has been
+engineered to go round in curves, so as to enable horses--horses bred to
+the work--to get up it, and at the top there is a bit of level, but most
+of the other streets fall sheer down. When babes who can scarce toddle
+scramble forth from their living-room on to a road slanting at an angle
+of forty-five degrees or more, which forms their only playground,
+naturally their leg muscles get strengthened, and as they grow up and
+have to start off to school, or return from it, up a hill that taxes the
+sinews of a "foreigner" till he groans, they make nothing of it. Roads
+seem to wander at their own sweet will with no inclination to the Roman
+ideal, but they never wander to avoid inclines; they tilt up and down
+again with the most gracious equanimity, and a man on a cycle who has
+struggled up a steep ascent and feels at last he will be able to reap
+the reward, as often as not finds the descent too perilous to ride
+without the utmost caution. Cornwall is not a county for cyclists except
+they be strong in the leg; but it is good country for those pedestrians
+who measure the day's journey by what they have seen and not by ground
+got over as the crow flies, for they can follow the enchanting little
+paths winding in and out by the great headlands of the coast.
+
+Cornwall is no place for being in a hurry.
+
+Many of the most famous sights, such as the great outlying cliffs at
+Gurnard's Head, and the Logan Rock, are not anywhere near a road. The
+roads keep inland, and for very good reason. These places have to be
+reached over long, sloping fields, and entail a good deal of
+scrambling--ideal places to resort to for a whole day with picnic
+provision, so long as one has a clear head and steady foot, but not to
+be sought as a "side-show."
+
+Very many of the little coast places too are down at the end of what may
+be called long shafts, and to the ardent cyclist, intent on mileage, to
+go down, down, down, for miles till he can see the cows grazing in the
+fields high overhead, and to arrive at last at a little port where a few
+old salts sit and smoke and idle, and there is no way of getting out
+again but by the funnel, is a matter for as strong comment as conscience
+permits. Yet again for those who love what is beautiful and unhackneyed,
+there is charm beyond measure in the spirit of these places. In
+Polperro, which might be a bit of Brittany planted wholesale in our
+land; or Fowey, with its unforgettable harbour, where the blue tide
+creeps up like a stain of spreading dye; or in Mullion, with its huge
+rounded masses of rock lying off the coast.
+
+Another popular idea of Cornwall, also mistaken, is that the interior of
+the Duchy is hideous and only the coast beautiful. There is much that is
+ugly no doubt; raw places where the half-grown mounds of rubbish and
+crumbling chimneys mark disused tin-mines; where the sharp and hard
+outlines of slate shriek at you everywhere; where ragged, scrubby fences
+break up an endless series of barren-looking fields, and the whole
+landscape gives the impression that it is flying at a terrific speed
+westward, heading into the prevailing wind, because all the trees and
+shrubs that have managed to survive it at all are bent nearly double.
+But what of the glorious wooded slopes in Bodmin neighbourhood where
+smooth roads wind between the rich growth of woods? What of the famous
+valleys such as Luxulyan and others? There is plenty inland attractive
+enough if one knows where to look for it.
+
+[Illustration: AT POLPERRO]
+
+Perhaps this impression as to the interior has grown because the
+painting fraternity, now a recognized part of Cornish society, mostly
+paint views on or near the coast, having settled chiefly at and near
+Newlyn and St. Ives. Mr. Lewis Hind, in his book on Cornwall, says:
+"Probably two hundred canvases are despatched each year from the
+Delectable Duchy to Burlington House and elsewhere; of this number
+seven-eighths have been painted in Newlyn or St. Ives.... The great
+centres are Newlyn, St. Ives, and Falmouth, and the votes of the
+Cornish contingent, it is said, can turn the scale in an election at the
+Royal Academy."
+
+The truth is, Cornwall must be taken in bits, and often the most hideous
+lie close up alongside the most attractive; however they only help to
+intensify that which is very good. People who look too cursorily are the
+most often disappointed.
+
+Wandering about Cornwall certainly induces one ache, and that is the
+ache to be more knowledgeable. Those lucky creatures who know something
+of botany and geology here have delights not unfolded to others.
+Cornwall is a paradise for the botanist and geologist, because for the
+former there are rare species and some altogether unknown elsewhere,
+such as the _Erica vagans_ so often mentioned, which grows in the
+neighbourhood of the Lizard. In fact Cornwall possesses more
+specialities in plant-life than any other county in England. For the
+latter because even the amateur can see the wonder and difference of the
+rocks: the pink tinged granite of Land's End, the great granite tors
+inland on the moors, and the variegated serpentine at the Lizard, as
+well as the cruel, sharp-edged slate of the northern coast. While as for
+the archaeologist is there any part of Britain that affords him such
+endless material? A mere enumeration of the ancient stone crosses,
+the standing stone circles, the cromlechs, the British huts, the
+earthworks, the cliff-castles, the hill-castles or camps, the stone
+graves, the chambered cumuli, the barrows, and other relics of a
+long-past age, would fill pages. The moors are covered with them and the
+bare heights above Land's End are a rich hunting-ground.
+
+[Illustration: THE COAST NEAR THE LIZARD]
+
+This evidence of the lives and habits of the very ancient inhabitants
+adds much depth and flavour to the "atmosphere," and especially when it
+is remembered that the original Cornish are the purest example of that
+old race--the British. Mr. W. H. Hudson, in his book _The Land's End_,
+quotes Lord Courtney's saying: "The population of Cornwall in general
+has remained much more homogeneous, much more Celtic in type, than in
+other parts; and of all Cornwall there is no part like this [Penzance
+and Land's End district] in which we meet with probably so pure a breed
+of human beings."
+
+The nation now calling itself British has Saxon, Teutonic, French, and
+Norse blood in its veins, as well as that of the original stock; but
+when the successive waves of invaders swept over the country, they
+usually exhausted themselves before reaching this remote corner, into
+which the oldest island stock was swept up.
+
+This probably accounts for the queer impression one often gets in
+Cornwall of being abroad. It comes suddenly, rising like one of the
+Cornish mists and enveloping one, until suddenly the conviction that one
+is across the sea, far from home, flows almost overwhelmingly over the
+mind. There is much more likeness and kinship between parts of Cornwall
+and parts of Brittany than between Cornwall and most of the rest of
+England. There is no doubt that Cornwall differeth not as "one county
+from another county," but as one county from all the rest. Here, where
+the British race had its last stronghold, the stamp of the national
+characteristics was retained in its effects much longer than elsewhere.
+Nowadays of course there is intermarrying and travelling, and frequent
+streams of new blood coming in--half the people you speak to are not
+Cornish at all--but still there is something remaining which stamps them
+as a whole. It has often been noticed that there are traces of Spanish
+blood to be found in the dwellers in the extreme west where many of the
+great Spanish galleons were wrecked in bygone days; just as there are
+found brown faces and black hair in the Fair Isle of the Shetlands,
+where half the population intermarried with some Spaniards of the great
+Armada wrecked on their coast. In this part of Cornwall one constantly
+sees women with clear-skinned faces, dark-brown eyes and hair, of a
+distinctly foreign type. The people, with their rather remote and
+surface friendliness, have often been described. They will greet you
+pleasantly and courteously--courteous manners have lingered here--small
+boys, and men too, still salute a stranger in passing with a greeting,
+and if one asks the way the answer will be no abrupt direction, but a
+careful and minute description repeated until clearly understood. Even
+in Wilkie Collins's time the people were noticeable for their courtesy.
+He says: "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."
+
+As it was then so it is now.
+
+Yet everywhere one feels a want; there is a lack of something. Perhaps
+it is they are too matter-of-fact; a passing jest leaves them puzzled.
+There is none of the dry humour of the Scot, which makes every man you
+meet on the road in Scotland instinctively approach a remark from what
+may be called the humorous angle. As an example of the Cornish lack of
+this quality, when I remarked to a man who was showing me a real fine
+golf-links stretching over the sandy towans of bent-grass, "these
+sandhills are simply made for golf," he answered: "Oh no, they were not
+made for the links; they were here long before!"
+
+The people simply don't understand analogy or imagery; their minds are
+very literal. In this part of the world they may well be literal, for
+the hard necessity of making a livelihood from very poor material must
+crush out fun. Yet in spite of many hardships endured, it is a rare
+thing to see a pale or miserable-looking child. The children are round
+and rosy, with sturdy legs, as indeed they may well have for they need
+them. This general well-being cannot be altogether attributed to the
+pure air, because in the Shetlands and on the West Coast of Scotland
+where the air is just as pure the children are usually brown and thin.
+It may be that this is due to the lack of milk, the heaths of Scotland
+affording scant pasturage, while the constant moisture of the air in
+Cornwall makes the grass grow richly.
+
+At midday you will see the bairns running along the street munching
+great pasties--a Cornish specialty--made with bits of meat and onion and
+potato in a cover of paste, and the pasty seems to be the school-child's
+usual dinner. Another specialty of Cornwall are the yellow saffron
+cakes, so unappetizing in appearance to those unused to them. Of the
+cream there is hardly need to speak. As one ardent admirer of the Duchy
+remarked: "Of course, Devonshire cream _is_ Cornish cream, only they've
+managed to get all the credit for it." In spite of this testimony it
+seems to me there is a difference, the Cornish variety is at once more
+fluid and more lumpy, but this may be an erroneous opinion based on
+insufficient experience.
+
+Of history Cornwall has little. The brightest jewel in her coronet is
+that she stood unfailingly for the Stuarts in the Civil Wars, and many a
+church holds a letter of thanks from King Charles I. Except for the
+struggles of that epoch, the Duchy has little to tell of what may be
+called historical times, but before them much. It is in the misty ages
+before the Norman Conquest that history was made in Cornwall, and every
+now and then we catch fleeting glimpses of scenes standing out bright
+and clear amid a general fog, just as we can to-day catch the vivid
+pictures of the landscape before the grey mists sweep down with
+incredible speed and blot them out. We see Athelstan's terrible fight
+with the Britons; his establishment of the collegiate church at St.
+Buryan in pursuance of his vow, when he returned victorious from the
+Scilly Isles. We get brilliant peeps in the legends of King Arthur; in
+the mysterious beehive huts and stone circles of a people who have
+vanished; in the whimsical tales of the early saints who scattered
+themselves so freely over the land on their arrival from Ireland; and we
+find hieroglyphic messages we cannot read in structures we call
+cromlechs and in the cliff-castles.
+
+Small wonder that Cornwall is a land of legend and story, and that tales
+of fabulous men and wonder-working men abound. In our very earliest
+nursery days, long before we could point to Cornwall on the map, we
+learned to repeat:
+
+    "Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum,
+    I smell the blood of a Cornishman.
+    Let him be alive or let him be dead,
+    I'll grind his bones to make me bread."
+
+And if modern nurseries substitute "Englishman" for "Cornishman," that
+is distinctly their loss. The coast with its mighty fragments and giant
+"chairs" and enormous blocks of stone is quite obviously the home of
+giants.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE GATEWAY OF THE DUCHY
+
+
+The gateway to the Duchy is impressive--that is to say, the gateway by
+which far the largest proportion of visitors enter--the railway bridge
+of the Great Western at Saltash. This marvellous bridge of Brunel's has
+been often described; it does not impress by its beauty for it has none,
+but by its tremendous height and length. It is 2,240 feet from end to
+end, and rises 260 feet above the water. It cuts across the narrowest
+part of that great ganglion of waters which break up the land behind
+Plymouth Sound. On the north lie the broad inlets of the Rivers Tamar
+and Tavy, and to the south that of the St. Germans or Lynher River
+curves away, and all along it the line runs, crossing the broad inlets
+of mud at low tide and shining water at high tide, giving a glimpse of
+the famous Hamoaze at Devonport and the busy dockyards filled with the
+clang of driven rivets.
+
+In the Hamoaze lies the _Powerful_, an establishment consisting of
+three ships for the training of boys, and also the _Impregnable_, used
+for the same purpose, with two ships attached; one of them has a fine
+figure-head of the Black Prince. These are close to the ferry to Mount
+Edgcumbe, the family seat of the Earl of that name. The lads have
+drillgrounds and playgrounds ashore, but live on board. When they all
+swarm about the decks and rigging in their white suits, to rest in the
+sun for a brief half-hour after the midday meal, it is as if a flock of
+sea-birds had alighted on the picturesque old hulk.
+
+In old times the destroyers used to be moored, two by two, when in port,
+just below Saltash Bridge, and this place was called the "destroyer
+trot," but the war has changed all that. Above the bridge are two
+powder-hulks.
+
+If we passed up the river in a small boat we should see a variety of
+bird-life. The most attractive are the cranes, measuring upwards of 5
+feet in length, ash-coloured with blackish wings and black legs. They
+stand and fish on the margin of the river, especially at evening time,
+planted close together like sentinels up to their knees in the water.
+They rise most gracefully and their great wings move slowly in measured
+action. The gulls and rooks are jealous of them, possibly seeing in
+this measured movement some imagined superiority, for they occasionally
+buffet them as they fly. There is a current saying accounting for the
+erratic allotment of days in the spring quarter. It is said that March
+borrowed a few days of February to catch the crane on her nest, but he
+only caught her tail, and so the crane has no tail since then! Milton
+speaks of the migration of the cranes when he says:
+
+    "Part loosely wing the region; part, more wise,
+    In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way,
+    Intelligent of seasons; and set forth
+    Their airy caravan; high over seas
+    Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
+    Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane
+    Her annual voyage, borne on winds, the air
+    Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes."
+
+The most common birds up these tidal rivers are the sheldrake. They are
+plentiful and very tame as they sit dozing away the hours in little
+parties on the tide edge, or flighting over the water with low musical
+quacks. They are extremely white when on the wing--in fact that is how
+one always thinks of them, white and orange. The orange flash is their
+bill, which is brightened in the springtime. They give poor sport for a
+gun, and don't seem to be of much use. They were the wildest of all wild
+fowl but have now taken on the tamest ways.
+
+And all the time in spring you can hear the wild musical note of the
+curlew, and see the dun-coloured birds flitting against the green of the
+woods. They are shy and wary, and common along the shores on the sands
+which are exposed at low water. Ringed plovers can sometimes be seen
+running on the wet surface of the sands at the tide's edge, flocks of
+lapwings too. Teal is by no means infrequent up the rivers, and an
+occasional shag (cormorant) may be noticed swimming far up towards
+Saltash and fishing. In its spring dress, with its horn-like crest, and
+miserable-looking yellow face, and its lustrous dark-green plumage, the
+shag is a handsome bird. Mallard is fairly plentiful in the rivers, and
+you may see flocks sleeping away the day-hours on the flats, and
+recognize them by the longitudinally marked plumage of the drakes.
+Sometimes they fly back and forth as gulls do while they wait for the
+tide to ebb. Small birds there are, of course, in numbers, such as
+wag-tails, sandpipers, and the oddly crying and flying redshank, a shore
+bird. It wheels above the tide-line, or rests, bowing quaintly, on some
+grassy hummock near a pool.
+
+But these things can only be studied in leisured intimacy from a
+slow-going boat passing in the spring-time, when the blackthorn frosts
+the hedges and starry-eyed primroses grow to monstrous size. The train
+which flashes us across the bridge reveals none of them!
+
+In the first glimpse of our first Cornish "town" we catch sight of a
+steep winding street, which serves as full introduction, for in many a
+Cornish town shall we see the same again! And then, even as the train
+runs in the cuttings of Cornish soil, we realize almost at once the
+key-note of Cornwall--the extraordinary richness of growth. Ivy bursts
+over every wall in a perfect cataract; ferns and small wild things fill
+every crevice with their grasping roots, and even in winter there is no
+thinness or barrenness to be felt for evergreens flourish amazingly. The
+wooded reaches of the hills dispel the idea that Cornwall is everywhere
+a treeless land, and the constant dampness of its climate is shown by
+the lichen which clings to every branch and twig like hoar-frost, so
+that in winter the whole mass has a curious shot-green-and-brown
+effect.
+
+[Illustration: OLD BRIDGE AT LOSTWITHIEL]
+
+The West Cornwall Railway, reaching as far as Truro, was opened in 1852,
+and the Cornwall Railway in 1859. Both of these were afterwards absorbed
+by the Great Western Railway.
+
+One of the most beautiful parts of the whole line is that between
+Liskeard and Bodmin Road. The woods run riot on the ever varying slopes,
+and the evergreens are so fine, with their abundance of clean, glossy
+leaves, that even the ordinary country roads have something of the
+appearance of a carefully tended private drive.
+
+The Cornish valleys are especially treasured by the people and much
+admired, because they present such a striking contrast to the high bleak
+uplands. That it is only the wind which prevents the growth of trees may
+be judged from these valleys, where they flourish finely. Take Luxulyan
+Valley, running down to St. Blazey, a place where hundreds come for
+picnics. Even in any part of England it would be admired; here its charm
+is enhanced by its surroundings. There are plenty of trees of a fair
+size, and the sides of the valley are covered with bracken and furze,
+from which peep out great grey rocks. Primroses and violets abound in
+the spring, and the mossy boulders and the extensive variety of ferns
+show a flourishing vegetation almost like that of a fern-house under
+glass. There is something also about the grey lichened rocks bursting
+out of the waist-deep furze and bracken that serves to emphasize the
+fulness of growth. The only drawback about Luxulyan is that it lies in
+the china-clay country, and the stream which runs down to ugly St.
+Blazey is white as milk. This china-clay is one of Cornwall's most
+living industries now that the tin-mining has declined, and the
+pilchards come so scantily. It is the product of decomposed granite
+owing to the action of fluoric acid. The works where it may be seen at
+its best are near Roche, on the little line between Newquay and Fowey,
+and here the piles of white earth might be mistaken for flour or
+whitening by those who did not know what they were. The clay is sent
+down by rail to Fowey, and the greater number of the steamers putting
+into that harbour are engaged in carrying it away. At Roche is an
+extraordinary rock starting sheer up from the plain. On the top was
+formerly a cell or hermitage, of which Norden says quaintly, "It
+standeth upon the wilde moares farr from comon societie."
+
+There are innumerable "singing valleys" in Cornwall, though mostly
+small. I call them so because of the congregation of singing-birds here
+crowded together for lack of nesting-places, instead of being spread
+thinly over the district. As can easily be understood, there is no
+difficulty in nesting for the larks, who make joyous the wide uplands,
+or for the sea-birds who haunt the rugged coast, and only come inland at
+times of storm, or to follow in a white, restless cloud close at the
+heels of the ploughman as he turns up the sod and exposes the fat white
+slugs and delicious grubs. Nor is there any difficulty for the smaller
+hedge-birds, least of all the wrens, who, like red-brown butterflies,
+flit in perfect safety to the roomy depths of the age-old "hedges."
+These hedges in Cornwall are, particularly in the west, but a core of
+hard stone piled loosely together and covered with mud or sod and the
+growth of many generations of plant-life, and knitted by creeping plants
+till they stand broad-based and immovable like ramparts, and are used as
+paths by the inhabitants, who pass quickly and safely from one swampy
+field to another along their turfy tops. Indeed in flooded winter-time
+it is often the only possible path, and when the main road lay deep in
+water I have been reduced to dragging my bicycle on to the summit of a
+"hedge" and wheeling it precariously along. Such places are paradises
+for Jenny Wren, who springs into the maze of twisted stalks and heavy
+leaves, and hops about the spacious corridors in the perpetual twilight,
+perfectly secure from intrusion. Smaller birds too can make shift with
+the windblown specimens of shrubs that sometimes adorn such hedges, but
+the great majority prefer something of larger size and so gather
+wherever trees make an oasis.
+
+One such "singing valley" is Landewednack, near the Lizard, called
+locally Church Cove, one of the sweetest of the Cornish chines. The
+little church is charming architecturally with its weathered pinnacles
+crowning the grey stone tower. The small-leaved Cornish elms cluster
+round the graveyard, and show through their warped and twisted stems
+glimpses of the infinite blue sea, giving an idea of boundless
+expansion, and adding to the snugness of the shut-in valley. The
+emerald-green moss clings thickly to the westward or windward side of
+the crusted trunks, and at their foot what a riot of vegetation! The
+sound of running water and the brilliant green of the grass, as well as
+the masses of long hart's-tongue ferns falling abundantly from the
+churchyard wall, all tell of perpetual moisture. Passing beyond the
+church, we come to a few thatched cottages placed anglewise to the
+steeply falling road, and near them see an immense hedge of veronica
+covered with big, furry, heliotrope-coloured blossoms, affording shelter
+to the straggling blue periwinkles below. Every niche and crevice of the
+wall shows small, green, flat leaves crawling out to the sun and light.
+Only a short way below, the cove comes to an abrupt end, and there is a
+steep drop made smooth for the boats, which have to be hauled up by
+pulleys, while the sea below for ever beats on the huge black stones.
+The marvel is how the boats are ever got up and down such a place, and
+that marvel confronts one everywhere in Cornwall. This cove is typical
+of hundreds,--vegetation down almost to the water's edge, a haunt of
+singing-birds, a tiny steep cove very inconvenient and dangerous for
+landing, and mighty cliffs rising at each side.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE "TOE" OF CORNWALL
+
+
+Penzance is strongly reminiscent of the Channel Isles to those who know
+both. There is the same odd mixture of sternness in the bare outlines of
+the stone houses--as bare as those on the Cumbrian Fells--and the
+unexpected luxuriance of growth, the flourishing tree-shrubs such as
+hydrangeas and fuchsias, in backyards and odd corners. When one gets a
+vista down the Morab Gardens in the midst of the town, with the steep
+green depths framed by the bushy-topped palms falling away to the
+brilliant blue sea, one might almost be having a peep in the Riviera, if
+we accept the lack of orange-trees, with their golden lamps, so
+beautiful to the sight, so disappointing to the taste! It is surprising
+to those coming from harsher parts of England to see the deprecating
+droop of the blue-grey tongues of the eucalyptus, the feathery grace of
+clumps of bamboo, and the glossy-leaved bushes of camellia. At any rate,
+whatever one compares the place with, one is conscious of an odd
+surprise at its un-English characteristics.
+
+[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT]
+
+The "front" is not the great attraction at Penzance. No doubt the
+wonderful bay, with its priceless jewel of St. Michael's Mount, does at
+all times satisfy the imagination; but the flat esplanade, the
+singularly ineffective strip for sea-bathing, and the rather dull style
+in which most of the houses are built, are not in themselves attractive.
+The bay can be seen better elsewhere, from the heights of the very ample
+churchyard of St. Mary's for instance, overlooking the grey slate roofs,
+or from Newlyn Hill, when at sunset time all the colours of the spectrum
+may be reflected on the Mount, and the only thing one can say with
+perfect certainty is that it is never twice exactly alike. One of the
+most lovely visions is when the sun catches it through a rift in sombre
+clouds, bathing it in a kind of unearthly radiance or dawning light,
+while Penzance, with its tall-pinnacled church tower, is all mouse-grey.
+And when a rainbow arches over one side of the steep slope, as I have
+seen it, it is almost unearthly.
+
+Sometimes the Mount disappears entirely, melting into its background, or
+only the castle is left visible, apparently unsupported except by a
+filmy mist. There is no end to the vagaries played by the lights and
+shadows and sea-colours on this wonderful instrument. Indeed the Mount
+is chiefly valuable for this reason, because, owing to the fact that it
+is private property, and that access to it is much restricted, it is not
+nearly so much an object of intrinsic interest as its grand counterpart
+in Brittany.
+
+It must be a strange place to live on. When the St. Levan family arrive
+they have to go over by launch from Penzance, probably after a long
+journey by rail; and the weather, if tempestuous, must make even such a
+short crossing unpleasant. Once there, there is the stupendous steep to
+climb--no trifle, even though the roads are graded. Dining out with
+county neighbours must be an almost impossible feat, and grand as the
+surroundings are, they must pall very soon because of their limitations.
+Tradition says that the men-folk of the family are not supposed to be
+able to swim properly until they can swim all round the Mount, a fine
+undertaking in view of the rocks and shoals!
+
+The Mount in Brittany is only 57 feet higher, but looks much larger,
+which is curious, as it stands considerably farther out to sea, being
+11/4 miles away; the Cornish one is only about 1,200 feet from the
+mainland. Perhaps the reason is the greater variety and grandeur of the
+buildings on St. Michel.
+
+The old name of Marazion was Market-jew, and the two together certainly
+make most people imagine there is some Israelitish association; but this
+is unfounded. Marazion is "the market by the seaside," and Market-jew
+"the market on the side of the hill." Some have supposed the Mount to
+have been the Ictis of the ancient tin trade, where the merchants from
+far met the inhabitants to barter for tin. "When they have cast it [the
+tin] into the form of cubes, they carry it to a certain island adjoining
+Britain called Ictis. During the recess of the tide the intervening
+space is left dry, and they carry over abundance of tin in carts"
+(Diodorus Siculus). Many other islands have been suggested to fit this
+account, even the Isle of Wight; but the bed of the sea must have
+changed very quickly if people could in historic times pass over to it
+on foot at low tide!
+
+The legend of the fair land of Lyonnesse is supported by the evidence of
+a submarine forest in Mount's Bay, noted by Borlase in 1757. This seems
+to have been a wood chiefly of hazel, but with alders, oaks, and other
+trees, and is by no means the only case of a submerged forest being
+found around the shores of Cornwall. Great trunks have been disclosed,
+and even hazel-nuts and twigs; but it is a big step from the subsidence
+of some parts of the shore and the consequent submergence of forest
+land, to the story of the overwhelming of such a land as Lyonnesse,
+reaching out as far as Scilly and containing many villages and churches.
+
+To return to Penzance. The town is very irregular, its meandering
+streets meet at all angles, and here and there are linked by narrow,
+passage-like cross-cuts, ofttimes as steep as wynds. There is a very
+noticeable prevalence of Nonconformist places of worship, and these
+show, as most of their kind do, a hideous lack of architectural beauty,
+a sort of defiance of the pride of the eye. The Cornishmen since
+Wesley's crusade have been strongly Nonconformist, notwithstanding the
+fact that Wesley himself was a son of the Church. They probably find the
+rigidity of the Established Church too formal for their fervent souls.
+Nonconformity appeals to them as it does to their cousins the Welsh, and
+it is a curious thing that St. Mary's, the most ancient of the churches,
+should be the opposite of this, with ritualistic services, whence the
+smell of incense is wafted into the uncompromising streets.
+
+[Illustration: NEWLYN]
+
+The greatest son of Penzance is Sir Humphry Davy, who was born here in
+1778. He belonged to an old Cornish family. His statue stands at the
+head of the sloping Market-jew Street.
+
+Though Penzance has not in itself anything very remarkable to show in
+the way of beauty, it is certainly a good centre for excursions, being
+at the very joint of the swollen and deformed "toe" of the county. Roads
+start from it in all directions over this much-sought peninsula, and it
+would be easy to spend not one, but many weeks hunting out all the
+quaint and interesting things, both natural and artificial, to be seen
+within reasonable distance.
+
+Newlyn, home of the painting colony known all the world over, is close
+to Penzance, and straggles up the side of a terrific hill. Rows of
+stereotyped villas in terraces now overlook the bay, and are eagerly
+taken as they are built. But round the harbour linger still the odours
+of the typical old fishing village, and there are few sights more
+suggestive to the imagination than the scattering of the red-sailed
+fishing-boats as one by one they pass at evening time out between the
+narrow horns of the harbour to their rough, wet nights of toil in the
+clammy sea air. Newlyn is famous for its apple-blossom, and the vision
+of the bay between masses of apple-blossom in springtime is one never to
+be forgotten. Newlyn itself is easily accessible compared with
+Mousehole, right round the corner, tucked away under the cliff. Here a
+name for once is thoroughly suitable, for the little place is hemmed in
+by the towering hills, and the principal ways on foot out of it are by
+tiny overgrown lanes, so narrow that two people can hardly pass, so
+steep that in places they are veritable staircases, with rotten wooden
+steps, or those made from hollowed mud worn by many feet. Yet whether
+the name really does mean what it appears to, or is only a corruption of
+some other word with a totally different significance, is not known. R.
+Edmonds (_Land's End District_) suggests "Mozhel" or "Mouzhel," meaning
+maids' brook or river, as a stream used for washing by the women runs
+through the town.
+
+The constant steep places in Cornwall are a great puzzle to many people
+who come with an idea that the Duchy is neatly and evenly sloped, rising
+in the middle and falling down to the sea on each side. As has been
+explained, this is very far from the truth. A pilgrimage round the
+county is like climbing a succession of ridges. The steeps are so steep
+that they demand real physical effort, and even the drops put a strain
+on unaccustomed leg-muscles. Newlyn Hill taxes the strength of those
+coming from normally level districts. It is to be hoped that only horses
+born and bred in Cornwall are used for the charabancs and other public
+vehicles; it would be sheer cruelty to bring horses from flat-lands
+here.
+
+If we scrambled along the coast beyond Mousehole we should come to
+Lamorna Cove, a deep indentation filled with scrub-bush and small trees.
+Wherever it is possible trees grow in Cornwall; they take advantage of
+every atom of shelter, and every cleft in the ground out of the raging
+wind is filled with them.
+
+The soil is wonderfully fertile, and the constant wet--not even its most
+ardent admirer denies that Cornwall gets rather more than its share of
+rain--develops a prodigal amount of growth in the way of ferns and
+creepers and other plants that like warm moisture. At Lamorna is a
+colony of artists; they have settled here as an outpost from Newlyn, for
+the natural beauty and remoteness of the place suit them. They have
+their picturesque houses within friendly reach all up and down the
+little glen, and take pride in their gardens, with wonderful rockeries
+and babbling streams, and all the rich growth that the soil and climate
+bring forth. They drop in on one another at all hours, and know all
+about each other's concerns. They are a friendly, kindly,
+generous-hearted clan. Here, where the woods are white with hawthorn in
+the spring, the stream gushes down in endless waterfalls, and the waves
+burst and break on the rocks in the cove below, every one of them can
+find endless scenes for his or her brush.
+
+Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick's book, _In Other Days_, gives a picture of Lamorna
+Valley in the guise of fiction: "It was a brilliant March day, warm in
+the sun, cold in the wind. The gorse and the blackthorn were both out,
+spreading the wild copse and common of the valley with a shimmer of
+white and gold. The old bracken still lay in patches of ruddy brown,
+primroses were just beginning shyly, and the short grass of the open
+places had not put on its summer hues yet. The sky was clear and deep,
+with little white clouds scudding across it; larks were singing, and in
+the distance sounds of men at work in the fields were heard. The air was
+scented with herbs and fresh from the sea, but sheltered by the lie
+of the low hills, and by old, long-neglected trees. In some places the
+trees were of a great height and girth, making a gloom over the huge
+moss-grown granite rocks strewing the earth and edging the little
+stream.... A small swamp full of peppermint scented the air."
+
+[Illustration: LAMORNA COVE]
+
+That is the work of a close observer.
+
+In this neighbourhood there are many of those curious relics of bygone
+times, which are bestrewn about Cornwall more thickly than any other
+part of England. The Fougou Hole in one of the gardens is a weird place,
+and its meaning and use is even yet little understood. It is a tiny,
+damp vault, made of great, unhewn stones, and reached by a hole in the
+ground. Here it is said harried cavaliers took shelter in the Civil
+Wars, but the Hole is much older than that; it dates back to those
+strange times beyond the dawn of history of which we only get vague
+glimpses.
+
+In the fields above, gaunt stones rise like pointing fingers to the sky.
+These are called "The Pipers," and mark the scene of Athelstan's defeat
+of the British in 936; it is the "place of blood." But if they were
+really erected by Athelstan in the tenth century, and are not, as is
+possible, relics of Druid worship, they are modern compared with the
+Fougou Hole. Not far from them, in the midst of a grass-field, are the
+"Merry Maidens," a circle of grey stones about 24 yards in diameter;
+there are nineteen of them altogether, none quite the height of a man,
+and some much smaller. They convey an impression of immovable solemnity,
+as such age-old things always do, for they are planted so securely, and
+look so indomitable with their grey, lichen-covered sides four-square to
+the winds. Local tradition tells how the Merry Maidens were caught
+dancing on the Sabbath to the music of the pipers, and turned to stone,
+but history is silent as to their origin. There is indeed all over
+Cornwall many a reminder of the ancient world now lost to all record. In
+various other places are to be found other circles of Merry Maidens just
+as much of a problem as these, but none so perfect or so impressive.
+
+The long, narrow, rectangular tower of St. Buryan, crowned with
+pinnacles, dominates all the landscape; exactly of this pattern are most
+of the Cornish church towers. They are generally as much alike as if
+they had been turned out of a mould. This is one of the most interesting
+of the many interesting churches in Cornwall. After Athelstan's
+triumphant victory near Lamorna, he vowed he would establish here a
+large religious foundation if he were successful in his further
+expedition to the Scilly Isles; and when he returned a conqueror he
+carried out his vow. This was about 930. Of course, there is nothing
+remaining of that church, but the present building contains much
+grotesque carving of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the
+greater part of the building must have stood from the fifteenth or
+sixteenth. There is a peacefulness about the ancient church, set in the
+long, billowing fields bordered by rugged hedges, gorse and ivy-grown,
+that appeals peculiarly to some natures. It is all very quiet.
+
+Down on the shore, not many miles away, is a great pile of splintered
+rocks jutting out into the sea, to be reached by a narrow neck. This is
+Treryn Dinas or Castle, where is the famous Logan stone. The striking
+thing about the rocks is that so many take the form of cubes, some of
+the most astounding being almost exactly the shape of the ancient
+Egyptian obelisks. There are so many shattered, square-edged lumps,
+resting on small bases, that the difficulty to the stranger is to
+discover the real Logan Rock, which brings hundreds of visitors to the
+place in summer. This headland has evidently been at one time a
+fortified cliff-castle, and in passing over to the peninsula visitors
+cross the first line of defence or earthworks, though few would notice
+it.
+
+From Penzance we might run out by any one of the diverging roads across
+the peninsula, and be sure of coming upon some relic of the most ancient
+race inhabiting these islands.
+
+By way of Madron we should pass the Lanyon Quoit or Cromlech, a great
+slab of rock 18 feet long, supported on three other slabs which are just
+a little too low to allow a man to stand upright beneath it. In 1816 it
+fell or was blown down; before this a mounted man could sit under it.
+When Lieutenant Goldsmith in 1824 committed the silly trick of upsetting
+the Logan Rock, and was condemned by the Admiralty to rebalance it at
+his own expense, the apparatus brought down to the duchy for the purpose
+was also used to replace the cap of the Cromlech, though why it should
+be of less height now than before is not known.
+
+Amid the bleak hills around are to be found constant remains of ancient
+British villages, rather in the manner of the Picts' houses of Scotland.
+That the strange people who lived in them thrashed corn for food and
+kept cattle, there is plenty of evidence. They lived in these little
+beehive huts, which were sometimes placed singly, sometimes two or
+three together, often with an embankment round, or a good cave near for
+retreat if necessary. The huts are circular and built without cement or
+mortar. Fragments of pottery have been found in and around. Some of them
+are near Chun Castle, that ancient earthwork, one of the half-dozen or
+so in the "toe" of Cornwall. This district was the last stronghold of
+the British race, who had retreated before the Western invaders to the
+very extremity of the land.
+
+By any one of these roads we should come at last out on to the coast
+road--rather grandiloquently called "The Atlantic Drive"--running from
+Land's End to St. Ives. This has been compared with the famous Corniche
+drives of the Riviera. But beware! Don't expect too much, or you will be
+terribly disappointed. Yet if you go with an open mind, expecting
+nothing, you will see something of very real interest and carry away new
+knowledge.
+
+The fields are in many places simply covered with stones. How the corn
+finds room to grow is a miracle. The constant winds try everything
+growing very severely, and there is a look of bare poverty about the
+land. It is often compared with Ireland, and called the Connemara of
+England; but in some ways, especially in the amount of stones, it is
+more like bits of Galloway. Stone is employed for objects which
+elsewhere are usually made of wood. The stiles are broad slabs of
+granite, the gate-posts are granite blocks, and as we have seen, the
+very "hedges" are stone. The name Zennor suggests gauntness of a Puritan
+kind. The whole of the great hill above Zennor is covered with immense
+and, if one may use such an expression, dignified stones. Away up among
+them is another huge quoit or cromlech, probably marking the
+burial-place of some chieftain long before Arthur's date. It is a grand
+place for burial too, austere and solemn, overlooking the ocean, and
+with a limitless horizon. The man who was buried here must have had
+imagination if he chose the spot for himself beforehand. The tearing
+winds shriek over the ragged furze and mighty stones, and howl in the
+crevices of the monument above him; the great black clouds roll in, and
+the whole country is drowned in a blinding squall of hail; the sky
+clears, patches of brilliant blue appear, and the sun strikes down on
+the dripping stones, while all the little rills and streams race down
+the soaking ground and over the roads in the wayward manner of Cornish
+streams; and still the old chieftain sleeps on, lulled by all the music
+of Nature in this wild outpost which England thrusts into the sea.
+
+The road surface round here is tolerably good. Much of it is granite,
+and the tiny crystals glitter in the sun like diamonds, and quickly dry
+up after the whirlwinds of rain that pitilessly descend in winter time.
+The road winds along around the desolate hills, keeping mostly rather
+far inland, and it passes by acres of rough land covered with the
+wayward gorse, where small, fox-red cows take an interest in the
+stranger. In spring primroses grow to enormous sizes, with leaves as
+large as those of foxgloves; and the foxgloves in their turn decorate
+the hedges, rearing their tall spikes of magenta-coloured bells in
+profusion. Pigs abound, and great grey sheep-dogs, of the Old English
+bobtail breed, come shyly to make friends. And everywhere in
+irrepressible masses is the furze, the quick-burning fuel of the poor, a
+godsend here where wood is so precious.
+
+Almost due west of Penzance is the mining region, where until lately
+there was great activity, now comparatively still. St. Just is the
+centre of this district; but it is not what one would expect in a
+mining town. Right in the heart of it, where now the children make their
+playground, is a great amphitheatre, one of the best known and preserved
+of the many like it that at one time held hundreds of Cornish folk to
+watch the open-air plays that delighted their hearts until Wesley's
+teaching made them think them wrong. After that they served as
+meeting-places for Wesley himself in many instances. The church, with
+some peculiarly quaint frescoes, and the Plan-an-guare, the plane as it
+is called locally, give St. Just a character of its own. Down one
+terrific hill, falling at an angle that no one unless he lived in
+Cornwall would dare to make a road, and up another, is Botallack, with
+its well-known mine, now stilled, and the taint of the red tin is felt
+in earth and air for many a mile beyond.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+FURTHEST WEST AND FURTHEST SOUTH
+
+
+It has been the invariable creed of every writer on Cornwall that
+visitors seeing the Land's End for the first time must be disappointed
+with it. Disappointment there may be after a very cursory inspection,
+but it is evanescent. It only lasts as one approaches across the flat
+ugly ground where sodden patches of raw earth lie in ridges, and the dun
+walls of the unsightly hotel present their dreariest side to the
+newcomers. Particularly is this so in the height of the season, when
+public vehicles of every variety and degree of manginess decorate the
+landscape and the picture-postcard craze is at its strongest.
+
+But those who stay long enough to see the place quietly or those who
+visit it in the winter when there are few disturbers of the peace, tell
+another story.
+
+The reef of broken and pinkish tinged granite, decorated by weird
+streaks of brilliant yellow lichen, is frequented by "guides" who point
+out fancy resemblances to faces in the weather carven rocks. The reef is
+small; there is not much that is grand about it; but if one sits there
+while the sun sinks, a glowing ball, into the sea exactly opposite, and
+the ruby and diamond points of the lighthouses flash out far and wide,
+and perhaps a clear pale sickle moon begins to sharpen in outline in the
+fading sky, there is plenty on which to exercise the imagination. The
+granite, being split by the action of the weather into long columns, and
+divided again horizontally into blocks, gives the impression of a series
+of obelisks built up of separate stones. The general effect is rather
+like the famous cavern at Staffa. In places however the rocks are split
+into such massive and even-edged blocks that it is very difficult to
+disentangle the natural from the artificial, and one often imagines
+oneself to be gazing at the ruins of a castle which is really only some
+cloven cliff hammered by natural elements and not by tools of man's
+making.
+
+On the seaward side the hotel lounge has been carried out in a great
+bay, and from the sweep of windows there are no less than four
+lighthouses to be seen, with their varying flashes. The bright ruby
+spot is the Longships Light on a grisly reef so near that it looks as if
+you could throw a stone upon it, though really two miles away. It is
+only red on the landward side. Ships usually pass outside this reef
+unless the sea is very calm, for it is a dangerous coast. It seems
+hardly believable that at times the men in the lighthouse are held up
+for two months by the swell which prevents their relief arriving, but so
+it is, and even on the calmest days it is no easy matter to land. The
+Longships is a reef composed of several rocky islets, some of which are
+connected by bridges and in fine weather the men can walk about and even
+fish, but in rough weather the great doors in the tower are closed for
+days together. When the swell comes, rolling from out the profoundly
+disturbed depths of the Atlantic and heralding a storm, the sheeted foam
+flies high above the lantern and often the last vision one has before
+night drops like a black curtain is that white froth of breaking foam
+around the glowing red eye in the tower. Further out to the south is the
+well-known Wolf Lighthouse, and far to the west that on the Scilly
+Isles.
+
+Even in the depth of winter, on clear white frosty moonlight nights,
+there are those who motor down to see the Land's End by moonlight, but
+usually the "trip" element occupies a very small part of the day and of
+the year; and for the greater part of the time the place is strangely
+solitary. When the storms beat on the coast, driven by the wild west
+winds, the boom and clangour is heard as far inland as Lamorna Cove.
+
+The chief characteristic of the weather is its uncertainty; there are
+clear bright intervals when the sea and sky are of electric blue and the
+headlands are etched out on them in black, and then all in a moment the
+lowering wall of storm comes up visibly; the outlines of everything are
+obliterated in one sweep, and a squall of hail as big as peas shrieks
+around, whitening the ground, then flies on in its mad course, to be
+succeeded by the joyous freshness of the clean-washed air and the glory
+of the vivifying sun. In winter time it is not safe to go two hundred
+yards from the hotel without a mackintosh, and yet just across the waste
+of heather along the little sheep tracks on the slopes, what wonderful
+views are to be seen in the steep-sided bays filled with a smother of
+foam, where the stones being driven irresistibly against one another
+grind off their harshnesses.
+
+It is a terrible coast, and nearly always, even on the calmest day,
+when the wolves might be supposed to be sleeping, the sudden baring of a
+fang in the whitening of some jagged rock, a moment before invisible,
+shows the lurking danger.
+
+But what perhaps catches the imagination most sharply at that "raw edge"
+is the tradition of the Land of Lyonnesse, lying between here and the
+Scilly Isles.
+
+There seems very little foundation for this poetic fable and though, as
+already said, the roots and trunks of trees have been found in Penzance
+Bay and it is possible there may have been some landslip on a large
+scale in prehistoric times, there seems geologically nothing to point to
+a complete submergence of miles of land at the extremity of Cornwall.
+Tradition speaks of a land covered with villages and churches--indeed,
+no less than a hundred and forty churches--all buried in the shifting
+water by reason of one great convulsion, and Tennyson has placed here
+the scene of Arthur's rule and his last battle:
+
+    "For Arthur, when none knew from whence he came,
+    Long ere the people chose him for their King,
+    Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,
+    Had found a glen, grey boulder and black tarn."
+
+And again:
+
+    "So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
+    Among the mountains by the winter sea;
+    Until King Arthur's Table, man by man,
+    Had fall'n in Lyonnesse about their lord."
+
+The Scilly Isles are supposed to be the tops of the hills belonging to
+the lost land and so are the Seven Stones, a jagged ridge midway between
+them and Land's End, whence in fine weather the isles can be seen as
+faint cirrus clouds lying along the horizon. But though this is the
+nearest point to the islands, they can only be reached by steamer from
+Penzance, the _Lyonnesse_ going and returning alternate days. There is
+no harbour at Land's End and the cruel fanged rocks would make the
+direct voyage very dangerous, so the journey has to be lengthened out
+from Penzance.
+
+As for the islands themselves, those who brave the crossing come away
+with strangely mixed feelings according to their temperament. If they go
+bathed in the glamour of _Armorel of Lyonnesse_, by far the best of
+Besant's books, they will see the romance and charm of these windswept
+bits of rock. If they are there in the spring they will visit with
+delight the acres of carefully tended flowers guarded by high thick
+walls and hedges from the ever sweeping western winds; if a little
+later in the nesting time of gull and guillemot, razor-bill, puffin and
+cormorant, say the first week in June, then the sights of bird-life will
+well repay them. They may even find the nesting-places of the tern,
+shearwater, or such voracious pirates as the kestrel and peregrine, or
+the stormy petrel; but this will be in the outlying islets, as the
+greater traffic and population of late years has driven many of the shy
+birds away. The halcyon days when sea and sky are one soft blue dome and
+the water washes and laps around the rocky shores give a glimpse of
+peace and remoteness such as one might imagine form part of heaven. The
+masses of cloud piled up in towering grandeur, the vast horizons and
+even the beat of the sudden squalls will find response in some people.
+But there are few save islanders born and bred who can revel in the lash
+and struggle and constant menace of the black winter days.
+
+Surrounded by water on all sides the temperature is kept equable, hence
+it is that narcissus, violets, anemones, daffodils and other of the
+earliest spring flowers can be grown in the open and sent to be
+delivered in London weeks before the home counties can produce them.
+
+It is rather curious that the name by which the whole group is known
+should not be that of the largest, or even of one of the largest,
+islands. Scilly is a mere rock rising from the sea to the west of
+Bryher, it is flat and cleft in two by a deep chasm through which the
+water runs. The currents are very strong and it is not often a landing
+is possible here. St. Mary's, the principal island, is the one where the
+steamers arrive, at Hugh Town. This name has not any authentic
+derivation, though it has been suggested it may be connected with the
+word "huer," to call or cry out. Tresco is next in size, and in summer a
+steam launch runs across to it from St. Mary's. Here lives the
+proprietor of the Scillies, Mr. Dorrien-Smith, in a comfortable house
+amid a perfectly glorious garden, in which are the ruins of an old Abbey
+built in the time of Henry I. There is some fine rock-scenery to be
+found in the outlying islets, if one takes the trouble to look for it in
+a boat, and some of the views of the scattered islands seen from a
+height on a clear day can never be forgotten.
+
+To the north of Land's End is the sweeping curve of Whitesand Bay
+leading up to Cape Cornwall. It is possible to bathe off the shore with
+certain precautions. Directly inland is the little village of Sennen,
+which for many years boasted "The First and Last" house in England; and
+down on the shore Sennen Cove, where the families of the lighthouse men
+live, and the Atlantic cable comes ashore.
+
+Whitesand Bay has historical memories; Athelstan sailed from here to
+conquer the Scilly Isles after his sanguinary victory at St. Buryan. It
+was a bold undertaking considering the means at his disposal. The shore
+of Whitesand, which is low-lying on an otherwise iron-bound coast, has
+naturally been the landing-place for those who arrived at this extremity
+of England. Stephen disembarked here when he first came to the country
+from France and so did Perkin Warbeck. In the centre of the bay the
+granite and slate meet and mingle.
+
+No other place can vie with the Cornish coast for curious and suggestive
+names. We have here Vell-an-Dreath meaning "The Mill on the Sand." All
+traces of the mill have disappeared, but the tradition of it lingers. It
+was kept by a father and son, it is said, who found themselves attacked
+by a roving gang of Spaniards who had landed to harry the country. The
+native Cornishmen made a stout resistance, and finally escaped the back
+way under protection of a cloud of smoke, carrying stout sacks of flour
+on their backs to protect them from bullets. The Spaniards destroyed the
+mill, which was never rebuilt.
+
+Close to the southern end of the bay is a detached rock called The Irish
+Lady, which with some imagination may be likened to a mincing dame
+flouncing out to sea. Such rocks are not at all uncommon in Cornwall,
+one, very well known, is Queen Bess at Bedruthan Steps. Towering above
+the lady on the mainland is Pedn Men Dhu, Black Rock Headland, a pile of
+massive granite. Further along we find Carn Barges, the Kites' Rock;
+Carn Towan, the Rock on the Sandhills; Polpry Cove, the Clay-Pit; Carn
+Leskez, the Rock of Light, said to be where the Druids kindled their
+sacred fires, but much more likely the place where faked beacon fires
+were lit to lure ships to destruction in the bad old days! Close off
+Cape Cornwall are the Brisons, two fearful shattering piles, and near
+them Priests' Cove, right under the headland.
+
+The coast to the south of Land's End is even more interesting, and if
+any of those who say they are "disappointed" with Land's End could walk
+round here they would soon recover. The coast-line is serrated by
+innumerable small bays like deep bites and in each one some wild and
+strange rock-forms imitating natural objects can be seen. We pass at
+first by Carn Greab, Cock's Comb Rock, where a conspicuous group
+includes the Armed Knight, and then we come to a tiny island called Enys
+Dodman, which has a great archway scored through it by the action of the
+waves. Pardenick Point rises perpendicularly about two hundred feet from
+the sea; the curious "pillar" appearance of the rocks is very striking,
+and not less so the reddish veins which run like streams sheer down the
+granite in places. Anyone lingering here, as the sun sets and the
+shadows grow long, can make out all sorts of weird shapes and haunting
+faces in the cliffs, as odd as any mediaeval artist's conceptions
+embodied in gargoyles. We pass Mozrang Pool, the Maid's Pool, and then
+the Red Rock, and the Chilly Carn; next a chasm called by the poetical
+name of "The Song of the Sea," and so to the "Cove under the Vale." All
+along the coast, those who have time to explore it will find strange
+sea-caverns, logan-stones, natural arches and other fantastic forms.
+
+Then we reach Tol Pedn, where is quite the grandest scenery in the
+whole district. Approaching from the landward side on an autumn or late
+summer day the heights are seen covered by a wonderful carpet of purple
+or crimson and gold. It is made by the intermingling of the dwarf gorse
+and the heather, which are so interwoven they could not be separated. As
+the result of this close embrace these two plants, both small, form a
+gorgeous tapestry of colour, and the vast heights and sounding hollows
+of the headland are glorified by them. Tol Pedn means Holed Headland and
+evidently refers to the Funnel, a great chasm a hundred feet in depth
+and eight feet in diameter, cut out as if by a giant cheese-scoop down
+to the roaring sea. Below, the tide scours the bottom at every return,
+and at low tide it is possible to enter from the beach. In early spring
+the close sward on the higher reaches is starred with little blue
+squills. Great care must be taken not to slip and lose one's balance on
+this short turf, because in Cornwall one is never fenced in by puny
+supports. The Chair Ladder usually attracts much wonder, it is an
+immense pile of upright blocks. The whole scarping and shaping of the
+cliff is vigorous and original, and looking down from above into one
+gully after another you can see the gulls float in effortless dignity
+over the measureless gulfs below.
+
+Just round the corner from Tol Pedn is to be found one of the quaintest
+little fishing villages, Porthgwarra, where a tunnel has been cut
+through the solid rock to allow the fishermen to get down to their
+boats. The rocks are fine red granite, and with the brilliant blue of
+the sea on a sunny day and the yellow ochres of sand and sail there are
+"ready-made" pictures at every turn. Looking out from the darkness of
+the tunnel the colours are enhanced. One of the most attractive points
+about the many mighty caverns along the coast are the clean-cut,
+brilliantly clear pictures to be seen from their dark interiors.
+
+All these and many other curious and fantastic things may be found by
+those sure of eye and foot. For one of the greatest charms of Cornwall
+is its variety and unexpectedness, at all events as regards the coast.
+
+For a hundred people who go to Land's End it is safe to say only one
+visits the Lizard. Though the usual run of tourist conveyances have
+found it out, it is more difficult to get to than the western extremity,
+and is a little out of the way. Yet in the opinion of those who have
+seen both the Lizard beats even the fantastic scenery to the southward
+of Land's End.
+
+The approach is nothing short of lamentable in its dulness. Except for
+an oasis about half-way across Goonhilly Downs, the wide, flat,
+dead-alive plateau occupying the heel of Cornwall, there is nothing to
+note. Even right on to the end the feeling of dismay grows. The meek
+green fields carry one down almost to the shore, for though we have come
+across a bit of heath _en route_ which recalls how repeatedly we have
+been told that the _Erica vagans_ grows here and nowhere else, we leave
+this behind and wind once more between grass fields toward the dreary
+little cluster of houses called Lizard-town, which looks not unlike a
+forsaken coast-guard station from the distance. To reach the famous
+Housel Bay Hotel we must branch off before getting to the town, and
+following a lane which looks as if it led merely to a lighthouse, we
+come quite suddenly on the building, facing due south in the centre of a
+little bay. Not until we have passed the hotel and got out to the cliff
+paths does the surprising interest of the scenery begin to unveil
+itself, and the orderly sanity of the fields, which vexed our eager
+souls, is forgotten. On the two horns of the bay stand the flashing
+lighthouse and Lloyds' signal station. We are here at the most
+southerly, as we have just been at the most westerly, point of our
+country.
+
+The cliffs are carved into many fantastic and bewildering shapes. Before
+we have got very far we are brought up short by an immense hole or
+funnel, cut clean-lipped from the short turf, and just the shape of one
+of those paper twists shop-keepers make for sweets. It is much larger in
+circumference than the Funnel at Tol Pedn. No railing protects the edge;
+people at the Lizard are supposed to have their wits about them. By
+lying down flat and approaching cautiously, we can peer over and see
+that here also the sea runs in on the floor. This is one of the cliff
+vagaries made within the memory of man. On the night of February 19,
+1847, the hole appeared suddenly, yet so quietly that no one knew of it
+until it was seen. There had apparently been a shell or roof which had
+given way as the sea scooped out the earth from below. Yet that such a
+sudden catastrophe is possible shows how little we know about what goes
+on under our feet.
+
+A little further on a column of spray shoots in fluffy steam from a
+blow-hole every few seconds after the last billow has fallen away. Near
+it a huge boulder perched on a great plinth balances at an uncertain
+angle. How did it get there? At every turn "chairs" of stone extend a
+silent invitation to us to seat ourselves and gaze at the ships passing
+and repassing in a silent and endless procession.
+
+The Serpentine rock streaked with hornblende, felspar, slate and
+green-stone, shows changing colours like a pigeon's breast. It weathers
+into columns and pillars and arches and caverns, as if on purpose to
+delight the hearts of children of a larger growth, too old for spades
+and pails. Only a mile or two away at Kynance Cove these wonders come to
+perfection in the torn and twisted rocks lying in masses on the shore,
+which is covered with shining sand in summer but scoured black and stony
+by the rough seas in winter. By Caerthillian Cove we may pass to
+Pentreath beach and Yellow Carn and thus to Kynance. At places the
+cliffs have broken away forming a natural quarry and here come the
+people from the little town above, and search for well-coloured
+fragments of serpentine to fashion into candlesticks, and brooches, and
+ash-trays to sell to tourists. Dark red is a rare and popular colour
+and dark green also; chocolate with splashes of green, like variegated
+marble, is often seen. There is little fishing to be done on this wild
+rigid coast, and beyond some rough farming and their "serpentine" shops,
+it is hard to see what the population live upon. The rocks at the Lizard
+are split more often horizontally than vertically, and instead of being
+sharp upright columns as the granite fragments are at Land's End, these
+are broad lumps giving a curious sense of steady untiring watching with
+uplifted heads.
+
+[Illustration: CAERTHILIAN COVE]
+
+One interesting point about rock scenery is that it changes so little in
+the course of years that the impressions of those who saw it long ago
+are still not out of date. There are two very simple little books, two
+generations old now, but full of charm when read on the spot, Mrs.
+Craik's _An Unsentimental Journey in Cornwall_ and the Rev. C. A.
+Johns's _A Week at the Lizard_, 1848. Mrs. Craik, who wrote _John
+Halifax, Gentleman_, came here with two nieces near the end of her life,
+and gives a picture of Lizard-town which might stand to-day. With a
+horse and "shay" they visited the various points of interest along the
+coast, climbed into the dank caves and mounted the slippery weed-strewn
+rocks. It was a bold journey to make at the time, and their taste was in
+advance of most of their contemporaries who had not learnt to delight in
+the grand and desolate places of the earth. The Rev. C. A. Johns is well
+known as the author of _Wild Flowers of the Field_, which ran through
+numerous editions and is the most popular of his many natural-history
+books.
+
+Not many days after reading Mrs. Craik's book at the Lizard, I was in
+the light railway running to Newquay in the north of the county and saw
+a girl of about sixteen, deeply absorbed in a book, opposite to me. It
+was bound in the dingy maroon cloth so beloved by the librarians of Free
+Libraries, and peeping over I saw it was _John Halifax_, thus nearly
+sixty years after publication giving as much pleasure as when it was
+new! If the good lady could have known it, how pleased she would have
+been!
+
+When the sun falls over the shoulder of the cliff in the west, the
+revolving light from the lighthouse begins to flash out with a regular
+monotonous beat on its long night vigil. At any time after dark one can
+see the huge pencil of light darting round, striking the white signal
+station opposite, losing itself in the sea and so returning. There is
+something awe-inspiring in that regular sweep of pulsing light every
+three minutes, hour after hour, carrying its silent sure message to
+those at sea. If anything happened to the Lizard light what terrible
+wrecks there would be on this jagged coast!
+
+Nearly as impressive is it to catch by night the glimmer of the Morse
+code flashing from ships which are revealing their names and journeys to
+those ever-vigilant watchers in the signal station as they pass. What
+stories that signal station might tell of the journeyings to and fro, of
+the ships conveying food and clothes and necessaries from port to port!
+Here is a vessel bound from Galveston to Havre with cotton, she is
+British; about every second or third that come by is laden with coals
+from Cardiff; here is another from the other direction, bringing fruit
+from the Mediterranean to Liverpool, with all the beating up the Irish
+Channel yet to face; passing it, and doubtless hailing it in transit, is
+another Liverpool ship carrying a general cargo to Italy, and when times
+are peaceful and there are no scares from submarines, the great American
+liners from Plymouth swell the number with their enormous bulk. It is a
+regular, and, if one may use the expression, a well-beaten track around
+this great blunt headland, and it is small wonder the enemy submarines
+haunted it to find their prey, as men wait hidden beside the tracks of
+wild animals in the jungle.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+KING ARTHUR'S LAND
+
+
+Tintagel can never disappoint anyone. The very spirit of romance is in
+the place. If you have climbed across the narrow neck that links the
+"island" to the main, and passing through the low doorway of the ruined
+castle, have crossed the space surrounded by the broken wall, and so
+gone out again to the plateau above, you will find yourself among the
+sheep and cut off from the world, apparently swinging in space. There
+are great mounds all around, in shape like graves, covered with coarse
+tufty grass munched by the ragged sheep whose hair is blown into knots
+by the ceaseless wind. It takes very little imagination to picture that
+around lie the bodies of a mighty host of warriors, at peace at last in
+sound of the booming sea which clashes in its mad rush through the
+caverns deep beneath, with the wind whistling over them boisterously, or
+crooning low even on the mildest summer day.
+
+It is quite likely, as experts say, that the present ruins date only
+from the twelfth or thirteenth century. Arthur may never have set foot
+on the tufty grass of the cube-shaped island; there may never, for that
+matter, have been an Arthur at all, but lying in the grass above the
+slaty ruins and looking through the serrated arch to the onyx-green sea,
+fretting the black rock, all these doubts seem simply silly and fly away
+light as the spume flying inland in great balls.
+
+The spirit of Arthur and his fighting men lives here still. It may
+possibly have been summoned up by the thoughts of the countless host of
+pilgrims who have come expectantly to the most beloved of all the
+shrines of British history. For thoughts if repeated may conjure up
+visions.
+
+And the vision of Tintagel, that needs no seeking, but comes pressing on
+you as insistently as the sea-laden air, is one of old-time warriors
+impregnably ensconced. With their castle standing on the very edge of
+the gulf--narrower then than now--which separated them from the
+mainland. Guarded by a drawbridge crossing that sharp space so that
+three men could well hold back an host. Protected on all other sides by
+the sheer cliff, with a fortification at one point where it was just
+possible to land. Having above a wide plateau from which to gaze seaward
+and landward far over the rolling slopes of the country, along the
+deeply broken coast with its sugar-loaves of detached rock, or else out
+to the shifting ocean, they were in an enviable situation. They had a
+well of water on the very summit of their stronghold, and pasture for
+sheep by the dozen to insure plenty of mutton. They could laugh to scorn
+any such enemies as that age could bring against them.
+
+There are several such striking vantage points along the Cornish coast,
+one at Tol Pedn, another at Treryn Dinas where is the Logan Rock, and
+there are signs they have all been utilized, but none of them had the
+superb advantages of Tintagel with its wide level of turfy heights, and
+the living water flowing from the heart of the rock.
+
+There is no doubt that some such man as Arthur existed, though it is
+hardly likely he was the model of refined sensitiveness and perfect
+chivalry romancers have made him out to be. At any rate he was a gallant
+warrior if the old chroniclers are to be believed, and it is probable
+that his standard of conduct was high above his age, or the legend of
+his virtue would not have clung to him so persistently. The notion that
+such a king in Cornwall would neglect such a position may be dismissed
+as absurd, and so we may take it that Arthur fortified himself here on
+the heights, from whence he ranged far and wide, even so far as
+Scotland, to win his victorious battles. And all proof seems to point to
+it that he met his death in Scotland far from the beating of his beloved
+savage waves in Cornwall.
+
+All this coast is slaty shale; there is a miniature quarry just away to
+the west round the next headland, and the materials lying to hand were
+not likely to be neglected in days when transport was more of a
+consideration than now. So the crumbling walls which cling to the cliff
+are of slate, sharp and jagged, and inside the arches present a serrated
+edge like a crocodile's teeth. These arches are pointed which shows they
+were of later date than Arthur, and the rest of the masonry can hardly
+be said to have any style. The first mention of Tintagel in public
+records is in 1305, and in 1337 the castle was fairly habitable, at any
+rate that part of it standing on the mainland. We can imagine the
+original castle, which this one superseded, to have been much the same
+only with heavy round arches. So we can picture the past without great
+difficulty. And lying in peace we can repeople the place with the
+gorgeous figures of Tennyson's Idylls, much better known to most people
+than _La Mort d'Arthur_. The constant splash of the waves and the steady
+cropping of the sheep are broken now and again by a Woof! exactly like
+the growl of an angry beast. This is caused by a blow-hole in the cliff
+from which, when the wind is strong and onshore, the spout of water is
+sent out forty feet or more.
+
+Right beneath us is a cavern cut through the solid rock from side to
+side, and into this the sea scours at its height, the breakers from each
+end meeting with a shock in the middle. The rocks, which are so black
+and frigid outside, are rounded within, and coloured a strange
+sea-green, with almost a wan look, while the floor is composed of
+myriads of flat stones, round and oval, all sizes, from a sixpence to a
+soup-plate, making a natural pavement easy to the tread. The beach at
+the mouth of the cave is the same, armoured by myriads and myriads of
+flat smooth rounded stones lying so closely together as to give the
+appearance of a dragon's scales; it would not be hard to conjure up
+imaginary dragons here for the cave is by tradition "Merlin's Cave," and
+magicians and dragons are always regarded as contemporaneous. These
+plates of slate, for they are nothing else, have had all the angles
+scoured off them by the scourging surge. The village people collect
+them, picking out all that are of one size, to form neat pavements. You
+also see them set like some strange mosaic on the fronts of the houses,
+stuck in mortar, and making a deep frieze; the effect is not beautiful.
+
+But the ruined castle on the island is not all that remains of man's
+handiwork here, for high on the mainland, on the great boss of earth
+fronting the island, are the remains of another castle, now falling
+piecemeal into the gulf below as the cliff crumbles. Some hold that the
+"island" was originally an island in reality, and that the slender neck
+of rock now linking it to the mainland is the result of cliff-falls and
+debris. But whether that was so or not the purpose of the landward
+castle can only be guessed. It may have been an outwork, though that
+seems rather unnecessary. Over it hover screaming jacks, who love the
+sheltering crevices of artificial walls, and occasionally may be seen a
+red-legged and beaked Cornish chough which here alone on the Cornish
+coast is not extinct, and is supposed by the children to re-embody the
+spirit of King Arthur.
+
+Arthur lived about A.D. 500. His story is so overlaid with legend that
+it is difficult to find any grains of truth concerning him. Tennyson
+makes him of miraculous birth, cast upon the shore by a wave at
+Tintagel, of which the earlier name was Dundagil, but even amid the
+romantic surroundings of Tintagel we cannot swallow that bit of poetic
+licence.
+
+Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, went to pay homage to the King of Britain,
+Uther Pendragon of glorious name, at the noble city of Winchester, and,
+like a foolish man, took his beautiful wife Igerna with him. Uther kept
+his eye on the lady and presently the unhappy husband, having returned
+to his domain of Cornwall, was besieged in the strong castle of
+Damelioc, not far from Tintagel. Damelioc, represented to this day by an
+earthwork, is on the road running through Delabole to Padstow, or more
+correctly Rock, and is about eight miles from Tintagel. Meantime,
+Gorlois had left his wife in Tintagel, probably thinking his own life
+would be safer if he were apart from her, for he must have been well
+aware of all the consequences his foolish indiscretion had brought
+about. This did not save him; he was slain, and meantime the British
+King obtained access to Tintagel and wooed the lady.
+
+In due time Arthur was born, and succeeded to the chieftainship or
+Dukedom of Cornwall, apparently without question, and proved himself one
+of the strongest and bravest rulers that ever held high position. His
+arms were everywhere triumphant, and about a dozen victories are placed
+to his credit, but he fell at last, fighting his traitorous nephew
+Mordred somewhere about the year 542, when Mordred was slain and Arthur,
+mortally wounded, carried from the battlefield to die. This was the
+Battle of Camulodunum and it was for long supposed to have been fought
+quite near Tintagel, close by the present town of Camelford, the
+similarity of names giving colour to the error. Besides there was a very
+fierce battle fought near Camelford in some remote time, and the
+tradition of it is strong to this day. The place is marked by Slaughter
+Bridge, to be found by going half a mile down a side road from the
+station. It is a small bridge over a tiny stream, and it is supported by
+great blocks of stone instead of piers. If you linger there a girl comes
+from a rough shanty near and says she will show you King Arthur's tomb.
+A short scramble takes you down steep banks where tree-trunks grow out
+horizontally turning up at an angle to reach the light, and brambles
+and creepers cling thickly, while the long hart's-tongue ferns dip in
+the running water, floating down stream like strange seaweed; then you
+see a great monolith with a Latin inscription, of which the only word
+still decipherable is "filius." You point out to the little guide that
+in all probability King Arthur was not buried here at all but in
+Scotland where the evidence shows that the Battle of Camulodunum was
+fought, and she makes no objection provided the fee is forthcoming.
+
+No doubt some great chieftain was laid here after the battle, where
+thousands were killed, so that a thousand years later the bridge retains
+the name of Slaughter Bridge, but it is likely the event took place long
+after Arthur's death. For its date is generally now acknowledged to be
+the year 823 in the time of King Egbert. It was between the Britons and
+Saxons, and history does not say which was victorious. It may have been
+a drawn fight, in which case the ground was strewn with bodies and the
+waters of the stream dyed crimson all for nothing.
+
+It is in later times that the dignity of King has been conferred on
+Arthur, and some suppose he was King of Britain; but it seems more
+likely that he gained slices of territory spasmodically as the result
+of fighting, and was really only ruler in his own corner of the country
+continuously, though his battles spread his name far and wide. There
+were so many rulers in those days and the country was so cut up that it
+is not likely he was able to assert himself supremely, and the conquests
+of Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Gaul and Spain attributed to him are pure
+legends. In a very interesting little book called _King Arthur in
+Cornwall_ by W. Howship Dickinson, the case is put clearly:--
+
+"The evidence which is wanting with regard to Arthur's battle on the
+Camel comes to light on the Firth of Forth. There is reason to suppose
+that tradition did not err in the fatal association of Arthur and
+Mordred, though the place of the last scene was not Cornwall but
+Scotland. The name Camlan which has been freely given by later writers
+to the supposed battle on the Camel, is not to be found there, nor, so
+far as I can ascertain, in Cornwall.
+
+"Skene and Stuart Glennie maintain with much converging evidence that
+Camlan is Camelon on the river Carron in the valley of the Forth, where
+it is said are the remains of a Roman town. Here, according to Scotch
+tradition Arthur and Mordred met. We have evidence which appears to be
+sufficient that Mordred was King of the Picts, or, as he is sometimes
+termed, King of Scotland, and the head of a confederacy of Picts, Scots
+and Saxons, or, as some authorities have it of Picts, Scots and renegade
+Britons. With this composite army he gave battle to Arthur and his
+faithful British force, in which the latter were defeated and Arthur
+slain.
+
+"It is worth noting as in favour of the Scottish location of the battle
+that Geoffrey [of Monmouth] who places it on the Camel states Mordred's
+force to have consisted of Picts and Scots. It is surely improbable that
+Arthur could have been confronted in Cornwall by a great army of these
+northern savages.... It may be added that an earthwork with double lines
+of circumvallation in the neighbouring valley of the Tay now known as
+Barry Hill, is designated by tradition as Mordred's castle."
+
+Where Arthur was buried will ever remain an open question; Glastonbury
+long claimed the honour but that has for some time been discredited by
+those who have gone into the evidence. The romantic account of his
+"passing," as given by Malory and Tennyson is very fine. It tells how
+Arthur, wounded to death, is carried down to the waterside and gives
+his sword, Excalibur, to Sir Bedivere to throw into the water, and how
+the knight, after some hesitation, does as he wishes, when a hand and
+arm arise out of the surface of the lake, brandish the sword three times
+and disappear. Then a little barge appears and carries the dying King
+off to the Vale of Avallon from whence he will one day return. The grand
+myth about Excalibur is generally said locally to have taken place at a
+dreary little pool known as Dozmare, a lonely tarn, flat and bleak,
+fringed by reeds, on a tableland several hundred feet above the sea near
+Brown Willy, and on this assumption many a persevering tourist has paid
+it a visit. But Tennyson in describing the scene took a much more
+beautiful place as his model, for he describes Looe Pool which could by
+no possibility be associated with the tragedy. This is close to Helston
+at the entrance to the Lizard Peninsula. It is two or three miles long,
+and formed by the widening out of the little river Cober. The water
+formerly escaped into the sea but gradually a bar was built up, and
+there was an old custom by which the Corporation of Helston had to
+present the lord of the manor with two leather purses, each containing
+three halfpence, in consideration of which they were then allowed to
+cut through the bar, but that has long been discontinued. The bar is now
+a mighty thing where great stones are hurled by powerful waves and even
+on a calm day the thunder of the surf breaking on it is heard for miles.
+The water of the lake is otherwise drained. Its banks are well wooded.
+
+In Tennyson's _Mort d'Arthur_ when Sir Bedivere, last survivor of the
+Knights of the Round Table, carried his mortally wounded ruler from the
+stricken field--
+
+    "On one side lay the ocean, and on one
+    Lay a great water, and the moon was full."
+
+And when Sir Bedivere, charged with the mission of throwing the magic
+sword Excalibur into the water, left the dying King:--
+
+    "From the ruin'd shrine he stept
+    And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
+    Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
+    Old Knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
+    Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He stepping down
+    By zigzag paths and juts of pointed rock,
+    Came on the shining levels of the lake."
+
+Thence twice he returned faithless, his mission unperformed, to
+report:--
+
+    "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
+    And the wild water lapping on the crag."
+
+All around Tintagel there are innumerable references to King Arthur. In
+fact it might be said that only the devil is more popular in this
+respect than Arthur, for his name occurs perhaps a little more
+frequently. Mr. Dickinson says: "We have King Arthur's Hall, Hunting
+Seat, Bed, Quoit, Cups and Saucers, Tomb and Grave." The cups and
+saucers are the round holes weathered in the stones on the summit of
+Tintagel island. The grave is a sepulchral mound lying within Warbstowe
+Bury, one of the largest British camps in Cornwall. This is not very far
+north of Boscastle. It is a vast circular mound with a sort of crater on
+the top, and in the middle of this is another mound, which has been
+called a Viking's grave and the Giant's grave as well as King Arthur's.
+
+Another place much associated with King Arthur, which cannot be passed
+over, is the earthwork known as Cardinham Castle about four miles east
+of Bodmin. This has been identified by good authorities with Caradigan
+where Arthur held his court, to which there are many references in
+Arthurian legends.
+
+On the other side of Tintagel, on the road between Camelford and
+Wadebridge, and not four miles from the latter place, is Killibury
+Castle identified with Kelliwic. Arthur was "lord of Kelliwic," and
+these associations all taken together carry a fair amount of evidence as
+to the presence of the chivalrous ruler in this district.
+
+Whatever else is doubtful we cannot but be sure that Arthur's existence
+and reputation contributed in no small degree to the preservation of the
+men of the British race in this corner of the island when they were in
+danger of being pushed back into the sea by the oncoming Saxons, and it
+is to this that Cornwall owes in some ways its distinctive character,
+preserving racial features that are found nowhere else. The men of
+Ireland and of Wales are related certainly to the original Cornish but
+there is a distinct cleavage. Arthur may have made his fame known right
+across England, his victories may have carried him to the capital,
+Winchester, and beyond, but it is certain that his name will ever be
+associated most strongly with this far corner of the country where he
+was born and where he had his homeland associations. And these
+associations, being the very earliest of the British race surviving,
+serve to attract from far our Colonial brothers and our American
+cousins; Tintagel will never lack visitors.
+
+But with the castle we have not exhausted by any means all that is worth
+seeing here.
+
+Leaving the castle on the mainland we come very quickly to the "little
+grey church on the windy hill" with its graveyard wall almost swallowed
+up in rising grass and turf, and some of the tombstones heavily
+buttressed against the prevailing winds. The church tower must have
+formed a mark for generations to men of the sea. It stands up straight
+and bleak with never a tree to hide it. The entrances to the graveyard
+are over a pavement of round stone bars placed a few inches apart so
+that the cattle dare not cross them for fear of slipping in between with
+their narrow hoofs. There are many marks of great age inside the
+building and the grey stone walls, that have been many times restored,
+have heard the strong west winds whistling round them from the sea and
+moaning the tale of the wrecks on the coast for many generations.
+
+All along this coast are steep descents and strange rock freaks. To the
+north, across the gully leading down to Tintagel Castle, there is a
+mighty fracture which has split asunder a huge angle of rock, that looks
+as if it only needed a giant push to thrust it back into the fracture,
+closely fitting. Yet the chasm below is so sheer and stern that no one
+can climb up the sides. The sea-birds know it. It was a happy chance for
+them that made this citadel free from the sullying steps of man, and the
+steep slopes of brilliant green amid the bare rock surfaces are peppered
+all over with them as if with a handful of comfits.
+
+The wild music of a host of gulls is the bagpipes of the coast, and
+arouses the same feelings in the breast of the sea-lover as the pipes do
+in that of a Scotsman. It is associated with the sound of the surge and
+the deadly thrust and heavy swell at the foot of the tough cliff. These
+things tug at the heart of a sea-lover. Lying amid the prickly furze,
+sheltered for a moment from the deadly wind-whistle, and gazing across
+that unscalable chasm, we have before us that gull-fortress exactly as
+it and its kind have been reproduced on the canvas of a well-known
+painter many many times. What business has he to do the thing so well
+that we are familiarized with the stern beauty of the haunts of the
+freest of birds, and feel when we see them in Nature that half the charm
+has been forestalled by the blunting of our sensibility?
+
+It is no easy task to scramble along these rough cliff edges, and one
+not to be undertaken by cripples or invalids.
+
+Not very far is one of the valleys so attractive to the Cornish folk,
+who find in them the growth and snugness that contrast so impressively
+with their bleak uplands.
+
+Down the Rocky Valley a stream gushes merrily, tumbling in miniature
+waterfalls every few yards, and meeting at last the oncoming wave with a
+shock as the sweet water mingles with salt. Everything grows amazingly,
+and the huge rectangular rocks high overhead on each side of the gully,
+are mostly draped in masses of ivy. They resemble ruins, as Cornish
+rocks often do, so that it is frequently most difficult to distinguish
+the natural from the artificial. Most people's idea of ivy is neat flat
+clinging stuff but here it grows in lumps, yards in thickness, and
+decorated with brilliant bunches of black berries in the season when
+there is little else to compete with it. In the valley which leads from
+the nearest station, Camelford, to Tintagel just such masses may be
+seen. The road runs downhill for about four miles, leading mysteriously
+into what seems the mouth of a quarry. The sides are covered with
+untidy, loose clumps of furze, with mighty stones, and ever and always,
+in all corners, moss so rich that it might almost be mistaken for a bed
+of miniature ferns. Climb up on one side and you get a glimpse into a
+pool, with sides sheer like a hewn cistern, and something so weird and
+awful in its onyx depths that it suggests robbery with violence,
+suicides, hangings, and anything else gruesome, while the water drips
+perpetually from the green lines of slime on its sharp walls. Further on
+are the glistening piles of slate from a disused quarry. The real quarry
+of Delabole, famous far and wide, is behind, beside the railway, from
+which one may look right down into it. The road to Tintagel opens out at
+last and then, if we are lucky enough to be going westward at sunset, we
+may see suddenly a hazy glow as of a forest fire over all the wide
+expanse of sea and sky, and outlined against it the great black lumps of
+rock off Trebarwith Strand.
+
+With Tintagel must be associated Boscastle but a few miles along the
+coast to the north, for hardly anyone who visits the one place will fail
+to see the other, yet the two are singularly different. Boscastle lies
+all down the sides of one of those curious clefts, which would be called
+chines or denes elsewhere, and in this instance the drop is
+extraordinarily steep. To go sheer down is a feat most people will find
+difficult, even on foot, and the new road has been designed to help.
+Even that would be accounted steep in any ordinary place. Down, down it
+goes into the neck of the funnel, and looks for all the world as if it
+were leading to a slate quarry, and then suddenly there opens out one of
+the grandest harbours on the coast, with huge sloping cliffs running
+alongside and curving round, making the entrance both difficult and
+dangerous. With their lovely curves and angles they add greatly to the
+vision. From the heights of these cliffs Lundy Island can be seen when
+the air is clear. There is an old saw:--
+
+    "When Lundy is high it will be dry
+    When Lundy is plain it will be rain
+    When Lundy is low it will be snow!"
+
+If the word of the inhabitants is to be trusted the last contingency
+must come seldom indeed!
+
+The name Boscastle comes from Bottreux or Botreaux-castle, spoken
+quickly and run together. The site of the castle, which had ceased to
+exist by Queen Elizabeth's reign, is still pointed out. The town lies in
+two parishes and the church of Forraburry, belonging to the one, stands
+well up on the western cliff.
+
+Care must be taken in climbing about the shore for the cliffs are very
+steep. Just to the north or east is Pentargon Bay, cutting deeply into
+the land, and near it the Seal Caves though seals seldom come there now.
+The waves dash in with tremendous force, especially with a westerly
+wind, which is common, when some grand sights may be seen. The black
+walls of the slate rock and the white spray of the shattered waves and
+the strange blue tint of the sea compose some pictures finer than any
+that have yet found their way on to a painter's canvas.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE SANDY BEACHES OF THE NORTHERN COAST
+
+
+What a splendid series of resorts lie along the northern coast of
+Cornwall! Take them in order as they come. St. Ives, Newquay, Padstow,
+and Bude, leaving aside for the moment the smaller ones, or those like
+Boscastle and Tintagel, which stand in a class by themselves and have
+been already referred to. All these four have certain characteristics in
+common but each has a distinct individuality. That is one of the charms
+of Cornwall, nothing is cut to a pattern. By far the best-known is of
+course the first mentioned, St. Ives, with its splendid bays or
+"porths," with acres of firm sand, and its unrivalled golf-links at
+Lelant. It seems odd that a place should be able to face due east in
+Cornwall, yet somehow part of St. Ives manages to do it, that part of it
+which is on Porthminster Bay and is most favoured by visitors. The town
+is curiously placed, for the older part lies on a neck or isthmus
+protruding northward between two magnificent bays, and it is the curve
+on each side of the neck that makes the east and west side face
+respectively Porthminster or Porthmeor. From the east you look straight
+across to Godrevy Point and lighthouse.
+
+[Illustration: ST. IVES]
+
+St. Ives could never pall because it is not all to be seen or understood
+at a glance, and those who stay there longest admit they know it least.
+Seen from almost any point there is a view which demands attention,
+whether it be the green ruggedness of the island--only technically an
+island--against the soft blue of the sea, with the terraced lines of
+drab houses rising in tiers in front of it, or the harbour with its
+boats and screaming gulls and the old weather-worn church abutting on
+it. The prevailing tones of all the buildings are drab and grey; drab
+stone, drab stucco, drab paint with pale slate-grey roofs; a little red
+brick or tile would be an improvement from an artistic point of view.
+
+It is an odd feature of Cornwall that however bare and treeless some
+parts are, and they could hardly be barer in the Hebrides, yet the towns
+are generally warmly encompassed by trees. It is so at Penzance and it
+is so here. Woods rise behind the houses, and the richness of the
+evergreens makes a shelter even in winter, while the ferns are
+inexhaustible in number and of great variety. The season is only for two
+months of the year, August and September, during which months the place
+is packed and the numerous inhabitants who live upon the yearly godsend
+of the "foreigners'" money, are hard put to it to supply accommodation;
+but all the year round there is a certain number of visitors who find in
+the clean fresh air, the glorious golf-links, second to none, and the
+wide views, just what they need. It is true that tiresome change at St.
+Erth junction has to be faced before reaching the town, but this is
+nothing compared with the days when the junction was the very nearest
+point of rail, and the rest of the journey had to be completed by road.
+This was altered in 1877 and the innovation was a great factor in the
+growth of the town. The road approach from this direction is well graded
+and has a good surface, but from the Zennor side so much cannot be said.
+A new road is being cut through and the approach improved, but even when
+it is completed, there must still be the long and precarious descent
+through a squalid part of the town to face.
+
+[Illustration: A STREET IN ST. IVES]
+
+The region of the visitors is mainly above the station, facing
+Porthminster Bay, where terraces of houses exist for the sole purpose of
+providing accommodation, but there is a secondary part above Porthmeor
+Bay where rows of neat little houses claim their share. Down on the
+harbour front and curving round behind it is the old town with its
+indescribable jumble of what can scarcely be called architecture; where
+outside staircases, and overhanging first-floor rooms with no visible
+means of support, twisted archways and narrow passages are inextricably
+mingled. The names of some of these places are quite delightful,
+Puddingbag Lane, Chy-an-Chy, Street-an-Garrow, Bunkers' Hill, and the
+Digey, while away westward is Clodgy Point. The old inhabitants must
+have had a genius for nomenclature.
+
+St. Ives is the haunt of a colony of artists who rival those at Newlyn,
+and what with artists, fishing and visitors, the rest of the inhabitants
+manage somehow to live. But the fishing is not what it was; gone are the
+golden days when the shoals of pilchards announced by the "huers" from
+the Malakoff bastion were sufficient to provide a good livelihood for
+the whole town:
+
+"The pilchards are expected on the coast in October, when their
+appearance gives rise to general excitement at a place like St. Ives.
+Often have been described the patient watching of the _huers_ on the
+cliffs, who with a huge trumpet at length announce their joyful
+discovery, and by the waving of bushes telegraph the movements of the
+shoal marked by the colour of the sea and its hovering escort of gulls;
+the rush of men, women, and children to the shore with shouts of _heva!
+heva!_ which is Cornish for the classic _Eureka_; the marshalling of the
+seine boats; the shooting of the huge nets; the enclosure of the
+luckless victims by myriads; then the hurried orgy of capturing,
+pickling, and storing, stimulated by its promise of prosperity to the
+whole place."
+
+Alas! they come but scantily now and there is not much of any sort of
+fishing to be had. Though just enough to account for the brown-sailed
+boats lying in the harbour and the blue-jerseyed men belonging to them
+without which, it may be presumed, the artists would find some paucity
+of material and perhaps disappear also.
+
+St. Ives would not be a Cornish town if it lacked hills and there are
+plenty to give exercise to leg muscles; but yet there are some places
+almost flat, and one has only to descend to the sands to secure a
+perfectly horizontal walk!
+
+This is not a guide book and there is no need to go into detail about
+the ancient church in the very midst of the workers, or the restored
+tiny chapel out on the "island" that really once was an island, which
+overlooks as in blessing the drying nets that blacken the green of the
+grass on the slopes below. The chunk or bite out of this island on the
+east is Porthgwidden Cove, and the Foresand runs from here to Penolva
+Point whence begin Porthminster Sands. On the hill behind the town rises
+the hideous Knill monument where the little girls dance around on July
+25 every fifth year, in memory of the conventional alderman who left
+such directions in his will, and yet after all is not buried here.
+
+The impression carried away from St. Ives is of light and freshness and
+space, and of width of sand that would attract attention anywhere, but
+which here in Cornwall is phenomenal; and of enough modern comfort and
+cleanliness to make things very pleasant though within reach lies the
+old kernel of the town in piquant contrast.
+
+The name Porthminster means "church of the sands" and it is curious that
+the church should thus be referred to in one of the principal
+place-names when the St. Ives' people had originally to go to Lelant
+for their services, marryings and buryings. Finding this state of things
+intolerable they petitioned for a church of their own and completed it
+in 1426. It was built close to the shore for the obvious reason that the
+stone of which there was abundance in the neighbourhood, could be more
+easily brought by water than overland, but it was not so near the sea as
+now, for in the seventeenth century "there was a field between the
+churchyard wall and Porth Cocking Rock, and sheep grazed on it."
+
+The church of Lelant was rapidly being overpowered by the sand which has
+swallowed up many ancient oratories or "cells" built low down on the
+shore, and it was only saved by the planting and rapid spreading of the
+coarse rush grass which binds the surface of the towans together in a
+kind of mat and prevents the sand from drifting.
+
+St. Ives with its eastern aspect is fresh even in the summer, and yet
+strange to say not very cold in winter, as the flowering shrubs which
+grow so well testify.
+
+Newquay is not at all like St. Ives; it has no quaint muddled fishing
+town behind the "visitors' front," and it lies all along the top of high
+cliffs so that its main street is almost level, or at any rate,
+level for Cornwall. At one end is Towan Head not unlike St. Ives'
+Island, and from thence the bay runs in great scoops or curves cut off
+from each other except at low tide. These sandy bays, surrounded by high
+cliffs, resemble to some extent those at Broadstairs, and the aspect of
+Newquay is the same as that at Broadstairs for it faces mainly north. It
+is airy and spacious and light, and its signmark of originality lies not
+in its front so much as in its back, the long estuary of the Gannel
+River which forms a kind of back-door entrance. But villas and
+boarding-houses are rapidly springing up along the Gannel estuary,
+facing south, with their backs to Newquay proper, and thereby a bit of
+very fine wild land is being spoilt. There are excellent golf-links
+along Fistral Bay and huge hotels have sprung up to reap what harvest of
+visitors there may be, indeed it is a stock joke to say of Newquay, as
+may be said with much truth about Oban, "every second house is an
+hotel."
+
+[Illustration: FROM LELANT TO GODREVY]
+
+No one who looks at the map even cursorily can fail to note the
+extraordinary number of places in Cornwall beginning with the prefix St.
+This would be natural in Roman Catholic Ireland but it is whimsical in
+Methodistical Cornwall. It is, however, but one of the many signs of the
+very ancient history of the place which gives it so much charm. These
+reminders keep cropping out constantly among the modern surroundings, as
+the granite outcrops on the Bodmin moors and again at Land's End and the
+far-lying Scilly Isles, which are too but granite peaks.
+
+Newquay for all its newness lies in a district of ancient memories. Only
+a mile or two away eastward are St. Columb Minor and Major, in fact
+Newquay itself is really in the parish of St. Columb Minor. Not far from
+St. Columb Major there is one of the most perfect remains of an ancient
+castle of the earthwork kind. It is called Castle-an-Dinas, or, locally,
+King Arthur's Castle. It is enclosed by three rings of earth and stone,
+of which one was probably strengthened by a moat, and the inmost part
+covers an acre and a half. But a little way from St. Columb Major on the
+other side is St. Mawgan at the end of the Vale of Lanherne, one of the
+well-wooded rich Cornish valleys which are so much admired by the
+inhabitants. Cornish people go for their picnic-parties and pleasure
+days to a valley as most people would to the seaside.
+
+Newquay Bay is really one crescent or horn of a much larger bay
+extending right up to Trevose Headland, and within this sweep lies
+Watergate Bay and Bedruthan Steps with its detached rocks and fine
+natural scenery. Dividing Watergate and Newquay Bays is Trevalgue Head,
+an island connected with the mainland by a footbridge. Here the
+sea-pinks flourish abundantly covering all the ground with their frilled
+blossoms when in flower. They do well almost anywhere in Cornwall, but
+exceptionally well here, and the sheet of pink-tinged ground, caught as
+a foreground to a vivid summer sea, is a sight not to be forgotten. The
+only thing that spoils the fine cliff effects is that the whole coast
+here and northwards is composed of slate--a substance which does not
+lend itself to beauty of line or colouring.
+
+But by far the most "saintly" associations of Newquay are on the other
+side. Across the Gannel is Crantock called after St. Crantock, St.
+Patrick's great friend, one of the three bishops chosen to revise the
+laws of Ireland after the country was converted to Christianity.
+Crantock landed here and built his church. A mile or two away on the
+shore is the Holy Well, still visited by curious men and maidens, and
+within the memory of those living held to have a miraculous power of
+making rheumatic men sound again. Holy wells in Cornwall are almost as
+plentiful as saints, possibly the one is always associated with the
+other as the outward sign of wonder-working power.
+
+The extraordinary stretch of sand called Perran Beach would be
+remarkable anywhere, but it is more remarkable still on the rock-bound
+coast of Cornwall. Norden, with unconscious Irishism, describes Perran
+as being "almost drowned with the sea sande." The whole region for three
+miles in length and as much in breadth is sand alone. Inland a few
+plantations of pines struggle to survive just beyond its zone, and the
+little slate-roofed houses have a strangely glaring unfinished look; the
+hedges which divide up the land show here and there straggly scrubby
+bushes all bent violently eastward by the prevailing winds, and in the
+dreary corner of sandhills between them and the sea is somewhere to be
+found the tiny chapel of St. Piran, which is very interesting because it
+is the very earliest ecclesiastical building to be found in the land. It
+dates from the eighth or ninth century and is only twenty-five feet
+long. It was covered with sand as if buried in a snow drift and for
+seven centuries was completely lost. It is probably to this it owes its
+preservation. Sir A. Quiller-Couch's irreverent but amusing story
+concerning it in his _Delectable Duchy_ is known to most people. St.
+Piran, or Kieran as he is called in Irish, came over from Ireland in the
+sixth century and settled down here, where many wonders grew up about
+his name and his fame spread far and wide. Hundreds of people who never
+enter a modern church find themselves strangely impressed by this little
+ruined church buried amid the sand dunes with its record of between
+thirteen and fourteen hundred years of sanctity behind it. The very name
+Perranporth and its neighbour Perranzabuloe are so peculiarly and
+distinctly Cornish that they draw the inquisitive to them. The latter
+means Perran in the Sand. There is some very curious rock-scenery near
+Perranporth, where all the fantastic freaks of caves and natural arches,
+so common in Cornwall, can be seen at their best.
+
+Far deeper than the inlet of the Gannel at Newquay is that of the River
+Camel, near the mouth of which Padstow stands. This is an estuary filled
+with water at high tide and lying in long melancholy reaches of sand at
+low tide. Padstow clusters round a very old-fashioned little port, where
+seafaring men congregate and discuss the weather and prices. There is
+not a great deal of fishing and only a little general trade, as the
+mouth of the river requires ticklish navigation. There is an enormous
+hotel standing on a height, and a very attractive church with an old
+Elizabethan mansion of the Prideaux-Brune family behind it. But all the
+sands are on the other side of the estuary, at Rock, whence the
+ferry-boat paddles to and fro about every hour. The rolling dunes have
+been utilized for fine golf-links and the all-encroaching sand has done
+its best to swallow up the little chapel of St. Enodoc, as it once
+succeeded in doing with St. Piran's; so far it has been kept at bay, but
+it still drifts in whenever it gets the chance. The links run out in the
+direction of Pentire Point, one of the fine coast headlands. It is very
+remarkable in Cornwall how constantly names are duplicated, one might
+imagine it would give rise to difficulties to find a Pentire Point here,
+and an East and West Pentire Point at the mouth of the Gannel near
+Newquay, many miles south, and just below this Pentire Point is Hayle
+Bay, and opposite Lelant near St. Ives we have again Hayle at the mouth
+of the river. Newlyn by Penzance is well known, and Newlyn East south of
+Newquay not so well. We have St. Just in Penwith and St. Just in
+Roseland. There are doubtless many other instances.
+
+Of all the four seaside places discussed in this chapter Bude has
+perhaps most strongly its own character. Whoever heard of a seaside
+place with a sweet-water canal running down the beach? Canals are not
+usually associated with beauty and the very word canal is enough to
+frighten off many people. But the canal at Bude is quite peculiar. It
+only serves the purpose of a harbour for the ketches or fishing-boats
+apparently, and a very awkward harbour it makes too when a distracted
+ketch harassed by the strong flowing tide and baffled by a teasing wind,
+noses this way and that and fails to hit the narrow entrance. Then, a
+thing of beauty and distress, she heels over on the beach as the tide
+runs out, and the natives gather round to speculate whether she will
+"break her back" or not.
+
+Bude possesses a breakwater too, but the oddest breakwater! For, instead
+of curving round like most normal ones, it sticks out straight into the
+sea and forms a favourite public promenade, with the added excitement
+that in rough weather you may very easily be swept off the hog's back of
+rounded stones and dashed to pieces against the rocky masses on either
+side.
+
+Owing to the fact that Bude Bay is on a coast facing sheer west, the
+quarter of the wildest winds, the waves drive in with great force
+sometimes. The thunder of the surf on the shore may be heard like the
+deep pedals of an organ and all the air is hazed by the flying scud. To
+see the sun drop like glowing copper straight into the sea, behind ridge
+upon ridge of the "wild white horses" is most impressive. The strata of
+the rocks on the shore are most weirdly bent and contorted. It is
+difficult to conceive the state of convulsion which twisted them into
+the shape of innumerable up-ended triangles, one within the other,
+fitting like puzzle-boxes, or bent them right back like gigantic hooks.
+There is one great layer of rock which looks like the back of a whale,
+half a-wash, with all the ribs showing.
+
+Bude is peculiar in the fact that it has all sorts of scenery combined
+in one place. The high downs covered with short grass lie north and
+south, and between them is the bay covered at high tide but showing a
+fine stretch of easily accessible hard sand at low water; while, as may
+be gathered, the rock scenery is well worth seeing. Here, as at so many
+places along this coast there are excellent golf-links, in this case in
+the very centre of the straggling town on the "Summerleaze." There is a
+second golf-links on the heights above Wrangle Point, belonging to the
+old Falcon Hotel by the bridge.
+
+About two miles inland is Stratton, the scene of the victory of Sir
+Bevil Grenville over the Roundheads, a victory which was within an ace
+of being a defeat. The Earl of Stamford had marched into Cornwall, with
+forces of about seven thousand men, and camped at Stratton, where he was
+attacked by Sir Bevil with half the number and defeated. Grenville came
+of a famous Cornish family which numbered among its members Sir Richard,
+who with his little ship the _Revenge_, tackled the great Spanish
+galleons and managed to damage many of them before he fell mortally
+wounded as is recorded in Tennyson's much-quoted poem!
+
+Further north still, the very last place of note on the Cornish coast,
+is Morwenstow, visited by hundreds of people because of its association
+with its one-time vicar, the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, a muscular
+Christian of a peculiarly pungent personality. His generosity and
+kindliness toward his fellow-men was unstinting, but he was withal full
+to the brim of eccentricity. He married while still a youth of twenty at
+the University, his godmother, who was twenty-one years his senior, and
+they lived happily together until her death in extreme old age. Hawker
+believed in ghosts and was exceedingly superstitious; there are many
+curious stories still current as to his doings, and the life of him by
+the notable novelist Baring-Gould is well worth reading.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE INLETS OF THE SOUTH COAST
+
+
+Fowey is perhaps the best known by name of all the Cornish towns. This
+is due in some measure to its being the home of Sir A. Quiller-Couch,
+who has made it familiar to thousands in his stories of _Troy Town_ and
+_The Delectable Duchy_. But people who go to Fowey should be prepared to
+find it unlike anything anywhere else. Fowey Harbour is a long narrow
+slit penetrating into the land and closed in on each side by very steep
+hills which drop down sharply to the water. On the west lies Fowey town
+close to the mouth of the harbour, built on the hillside. It consists of
+one long narrow street, so constricted that only here and there, where
+the houses fall back a little, has it been found possible to drop in a
+few feet of pavement, otherwise foot-passengers take their chance with
+the traffic. There are houses on each side. Those on the seaward side
+are built right on to the water so that many of them have ladders
+hanging from their backyards by which the men can climb down into their
+boats. Passing casually along the main street and glancing into an open
+doorway one sometimes sees the passage falling downwards like an open
+shaft, the lower end a rectangle of blue dancing water!
+
+On the other side the levels, if they can be called levels--for there is
+hardly a foot of level land anywhere--rise high overhead. In following
+any of the quaint crooked streets it is possible at one moment to look
+up at school children playing in a courtyard high overhead and five
+minutes later to survey the same children shortened in perspective by
+being seen from above!
+
+In the very midst of the town is the splendid old church, and near it,
+but so tucked away it is not easily discovered, is Place House, the seat
+of the Treffrys, an old Cornish family. The oldest parts of this have
+stood since 1457 and it is said that here once was a palace of the old
+Earls of Cornwall, which is quite probable, as they could hardly have
+chosen a better spot.
+
+[Illustration: FOWEY]
+
+If we pass on by the long narrow main street we come out eventually on
+heights terminating in Gribbin Head. But Fowey is not recommended for
+people with weak hearts unless they intend to sit upon the charming
+verandah of the hotel as suggested in the first chapter. Wherever one
+turns there are steep hills to negotiate, and the magnificent views
+gained across the deep inlet must be bought by hard labour. Yet having
+said that it is but fair to add that nowhere in Britain are there sights
+to beat these. The harbour lies like a Norwegian fiord between its
+hills, and the water ranges in all imaginable blues and greens as the
+light wanes and changes, while there are ever coming and going craft of
+many kinds. Fowey is not a fishing village; anyone who said it was would
+have to reckon with Sir A. Quiller-Couch! The harbour is visited by
+ships in search of cargo such as the china-clay which forms so large a
+proportion of the export, and the graceful vessels, often sailing-ships,
+which come to fetch it, are towed in and out by the little tugs which
+work unceasingly about the narrow straits. And the inlet is one of the
+most popular for yachts all along the coast. There is here reproduced a
+most interesting chart of Fowey Harbour, drawn in Henry VIII.'s time,
+and now in the British Museum. This reproduction is taken from Lysons'
+_Magna Britannica_. As will be seen, it shows Lostwithiel, Liskeard, and
+even Bodmin, with a pictorial representation of the stags grazing in
+Restormel Park. Even at that date the twin forts guarding the narrow
+entrance to the harbour were "decayed."
+
+[Illustration]
+[Illustration]
+
+In Henry III.'s reign Fowey men rescued some of the ships of the men of
+Rye, and Fowey was therefore honoured by the Cinque Ports "with armes
+and privileges." In the time of Edward III. Fowey supplied more ships to
+the King's Navy than any other port in England, which is an amazing
+fact. At the Siege of Calais there were forty-seven ships from this
+little place! The men of Fowey were always known as bold sailors, having
+been brought up upon the water it seemed their natural element. So stung
+were the French by the wasps issuing from this nest that they made a
+descent on Fowey in 1457 when Lady Treffry, whose husband was not at
+home, led the defence and helped to beat back the attackers to their
+ships.
+
+In later times Fowey earned a base reputation for being the harbour of
+pirates and eventually was punished by being obliged to transfer its
+ships to Dartmouth.
+
+Those who like boating and sea-fishing will find plentiful opportunity
+here to indulge in both.
+
+[Illustration: BODINNICK FERRY, FOWEY]
+
+Just opposite Fowey town a deep bite into the land cuts off a
+projecting tongue, reached from the west by ferry, and the piled houses
+upon it, falling down their mountain-side, lack something of the beauty
+they might easily have had in such a situation. But further down, where
+at Bodinnick ferry passengers are carried to and fro there is much to
+admire. Bodinnick is an inland village which has fallen by accident upon
+a seashore, at least that is the impression it gives. The walls are
+lined with bladder seaweed, the seaweed that goes "pop" to the delight
+of children. This hangs in black masses above the incoming water, but
+over it rise woods and trees, and ivy and ferns, and all the
+paraphernalia of a country lane. The ivy in fact tumbles riotously down
+on the top of the seaweed! The cottages, maintaining their balance with
+difficulty on the perilous slope rising from the ferry, are covered with
+rose bushes. Candytuft and violets come out in their season to creep
+over the rough stone walls; white pigeons flutter overhead and glimpses
+of large-leaved plants of a kind more often associated with a tropical
+climate, peep at one from backyards. There is nothing conventional or
+suburban about Bodinnick! It takes no trouble to clear away the bits of
+broken crockery or rusty tins; perhaps it likes the feeling of
+homeliness they give, and the sleepy cats appear to like it too.
+
+From Fowey there is one road and only one, which leads across the
+headland westward to Par sands, but there is a choice of two routes by
+railway, one running along beside the inlet, which is of course the
+mouth of the River Fowey, and giving lovely views of the wooded reaches
+about the mouth of its tributary the Lerryn, which, following the custom
+of rivers in this district, has a considerable inlet to itself. While
+Penpoll Creek, nearer the sea, affords a comfortable harbourage even in
+a very high wind. But the one road and the two railways do not sum up
+all the ways of getting out of Fowey, for you may persuade the burly
+round-eyed old salt who has spent his life in crossing and recrossing
+hundreds of times, to put you over at Bodinnick, and then you can wander
+at your own sweet will by any of the innumerable tracks over the great
+rectangle bounded on the west and north by Fowey River (which turns at a
+right angle about Bodmin Road), and on the east by Looe River. This lump
+of land is cut up and seamed by valleys and broken by hills. On the
+sea-line, about halfway across, is the tiny fishing village--really a
+fishing village this time--of Polperro, than which no quainter thing
+exists in Britain. You drop down, down, down, to Polperro until you can
+look up and see the cows grazing high overhead as you might in an Alpine
+valley, and then you plunge into the miniature confused streets of the
+town, and following them at random may or may not come out at the little
+port, and walking along the rude jetty see the outer harbour and the
+small beach. The smell of fish is strong in the air; the fishing-boats
+lie in neat rows, supported by legs to prevent their heeling over when
+the tide runs out. The houses cluster on the steep hillside in terraces,
+and below them a collection of blue-guernseyed stout-booted men, with
+wholesome sea-tanned faces, lounge about as if they were the idlest set
+in Christendom, though their work demands the hardest toil and greatest
+endurance of any calling man can follow.
+
+Polperro is strangely like a little town in Brittany and has something
+about it also which recalls the inland villages tucked away in the spurs
+of the Alps or Apennines above the Riviera. It is easy to imagine that
+anyone having visited it and trying to recall where he had looked upon
+such a scene, would search his memory for tours abroad and never think
+of England.
+
+A good road leads up out of this valley on the Looe side and once the
+hill is surmounted it may be remarked with surprise that at the cost of
+going a little round it actually tries to keep on the level; that is not
+a practice habitual to Cornish roads, which seem to take a pure delight
+in a switchback manner of progress. This road was cut in 1849, the means
+of arriving at Polperro before that being something like falling down
+the face of a cliff. Polperro was the home of Jonathan Couch, the
+naturalist, grandfather of the novelist Sir A. Quiller-Couch, who lives
+a short way off at Fowey. Mr. Thomas Couch's _History of Polperro_
+embodying his father, Jonathan Couch's, notes, and published in 1871,
+may still be read with interest. He pictures himself standing on the
+height of Brent. "Immediately below are the harbour, valley and town of
+Polperro; the Peak with its striking jagged outline and massive black
+colouring; the sail-loft resting in a recess on its side; the ledges of
+rocks here and there hollowed into caverns, and the quays, between which
+are the fishing-boats riding quietly in tiers. Further up among the
+hills which shut this scene in you see strange, and apparently confused,
+groups of houses, having a general tint of whitewash, and, above
+them, on the southern side, the little Chapel of St. John."
+
+[Illustration: LOOE]
+
+Though many new and better-class houses have been built, this
+description still holds good. The cliffs all round are very sheer and
+steep, dropping straight into the water, which is deep up to the base.
+In some of the little old houses there are low, dark rooms smelling
+strongly of fish and brine, with the beams showing. Mr. Thomas Couch
+says: "In the old home of the Quillers [his mother's family] there was
+hanging on a beam a key, which we, as children, regarded with respect
+and awe, and never dared to touch, for Richard Quiller, Jane's father,
+had put the key of his quadrant on the nail with strong injunctions that
+no one should take it off until his return [which never happened]; and
+there, I believe, it still hangs." This doubtless gave "Q" his idea for
+the key on the beam in that curiously unequal story, _Dead Man's Rock_.
+
+The two Looes, East and West, facing each other across the mouth of the
+river,--which here _looks_ like the mouth of a river and not a fiord as
+at Fowey--are easily understood. You can see them both from the bridge,
+whereas in Fowey on first arrival it is very difficult to know where you
+are and I doubt if anyone really knows even after staying there awhile,
+for there is no place where you can get a comprehensive view unless it
+is from the opposite shore at the expense of much toil and trouble. The
+Looes lack the picturesqueness of Fowey but on the other hand you can
+get about much more easily and there is bathing on the front. The woods
+lying inland have a great and peculiar charm. Not very far above the
+bridge the river bifurcates, the two branches being east and west to
+match the twin-town. Here in the wide sandy estuary sea-birds
+congregate, and the boats are drawn up in rows beneath the overhanging
+trees, which come right down to the very lip of the water. It is
+difficult to contemplate without amusement the golden era before the
+Reform Bill when this little place returned four members to Parliament,
+two for the handful of houses each side of the river! It is
+difficult--but perhaps not quite so difficult--to realize that Looe sent
+twenty ships to help King Edward III. to besiege Calais.
+
+But these inlets we have been sketching are small indeed compared with
+the mighty harbours of many ramifications such as those at Devonport and
+Falmouth. Devonport has already been touched upon elsewhere, and we can
+pass on now to Falmouth with its wide opening in Carrick Roads and the
+long thin fingers or tongues of water diving deep into the heart of the
+land. One of these goes up to Truro and it is one of the popular
+excursions from both towns to sail up and down in the summer steamboats
+from one to the other. Falmouth itself lies along both sides of the neck
+of land ending in Pendennis Point, and, though on a much larger scale,
+is in that respect not unlike St. Ives in situation. The southern side
+boasts the beach and what may be called Villadom for its share, and the
+northern looks upon the harbour and faces over to the hamlet of Flushing
+where the ferry runs continually. There are steep streets in Falmouth as
+everywhere else in Cornwall, and even the main street passing all along
+beside the water, mounts a tough hill toward Penryn. The glimpses of the
+crowded harbour and the variety and picturesqueness of the boats and
+ships that find their way in are a never-failing source of interest and
+pleasure.
+
+Before the days of steam Falmouth was of more importance than it is now,
+and many a sailing ship started from here with a cargo of passengers who
+had travelled as far as possible on land before committing themselves to
+the uncertain sea. But Falmouth is particularly known for having been
+the starting-place of the Royal Mail Packets which went to America, the
+Indies and other parts of the globe. The mails were sent down by the
+authorities, who chartered armed brigs with a crew of thirty men and
+sent them off to run all the risks of the sea and to fight if need be in
+defence of their valuable cargo. Many a stubborn fight there was too and
+many the weeping widow of Falmouth who mourned her man in vain. It is
+supposed that Falmouth first became a station for "packets" in 1688, and
+the number sailing from the port was increased from time to time until
+in 1763 there were boats going to Lisbon, the West Indies and New York
+continually. Therefore for about 150 years, until 1850, Falmouth was the
+port for the mail-packets, but when steam power was applied to ships she
+lost the mail service which was transferred to Southampton.
+
+There is a school of artists here, an offshoot from the Newlyn school,
+which seems to have been the parent swarm of many a cluster.
+
+The castle on the headland, now in the hands of the military, dates from
+the time of Henry VIII.
+
+Facing Pendennis Point are the jagged jaws of another peninsula
+singularly like a crocodile's head. On the lower jaw is St. Mawes, a
+pretty little place with a rising hill behind. This peninsula is
+called by the pretty name of Roseland, which has however nothing to
+do with flowers, being derived from Rhos, the Celtic word for heath or
+gorse.
+
+[Illustration: FLUSHING--FROM FALMOUTH]
+
+About a mile along the southern shore of Falmouth is the Swan Pool, a
+sheet of fresh water cut off from the sea by a narrow bar of sand, and
+supposed by the Falmouth folk to outrival completely the better-known
+Looe Pool near Mullion.
+
+The whole of the Lizard peninsula is nearly shorn through by the Helford
+River, which almost reaches across to Looe Pool. If this is the heel of
+Cornwall, it, like the heel of Achilles, is vulnerable, and nearly
+severed by the slash! There is less to say about the Helford River
+estuary than any other. Beyond the fact that it was once a well-known
+harbourage for pirates it does not seem to have any striking title to
+fame.
+
+It is rather odd that though Cornwall is so liberally endowed with
+coast-line, so that at no part of the Duchy is one really far from the
+sea, yet she should have in addition these delightful winding waterways
+cutting deeply and widely into her south coast and affording excellent
+means of transit.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+CORNISH TOWNS
+
+
+If an enquiry were made among the Cornish towns as to which of them it
+were fittest to mention first, it can be easily imagined that one and
+all would claim the honour for themselves. And truly each has something
+to say for itself. Penzance is the town best known to the majority of
+visitors, because the railway ends there, and "London to Penzance" has
+become almost as common a phrase as "London to Cornwall." But so far as
+we are concerned we need not bother about Penzance as we have already
+given it full space. Truro could advance good claims for she is the seat
+of the Bishop's See and possesses the modern cathedral, the only one in
+the Duchy, and also she is the educational centre with fine county
+education offices. Bodmin, however, is really the county town as the
+Assizes are still held there, an honour she has disputed with Launceston
+for many centuries, the Assize Courts having swayed to and fro
+between them. Even now there is talk of removing them from Bodmin
+owing to the difficulty of getting there. Bodmin is not on the main
+Great Western line but only connected with it from Bodmin Road by a
+branch line. Launceston can outshine the others by reason of her fine
+ruin of the ancient castle and an historical record second to none, but
+at present official recognition she cannot claim.
+
+[Illustration: TRURO]
+
+Beyond these three we need not go. The coast-towns have been already
+visited, and as for smaller ones inland, such as Liskeard, Camelford,
+Redruth, Cambourne, Callington and Helston, they cannot hope to compete.
+
+Truro is just the picture of what one imagines a market-town to be. On
+market-days its open spaces are filled with country carts and the quaint
+little covered-in omnibuses, like those used by the peasantry of France
+on their immensely long straight roads. There is a buzz and clamour of
+talk outside the doors of the old Red Lion Inn, or, as it now seems to
+be the fashion to say--hotel. This is the house in which Samuel Foote,
+actor and dramatist, was born in 1720; his father was at one time Mayor
+of Truro. The house is worth seeing on its own account, for it has a
+massive carved oak staircase--alas, thickly overlaid with varnish, and
+some moulded ceilings unusual in an inn.
+
+Truro is well watered, as it stands between two small rivers which join
+in the creek by which steamboats go down to Falmouth through pretty
+wooded scenery. The town itself is quite tolerably flat for a Cornish
+town, but long hills run up out of it on all sides. The oldest part of
+the cathedral is that which was the parish church, incorporated into the
+new building. About the cathedral there have been many opinions, but a
+modern cathedral can hardly escape severe criticism considering that it
+has to compete with all the dignity and reverence of those which have
+stood hundreds of years! The white stone shows up well, and though the
+town is more or less in a basin the tall spires are seen from the
+surrounding hills to advantage. There are good shops in Truro and much
+that is of interest, including the very fine collection in the Museum of
+the Royal Institution of Cornwall, now housed in a worthy building. Here
+anyone who has wandered in the hills and over the barren moors and seen
+the relics of hoary antiquity so freely scattered, can look with seeing
+eye on the more valuable specimens which have been found and are now
+cared for and preserved where they will not be stolen or lost.
+
+Even in Domesday Book Truro is mentioned, and at that time there were
+two towns, Great and Little Truro, standing under the shadow of a
+fortress held by the Earls of Cornwall, now vanished, though its site is
+known and pointed out near the station. The town's charter was granted
+in 1130 and renewed in 1589, so it is not much matter for wonder the
+inhabitants look upon it as the first city in Cornwall, and, in olden
+times, so bore themselves that they earned for their city the nickname
+of "Proud Truro."
+
+The cathedral was in great part due to the energy of Bishop Benson,
+afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who was made first Bishop when the
+See was created. Bishop Benson "delighted in the Cornish people and was
+never tired of observing and analyzing their character." He did much for
+Truro in many ways.
+
+Bodmin stands almost in the middle of the Duchy with two long fingers,
+that of the inlet of Fowey on the south and that of the inlet of the
+River Camel on the north, pointing directly at it. It is a very quiet
+little town but has somehow managed to preserve its charm. The fine old
+parish church, almost worthy to take rank as a cathedral, is in the
+midst, easily to be seen. The church is the largest in Cornwall and
+parts of it date from 1125. It once had a very striking spire, destroyed
+by lightning in 1699. Bodmin means the Monks' Town, and even though it
+has the enormous barracks built in the usual style, just outside, it
+still keeps something of the monkish atmosphere. Bodmin scorns Truro's
+claims of long descent, turning to Athelstan as its founder. Athelstan,
+who founded here in 926 a Benedictine Priory of which some traces even
+now remain. The town is in a beautiful and well-wooded neighbourhood,
+and anyone taking the trouble to climb Beacon Hill just outside will be
+rewarded. It was at Bodmin in 1498 that Perkin Warbeck, who had
+disembarked near Land's End, gathered 3,000 men together and started his
+disastrous campaign by launching himself against Exeter. In Bodmin meet,
+or rather "meet with a gap between," the two rival railways--the Great
+Western and London and South Western; the latter station is a terminus,
+and the line running northward connects the town with Wadebridge and
+Padstow. The former comes from Bodmin Road where it joins the main
+line, and continues also to Wadebridge.
+
+[Illustration: THE BANKS OF THE FAL, FALMOUTH]
+
+Between Bodmin and Launceston stretches the wild tract of country known
+as Bodmin Moor. A more desolate region it would be hard to find or one
+more covered with relics of primitive man. Norden has said in writing of
+Cornwall, "The rockes are high, huge, ragged and craggy not only upon
+the sea-coaste ... but also the inland mountayns are so crowned with
+mightie rockes as he that passing through the country beholding some of
+the rockes afar off may suppose them to be greate cyties planted on the
+hills, wherin prima facie ther appeareth the resemblance of towres,
+howses, chimnies and such like."
+
+Though he flatters the Cornish highlands in calling them mountains, yet
+it is true enough that the tors out-cropping in this region do take on
+most curious shapes. The most remarkable of all is the unstable-looking
+Cheesewring, southwest of Launceston, and rather difficult of access.
+Here stones are piled one on the top of the other, each larger than the
+last, till the effect is that of a gigantic and misshapen mushroom. But
+it was not built deliberately, it just happened so. How--no one knows,
+but the suggestion is that the mass was once banked in by earth, which
+was washed away, leaving the bare pinnacle of stone. In the midst of the
+moor Brown Willy and Rough Tor rise with considerable picturesqueness,
+and their surfaces are strewn with the old beehive huts of a people
+whose history is lost.
+
+But those who are not familiar with the country should not wander far
+from the road as the bogs and marshes are really dangerous. They find
+their culmination in the odd little lake called Dozmare Pool associated
+with the story of King Arthur. This has no apparent outlet, and was once
+reported to be of fabulous depth.
+
+Launceston stands in a category by itself; though both the preceding
+towns are fairly hilly, it outdoes them magnificently in that respect!
+The streets up from the station are so steep that only by one of them,
+graded for the purpose, can vehicles mount at all. The others are merely
+for foot-passengers. Yet if looked at on a map which does not give
+contours, it will be seen that Launceston in reality is one very long
+straggling street running from end to end with various branches. This
+street dips down into the hollow where the railway is and mounts the
+other side. Baring-Gould says of Launceston, "Scarcely another English
+town has such a picturesque and continental appearance," but that is a
+matter of opinion. The name, meaning Church-Castle-Town, is very
+explanatory, for the church and castle are the two outstanding objects
+of interest. The former is most curious, for every foot of the walls
+outside is covered by granite carving, mostly of secular subjects and
+hacked out instead of chiselled.
+
+At the east end beneath the east window is a recess with a figure of
+Mary Magdalene much worn and tormented, and no wonder, for it is one of
+the Launceston superstitions that anyone who can chuck a pebble so as to
+lodge on the statue's back--no easy feat as the slope is slippery--will
+have a year's good luck, and many there be that try! The church is
+dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene and is, as churches go, of no great age.
+Curiously enough it was not at first the parish church but merely the
+development of a chapel.
+
+The present building dates from 1511 and the tower is older. What is
+very singular, and accounts for the choice of subjects on its quaintly
+carven walls, is that they were not designed for a sacred building at
+all. They were done for Henry Ashe of Trecarell, a wealthy Cornishman
+who had a great mansion and was rebuilding it regardless of cost; but in
+the midst of the work his only son, a child, was drowned and the mother
+died almost immediately from the shock, so the wretched father passed on
+the granite carvings, designed for a gateway to his mansion, to the
+church, where they now attract many curious visitors and adorn, not only
+the walls but the very fine projecting south porch. The rose, the
+pomegranate, the Prince of Wales's feathers are frequently repeated with
+the arms of Trecarell and Ashe. In order to give it an ecclesiastical
+finish certain sentences in Latin such as "Oh how terrible and fearful
+is this place. Surely this is none other but the house of God and the
+gate of heaven!" are embossed on shields round the base.
+
+A much more ancient church is that of St. Stephen away on the opposite
+heights beyond the valley. Some authorities think that the name
+Launceston really means Llan Stephan, the church of St. Stephen, and
+there is some colour for this, as it is possible the original town was
+around the older church and that the other grew up near to the castle.
+Baring-Gould boldly claims that the present town has no right to the
+name at all, but should be called Dunheved meaning "Swelling Hill." The
+castle keep certainly stands on a most appropriate swelling hill, just
+the place for such a fortification, with a magnificent view over miles
+of country.
+
+The present remains, the great keep with its rings of stone, is of
+Norman origin, but there was most certainly a Saxon castle here before
+it. It stands in delightful grounds, freely open to all, and a very
+sanctuary for birds. A winding stair runs within the wall and even in
+the present roofless condition it needs but little imagination to
+transport oneself back into feudal times, when the womenfolk cowered
+within the small rooms behind the solid masonry, and the warriors
+guarded the loopholes, watching, waiting for attack.
+
+Launceston is peculiarly rich in churches; besides the two mentioned
+there is St. Thomas, in the valley between, where have been discovered
+the ruins of a priory. From this the doorway of the White Hart Hotel in
+the market-place came.
+
+Down a side street is one of the old city gates, the only one remaining
+to show that Launceston was once walled. The chief point of interest
+about this, however, is apparently the very substantial tree, which, in
+most mysterious fashion, has found root-hold in the stone crevices and
+continues to flourish many feet above the ground.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+CORNISH CUSTOMS
+
+
+Old customs, and festivals carrying in them the germ of a meaning and
+significance long forgotten by those who practised them but intelligible
+to students of antiquity, continued to be observed in Cornwall when they
+had died out in most other places. There is no part of England where so
+many curious observances, superstitions and festivals are still observed
+as in Cornwall.
+
+Midsummer Day merrymakings were long kept up in many places, especially
+in regard to the part played by fire, and Richard Edmonds, secretary for
+Cornwall to the Cambrian Archaeological Association, writing in 1862,
+says:--"It is the immemorial usage in Penzance, and the neighbouring
+towns and villages, to kindle bonfires and torches on Midsummer Eve....
+St. Peter's Eve is distinguished by a similar display.... On these eves
+a line of tar-barrels, relieved occasionally by large bonfires, is seen
+in the centre of each of the principal streets in Penzance. On either
+side of this line young men and women pass up and down, swinging round
+their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of folded canvas steeped
+in tar and nailed to the ends of sticks between three and four feet
+long.... On these nights Mounts Bay has a most animating appearance
+although not equal to what was annually witnessed at the beginning of
+the present century when the whole coast from the Land's End to the
+Lizard, wherever a town or a village existed, was lighted up with these
+stationary or moving fires.... At the close of fireworks in Penzance, a
+great number of persons of both sexes, chiefly from the neighbourhood of
+the quay, used always, until within the last few years, to join hand in
+hand forming a long string and run through the streets playing 'thread
+the needle,' heedless of the fireworks showered upon them, and
+oftentimes leaping over the yet glowing embers. I have on these
+occasions seen boys following one another jumping through flames higher
+than themselves."
+
+This is a significant reminder of the custom of passing children through
+the fire referred to in the Bible.
+
+May Day celebrations are still kept up in the little town of Helston,
+the key to the Lizard. This saturnalia is held on the eighth of the
+month instead of the first, because the eighth is the festival of the
+apparition of St. Michael, who is represented in the Town Arms. The
+festival is called the "furry dance," a word which some writers have
+associated with "forage" or "foray" because the young people make a raid
+on all gardens and out into the fields early in the morning to collect
+flowers and green boughs. Polwhele connects the word with the old
+Cornish "fer," a fair or jubilee. Rather unsuccessful attempts have also
+been made to bring in the goddess Flora, and suggest a corruption of
+Flora-day to fit the present name.
+
+The day is a general holiday and anyone caught working is subjected to
+unpleasant penalties. About midday the most important person present
+leads off with his partner down the main street to the tune of a
+hornpipe--a local tune--and they are followed by a gay crowd. The throng
+threads in and out of the houses, in by the front door and out by the
+back if possible, for all doors are left open for them. Woe be to the
+churl who kept his shut! At length they arrive at the Assembly Rooms
+where a real ball begins.
+
+This curious performance slackened off for some years, but the
+Helstonians, finding that their little town owed a good deal of
+advertisement to this special festival, have revived it with goodwill,
+and now are inundated with visitors at the recurrence of the
+anniversary.
+
+Furry Day used to be held at Penryn on May 3 and at the Lizard on May 1
+and also in the parish of Sithney, but now it can only be seen at
+Helston.
+
+May Day has peculiar significance as being the celebration of the return
+of spring, and it is the custom at dawn on that day in some parts to dip
+weakly infants in the holy wells, which abound in Cornwall, to ensure
+strength. This is still done, though either secretly or in a jesting
+spirit, at the holy well of Madron near Penzance of which Madron is the
+mother parish.
+
+Many people adorn their houses in Cornwall with boughs and garlands in
+honour of the day even at the present time. May Day was the great day
+for miracle plays, so beloved by the old Cornishmen before they learned
+to consider them sinful under the teaching of Wesley. The best of the
+old amphitheatres, at any rate the one most accessible, is the
+Plan-an-Guare at St. Just referred to elsewhere.
+
+[Illustration: AT NEWLYN]
+
+At Padstow hobby-horses still prance round the town on May Day.
+Edmonds says:--"The hobby horse, or effigy of a horse, is, at this
+festival of the moon, dipped in a pool of water, and, for the same
+reason perhaps, that a similar figure was, in Ireland, passed through
+fire at the festival of the sun; to preserve the cattle from death and
+disease." Sun and moon being represented by fire and water.
+
+Mr. Baring-Gould says:--"During the days that precede the festival no
+garden is safe. Walls, railings, even barbed wire, are surmounted by
+boys and men in quest of flowers. Conservatories have to be fast locked,
+or they will be invaded. The house that has a show of flowers in the
+windows is besieged by pretty children with roguish eyes begging for
+blossoms which they cannot steal. The Hobby-horse Pairs, as they were
+called, _i.e._, a party of eight men, then repaired to the 'Golden
+Lion,' at that time the first inn in Padstow, and sat down to a hearty
+supper of leg of mutton and plum-pudding, given them by the landlord.
+After supper a great many young men joined the 'pairs,' _i.e._, the
+_peers_, the lords of the merriment, and all started for the country,
+and went round from one farmhouse to another, singing at the doors of
+each, and soliciting contributions to the festivities of the morrow.
+
+"They returned into Padstow about three o'clock in the morning, and
+promenaded the streets singing the 'Night Song.' After that they retired
+to rest for a few hours. At ten o'clock in the morning the 'pairs'
+assembled at the 'Golden Lion' again, and now was brought forth the
+hobby-horse. The drum-and-fife band was marshalled to precede, and then
+came the young girls of Padstow dressed in white, with garlands of
+flowers in their hair, and their white gowns pinned up with flowers. The
+men followed armed with pistols, loaded with a little powder, which they
+fired into the air or at the spectators. Lastly came the hobby-horse,
+ambling, curvetting, and snapping its jaws. It may be remarked that the
+Padstow hobby-horse is wonderfully like the Celtic horse decoration
+found on old pillars and crosses with interlaced work. The procession
+went first to Prideaux Place, where the late squire, Mr. Prideaux Brune,
+always emptied a purse of money into the hands of the 'pairs.' Then the
+procession visited the vicarage, and was welcomed by the parson. After
+that it went forth from the town to Treator Pool 'for the horse to
+drink.'"
+
+In Hitchins' _History of Cornwall_, edited by Samuel Drew, he says of
+the hobby-horse of Padstow: "The head, being dipped into the water, is
+instantly taken up and the mud and water are sprinkled on the spectators
+to the no small diversion of all."
+
+The Maypole festivities have been given up of recent years, but
+hobby-horses still prance the streets.
+
+Hitchins gives an account of a few local superstitions, some of which
+are not peculiar to Cornwall:--
+
+"The sound of the cuckoo, if first heard on the right ear, denotes good
+luck; but to hear the voice first on the left, is an omen of undefinable
+disasters. To spit on the first piece of money that is received in the
+morning will ensure a successful day in trade; and to hold up a silver
+coin against the new moon on its first appearance can hardly fail to
+secure lunar virtue for a month. To bite from the ground the first fern
+that appears in the spring is an infallible preventive of the toothache
+during the year; and the first ripe blackberry that is seen will put
+away warts. To pay money on the first day of January is very unlucky as
+it ensures a continuance of disbursements during the year; and to remove
+bees on any day besides Good Friday will ensure their death; while to
+work oxen on that day is an act which few would dare to perform lest
+they should suddenly die in the yoke. To whistle underground is an
+offence which few miners will suffer to pass over in silence; but to
+whistle while the farmer is winnowing his corn will as inevitably bring
+the wind as on board of a ship or boat, it is certain to secure a
+favourable breeze."
+
+Polwhele says: "The custom of saluting the apple-trees at Christmas with
+a view to another year, is still preserved both in Cornwall and
+Devonshire. In some places the parishioners walk in procession visiting
+the principal orchards in the parish; in each orchard single out the
+principal tree, salute it with a certain form of words and sprinkle it
+with cyder or dash a bowl of cyder against it. In other places, the
+farmer and his workmen only, immerse cakes in cyder and place them on
+the branches of an apple-tree in due solemnity; sprinkle the tree, as
+they repeat a formal incantation and dance round it."
+
+The harvest custom where the last handful of corn is cut, being called
+"a neck," and then dressed with flowers and carried off in triumph has
+been often referred to.
+
+The men of Cornwall have long been celebrated for wrestling, they being
+no whit behind the men of Devonshire and Somerset in this.
+
+They have other special games of their own too. Of which the chief is
+"hurling," though now only kept up in the parishes of St. Columb Major
+and Minor, in other words in the neighbourhood of Newquay, though a
+collection is made at St. Ives in a silver "hurlers' ball." The game is
+that of a ball being flung and thrown from one to the other, with goals
+which may be two miles apart. Sometimes one match takes days to decide.
+It is an extremely rough-and-tumble sport. In the season a match is
+played on the wide flat firm expanse of Newquay sands and hundreds take
+part in it, badges being used to discriminate between the players. And
+on Shrove Tuesday a game is played in the town of St. Columb the ball
+being thrown up in the market-place and all traffic being held up for
+the occasion. The goals used to be "either the mansion-house of one of
+the leading gentlemen of the party, a parish church, or some other
+well-known place." The ball is rather larger than a cricket-ball, but
+not so large as a football, and is silvered over. The struggle is
+expressively described by Carew:--"The hurlers take their way over
+hills, dales, hedges and ditches, through bushes, briers, mires,
+plashes, rivers; sometimes twenty or thirty lie tugging together in the
+water, scrambling and scratching for the ball."
+
+These customs and sports are only samples, for there are many quaint
+ideas still held in certain parishes which would almost provide the
+material for a book by themselves, and are far too numerous to collect
+together in a sketch like the present. However, enough has perhaps been
+said to show how the Cornish spirit still lingers in spite of the influx
+of "foreigners" growing ever greater yearly.
+
+
+
+
+SOME BOOKS ON CORNWALL
+
+
+  ANON. Walk Round Mount Edgcumbe. 1821.
+  BARING-GOULD, S. Book of the East. 1902.
+  BARING-GOULD, S. Vicar of Morwenstow. 1876.
+  BLIGHT, J. T. Land's End. 1861.
+  BORLASE, W. C. Noenia Cornubiae. 1872.
+  BRAY, ANNA ELIZA. Banks of Tamar. New edition. 1879.
+  CAMDEN. Britannia. 1594.
+  CAREW, RICHARD. Survey of Cornwall. 1602.
+  COLLINS, WILKIE. Rambles Beyond Railways. 1861.
+  COUCH, JONATHAN. History of Polperro. 1871.
+  CRAIK, MRS. An Unsentimental Journey in Cornwall. 1884.
+  DICKINSON, W. H. King Arthur in Cornwall. 1900.
+  EDMONDS, RICHARD. Land's End District. 1862.
+  GAY, SUSAN E. Old Falmouth. 1903.
+  GILBERT, C. S. Historical Survey of Cornwall. Two vols. 1817-20.
+  GILBERT, DAVIES. Parochial History of Cornwall. Four vols. 1838.
+  HALLIWELL, J. O. Rambles in Western Cornwall. 1861.
+  HAMMOND, JOSEPH. St. Austell. 1897.
+  HARVEY, E. G. Mullion. 1875.
+  HIND, LEWIS. Days in Cornwall. 1907.
+  HUDSON, W. H. The Land's End. 1908.
+  JOHNS, REV. C. A. A Week at the Lizard. 1874.
+  LACH-SZYRMA, W. S. Short History of Penzance, etc. 1878.
+  LYSONS. Magna Britannica. 1806-22. Vol. iii.
+  MACLEAN, SIR J. Trigg Minor. Three vols. 1873-79.
+  MATTHEWS, J. H. Parishes of St. Ives, Lelant, etc. 1892.
+  NORTH, I. W. Week in Scilly. 1850.
+  NORWAY, A. H. Highways and Byways in Devon and Cornwall. 1897.
+  POLWHELE, REV. RICHARD. History of Cornwall. 1803 and 1806.
+  ROBBINS, A. F. Launceston, Past and Present. 1888.
+  SCOTT, C. A. DAWSON-. Nooks and Corners of Cornwall.
+  STONE, J. HARRIS. England's Riviera. 1912.
+  TREGARTHEN, J. C. Wild Life at the Land's End. 1904.
+  VICTORIA COUNTY HISTORY. 1906.
+
+
+NOVELS.
+
+Most of Q's books.
+
+  ELLIS, MRS. HAVELOCK. My Cornish Neighbours.
+  SIDGWICK, MRS. ALFRED. In Other Days. 1915.
+  BESANT, SIR WALTER. Armorel of Lyonnesse. 1890.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Archaeology, 17
+
+Armed Knight, the, 61
+
+Arthur. _See under_ King
+
+Artists, 15, 39, 41, 95, 122
+
+Athelstan, 22, 43, 59, 128
+
+"Atlantic Drive, The," 47
+
+
+Bedruthan Steps, 11, 60, 101
+
+Benson, Bishop, 127
+
+Bird-life, 25, 57, 76, 87
+
+Bodinnick Ferry, 115
+
+Bodmin, 124, 127
+
+Bodmin Moor, 129
+
+Bodmin Road, 29
+
+Boscastle, 89
+
+Brisons, the, 60
+
+British villages, 46
+
+Brown Willy, 12
+
+Bude, 105
+
+
+Callington, 125
+
+Cambourne, 125
+
+Camel River, 103, 127
+
+Camelford, 78, 125
+
+Camulodunum, Battle of, 78
+
+Cape Cornwall, 60
+
+Cardinham Castle, 84
+
+Castle-an-Dinas, 100
+
+Cheesewring, 129
+
+Chun Castle, 47
+
+Cliffs, 61, 65, 87, 106
+
+Climate, mildness of, 7
+
+Cornish cliffs, 11
+
+Cornish people, 4, 17, 18, 85
+
+Couch, Jonathan, 118
+
+Crantock, 101
+
+Cream, 21
+
+Customs, 135
+
+
+Davy, Sir Humphry, 39
+
+Delabole, 89
+
+Devonport, 120
+
+Dozmare Pool, 130
+
+Dunheved, 133
+
+
+Earthworks, 47
+
+East Looe, 119
+
+Enys Dodman, 61
+
+
+Falmouth, 120
+
+Fistral Bay, 99
+
+Flushing, 121
+
+Forraburry, 90
+
+Fougou Hole, 43
+
+Fowey, 8, 14, 30, 109 _et seq._
+
+"Furry dance," 137
+
+
+Gannel River, 101
+
+Godrevy Point, 93
+
+Golf, 10, 20, 92, 99, 106
+
+Goonhilly Downs, 64
+
+Great Western Railway, 29, 128
+
+Grenville, Sir Bevil, 107
+
+Gribbin Head, 110
+
+
+Hamoaze, 24
+
+Hawker, Rev. Robert Stephen, 107
+
+"Hedges," 5, 31
+
+Helford River, 123
+
+Helston, 125, 137
+
+Hills, 12, 41, 50, 96, 130
+
+History, 21
+
+Holy wells, 101
+
+Housel Bay Hotel, 64
+
+Hugh Town, 58
+
+Hurling, 143
+
+
+Killibury Castle, 85
+
+King Arthur, 55, 72 _et seq._
+
+King Stephen, 59
+
+Knill monument, 97
+
+Kynance Cove, 11, 66
+
+
+Lamorna Cove, 41
+
+Land of Lyonnesse, 37, 55
+
+Landewednack, 32
+
+Land's End, 1, 2, 51, 60
+
+Lanherne, Vale of, 100
+
+Lanyon Quoit, 46
+
+Launceston, 12, 124, 130
+
+Lelant, 92, 98
+
+Lerryn River, 116
+
+Lighthouses, 53, 68
+
+Liskeard, 125
+
+Lizard, the, 63
+
+Lizard-town, 64
+
+Lloyd's Signal Station, 69
+
+Logan Rock, 45, 46
+
+London and South-Western Railway, 128
+
+Longships Light, 53
+
+Looes, East and West, 119
+
+Lundy Island, 90
+
+Luxulyan, 15
+
+Luxulyan Valley, 29
+
+Lynher or St. Germans River, 24
+
+
+Madron, 46
+
+Marazion, 37
+
+May Day, 136
+
+"Merry Maidens," 44
+
+Midsummer Day, 135
+
+Mining Region, 49
+
+Mordred, 78
+
+Morwenstow, 107
+
+Mount Edgcumbe, 25
+
+Mount's Bay, 35
+
+Mousehole, 40
+
+Mozrang Pool, 61
+
+Mullion, 14
+
+
+Newlyn, 15, 39
+
+Newquay, 98
+
+Nonconformists, 38
+
+
+Padstow, 103, 128, 138
+
+Pardenick Point, 61
+
+Pasties, 21
+
+Pedn Men Dhu, 60
+
+Pendennis Point, 121, 122
+
+Penolva Point, 97
+
+Penpoll Creek, 116
+
+Penryn, 121
+
+Pentargon Bay, 91
+
+Pentire Point, 104
+
+Penzance, 34, 38, 93, 124, 136
+
+Perran Beach, 102
+
+Perranporth, 103
+
+Perranzabuloe, 103
+
+Pilchards, 95
+
+"Pipers, The," 43
+
+Pirates, 114, 123
+
+Plan-an-guare, 50
+
+Plant-life, 16
+
+Polperro, 14, 117
+
+Porthgwarra, 63
+
+Porthgwidden Cove, 97
+
+Porthmeor Bay, 95
+
+Porthminster Bay, 92
+
+
+Quiller-Couch, Sir A., 118
+
+
+Redruth, 125
+
+Roads, 13, 49
+
+Roche, 30
+
+Rock, 104
+
+Rocky Valley, 88
+
+Roseland, 123
+
+Royal Institution of Cornwall, 126
+
+Royal Mail Packets, 121
+
+
+St. Blazey, 29
+
+St. Buryan, 22, 44
+
+St. Columb Major, 100, 143
+
+St. Columb Minor, 100, 143
+
+St. Erth, 94
+
+St. Germans or Lynher River, 24
+
+St. Ives, 7, 15, 92 _et seq._
+
+St. Mary's Island, 58
+
+St. Mawes, 122
+
+St. Mawgan, 100
+
+St. Michael's Mount, 35
+
+St. Piran, 102
+
+Saints, 99
+
+Saltash, 24
+
+Scilly Isles, 56
+
+Sennen, 59
+
+Sennen Cove, 59
+
+Serpentine Rock, 66
+
+Seven Stones, 56
+
+Slaughter Bridge, 78
+
+Stamford, Earl of, 107
+
+Stephen, King, 59
+
+Stratton, 107
+
+Swan Pool, 123
+
+
+Tamar River, 24
+
+Tavy River, 24
+
+Tol Pedn, 61
+
+Treffrys, the, 110
+
+Treryn Dinas, 45, 73
+
+Trevalgue Head, 101
+
+Trevose Headland, 100
+
+Truro, 125
+
+
+Uther Pendragon, 77
+
+
+Valleys, 30
+
+Vell-an-Dreath, 59
+
+
+Wadebridge, 128
+
+Warbeck, Perkin, 59, 128
+
+Watergate Bay, 101
+
+Wesley, 38, 50
+
+West Looe, 119
+
+Whitesand Bay, 58
+
+Wolf Lighthouse, 53
+
+Wrangle Point, 107
+
+Wrestling, 143
+
+
+Zennor, 48
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND
+
+[Illustration: SKETCH-MAP OF CORNWALL
+
+(A. & C. BLACK, LTD., LONDON)]
+
+
+    Transcriber's note:
+
+    _Underscores_ have been used to indicate _italic_ fonts.
+    Inconsistent hyphenation left as written.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cornwall, by G. E. Mitton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORNWALL ***
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