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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44557 ***
+
+  AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
+
+  THROUGH CORNWALL
+
+  [Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.]
+
+
+
+
+  AN
+
+  UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
+
+  THROUGH
+
+  CORNWALL
+
+  BY
+
+  THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN"
+
+  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  BY
+
+  C. NAPIER HEMY
+
+  London
+
+  MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+  1884
+
+  _The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved_
+
+  LONDON:
+
+  R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
+
+  BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+  DAY THE FIRST                                             1
+
+  DAY THE SECOND                                            9
+
+  DAY THE THIRD                                            25
+
+  DAY THE FOURTH                                           45
+
+  DAY THE FIFTH                                            53
+
+  DAY THE SIXTH                                            59
+
+  DAY THE SEVENTH                                          67
+
+  DAY THE EIGHTH                                           75
+
+  DAY THE NINTH                                            86
+
+  DAY THE TENTH                                           101
+
+  DAY THE ELEVENTH                                        110
+
+  DAY THE TWELFTH                                         118
+
+  DAY THE THIRTEENTH                                      127
+
+  DAYS FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH               133
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+  ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT                           _Frontispiece_
+
+  FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING                                   1
+
+  ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY                           5
+
+  VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH      7
+
+  A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD                     11
+
+  THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT         15
+
+  THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT                               23
+
+  CORNISH FISH                                             24
+
+  POLTESCO                                                 29
+
+  CADGWITH COVE                                            32
+
+  THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH                    34
+
+  MULLION COVE, CORNWALL                                   38
+
+  A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY                           41
+
+  STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT                              46
+
+  HAULING IN THE BOATS--EVENING                            50
+
+  HAULING IN THE LINES                                     55
+
+  THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY                                 60
+
+  THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER--A CORNISH STUDY                63
+
+  KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL                                   68
+
+  THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE                           71
+
+  THE LION ROCKS--A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE          76
+
+  HAULING IN THE BOATS                                     79
+
+  ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS                         83
+
+  JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING                                   87
+
+  THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE          94
+
+  CORNISH FISHERMAN                                       100
+
+  THE SEINE BOAT--A PERILOUS MOMENT                       103
+
+  ST. IVES      108
+
+  THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK                       114
+
+  SENNEN COVE, WAITING FOR THE BOATS                      119
+
+  ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE                      124
+
+  TINTAGEL                                                128
+
+  CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY                     135
+
+  BOSCASTLE                                               139
+
+  THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA                            145
+
+
+
+
+AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
+
+THROUGH CORNWALL
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING.]
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE FIRST
+
+
+I believe in holidays. Not in a frantic rushing about from place to
+place, glancing at everything and observing nothing; flying from town
+to town, from hotel to hotel, eager to "do" and to see a country, in
+order that when they get home they may say they have done it, and seen
+it. Only to say;--as for any real vision of eye, heart, and brain, they
+might as well go through the world blindfold. It is not the things
+we see, but the mind we see them with, which makes the real interest
+of travelling. "Eyes and No Eyes,"--an old-fashioned story about two
+little children taking a walk; one seeing everything, and enjoying
+everything, and the other seeing nothing, and thinking the expedition
+the dullest imaginable. This simple tale, which the present generation
+has probably never read, contains the essence of all rational
+travelling.
+
+So when, as the "old hen," (which I am sometimes called, from my habit
+of going about with a brood of "chickens," my own or other people's) I
+planned a brief tour with two of them, one just entered upon her teens,
+the other in her twenties, I premised that it must be a tour after my
+own heart.
+
+"In the first place, my children, you must obey orders implicitly. I
+shall collect opinions, and do my best to please everybody; but in
+travelling one only must decide, the others coincide. It will save them
+a world of trouble, and their 'conductor' also; who, if competent to be
+trusted at all, should be trusted absolutely. Secondly, take as little
+luggage as possible. No sensible people travel with their point-lace
+and diamonds. Two 'changes of raiment,' good, useful dresses, prudent
+boots, shawls, and waterproofs--these I shall insist upon, and nothing
+more. Nothing for show, as I shall take you to no place where you can
+show off. We will avoid all huge hotels, all fashionable towns; we
+will study life in its simplicity, and make ourselves happy in our own
+humble, feminine way. Not 'roughing it' in any needless or reckless
+fashion--the 'old hen' is too old for that; yet doing everything with
+reasonable economy. Above all, rushing into no foolhardy exploits, and
+taking every precaution to keep well and strong, so as to enjoy the
+journey from beginning to end, and hinder no one else from enjoying
+it. There are four things which travellers ought never to lose: their
+luggage, their temper, their health, and their spirits. I will make
+you as happy as I possibly can, but you must also make me happy by
+following my rules: especially the one golden rule, Obey orders."
+
+So preached the "old hen," with a vague fear that her chickens might
+turn out to be ducklings, which would be a little awkward in the
+region whither she proposed to take them. For if there is one place
+more risky than another for adventurous young people with a talent
+for "perpetuating themselves down prejudices," as Mrs. Malaprop would
+say, it is that grandest, wildest, most dangerous coast, the coast of
+Cornwall.
+
+I had always wished to investigate Cornwall. This desire had existed
+ever since, at five years old, I made acquaintance with Jack the
+Giantkiller, and afterwards, at fifteen or so, fell in love with my
+life's one hero, King Arthur.
+
+Between these two illustrious Cornishmen,--equally mythical, practical
+folk would say--there exists more similarity than at first appears.
+The aim of both was to uphold right and to redress wrong. Patience,
+self-denial; tenderness to the weak and helpless, dauntless courage
+against the wicked and the strong: these, the essential elements of
+true manliness, characterise both the humble Jack and the kingly
+Arthur. And the qualities seem to have descended to more modern times.
+The well-known ballad:--
+
+  "And shall they scorn Tre, Pol, and Pen?
+    And shall Trelawny die?
+  There's twenty thousand Cornishmen
+    Will know the reason why,"
+
+has a ring of the same tone, indicating the love of justice, the spirit
+of fidelity and bravery, as well as of that common sense which is at
+the root of all useful valour.
+
+I wanted to see if the same spirit lingered yet, as I had heard it did
+among Cornish folk, which, it was said, were a race by themselves,
+honest, simple, shrewd, and kind. Also, I wished to see the Cornish
+land, and especially the Land's End, which I had many a time beheld in
+fancy, for it was a favourite landscape-dream of my rather imaginative
+childhood, recurring again and again, till I could almost have painted
+it from memory. And as year after year every chance of seeing it in its
+reality seemed to melt away, the desire grew into an actual craving.
+
+After waiting patiently for nearly half a century, I said to myself, "I
+will conquer Fate; I _will_ go and see the Land's End."
+
+And it was there that, after making a circuit round the coast, I
+proposed finally to take my "chickens."
+
+We concocted a plan, definite yet movable, as all travelling plans
+should be, clear in its dates, its outline, and intentions, but
+subject to modifications, according to the exigency of the times
+and circumstances. And with that prudent persistency, without which
+all travelling is a mere muddle, all discomfort, disappointment,
+and distaste--for on whatever terms you may be with your travelling
+companions when you start, you are quite sure either to love them or
+hate them when you get home--we succeeded in carrying it out.
+
+The 1st of September, 1881, and one of the loveliest of September
+days, was the day we started from Exeter, where we had agreed to meet
+and stay the night. There, the previous afternoon, we had whiled away
+an hour in the dim cathedral, and watched, not without anxiety, the
+flood of evening sunshine which poured through the great west window,
+lighting the tombs, old and new, from the Crusader, cross-legged and
+broken-nosed, to the white marble bas-relief which tells the story of a
+not less noble Knight of the Cross, Bishop Patteson. Then we wandered
+round the quaint old town, in such a lovely twilight, such a starry
+night! But--will it be a fine day to-morrow? We could but live in hope:
+and hope did not deceive us.
+
+To start on a journey in sunshine feels like beginning life well.
+Clouds may come--are sure to come: I think no one past earliest youth
+goes forth into a strange region without a feeling akin to Saint Paul's
+"not knowing what things may befall me there." But it is always best
+for each to keep to himself all the shadows, and give his companions
+the brightness, especially if they be young companions.
+
+And very bright were the eyes that watched the swift-moving landscape
+on either side of the railway: the estuary of Exe; Dawlish, with its
+various colouring of rock and cliff, and its pretty little sea-side
+houses, where family groups stood photographing themselves on our
+vision, as the train rushed unceremoniously between the beach and their
+parlour windows; then Plymouth and Saltash, where the magnificent
+bridge reminded us of the one over the Tay, which we had once crossed,
+not long before that Sunday night when, sitting in a quiet sick-room
+in Edinburgh, we heard the howl outside of the fearful blast which
+destroyed such a wonderful work of engineering art, and whirled so many
+human beings into eternity.
+
+But this Saltash bridge, spanning placidly a smiling country,
+how pretty and safe it looked! There was a general turning to
+carriage-windows, and then a courteous drawing back, that we,
+the strangers, should see it, which broke the ice with our
+fellow-travellers. To whom we soon began to talk, as is our
+conscientious custom when we see no tangible objection thereto, and
+gained, now, as many a time before, much pleasant as well as useful
+information. Every one evinced an eager politeness to show us the
+country, and an innocent anxiety that we should admire it; which we
+could honestly do.
+
+I shall long remember, as a dream of sunshiny beauty and peace, this
+journey between Plymouth and Falmouth, passing Liskeard, Lostwithiel,
+St. Austell, &c. The green-wooded valleys, the rounded hills, on one of
+which we were shown the remains of the old castle of Ristormel, noted
+among the three castles of Cornwall; all this, familiar to so many,
+was to us absolutely new, and we enjoyed it and the kindly interest
+that was taken in pointing it out to us, as happy-minded simple folk do
+always enjoy the sight of a new country.
+
+[Illustration: ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY.]
+
+Our pleasure seemed to amuse an old gentleman who sat in the corner.
+He at last addressed us, with an unctuous west-country accent which
+suited well his comfortable stoutness. He might have fed all his life
+upon Dorset butter and Devonshire cream, to one of which counties
+he certainly belonged. Not, I think, to the one we were now passing
+through, and admiring so heartily.
+
+"So you're going to travel in Cornwall. Well, take care, they're sharp
+folk, the Cornish folk. They'll take you in if they can." (Then, he
+must be a Devon man. It is so easy to sit in judgment upon next-door
+neighbours.) "I don't mean to say they'll actually cheat you, but
+they'll take you in, and they'll be careful that you don't take them
+in--no, not to the extent of a brass farthing."
+
+We explained, smiling, that we had not the slightest intention of
+taking anybody in, that we liked justice, and blamed no man, Cornishman
+or otherwise, for trying to do the best he could for himself, so that
+it was not to the injury of other people.
+
+"Well, well, perhaps you're right. But they are sharp, for all that,
+especially in the towns."
+
+We replied that we meant to escape towns, whenever possible, and encamp
+in some quiet places, quite out of the world.
+
+Our friend opened his eyes, evidently thinking this a most singular
+taste.
+
+"Well, if you really want a quiet place, I can tell you of one, almost
+as quiet as your grave. I ought to know, for I lived there sixteen
+years." (At any rate, it seemed to have agreed with him.) "Gerrans is
+its name--a fishing village. You get there from Falmouth by boat. The
+fare is "--(I regret to say my memory is not so accurate as his in the
+matter of pennies), "and mind you don't pay one farthing more. Then you
+have to drive across country; the distance is--and the fare per mile--"
+(Alas! again I have totally forgotten.) "They'll be sure to ask you
+double the money, but never you mind! refuse to pay it, and they'll
+give in. You must always hold your own against extortion in Cornwall."
+
+I thanked him, with a slightly troubled mind. But I have always noticed
+that in travelling "with such measure as ye mete it shall be meted
+to you again," and that those who come to a country expecting to be
+cheated generally are cheated. Having still a lingering belief in human
+nature, and especially in Cornish nature, I determined to set down the
+old gentleman's well-meant advice for what it was worth, no more, and
+cease to perplex myself about it. For which resolve I have since been
+exceedingly thankful.
+
+He gave us, however, much supplementary advice which was rather useful,
+and parted from us in the friendliest fashion, with that air of bland
+complaisance natural to those who assume the character of adviser in
+general.
+
+"Mind you go to Gerrans. They'll not take you in more than they do
+everywhere else, and you'll find it a healthy place, and a quiet
+place--as quiet, I say, as your grave. It will make you feel exactly as
+if you were dead and buried."
+
+That not being the prominent object of our tour in Cornwall, we thanked
+him again, but as soon as he left the carriage determined among
+ourselves to take no further steps about visiting Gerrans.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH.]
+
+However, in spite of the urgency of another fellow-traveller--it is
+always good to hear everybody's advice, and follow your own--we carried
+our love of quietness so far that we eschewed the magnificent new
+Falmouth Hotel, with its _table d'hôte_, lawn tennis ground, sea baths
+and promenade, for the old-fashioned Green Bank, which though it had no
+green banks, boasted, we had been told, a pleasant little sea view and
+bay view, and was a resting-place full of comfort and homely peace.
+
+Which we found true, and would have liked to stay longer in its
+pleasant shelter, which almost conquered our horror of hotels; but we
+had now fairly weighed anchor and must sail on.
+
+"You ought to go at once to the Lizard," said the friend who met us,
+and did everything for us at Falmouth--and the remembrance of whom, and
+of all that happened in our brief stay, will make the very name of the
+place sound sweet in our ears for ever. "The Lizard is the real point
+for sightseers, almost better than the Land's End. Let us see if we can
+hear of lodgings."
+
+She made inquiries, and within half an hour we did hear of some most
+satisfactory ones. "The very thing! We will telegraph at once--answer
+paid," said this good genius of practicality, as sitting in her
+carriage she herself wrote the telegram and despatched it. Telegrams to
+the Lizard! We were not then at the Ultima Thule of civilisation.
+
+"Still," she said, "you had better provide yourself with some food,
+such as groceries and hams. You can't always get what you want at the
+Lizard."
+
+So, having the very dimmest idea what the Lizard was--whether a town,
+a village, or a bare rock--when we had secured the desired lodgings
+("quite ideal lodgings," remarked our guardian angel), I proceeded to
+lay in a store of provisions, doing it as carefully as if fitting out
+a ship for the North Pole--and afterwards found out it was a work of
+supererogation entirely.
+
+The next thing to secure was an "ideal" carriage, horse, and man, which
+our good genius also succeeded in providing. And now, our minds being
+at rest, we were able to write home a fixed address for a week, and
+assure our expectant and anxious friends that all was going well with
+us.
+
+Then, after a twilight wander round the quaint old town--so like a
+foreign town--and other keen enjoyments, which, as belonging to the
+sanctity of private life I here perforce omit, we laid us down to
+sleep, and slept in peace, having really achieved much; considering it
+was only the first day of our journey.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE SECOND
+
+
+Is there anything more delightful than to start on a smiling morning
+in a comfortable carriage, with all one's _impedimenta_ (happily not
+much!) safely stowed away under one's eyes, with a good horse, over
+which one's feelings of humanity need not be always agonising, and a
+man to drive, whom one can trust to have as much sense as the brute,
+especially in the matter of "refreshment." Our letters that morning had
+brought us a comico-tragic story of a family we knew, who, migrating
+with a lot of children and luggage, and requiring to catch a train
+thirteen miles off, had engaged a driver who "refreshed himself" so
+successfully at every public-house on the way, that he took five hours
+to accomplish the journey, and finally had to be left at the road-side,
+and the luggage transferred to another vehicle, which of course lost
+the train. We congratulated ourselves that no such disaster was likely
+to happen to us.
+
+"Yes; I've been a teetotaller all my life," said our driver, a
+bright-looking, intelligent young fellow, whom, as he became rather a
+prominent adjunct to our life and decidedly to our comfort, I shall
+individualise by calling him Charles. "I had good need to avoid
+drinking. My father drank through a small property. No fear of me,
+ma'am."
+
+So at once between him and us, or him and "we," according to the
+Cornish habit of transposing pronouns, was established a feeling of
+fraternity, which, during the six days that we had to do with him,
+deepened into real regard. Never failing when wanted, never presuming
+when not wanted, straightforward, independent, yet full of that
+respectful kindliness which servants can always show and masters
+should always appreciate, giving us a chivalrous care, which, being
+"unprotected females," was to us extremely valuable, I here record that
+much of the pleasure of our tour was owing to this honest Cornishman,
+who served us, his horse, and his master--he was one of the employés of
+a livery-stable keeper--with equal fidelity.
+
+Certainly, numerous as were the parties he had driven--("I go to the
+Lizard about three times a week," he said)--Charles could seldom have
+driven a merrier trio than that which leisurely mounted the upland road
+from Falmouth, leading to the village of Constantine.
+
+"Just turn and look behind you, ladies" (we had begged to be shown
+everything and told everything); "isn't that a pretty view?"
+
+It certainly was. From the high ground we could see Falmouth with its
+sheltered bay and glittering sea beyond. Landward were the villages of
+Mabe and Constantine, with their great quarries of granite, and in the
+distance lay wide sweeps of undulating land, barren and treeless, but
+still beautiful--not with the rich pastoral beauty of our own Kent, yet
+having a charm of its own. And the air, so fresh and pure, yet soft and
+balmy, it felt to tender lungs like the difference between milk and
+cream. To breathe became a pleasure instead of a pain. I could quite
+understand how the semi-tropical plants that we had seen in a lovely
+garden below, grew and flourished, how the hydrangeas became huge
+bushes, and the eucalyptus an actual forest tree.
+
+But this was in the sheltered valley, and we had gained the hill-top,
+emerging out of one of those deep-cut lanes peculiar to Devon and
+Cornwall, and so pretty in themselves, a perfect garden of wild flowers
+and ferns, except that they completely shut out the view. This did not
+much afflict the practical minds of my two juniors. Half an hour before
+they had set up a shout--
+
+"Stop the carriage! _Do_ stop the carriage! Just look there! Did you
+ever see such big blackberries? and what a quantity! Let us get out;
+we'll gather them for to-morrow's pudding."
+
+Undoubtedly a dinner earned is the sweetest of all dinners. I remember
+once thinking that our cowslip tea (I should not like to drink it
+now) was better than our grandmother's best Bohea or something out
+of her lovely old tea-caddy. So the carriage, lightened of all but
+myself, crawled leisurely up and waited on the hill-top for the busy
+blackberry-gatherers.
+
+While our horse stood cropping an extempore meal, I and his driver
+began to talk about him and other cognate topics, including the
+permanent one of the great advantage to both body and soul in being
+freed all one's life long from the necessity of getting "something to
+drink" stronger than water.
+
+[Illustration: A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD.]
+
+"Yes," he said, "I find I can do as much upon tea or coffee as other
+men upon beer. I'm just as strong and as active, and can stand weather
+quite as well. It's a pretty hard life, winter and summer, driving all
+day, coming in soaked, sometimes in the middle of the night, having to
+turn in for an hour or two, and then turn out again. And you must look
+after your horse, of course, before you think of yourself. Still, I
+stand it well, and that without a drop of beer from years end to years
+end."
+
+I congratulated and sympathised; in return for which Charles entered
+heart and soul into the blackberry question, pointed out where the
+biggest blackberries hung, and looked indeed--he was still such a young
+fellow!--as if he would have liked to go blackberry-hunting himself.
+
+I put, smiling, the careless question, "Have you any little folks of
+your own? Are you married?"
+
+How cautious one should be over an idle word! All of a sudden the
+cheerful face clouded, the mouth began to quiver, with difficulty I
+saw he kept back the tears. It was a version in every-day life of
+Longfellow's most pathetic little poem, "The Two Locks of Hair."
+
+"My wife broke her heart after the baby, I think. It died. She went off
+in consumption. It's fifteen months now"--(he had evidently counted
+them)--"fifteen months since I have been alone. I didn't like to give
+up my home and my bits of things; still, when a man has to come in wet
+and tired to an empty house----"
+
+He turned suddenly away and busied himself over his horse, for just
+that minute the two girls came running back, laughing heartily, and
+showing their baskets full of "the very biggest blackberries you ever
+saw!" I took them back into the carriage; the driver mounted his box,
+and drove on for some miles in total silence. As, when I had whispered
+that little episode to my two companions, so did we.
+
+There are two ways of going from Falmouth to the Lizard--the regular
+route through the town of Helstone, and another, a trifle longer,
+through the woods of Trelowarren, the seat of the old Cornish family of
+Vyvyan.
+
+"I'll take you that road, ma'am, it's much the prettiest," said Charles
+evidently exerting himself to recover his cheerful looks and be the
+civil driver and guide, showing off all the curiosities and beauties
+of the neighbourhood. And very pretty Trelowarren was, though nothing
+remarkable to us who came from the garden of England. Still, the trees
+were big--for Cornwall, and in the ferny glade grew abundantly the
+_Osmunda regalis_, a root of which we greatly coveted, and Charles
+offered to get. He seemed to take a pride in showing us everything,
+except what he probably did not know of, and which, when I heard of
+too late, was to me a real regret.
+
+At Trelowarren, not far from the house, are a series of subterranean
+chambers and galleries, in all ninety feet long and about the height
+of a man. The entrance is very low. Still it is possible to get into
+them and traverse them from end to end, the walls being made of blocks
+of unhewn stone, leaning inward towards the roof, which is formed of
+horizontal blocks. How, when, and for what purpose this mysterious
+underground dwelling was made, is utterly lost in the mists of time.
+I should exceedingly have liked to examine it, and to think we passed
+close by and never knew of it will always be a certain regret, of which
+I relieve my mind by telling it for the guidance of other archæological
+travellers.
+
+One of the charms of Cornwall is that it gives one the sense of being
+such an old country, as if things had gone exactly as they do now, not
+merely since the days of King Arthur, but for ever so long before then.
+The Romans, the Ph[oe]nicians, nay, the heroes of pre-historic ages,
+such as Jack the Giantkiller and the giant Cormoran, seemed to be not
+impossible myths, as we gradually quitted civilisation in the shape of
+a village or two, and a few isolated farm-houses, and came out upon the
+wild district known as Goonhilly Down.
+
+Certainly not from its hills, for it is as flat as the back of your
+hand, and as bare. But the word, which is old Cornish--that now extinct
+tongue, which only survives in the names of places and people--means a
+_hunting ground_; and there is every reason to believe that this wide
+treeless waste was once an enormous forest, full of wild beasts. There
+St. Rumon, an Irish bishop, long before there were any Saxon bishops
+or saints, is said to have settled, far away from the world, and made
+a cell and oratory, the memory of which, and of himself, is still kept
+up by the name of the two villages, Ruan Major and Ruan Minor, on the
+outskirts of this Goonhilly Down.
+
+In later times the down was noted for a breed of small, strong ponies,
+called "Goonhillies." Charles had heard of them, but I do not suppose
+he had ever heard of St. Rumon, or of the primeval forest. At present,
+the fauna of Goonhilly is represented by no animal more dangerous
+than a rabbit or a field-mouse, and its vegetation includes nothing
+bigger than the _erica vagans_--the lovely Cornish heath, lilac,
+flesh-coloured and white which will grow nowhere else, except in a
+certain district of Portugal.
+
+"There it is!" we cried, at the pleasant first sight of a new flower:
+for though not scientific botanists, we have what I may call a speaking
+acquaintance with almost every wild flower that grows. To see one that
+we had never seen before was quite an excitement. Instantly we were out
+of the carriage, and gathering it by handfuls.
+
+Botanists know this heath well--it has the peculiarity of the anthers
+being outside instead of inside the bell--but we only noticed the
+beauty of it, the masses in which it grew, and how it would grow only
+within a particular line--the sharp geological line of magnesian earth,
+which forms the serpentine district. Already we saw, forcing itself
+up through the turf, blocks of this curious stone, and noticed how
+cottage-walls were built, and fences made of it.
+
+"Yes, that's the serpentine," said Charles, now in his depth once more;
+we could not have expected him to know about St. Rumon, &c. "You'll see
+plenty of it when you get to the Lizard. All the coast for miles and
+miles is serpentine. Such curious rocks, reddish and greenish; they
+look so pretty when the water washes against them, and when polished,
+and made into ornaments, candlesticks, brooches and the like. But I'll
+show you the shops as we pass. We shall be at Lizard Town directly."
+
+So it was a town, and it had shops. We should not have thought so,
+judging by the slender line of white dots which now was appearing on
+the horizon--Cornish folk seemed to have a perfect mania for painting
+their houses a glistening white. Yes, that was the Lizard; we were
+nearing our journey's end. At which we were a little sorry, even though
+already an hour or two behind-hand--that is, behind the hour we had
+ordered dinner. But "time was made for slaves"--and railway travellers,
+and we were beyond railways.
+
+"Never mind, what does dinner matter?" (It did not seriously, as we had
+taken the precaution, which I recommend to all travellers, of never
+starting on any expedition without a good piece of bread, a bunch of
+raisins, and a flask of cold tea or coffee.) "What's the odds so long
+as you're happy? Let us linger and make the drive as long as we can.
+The horse will not object, nor Charles either."
+
+Evidently not; our faithful steed cropped contentedly an extempore
+meal, and Charles, who would have scrambled anywhere or dug up anything
+"to please the young ladies," took out his pocket-knife, and devoted
+himself to the collection of all the different coloured heaths; roots
+which we determined to send home in the hope, alas! I fear vain, that
+they would grow in our garden, afar from their native magnesia.
+
+[Illustration: THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT.]
+
+So for another peaceful hour we stayed; wandering about upon Goonhilly
+Down. How little it takes to make one happy, when one wants to be
+happy, and knows enough of the inevitable sorrows of life to be glad to
+be happy--as long as fate allows. Each has his burthen to bear, seen or
+unseen by the world outside, and some of us that day had not a light
+one; yet was it a bright day, a white day, a day to be thankful for.
+
+Nor did it end when, arriving at the "ideal" lodgings, and being
+received with a placidity which we felt we had not quite deserved, and
+fed in a manner which reflected much credit not only on the cook's
+skill, but her temper--we sallied out to see the place.
+
+Not a picturesque place exactly. A high plain, with the sparkling sea
+beyond it; the principal object near being the Lizard Lights, a huge
+low building, with a tower at either side, not unlike the Sydenham
+Crystal palace, only dazzling white, as every building apparently was
+at the Lizard.
+
+"We'll go out and adventure," cried the young folks; and off
+they started down the garden, over a stile--made of serpentine
+of course--and across what seemed a field, till they disappeared
+mysteriously where the line of sea cut the line of cliffs, and were
+heard of no more for two hours.
+
+Then they returned, all delight and excitement. They had found such
+a lovely little cove, full of tiny pools, a perfect treasure-house
+of sea-weeds and sea-anemones; and the rocks, so picturesque, and
+"so grand to scramble over." (I must confess that to these, my
+practically-minded "chickens," the picturesque or the romantic always
+ranked second to the fun of a scramble.) The descent to this marine
+paradise also seemed difficult enough to charm anybody.
+
+"But _you_ wouldn't do it. Quite impossible! You would break all your
+legs and arms, and sprain both your ankles."
+
+Alas, for a hen--and an old hen--with ducklings! But mine, though
+daring, were not rash, and had none of that silly fool-hardiness
+which for the childish vanity of doing, or of saying one has done, a
+dangerous thing, risks health, comfort, life, and delights selfishly
+in making other people utterly miserable. So, being feeble on my feet,
+though steady in my head, I agreed to sit like a cormorant on the
+nearest cliff, and look down placidly upon the young adventurers in
+their next delightful scramble.
+
+It could not be to-night, however, for the tide was coming in fast; the
+fairy cove would soon be all under water.
+
+"Shall we get a boat? It will soon be sunset and moon-rise; we can
+watch both from the sea."
+
+That sea! Its broad circle had no other bound than the shores of
+America, and its blueness, or the strange, changing tint often called
+blue, almost equalled the blue of the Mediterranean.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, it's a fine evening for a row," said the faithful Charles.
+"And it isn't often you can get a row here; the sea is so rough, and
+the landing so difficult. But there's a man I know; he has a good
+boat, he knows the coast well, and he'll not go out unless it's really
+safe."
+
+This seemed ultra-prudent, with such a smiling sky and sea; but we
+soon found it was not unnecessary at the Lizard. Indeed all along the
+Cornish coast the great Atlantic waves come in with such a roll or a
+heavy ground-swell, windless, but the precursor of a storm that is
+slowly arriving from across the ocean, that boating here at best is no
+child's play.
+
+We had been fair-weather sailors, over shut-in lochs or smooth rivers;
+all of us could handle an oar, or had handled it in old days, but
+this was a different style of thing. Descending the steep zigzag path
+to the next cove--the only one where there was anything like a fair
+landing--we found we still had to walk through a long bed of sea-weed,
+and manage somehow to get into the boat between the recoil and advance
+of a wave. Not one of the tiny waves of quiet bays, but an Atlantic
+roller, which, even if comparatively small and tame, comes in with a
+force that will take you off your feet at any time.
+
+However, we managed it, and found ourselves floating among an
+archipelago of rocks, where the solemn cormorants sat in rows, and
+affectionate families of gulls kept swimming about in a large flotilla
+of white dots on the dark water. Very dark the sea was: heaving and
+sinking in great hills and valleys, which made rowing difficult. Also,
+for several yards round every rock extended a perfect whirlpool of
+foaming waves, which, if any boat chanced to be caught therein, would
+have dashed it to pieces in no time. But our boatmen seemed used to the
+danger, and took us as near it as possible, without actually running
+into it.
+
+They were both far from commonplace-looking men, especially the elder,
+our stroke-oar. Being rather given to ethnological tastes, we had
+already noticed the characteristic Cornish face, not unlike the Norman
+type, and decidedly superior to that of the inland counties of England.
+But this was a face by itself, which would have attracted any artist or
+student of human nature; weather-beaten, sharp-lined, wrinkled as it
+was--the man must have been fully sixty--there was in it a sweetness,
+an absolute beauty, which struck us at once. The smile, placid and
+paternal, came often, though words were few; and the keen, kindly eyes
+were blue as a child's, or as Tennyson describes King Arthur's.
+
+"I can imagine," whispered one of us who had imaginative tendencies,
+"that King Arthur might have looked thus, had he lived to grow old."
+
+"I don't believe King Arthur ever lived at all," was the knock-me-down
+utilitarian answer, to which the other had grown accustomed and
+indifferent. Nevertheless, there was such a refinement about the man,
+spite of his rough fisherman's dress, and he had been so kind to the
+young folks, so considerate to "the old lady," as Cornish candour
+already called me, that, intending to employ him again, we asked his
+name.
+
+"John Curgenven."
+
+"John what?" We made several hopeless plunges at it, and finally asked
+him to spell it.
+
+"Cur-gen-ven," said he; adding, with a slight air of pride, "one of the
+oldest families in Cornwall."
+
+(I have no hesitation in stating this, because, when we afterwards
+became great friends, I told John Curgenven I should probably "put
+him in a book"--if he had no objection. To which he answered with his
+usual composure, "No, he did not think it would harm him." He evidently
+considered "writing a book" was a very inferior sort of trade.)
+
+But looking at him, one could not help speculating as to how far the
+legend of King Arthur had been really true, and whether the type of
+man which Tennyson has preserved--or created--in this his "own ideal
+knight," did once exist, and still exists, in a modified modern form,
+throughout Cornwall. A fancy upon which we then only argued; now I, at
+least, am inclined to believe it.
+
+"There is Lord Brougham's head, his wig and his turn-up nose, you can
+see all distinctly. At least, you could if there was light enough."
+
+But there was not light, for the sun was setting, and the moon only
+just rising. Black looked the heaving sea, except where rings of white
+foam encircled each group of rocks, blacker still. And blackest of all
+looked the iron-bound coast, sharp against the amber western sky.
+
+"Yes, that's Kynance Cove, and the Gull Rock and Asparagus Island.
+Shall we row there? It's only about two miles."
+
+Two miles there, and two back, through this angry sea, and then to land
+in the dim light about 9 p.m.! Courage failed us. We did not own this;
+we merely remarked that we would rather see Kynance by daylight, but I
+think each of us felt a sensation of relief when the boat's head was
+turned homewards.
+
+Yet how beautiful it all was! Many a night afterwards we watched
+the same scene, but never lovelier than that night, the curved line
+of coast traceable distinctly up to Mount's Bay, and then the long
+peninsula which they told us was the Land's End, stretching out into
+the horizon, where sea and sky met in a mist of golden light, through
+which the sun was slowly dropping right from the sky into the sea.
+Beyond was a vague cloud-land, which might be the fair land of Lyonesse
+itself, said still to lie there submerged, with all its cities and
+towers and forests; or the "island-valley of Avillion," whither Arthur
+sailed with the three queens to be healed of his "grievous wound," and
+whence he is to come again some day. Popular superstition still expects
+him, and declares that he haunts this coast even now in the shape of a
+Cornish chough.
+
+Modern ghosts, too, exist, decidedly more alarming.
+
+"Look up there, ladies, that green slope is Pistol Meadow. Nobody likes
+to walk there after dark. Other things walk as well."
+
+"What things?"
+
+"Two hundred and more of foreign sailors, whose ship went to pieces in
+the little cove below. They're buried under the green mounds you see.
+Out of a crew of seven hundred only two men were washed ashore alive,
+and they were in irons, which the captain had put on them because
+they said he was going too near in shore. It was called Pistol Meadow
+because most of 'em were found with pistols in their hands, which may
+have been true or may not, since it happened more than a hundred years
+ago. However, there are the green mounds, you see, and Lizard folk
+don't much like passing the place after dark."
+
+"But you?"
+
+John Curgenven smiled. "Oh, us and the coast-guards! Us goes anywhere,
+at all hours, and never meets nothing. D'ye see those white marks all
+along the coast every few yards? They're rocks, kept white-washed, to
+guide the men of dark nights between here and Kynance. It's a ticklish
+path, when all's as black as pitch, with a stiff wind blowing."
+
+I should think it was! One almost shuddered at the idea, and then
+felt proud of the steady heads and cool courage of these coast-guard
+men--always the pick of the service, true Englishmen, fearless
+and faithful--the business of whose whole lives is to save other
+lives--that is, now that smuggling has abated, and those dreadful
+stories once current all along the coast of Cornwall have become
+mostly legends of the past. No tales of wreckers, or of fights between
+smugglers and revenue officers, reached our ears, but the stories of
+shipwrecks were endless. Every winter, and many times through the
+winter, some ghastly tragedy had happened. Every half-mile along this
+picturesque shore was recorded the place where some good ship went to
+pieces, often with the brief addendum, "all hands lost."
+
+"The sun's just setting. Look out for the Lizard Lights," called out
+Charles, who sat in the bow of the boat in faithful attendance upon his
+"ladies,"--another Knight of the Round Table in humble life--we met
+many such in Cornwall. "Look! There they are."
+
+And sure enough, the instant the sun's last spark was quenched in
+the sea, into which he dropped like a red round ball, out burst two
+substitute suns, and very fair substitutes too, making the poor little
+moon in the east of no importance whatever. The gleam of them extended
+far out upon the darkening ocean, and we could easily believe that
+their light was "equal to 20,000 candles," and that they were seen out
+at sea to a distance of twenty, some said even thirty, miles.
+
+"Except in a fog; and the fogs at the Lizard are very bad. Then you
+can see nothing, not even the Lights, but they keep sounding the
+fog-horn every minute or so. It works by the same machinery as works
+the Lights--a big steam-engine; you can hear it bum-bumming now, if you
+listen."
+
+So we could, a mysterious noise like that of a gigantic bumble-bee,
+coming across the water from that curious building, long and white,
+with its two towers and those great eyes in each of them, at either end.
+
+"They're wonderful bright;" said John Curgenven; "many's the time I've
+sat and read my newspaper by them a quarter of a mile off. They're seen
+through the blackest night, the blacker the brighter, seen through
+everything--except fog. Now, ladies, d'ye think you can jump ashore?"
+
+Some of us did, airily enough, though it required to choose your
+moment pretty cleverly so as to escape the incoming wave. And some of
+us--well, we accepted the inevitable, and were only too thankful to
+scramble anyhow, wet or dry, on terra firma.
+
+And then we had to ascend the zigzag path, slippery with loose stones,
+and uncertainly seen in the dim half-twilight, half-moonlight. At
+last we came out safe by the life-boat house, which we had noticed in
+passing, with the slit in its door for "Contributions," and a notice
+below that the key was kept at such and such a house--I forget the
+man's name--"and at the Rectory."
+
+[Illustration: THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT.]
+
+"Yes," said Curgenven, "in many places along this coast, when there's a
+wreck, and we're called out, the parson's generally at the head of us.
+Volunteers? Of course we're all volunteers, except the coast-guard, who
+are paid. But they're often glad enough of us and of our boats too. The
+life-boat isn't enough. They keep her here, the only place they can,
+but it's tough work running her down to the beach on a black winter's
+night, with a ship going to pieces before your eyes, as ships do here
+in no time. I've seen it myself--watched her strike, and in ten minutes
+there was not a bit of her left."
+
+We could well imagine it. Even on this calm evening the waves kept
+dashing themselves against every rock with a roar and a swell and a
+circle of boiling foam. What must it be on a stormy winter night, or
+through the deathly quiet of a white mist, with nothing visible or
+audible except the roar of the waters and the shriek of the fog-horn!
+
+"I think it's full time we were in-doors," suggested a practical and
+prudent little voice; "we can come again and see it in the daylight.
+Here's the road."
+
+"That's the way you came, Miss," said Charles, "but I can take you a
+much shorter one on the top of the hedges"--or edges, we never quite
+knew which they were, though on the whole the letter _h_ is tolerably
+well treated in Cornwall.
+
+These "hedges" were startling to any one not Cornish-born. In the
+Lizard district the divisions of land are made not by fences, but by
+walls, built in a peculiar fashion, half stones, half earth, varying
+from six to ten feet high, and about two feet broad. On the top of this
+narrow giddy path, fringed on either side by deceitful grass, you are
+expected to walk!--in fact, are obliged to walk, for there is often no
+other road. There was none here.
+
+I looked round in despair. Once upon a time I could have walked upon
+walls as well as anybody, but now--!
+
+"I'll help you, ma'am; and I'm sure you can manage it," said Charles
+consolingly. "It's only three-quarters of a mile."
+
+Three-quarters of a mile along a two-foot path on the top of a wall,
+and in this deceitful light, when one false step would entail a certain
+fall. And at my age one doesn't fall exactly like a feather or an
+india-rubber ball.
+
+"Ma'am, if you go slow and steady, with me before and Curgenven behind,
+you'll _not_ fall."
+
+Nor did I. I record it with gratitude to those two honest men--true
+_gentlemen_, such as I have found at times in all ranks--who never
+once grumbled or relaxed in their care of their tardy and troublesome
+charge; one instance more of that kindly courtesy which it does any
+man good to offer, and which any woman, "lady" though she be, may feel
+proud to receive.
+
+When we reached "home," as we had already begun to call it, a smiling
+face and a comfortable tea justified the word. And when we retired,
+a good deal fatigued, but quite happy, we looked out upon the night,
+where the fiery stream of the Lizard Lights was contending with the
+brightest of harvest moons. It was a hopeful ending of our second day.
+
+[Illustration: CORNISH FISH.]
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE THIRD
+
+
+"And a beautiful day it is, ladies, though it won't do for Kynance."
+
+Only 8 a.m., yet there stood the faithful Charles, hat in hand, having
+heard that his ladies were at breakfast, and being evidently anxious
+that they should not lose an hour of him and his carriage, which were
+both due at Falmouth to-night. For this day was Saturday, and we were
+sending him home for Sunday.
+
+"As I found out last night, the tide won't suit for Kynance till
+Wednesday or Thursday, and you'll be too tired to walk much to-day.
+I've been thinking it all over. Suppose I were to drive you to Kennack
+Sands, back by the serpentine works to Cadgwith, and home to dinner?
+Then after dinner I'll give the horse a rest for two hours, and take
+you to Mullion; we can order tea at Mary Mundy's, and go on to the cove
+as far as I can get with the carriage. I'll leave it at the farm and be
+in time to help you over the rocks to see the caves, run ahead and meet
+you again with the carriage, and drive you back to Mary Mundy's. You
+can have tea and be home in the moonlight before nine o'clock."
+
+"And you?" we asked, a good deal bewildered by this carefully-outlined
+plan and all the strange names of places and people, yet not a little
+touched by the kindly way in which we were "taken in and done for" by
+our faithful squire of dames.
+
+"Me, ma'am? Oh, after an hour or two's rest the horse can start
+again--say at midnight, and be home by daylight. Or we could go to bed
+and be up early at four, and still get to Falmouth by eight, in time
+for the church work. Don't you trouble about us, we'll manage. He" (the
+other and four-footed half of the "we") "is a capital animal, and he'd
+get much harder work than this if he was at home."
+
+So we decided to put ourselves entirely in the hands of Charles,
+who seemed to have our interest so much at heart, and yet evinced a
+tenderness over his horse that is not too common among hired drivers.
+We promised to be ready in half an hour, so as to waste nothing of this
+lovely day, in which we had determined to enjoy ourselves.
+
+Who could help it? It was delightful to wake up early and refreshed,
+and come down to this sunshiny, cheerful breakfast-table, where, though
+nothing was grand, all was thoroughly comfortable.
+
+"I'm sure you're very kind, ladies, to be so pleased with everything,"
+apologised our bright-looking handmaiden; "and since you really wish
+to keep this room"--a very homely parlour which we had chosen in
+preference to a larger one, because it looked on the sea--"I only wish
+things was better for you; still, if you can make shift--"
+
+Well, if travellers cannot "make shift" with perfectly clean tidy
+rooms, well-cooked plain food, and more than civil, actually kindly,
+attendance, they ought to be ashamed of themselves! So we declared we
+would settle down in the evidently despised little parlour.
+
+It was not an æsthetic apartment, certainly. The wall-paper and carpet
+would have driven Morris and Co. nearly frantic; the furniture--mere
+chairs and a table--belonged "to the year one"--but (better than many
+modern chairs and tables) you could sit down upon the first and dine
+upon the second, in safety. There was no sofa, so we gladly accepted
+an offered easy-chair, and felt that all really useful things were now
+ours.
+
+But the ornamental? There was a paper arrangement in the grate, and
+certain vases on the chimney-piece which literally made our hair stand
+on end! After a private consultation as to how far we might venture,
+without wounding the feelings of our landlady, we mildly suggested that
+"perhaps we could do without these ornaments." All we wanted in their
+stead were a few jars, salt-jars or jam-pots, in which to arrange our
+wild flowers, of which yesterday the girls had gathered a quantity.
+
+The exchange was accepted, though with some surprise. But when, half
+an hour afterwards, the parlour appeared quite transformed, decorated
+in every available corner with brilliant autumn flowers--principally
+yellow--intermixed with the lovely Cornish heath; when, on some excuse
+or other, the hideous "ornament for your fire-stoves" was abolished,
+and the grate filled with a mass of green fern and grey sea-holly--I
+know no combination more exquisite both as to colour and form--then we
+felt that we could survive, at least for a week, even if shut up within
+this humble room, innocent of the smallest attraction as regarded art,
+music, or literature.
+
+But without doors? There Nature beat Art decidedly.
+
+What a world it was! Literally swimming in sunshine, from the sparkling
+sea in the distance, to the beds of marigolds close by--huge marigolds,
+double and single, mingled with carnations that filled the air with
+rich autumnal scent, all the more delicious because we feel it is
+autumnal, and therefore cannot last. It was a very simple garden,
+merely a square grass-plot with a walk and a border round it, and its
+only flowers were these marigolds, carnations, with quantities of
+mignonette, and bounded all round with a hedge of tamarisk; yet I think
+we shall always remember it as if it were the Garden of Armida--without
+a Tancred to spoil it!
+
+For--under the rose--one of the pleasures of our tour was that it was
+so exclusively feminine. We could feed as we liked, dress as we liked,
+talk to whom we liked, without any restriction, from the universal
+masculine sense of dignity and decorum in travelling. We felt ourselves
+unconventional, incognito, able to do exactly as we chose, provided we
+did nothing wrong.
+
+So off we drove through Lizard Town into the "wide, wide world;" and
+I repeat, what a world it was! Full filled with sunlight, and with an
+atmosphere so fresh and bracing, yet so dry and mild and balmy, that
+every breath was a pleasure to draw. We had felt nothing like it since
+we stood on the top of the highest peak in the Island of Capri, looking
+down on the blue Mediterranean. But this sea was equally blue, the sky
+equally clear, yet it was home--dear old England, so often misprized.
+Yet, I believe, when one does get really fine English weather, there is
+nothing like it in the whole world.
+
+The region we traversed was not picturesque--neither mountains, nor
+glens, nor rivers, nor woods; all was level and bare, for the road lay
+mostly inland, until we came out upon Kennack Sands.
+
+They might have been the very "yellow sands" where Shakespeare's elves
+were bidden to "take hands" and "foot it featly here and there." You
+might almost have searched for the sea-maids' footsteps along the
+smooth surface where the long Atlantic waves crept harmlessly in,
+making a glittering curve, and falling with a gentle "thud"--the only
+sound in the solitary bay, until all at once we caught voices and
+laughter, and from among some rock, emerged a party of girls.
+
+They had evidently come in a cart, which took up its station beside
+our carriage, laden with bundles which looked uncommonly like bathing
+gowns; and were now seeking a convenient dressing-room--one of
+those rock-parlours, roofed with serpentine and floored with silver
+sand--which are the sole bathing establishments here.
+
+All along the Cornish coast the bathing is delightful--when you can
+get it; but sometimes for miles and miles the cliffs rise in a huge
+impregnable wall, without a single break. Then perhaps there comes a
+sudden cleft in the rock, a green descent, possibly with a rivulet
+trickling through it, and leading to a sheltered cove or a sea-cave,
+accessible only at low water, but one of the most delicious little
+nooks that could be imagined. Kynance, we were told, with its "kitchen"
+and "drawing-room," was the most perfect specimen of the kind; but
+Kennack was sufficiently lovely. With all sorts of fun, shouting, and
+laughter, the girls disappeared to their evidently familiar haunts, to
+reappear as merry mermaids playing about in a crystalline sea.
+
+A most tantalising sight to my two, who vowed never again to attempt
+a day's excursion without taking bathing dresses, towels, and the
+inevitable fish-line, to be tied round the waist,--with a mother
+holding the other end. For we had been warned against these long and
+strong Atlantic waves, the recoil of which takes you off your feet even
+in calm weather. As bathing must generally be done at low water, to
+ensure a sandy floor and a comfortable cave, it is easy enough to be
+swept out of one's depth; and the cleverest swimmer, if tossed about
+among these innumerable rocks circled round by eddies of boiling white
+water, would have small chance of returning with whole bones, or of
+returning at all.
+
+Indeed, along this Cornish coast, life and death seem very near
+together. Every pleasure carries with it a certain amount of risk; the
+utmost caution is required both on land and sea, and I cannot advise
+either rash or nervous people to go travelling in Cornwall.
+
+Bathing being impracticable, we consoled ourselves with ascending the
+sandy hillock, which bounded one side of the bay, and sat looking from
+it towards the coast-line eastwards.
+
+[Illustration: POLTESCO.]
+
+What a strange peace there is in a solitary shore, an empty sea, for
+the one or two white dots of silent ships seemed rather to add to than
+diminish its loneliness--lonelier in sunshine, I think, than even in
+storm. The latter gives a sense of human life, of struggle and of
+pain; while the former is all repose, the bright but solemn repose of
+infinity or eternity.
+
+But these thoughts were for older heads; the only idea of the young
+heads--uncommonly steady they must have been!--was of scrambling
+into the most inaccessible places, and getting as near to the sea as
+possible without actually tumbling into it. After a while the land
+attracted them in turn, and they came back with their hands full of
+flowers, some known, some unknown; great bunches of honeysuckle,
+curious sand-plants, and cliff-plants; also water-plants, which fringed
+a little rivulet that ran into the bay, while, growing everywhere
+abundantly, was the lovely grey-green cringo, or sea-holly.
+
+All these treasures, to make the parlour pretty, required much
+ingenuity to carry home safely, the sun withered them so fast. But
+there was the pleasure of collecting.
+
+We could willingly have stayed here all day--how natural is that wish
+of poor young Shelley, that in every pretty place he saw he might
+remain "for ever"!--but the forenoon was passing, and we had much to
+see.
+
+"Poltesco, everybody goes to Poltesco," observed the patient Charles.
+
+So of course we went there too. At Poltesco are the principal
+serpentine works--the one commerce of the district. The monotonous hum
+of its machinery mingled oddly with the murmur of a trout-stream which
+ran through the pretty little valley, crossed by a wooden bridge, where
+a solitary angler stood fishing in imperturbable content.
+
+There were only about a dozen workmen visible; one of whom came
+forward and explained to us the mode of work, afterwards taking us
+to the show-room, which contained everything possible to be made of
+serpentine, from mantelpieces and tombstones, down to brooches and
+studs. Very delicate and beautiful was the workmanship; the forms of
+some of the things--vases and candlesticks especially--were quite
+Pompeian. In truth, throughout Cornwall, we often came upon shapes,
+Roman or Greek, proving how even yet relics of its early masters or
+colonisers linger in this western corner of England.
+
+In its inhabitants too. When, as we passed, more than one busy
+workman lifted up his head for a moment, we noticed faces almost
+classic in type, quite different from the bovine, agricultural
+Hodge of the midland counties. In manner different likewise.
+There was neither stupidity nor servility, but a sort of dignified
+independence. No pressing to buy, no looking out for gratuities,
+only a kindly politeness, which did not fail even when we departed,
+taking only a few little ornaments. We should have liked to carry off
+a cart-load--especially two enormous vases and a chimney-piece--but
+travellers have limits to luggage, and purse as well.
+
+Pretty Poltesco! we left it with regret, but we were in the hands
+of the ever-watchful Charles, anxious that we should see as much as
+possible.
+
+"The driving-road goes far inland, but there's a splendid cliff-walk
+from Poltesco to Cadgwith direct. The young ladies might do it with a
+guide--here he is, a man I know, quite reliable. They'll walk it easily
+in half an hour. But you, ma'am, I think you'd better come with me."
+
+No fighting against fate. So I put my "chickens" in safe charge, meekly
+re-entered the carriage, and drove, humbly and alone, across a flat
+dull country, diversified here and there by a few cottages, politely
+called a village--the two villages of Ruan Minor and Ruan Major. I
+afterwards found that they were not without antiquarian interest, that
+I might have gone to examine a curious old church, well, and oratory,
+supposed to have been inhabited by St. Rumon. But we had left the
+guide-book at home, with the so longed-for bathing gowns, and Charles
+was not of archæological mind, so I heard nothing and investigated
+nothing.
+
+Except, indeed, numerous huge hand-bills, posted on barn doors and
+gates, informing the inhabitants that an Exhibition of Fine Arts,
+admittance one shilling, was on view close by. Charles was most anxious
+I should stop and visit it, saying it was "very fine." But as within
+the last twelvemonth I had seen the Royal Academy, Grosvenor Gallery,
+and most of the galleries and museums in Italy, the Fine Art Exhibition
+of Ruan Minor was not overwhelmingly attractive. However, not to wound
+the good Cornishman, who was evidently proud of it, I explained that,
+on the whole, I preferred nature to art.
+
+And how grand nature was in this fishing-village of Cadgwith, to which
+after a long round, we came at last!
+
+[Illustration: CADGWITH COVE.]
+
+Nestled snugly in a bend of the coast which shelters it from north
+and east, leaving it open to southern sunshine, while another curve
+of land protects it from the dense fogs which are so common at the
+Lizard, Cadgwith is, summer and winter, one of the pleasantest nooks
+imaginable. The climate, Charles told me, is so mild, that invalids
+often settle down in the one inn--a mere village inn externally, but
+very comfortable. And, as I afterwards heard at Lizard Town, the parson
+and his wife--"didn't I know them?" and I felt myself rather looked
+down upon because I did not know them--are the kindest of people,
+who take pleasure in looking after the invalids, rich or poor. "Yes,"
+Charles considered Cadgwith was a nice place to winter in, "only just a
+trifle dull."
+
+Probably so, to judge by the interest which, even in this
+tourist-season, our carriage excited, as we wound down one side and
+up another of the ravine in which the village is built, with a small
+fishing-station at the bottom, rather painfully odoriferous. The
+fisher-wives came to their doors, the old fisher-men stood, hands in
+pockets, the roly-poly healthy fisher-children stopped playing, to
+turn round and stare. In these parts everybody stares at everybody,
+and generally everybody speaks to everybody--a civil "good-day" at any
+rate, sometimes more.
+
+"This is a heavy pull for you," said a sympathetic old woman, who had
+watched me leave the carriage and begin mounting the cliff towards the
+Devil's Frying-pan--the principal thing to be seen at Cadgwith. She
+followed me, and triumphantly passed me, though she had to carry a bag
+of potatoes on her back. I wondered if her feeling was pity or envy
+towards another old person who had to carry nothing but her own self.
+Which, alas! was enough!
+
+She and I sat down together on the hill-side and had a chat, while I
+waited for the two little black dots which I could see moving round the
+opposite headland. She gave me all kinds of information, in the simple
+way peculiar to country folk, whose innocent horizon comprises the
+whole world, which, may be, is less pleasant than the little world of
+Cadgwith. Then we parted for ever and aye.
+
+The Devil's Frying-pan is a wonderful sight. Imagine a natural
+amphitheatre two acres in extent, inclosed by a semi-circular slope
+about two hundred feet high, covered with grass and flowers and low
+bushes. Outside, the wide, open sea, which pours in to the shingly
+beach at the bottom through an arch of serpentine, the colouring of
+which, and of the other rocks surrounding it, is most exquisite,
+varying from red to green, with sometimes a tint of grey. Were Cadgwith
+a little nearer civilisation, what a show-place it would become!
+
+But happily civilisation leaves it alone. The tiny farm-house on the
+hill-side near the Frying-pan looked, within and without, much as it
+must have looked for the last hundred years; and the ragged, unkempt,
+tongue-tied little girl, from whom we succeeded in getting a drink
+of milk in a tumbler which she took five minutes to search for, had
+certainly never been to a Board School. She investigated the penny
+which we deposited as if it were a great natural curiosity rarely
+attainable, and she gazed after us as we climbed the stile leading to
+the Frying-pan as if wondering what on earth could tempt respectable
+people, who had nothing to do, into such a very uncomfortable place.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH.]
+
+Uncomfortable, certainly, as we sat with our feet stuck in the long
+grass to prevent slipping down the slope--a misadventure which would
+have been, to say the least, awkward. Those boiling waves, roaring each
+after each through the arch below; and those jagged rocks, round which
+innumerable sea-birds were flying--one could quite imagine that were
+any luckless vessel to find itself in or near the Frying-pan, it would
+never get out again.
+
+To meditative minds there is something very startling in the perpetual
+contrast between the summer tourist-life, so cheerful and careless,
+and the winter life of the people here, which must be so full of
+privations; for one half the year there is nothing to do, no market
+for serpentine, and almost no fishing possible: they have to live
+throughout the dark days upon the hay made while the sun shines.
+
+"No, no," said one of the Lizard folk, whom I asked if there was much
+drunkenness thereabout, for I had seen absolutely none; "no, us don't
+drink; us can't afford it. Winter's a bad time for we--sometimes for
+four months a man doesn't earn a halfpenny. He has to save in summer,
+or he'd starve the rest of the year."
+
+Which apparently is not altogether bad for him. I have seldom seen,
+in any part of England or Scotland, such an honest, independent,
+respectable race as the working people on this coast, and indeed
+throughout Cornwall.
+
+We left with regret the pretty village, resolving to come back again
+in a day or two; it was barely three miles from the Lizard, though the
+difference in climate was said to be so great. And then we drove back
+across the bleak down and through the keen "hungry" sea-air, which made
+dinner a matter of welcome importance. And without dwelling too much
+on the delights of the flesh--very mild delights after all--I will say
+that the vegetables grown in the garden, and the grapes in the simple
+green-house beside it, were a credit to Cornwall, especially so near
+the sea-coast.
+
+We had just time to dine, repose a little, and communicate our address
+to our affectionate friends at home--so as to link ourselves for a few
+brief days with the outside world--when appeared the punctual Charles.
+
+"Don't be afraid, ladies, he's had a good rest,"--this was the
+important animal about whose well-being we were naturally anxious.
+Charles patted his shoulder, and a little person much given to deep
+equine affections tenderly stroked his nose. He seemed sensible of the
+attention and of what was expected from him, and started off, as lively
+as if he had been idle for a week, across the Lizard Down and Pradenack
+Down to Mullion.
+
+"I hope Mary will be at home," said Charles, turning round as usual to
+converse; "she'll be sure to make you comfortable. Of course you've
+heard of Mary Mundy?"
+
+Fortunately we had. There was in one of our guide-books a most
+glowing description of the Old Inn, and also an extract from a poem,
+apostrophising the charms of Mary Mundy. When we said we knew the
+enthusiastic Scotch Professor who had written it, we felt that we rose
+a step in the estimation of Charles.
+
+"And Mary will be so pleased to see anybody who knows the
+gentleman"--in Cornwall the noted Greek Professor was merely "the
+gentleman." "She's got his poem in her visitors' book and his portrait
+in her album. I do hope Mary will be at home."
+
+But fate was against us. When we reached Mullion and drove up to the
+door of the Old Inn, there darted out to meet us, not Mary, but an
+individual concerning whom Fame has been unjustly silent.
+
+"It's only Mary's brother," said Charles, with an accent of deep
+disappointment.
+
+But as the honest man who had apparently gone through life as "Mary's
+brother" stood patting our horse and talking to our driver, with both
+of whom he seemed on terms of equal intimacy, his welcome to ourselves
+was such a mixture of cordiality and despair that we could scarcely
+keep from laughing.
+
+"Mary's gone to Helstone, ladies; her would have been delighted, but
+her's gone marketing to Helstone. I hope her'll be back soon, for I
+doesn't know what to do without she. The house is full, and there's a
+party of eleven come to tea, and actually wanting it sent down to them
+at the Cove. They won't get it though. And you shall get your tea,
+ladies, even if they have to go without."
+
+We expressed our gratitude, and left Charles to arrange all for us,
+which he did in the most practical way.
+
+"And you think Mary may be back at six?"
+
+"Her said her would, and I hope her will," answered the brother
+despondently. "Her's very seldom out; us can't get on at all without
+she."
+
+This, and several more long and voluble speeches given in broad
+Cornish, with the true Cornish confusion of pronouns, and with an air
+of piteous perplexity--nay, abject helplessness, the usual helplessness
+of man without woman--proved too much for our risible nerves. We
+maintained a decorous gravity till we had driven away, and then fell
+into shouts of laughter--the innocent laughter of happy-minded people
+over the smallest joke or the mildest species of fun.
+
+"Never mind, ladies, you'll get your tea all right. If Mary said she'd
+be back at six, back she'll be. And you'll find a capital tea waiting
+for you; there isn't a more comfortable inn in all Cornwall."
+
+Which, we afterwards found, was saying a great deal.
+
+Mullion Cove is a good mile from Mullion village, and as we jolted over
+the rough road I was remorseful over both carriage and horse.
+
+"Not at all, ma'am, he's used to it. Often and often he comes here with
+pic-nic parties, all the way from Falmouth. I'll put him in at the
+farm, and be down with you at the Cove directly. You'll find the rocks
+pretty bad walking, but there's a cave which you ought to see. We'll
+try it."
+
+There was no resisting the way the kindly young Cornishman thus
+identified himself with our interests, and gave himself all sorts
+of extra trouble on our account. And when after a steep and not too
+savoury descent--the cove being used as a fish cellar--we found
+ourselves on the beach, shut in by those grand rocks of serpentine,
+with Mullion Island lying ahead about a quarter of a mile off, we felt
+we had not come here for nothing.
+
+The great feature of Mullion Cove is its sea-caves, of which there are
+two, one on the beach, the other round the point, and only accessible
+at low water. Now, we saw the tide was rising fast.
+
+"They'll have to wade; I told them they would have to wade!" cried an
+anxious voice behind me; and "I was ware," as ancient chroniclers say,
+of the presence of another "old hen," the same whom we had noticed
+conducting her brood of chickens, or ducklings--they seemed more like
+the latter now--to bathe on Kennack Sands.
+
+"Yes, they have been away more than half an hour, all my children
+except this one"--a small boy who looked as if he wished he had gone
+too. "They would go, though I warned them they would have to wade. And
+there they are, just going into the cave. One, two, three, four, five,
+six," counting the black specks that were seen moving on, or rather in,
+the water. "Oh dear, they've _all_ gone in! I wish they were safe out
+again."
+
+[Illustration: MULLION COVE, CORNWALL.]
+
+Nevertheless, in the midst of her distress, the benevolent lady stopped
+to give me a helping hand into the near cave, a long, dark passage,
+with light at either end. My girls had already safely threaded it and
+come triumphantly out at the other side. But what with the darkness and
+the uncertain footing over what felt like beds of damp seaweed, with
+occasional stones, through which one had to grope every inch of one's
+way, my heart rather misgave me, until I was cheered by the apparition
+of the faithful Charles.
+
+"Don't go back, ma'am, you'll be so sorry afterwards. I'll strike a
+light and help you. Slow and steady, you'll come to no harm. And it's
+beautiful when you get out at the other end."
+
+So it was. The most exquisite little nook; where you could have
+imagined a mermaid came daily to comb her hair; one can easily believe
+in mermaids or anything else in Cornwall. What a charming dressing-room
+she would have, shut in on three sides by those great walls of
+serpentine, and in front the glittering sea, rolling in upon a floor of
+the loveliest silver sand.
+
+But the only mermaid there was an artist's wife, standing beside her
+husband's easel, at which he was painting away so earnestly that he
+scarcely noticed us. Very picturesque he looked, and she too, in her
+rough serge dress, with her pretty bare feet and ankles, the shoes and
+stockings lying in a corner as if they had not been worn for hours.
+Why should they be? they were quite unnecessary on those soft sands,
+and their owner stood and talked with me as composedly as if it were
+the height of the fashion to go barefoot. And far more than anything
+concerning herself, she seemed interested in my evident interest in the
+picture, which promised to be a remarkably good one, and which, if I
+see it on the R. A. walls next year will furnish my only clue to the
+identity of the couple, or theirs to mine.
+
+But the tide was fast advancing; they began to take down the easel, and
+I remembered that the narrow winding cave was our only way out from
+this rock-inclosed fairy paradise to the prosaic beach.
+
+"Look, they are wading ashore up to the knees! And we shall have to
+wade too if we don't make haste back."
+
+So cried the perplexed mother of the six too-adventurous ducklings.
+But mine, more considerate, answered me from the rocks where they were
+scrambling, and helped me back through the cave into safe quarters,
+where we stood watching the waders with mingled excitement and--envy?
+
+Alas! I can still recall the delicious sensation of paddling across the
+smooth sea-sand, and of walking up the bed of a Highland burn. But "Oh!
+the change twixt Now and Then," I sat calmly on a stone, dry-shod; as
+was best. Still, is it not a benign law of nature, that the things we
+are no longer able to do, we almost cease to wish to do? Perhaps even
+the last cessation of all things will come naturally at the end, as
+naturally as we turn round and go to sleep at night?
+
+But it was not night yet. I am proud to think how high and steep was
+the cliff we re-ascended, all three of us, and from which we stood
+and looked at sky and sea. Such a sea and such a sky: amber clear, so
+that one could trace the whole line of coast--Mount's Bay, with St.
+Michael's Mount dotted in the midst of it, and even the Land's End,
+beyond which the sun, round and red, was just touching the top of the
+waves. We should have liked to watch him drop below them--that splendid
+sea-sunset of which one never tires, but we had some distance to walk,
+and we began to rejoice in the prospect of Mary Mundy's tea.
+
+"I'll go on ahead and have the carriage ready," said the ever
+thoughtful Charles. "You can't miss your way, ladies. Just follow the
+hedges"--that tempting aerial promenade, to which we were now getting
+accustomed, becoming veritable Blondins in petticoats--"then cross the
+cornfield; and take to the hedges again. You'll be at the farm-yard
+directly."
+
+Not quite--for we lingered, tempted by the abundance of corn-flowers,
+of which we gathered, not handfuls but armfuls. When we reached
+it, what a picture of an English farm-yard it was! With a regular
+old-fashioned English milk-maid--such as Izaak Walton would have loved
+to describe--sitting amidst her shining pails, her cows standing round
+her, meekly waiting their turn. Sleek, calm creatures they were,
+Juno-eyed and soft-skinned--of that peculiar shade of grey which I
+have seen only in Cornwall. And, being rather a connoisseur in cows,
+I have often amused myself to notice how the kine of each country
+have their own predominant colour, which seems to harmonise with its
+special landscape. The curious yellow tint of Highland cattle, the red,
+white, or brown of those of the midland counties, and the delicate
+grey of Cornish cows, alike suit the scene around them, and belong to
+it as completely as the dainty little Swiss herds do to their Alpine
+pastures, or the large, mild, cream-coloured oxen to the Campagna at
+Rome.
+
+But we had to tear ourselves away from this Arcadia, for in the midst
+of the farm-yard appeared the carriage and Charles. So we jolted
+back--it seemed as if Cornish carriages and horses could go anywhere
+and over everything--to the Old Inn and Mary Mundy.
+
+She _had_ come home, and everything was right. As we soon found,
+everything and everybody was accustomed to be put to rights by Miss
+Mary Mundy.
+
+She stood at the door to greet us--a bright, brown-faced little
+woman with the reddest of cheeks and the blackest of eyes; I have no
+hesitation in painting her portrait here, as she is, so to speak,
+public property, known and respected far and wide.
+
+[Illustration: A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY.]
+
+"Delighted to see you, ladies; delighted to see any friends of the
+Professor's; and I hope you enjoyed the Cove, and that you're all
+hungry, and will find your tea to your liking. It's the best we can do;
+we're very homely folk here, but we try to make people comfortable,"
+and so on and so on, a regular stream of chatty conversation, given in
+the strongest Cornish, with the kindliest of Cornish hearts, as she
+ushered us into a neat little parlour at the back of the inn.
+
+There lay spread, not one of your dainty afternoon teas, with two or
+three wafery slices of bread and butter, but a regular substantial
+meal. Cheerful candles--of course in serpentine candlesticks--were
+already lit, and showed us the bright teapot full of that welcome drink
+to weary travellers, hot, strong and harmless; the gigantic home-baked
+loaf, which it seemed sacrilegious to have turned into toast; the rich,
+yellow butter--I am sure those lovely cows had something to do with
+it, and also with the cream, so thick that the spoon could almost have
+stood upright in it. Besides, there was a quantity of that delicious
+clotted cream, which here accompanies every meal and of which I had
+vainly tried to get the receipt, but was answered with polite scorn,
+"Oh, ma'am, it would be of no use to _you_: Cornish cream can only be
+made from Cornish cows!"
+
+Whether this remarkable fact in natural history be true or not, let me
+record the perfection of Mary Mundy's cream, which, together with her
+jam and her marmalade, was a refection worthy of the gods.
+
+She pressed us again and again to "have some more," and her charge for
+our magnificent meal was as small as her gratitude was great for the
+slight addition we made to it.
+
+"No, I'll not say no, ma'am, it'll come in handy; us has got a young
+niece to bring up--my brother and me--please'm. Yes, I'm glad you came,
+and I hope you'll come again, please'm. And if you see the Professor,
+you'll tell him he's not forgotten, please'm."
+
+This garniture of "please'm" at the end of every sentence reminded
+us of the Venetian "probbedirla," _per ubbedirla_, with which our
+gondolier Giovanna used to amuse us, often dragging it in in the oddest
+way. "Yes, the Signora will get a beautiful day, probbedirla," or "My
+wife has just lost her baby, probbedirla." Mary Mundy's "please'm"
+often came in with equal incongruity, and her voluble tongue ran on
+nineteen to the dozen; but her talk was so shrewd and her looks so
+pleasant--once, no doubt, actually pretty, and still comely enough for
+a middle-aged woman--that we departed, fully agreeing with her admiring
+Professor that
+
+  "The brightest thing on Cornish land
+  Is the face of Miss Mary Mundy."
+
+Recrossing Pradenack down in the dim light of a newly-risen moon,
+everything looked so solitary and ghostly that we started to see moving
+from behind a furz-bush, a mysterious figure, which crossed the road
+slowly, and stood waiting for us. Was it man or ghost, or--
+
+Only a donkey! A ridiculous grey donkey. It might have been Tregeagle
+himself--Tregeagle, the grim mad-demon of Cornish tradition, once a
+dishonest steward, who sold his soul to the devil, and is doomed to
+keep on emptying Dozmare Pool, near St. Neots (the same mere wherein
+Excalibur was thrown), with a limpet-shell; and to spend his nights in
+other secluded places balancing interminable accounts, which are always
+just sixpence wrong.
+
+Poor Tregeagle! I fear some of us, weak in arithmetic, had a secret
+sympathy for him! But we never met him--nor anything worse than that
+spectral donkey, looming large and placid against the level horizon.
+
+Soon, "the stars came out by twos and threes,"--promising a fine night
+and finer morning, during which, while we were comfortably asleep,
+our good horse and man would be driving across this lonely region to
+Falmouth, in time to take the good people to church on Sunday morning.
+
+"And we'll do it, too--don't you be anxious about us, ladies," insisted
+Charles. "I'll feed him well, and groom him well. I likes to take care
+of a good horse, and you'll see, he'll take no harm. I'll be back when
+you want me, at the week's end, or perhaps before then, with some party
+or other--we're always coming to the Lizard--and I'll just look in and
+see how you're getting on, and how you liked Kynance. But take care of
+the tide."
+
+We thanked our kindly charioteer, bade him and his horse good-bye,
+wished him a pleasant journey through the moonlight, which was every
+minute growing more beautiful, then went indoors to supper--no! supper
+would have been an insult to Mary Mundy's tea--to bed.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE FOURTH
+
+
+Sunday, September 4th--and we had started on September 1st; was it
+possible we had only been travelling four days?
+
+It felt like fourteen at least. We had seen so much, taken in so many
+new interests--nay, made several new friends. Already we began to plan
+another meeting with John Curgenven, who we found was a relation of
+our landlady, or of our bright-faced serving maiden, Esther--I forget
+which. But everybody seemed connected with everybody at the Lizard,
+and everybody took a friendly interest in everybody. The arrival of
+new lodgers in the "genteel" parlour which we had not appreciated
+was important information, and we were glad to hear that Charles had
+started about four in the morning quite cheery.
+
+And what a morning it was!--a typical Sabbath, a day of rest, a day
+to rejoice in. Strolling round the garden at eight o'clock, while the
+dew still lay thick on the grass, and glittered like diamonds on the
+autumnal spider-webs, even the flowers seemed to know it was Sunday,
+the mignonette bed to smell sweeter, the marigolds--yes! æsthetic
+fashion is right in its love for marigolds--burnt in a perfect blaze
+of golden colour and aromatic scent. The air was so mild that we could
+imagine summer was still with us: and the great wide circle of sea
+gleamed in the sunshine as if there never had been, never could be,
+such a thing as cloud or storm.
+
+Having ascertained that there was no service nearer than Grade, some
+miles off, until the afternoon, we "went to church" on the cliffs, in
+Pistol Meadow, beside the green mounds where the two hundred drowned
+sailors sleep in peace.
+
+[Illustration: STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT.]
+
+And such a peaceful place! Absolutely solitary: not a living creature,
+not even a sheep came near me the whole morning:--and in the silence
+I could hear almost every word said by my young folks, searching for
+sea-treasures among the rocks and little pools far below. Westwards
+towards Kynance, and eastwards towards Landewednack--the church we were
+to go to in the afternoon--the cliff path was smooth and green, the
+short grass full of those curious dainty flowers, some of which were
+new to our eager eyes. At other times the road was so precipitous that
+we did not wonder at those carefully white-washed stones every few
+yards, which are the sole guide to the coastguard men of dark nights.
+Even in daylight, if the wind were high, or the footing slippery with
+rain, the cliff-walk from the Lizard to Kynance would be no joke to
+uninitiated feet.
+
+Now, all was so still that the wind never once fluttered the letter I
+was writing, and so warm that we were glad to escape the white glare of
+the wall of the Lizard Lights and sit in a cool hollow, watching sky
+and ocean, with now and then a sea-bird floating lazily between, a dark
+speck on the perpetual blue.
+
+"If it will only keep like this all week!" And, as we sat, we planned
+out each day, so as to miss nothing, and lose nothing--either of time
+or strength: doing enough, but never too much--as is often the fatal
+mistake of tourists. And then, following the grand law of travelling,
+to have one's "meals reg'lar"--we went indoors and dined. Afterwards in
+honour of the day
+
+        "that comes between
+  The Saturday and Monday,"
+
+we dressed ourselves in all our best--very humble best it was!--to join
+the good people going to church at Landewednack.
+
+This, which in ancient Cornish means "the white-roofed church of St.
+Wednack"--hagiologists must decide who that individual was!--is the
+name of the parish to which the comparatively modern Lizard Town
+belongs. The church is in a very picturesque corner, close to the sea,
+though both it and the rectory are protected by a sudden dip in the
+ground, so that you see neither till you are close upon them. A fine
+Norman doorway, a curious hagioscope, and other points, interesting to
+archaeologists--also the neatest and prettiest of churchyards--make
+note-worthy this, the most southerly church in England. A fine old
+building, not spoiled though "restored." The modern open pews, and a
+modern memorial pulpit of serpentine, jarred less than might have been
+expected with the carefully-preserved remains of the past.
+
+In Landewednack church is said to have been preached the last sermon in
+Cornish. This was in 1678. Since, the ancient tongue has completely
+died out, and the people of King Arthur's country have become wholly
+English.
+
+Still, they are not the English of the midland and northern districts,
+but of a very different type and race. I have heard it said that a
+seaboard population, accustomed to wrestle with the dangers of the
+coast, to move about from place to place, see foreign countries, and
+carry on its business in the deep waters, is always more capable, more
+intelligent, as a whole, than an inland people, whether agricultural
+or manufacturing. It may be so: but certainly the aborigines of
+Lizard Town, who could easily be distinguished from the visitors--of
+whom there was yet a tolerable sprinkling--made a very interesting
+congregation; orderly, respectable, reverent; simple in dress and
+manner, yet many of them, both the men and women, exceedingly
+picturesque. That is, the old men and the old women: the younger ones
+aped modern fashion even here, in this out-of-the-way corner, and
+consequently did not look half so well as their seniors.
+
+I must name one more member of the congregation--a large black dog,
+who walked in and settled himself in the pew behind, where he behaved
+during half the service in an exemplary manner, worthy of the Highland
+shepherds' dogs, who always come to church with their masters, and
+conduct themselves with equal decorum.
+
+There is always a certain pathos in going in to worship in a strange
+church, with a strange congregation, of whom you are as ignorant as
+they of you. In the intervals of kneeling with them as "miserable
+sinners," one finds oneself speculating upon them, their possible
+faults and virtues, joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, watching the
+unknown faces, and trying to read thereon the records of a common
+humanity. A silent homily, better perhaps than most sermons.
+
+Not that there was aught to complain of in the sermon, and the singing
+was especially good. Many a London choir might have taken a lesson from
+this village church at the far end of Cornwall. When service was over,
+we lingered in the pretty and carefully tended churchyard, where the
+evening light fell softly upon many curious gravestones, of seafaring
+men, and a few of wrecked sailors--only a few, since it is but within
+a generation that bodies washed ashore from the deep were allowed to
+be buried in consecrated ground; most of them, like the two hundred in
+Pistol Meadow, being interred as near as convenient to where they were
+found, without any burial rites. Still, in all the churchyards along
+this coast are graves with a story. A little corner railed off has an
+old and sad one. There lie buried the victims of the plague, which in
+1645 devastated the village. No one since has ever ventured to disturb
+their resting-place.
+
+Very green and peaceful the churchyard looked: the beautiful day was
+dying, beautiful to the last. We stood and watched the congregation
+melt slowly away, disappearing down the lane, and then, attracted by
+the sound of music, we re-entered the church. There we sat and listened
+for another half-hour to the practising of an anthem ready for the
+harvest festival, which had been announced for the following Tuesday;
+exceedingly well done too, the rector's voice leading it all, with an
+energy and enthusiasm that at once accounted for the capital condition
+of the choir.
+
+"If this weather will only last!" was our earnest sigh as we walked
+home; and anxious not to lose a minute of it, we gave ourselves the
+briefest rest, and turned out again, I to watch the sunset from the
+cliffs, while the others descended once more to their beloved sea-pools.
+
+"Such anemones, such sea-weed! and scrambling is so delicious! Besides,
+sunsets are all alike," added the youthful, practical, and slightly
+unpoetical mind.
+
+No, they are not alike. Every one has a mysterious charm of its
+own--just like that in every new human face. I have seen hundreds of
+sunsets in my time, and those I shall see are narrowing down now, but
+I think to the end of my life I shall always feel a day incomplete of
+which I did not see the sunset.
+
+This one was splendid. The usual place where the sun dropped into the
+sea, just beyond the point of the Land's End, was all a golden mist.
+I hastened west, climbing one intervening cliff after the other,
+anxious not to miss the clear sight of him as he set his glowing
+feet, or rather his great round disc, on the sea. At last I found a
+"comfortable" stone, sheltered from the wind, which blew tolerably
+fresh, and utterly solitary (as I thought), the intense silence
+being such that one could almost hear the cropping of three placid
+sheep--evidently well accustomed to sunsets, and thinking them of
+little consequence.
+
+There I sat until the last red spark had gone out, quenched in the
+Atlantic waters, and from behind the vanished sun sprung a gleam of
+absolutely green light, "like a firework out of a rocket," the young
+people said; such as I had never seen before, though we saw it once
+afterwards. Nature's fireworks they were; and I could see even the two
+little black figures moving along the rocks below stand still to watch
+them. I watched too, with that sort of lonely delight--the one shadow
+upon it being that it is so lonely--with which all one's life one is
+accustomed to watch beautiful and vanishing things. Then seeing how
+fast the colours were fading and the sky darkening, I rose; but just
+took a step or two farther to look over the edge of my stone into the
+next dip of the cliff, and there I saw--
+
+[Illustration: HAULING IN THE BOATS--EVENING.]
+
+Actually, two human beings! Lovers, of course. Nothing else would have
+sat so long and so silently, for I had been within three yards of them
+all the time, and had never discovered them, nor they me. Poor young
+things! they did not discover me even yet. They sat, quite absorbed in
+one another, hand in hand, looking quietly seaward, their faces bathed
+in the rosy sunset--which to them was a sunrise, the sort of sun which
+never rises twice in a life-time.
+
+I left them to it. Evidently they did not see me, in fact I just
+peered over the rock's edge and drew back again; any slight sound they
+probably attributed to the harmless sheep. Well, it was but an equally
+harmless old woman, who did not laugh at them, as some might have done,
+but smiled and wished them well, as she left them to their sunset, and
+turned to face the darkening east, where the sun would rise to-morrow.
+
+The moon was rising there now, and it was a picture to behold. Indeed,
+all these Cornish days seemed so full of moonrises and sunsets--and
+sunrises too--that it was really inconvenient. Going to bed seemed
+almost a sin--as on this night, when, opening our parlour door, which
+looked right on to the garden, we saw the whole world lying in a flood
+of moonlight peace, the marigolds and carnations leaning cheek to
+cheek, as motionless as the two young lovers on the cliff. Who, alas!
+must long ago have had their dream broken, for five minutes afterwards
+I had met a most respectable fat couple from Lizard Town taking their
+Sunday evening stroll, in all their Sunday best, along those very
+cliffs. Most painful interruption! But perhaps, the good folks had once
+been lovers too.
+
+What a night it was! fit night to such a perfect day. How the stars
+shone, without a mist or a cloud; how the Lizard Lights gleamed, even
+in spite of the moonlight, and how clear showed the black outline of
+Kynance Cove, from which came through the silence a dull murmur of
+waves! It was, as we declared, a sin and a shame to go to bed at all
+though we had been out the whole day, and hoped to be out the whole of
+to-morrow. Still, human nature could not keep awake for ever. We passed
+from the poetical to the practical, and decided to lay us down and
+sleep.
+
+But, in the middle of the night I woke, rose, and looked out of the
+window.
+
+What a change! Sea and sky were one blackness, literally as "black as
+ink," and melting into one another so that both were undistinguishable.
+As for the moon and stars--heaven knows where they had gone to, for
+they seemed utterly blotted out. The only light visible was the ghostly
+gleam of those two great eyes, the Lizard Lights, stretching far out
+into the intense darkness. I never saw such darkness--unbroken even by
+the white crest of a wave. And the stillness was like the stillness of
+death, with a heavy weight in the air which made me involuntarily go
+to sleep again, though with an awed impression of "something going to
+happen."
+
+And sure enough in another hour something did happen. I started awake,
+feeling as if a volley of artillery had been poured in at my window.
+It was the wildest deluge of rain, beating against the panes, and with
+it came a wind that howled and shrieked round the house as if all the
+demons in Cornwall, Tregeagle himself included, were let loose at once.
+
+Now we understood what a Lizard storm could be. I have seen
+Mediterranean storms, sweeping across the Campagna like armed
+battalions of avenging angels, pouring out their vials of wrath--rain,
+hail, thunder, and lightning--unceasingly for two whole days. I have
+been in Highland storms, so furious that one had to sit down in the
+middle of the road with one's plaid over one's head, till the worst of
+their rage was spent. But I never saw or heard anything more awful than
+this Lizard storm, to which I lay and listened till the day began to
+dawn.
+
+Then the wind lulled a little, but the rain still fell in torrents,
+and the sky and sea were as black as ever. The weather had evidently
+broken for good--that is, for evil. Alas! the harvest, and the harvest
+festival! And alas--of minor importance, but still some, to us at
+least--alas for our holiday in Cornwall! Only four days, and--this!
+
+It was with a heavy heart that, feeling there was not the slightest use
+in getting up, I turned round and took another sleep.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE FIFTH
+
+
+"Hope for the best, and be prepared for the worst," had been the motto
+of our journey. So when we rose to one of the wettest mornings that
+ever came out of the sky, there was a certain satisfaction in being
+prepared for it.
+
+"We must have a fire, that is certain," was our first decision. This
+entailed the abolition of our beautiful decorations--our sea-holly
+and ferns; also some anxious looks from our handmaiden. Apparently no
+fire, had been lit in this rather despised room for many months--years
+perhaps--and the chimney rather resented being used. A few agonised
+down-puffs greatly interfered with the comfort of the breakfast table,
+and an insane attempt to open the windows made matters worse.
+
+Which was most preferable--to be stifled or deluged? We were just
+considering the question, when the chimney took a new and kinder
+thought, or the wind took a turn--it seemed to blow alternately from
+every quarter, and then from all quarters at once--the smoke went up
+straight, the room grew warm and bright, with the cosy peace of the
+first fire of the season. Existence became once more endurable, nay,
+pleasant.
+
+"We shall survive, spite of the rain!" And we began to laugh over our
+lost day which we had meant to begin by bathing in Housel Cove; truly,
+just to stand outside the door would give an admirable douche bath in
+three minutes. "But how nice it is to be inside, with a roof over our
+heads, and no necessity for travelling. Fancy the unfortunate tourists
+who have fixed on to-day for visiting the Lizard!" (Charles had told us
+that Monday was a favourite day for excursions.) "Fancy anybody being
+obliged to go out such weather as this!"
+
+And in our deep pity for our fellow-creatures we forgot to pity
+ourselves.
+
+Nor was there much pity needed; we had provided against emergencies,
+with a good store of needlework and knitting, anything that would
+pack in small compass, also a stock of unquestionably "light"
+literature--paper-covered, double-columned, sixpenny volumes, inclosing
+an amount of enjoyment which those only can understand who are true
+lovers of Walter Scott. We had enough of him to last for a week of wet
+days. And we had a one-volume Tennyson, all complete, and a "Morte
+d'Arthur"--Sir Thomas Malory's. On this literary provender we felt that
+as yet we should not starve.
+
+Also, some little fingers having a trifling turn for art, brought out
+triumphantly a colour-box, pencils, and pictures. And the wall-paper
+being one of the very ugliest that ever eye beheld, we sought and
+obtained permission to adorn it with these, our _chefs-d'[oe]uvre_,
+pasted at regular intervals. Where we hope they still remain, for the
+edification of succeeding lodgers.
+
+We read the "Idylls of the King" all through, finishing with "The
+Passing of Arthur," where the "bold Sir Bedivere" threw Excalibur into
+the mere--which is supposed to be Dozmare Pool. Here King Arthur's
+faithful lover was so melted--for the hundredth time--by the pathos
+of the story, and by many old associations, that the younger and
+more practical minds grew scornful, and declared that probably King
+Arthur had never existed at all--or if he had, was nothing but a rough
+barbarian, unlike even the hero of Sir Thomas Malory, and far more
+unlike the noble modern gentleman of Tennyson's verse. Maybe: and yet,
+seeing that
+
+  "'Tis better to have loved and lost
+  Than never to have loved at all,"
+
+may it not be better to have believed in an impossible ideal man, than
+to accept contentedly a low ideal, and worship blindly the worldly, the
+mean, or the base?
+
+This topic furnished matter for so much hot argument, that, besides
+doing a quantity of needlework, we succeeded in making our one wet day
+by no means the least amusing of our seventeen days in Cornwall.
+
+[Illustration: HAULING IN THE LINES.]
+
+Hour after hour we watched the rain--an even down-pour. In the midst
+of it we heard a rumour that Charles had been seen about the town, and
+soon after he appeared at the door, hat in hand, soaked but smiling,
+to inquire for and sympathise with his ladies. Yes, he _had_ brought a
+party to the Lizard that day!--unfortunate souls (or bodies), for there
+could not have been a dry thread left on them! We gathered closer round
+our cosy fire; ate our simple dinner with keen enjoyment, and agreed
+that after all we had much to be thankful for.
+
+In the afternoon the storm abated a little, and we thought we would
+seize the chance of doing some shopping, if there was a shop in Lizard
+Town. So we walked--I ought rather to say waded, for the road was
+literally swimming--meeting not one living creature, except a family of
+young ducks, who, I need scarcely say, were enjoying supreme felicity.
+
+"Yes, ladies, this is the sort of weather we have pretty well all
+winter. Very little frost or snow, but rain and storm, and plenty of
+it. Also fogs; I've heard there's nothing anywhere like the fogs at the
+Lizard."
+
+So said the woman at the post-office, which, except the serpentine
+shops, seemed to be the one emporium of commerce in the place. There we
+could get all we wanted, and a good deal that we were very thankful we
+did not want, of eatables, drinkables, and wearables. Also ornaments,
+china vases, &c., of a kind that would have driven frantic any person
+of æsthetic tastes. Among them an active young Cornishman of about a
+year old was meandering aimlessly, or with aims equally destructive
+to himself and the community. He all but succeeded in bringing down a
+row of plates upon his devoted head, and then tied himself up, one fat
+finger after another, in a ball of twine, upon which he began to howl
+violently.
+
+"He's a regular little trial," said the young mother proudly. "He's
+only sixteen months old, and yet he's up to all sorts of mischief. I
+don't know what in the world I shall do with he, presently. Naughty
+boy!" with a delighted scowl.
+
+"Not naughty, only active," suggested another maternal spirit, and
+pleaded that the young jackanapes should be found something to do that
+was not mischief, but yet would occupy his energies, and fill his mind.
+At which, the bright bold face looked up as if he had understood it
+all--an absolutely fearless face, brimming with fun, and shrewdness
+too. Who knows? The "regular little trial" may grow into a valuable
+member of society--fisherman, sailor, coastguardman--daring and doing
+heroic deeds; perhaps saving many a life on nights such as last night,
+which had taught us what Cornish coast-life was all winter through.
+
+The storm was now gradually abating; the wind had lulled entirely, the
+rain had ceased, and by sunset a broad yellow streak all along the west
+implied that it might possibly be a fine day to-morrow.
+
+But the lane was almost a river still, and the slippery altitudes of
+the "hedges" were anything but desirable. As the only possible place
+for a walk I ventured into a field where two or three cows cropped
+their supper of damp grass round one of those green hillocks seen in
+every Cornish pasture field--a manure heap planted with cabbages, which
+grow there with a luxuriance that turns ugliness into positive beauty.
+Very dreary everything was--the soaking grass, the leaden sky, the
+angry-looking sea, over which a rainy moon was just beginning to throw
+a faint glimmer; while shorewards one could just trace the outline of
+Lizard Point and the wheat-field behind it. Yesterday those fields had
+looked so sunshiny and fair, but to-night they were all dull and grey,
+with rows of black dots indicating the soppy, sodden harvest sheaves.
+
+Which reminded me that to-morrow was the harvest festival at
+Landewednack, when all the world and his wife was invited by shilling
+tickets to have tea in the rectory garden, and afterwards to assist at
+the evening thanksgiving service in the church.
+
+"Thanksgiving! What for?" some poor farmer might well exclaim,
+especially on such a day as this. Some harvest festivals must
+occasionally seem a bitter mockery. Indeed, I doubt if the next
+generation will not be wise in taking our "Prayers for Rain,"
+"Prayers for Fair Weather," clean out of the liturgy. Such conceited
+intermeddling with the government of the world sounds to some
+ridiculous, to others actually profane. "Snow and hail, mists and
+vapours, wind and storm, fulfilling His Word." And it must be
+fulfilled, no matter at what cost to individuals or to nations. The
+laws of the universe must be carried out, even though the mystery
+of sorrow, like the still greater mystery of evil, remains for ever
+unexplained. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
+
+And how right is His right! How marvellously beautiful He can make this
+world! until we can hardly imagine anything more beautiful in the world
+everlasting. Ay, even after such a day as to-day, when the world seems
+hardly worth living in, yet we live on, live to wake up unto such a
+to-morrow--
+
+But I must wait to speak of it in another page.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE SIXTH
+
+
+And a day absolutely divine! Not a cloud upon the sky, not a ripple
+upon the water, or it appeared so in the distance. Nearer, no doubt,
+there would have been that heavy ground-swell which is so long in
+subsiding, in fact is scarcely ever absent on this coast. The land,
+like the sea, was all one smile; the pasture fields shone in brilliant
+green, the cornfields gleaming yellow--at once a beauty and a
+thanksgiving.
+
+It was the very perfection of an autumn morning. We would not lose
+an hour of it, but directly after breakfast started leisurely to
+find Housel Cove and try our first experiment of bathing in the wide
+Atlantic.
+
+The Atlantic it certainly was. Not a rood of land lay between us and
+America. Yet the illimitable ocean "where the great ships go down,"
+rolled in to our feet in baby ripples, disporting itself harmlessly,
+and tempting my two little mermaids to swim out to the utmost limit
+that prudence allowed. And how delightful it was to run back barefoot
+across the soft sand to the beautiful dressing-room of serpentine
+rock, where one could sit and watch the glittering sea, untroubled by
+any company save the gulls and cormorants. What a contrast to other
+bathing places--genteel Eastbourne and Brighton, or vulgar Margate and
+Ramsgate, where, nevertheless, the good folks look equally happy. But
+our happiness! No words could describe it. Shall we stamp ourselves
+as persons of little mind, easily satisfied, if I confess that we
+spent the whole morning in Housel Cove without band or promenade,
+without even a Christy Minstrel or a Punch and Judy, our sole amusement
+being the vain attempt to catch a tiny fish, the Robinson Crusoe of
+a small pool in the rock above high-water mark, where by some ill
+chance he found himself. But he looked extremely contented with his
+sea hermitage, and evaded so cleverly all our efforts to get hold of
+him, that after a while we left him to his solitude--where possibly he
+resides still.
+
+[Illustration: THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY.]
+
+How delicious it is for hard-worked people to do nothing, absolutely
+nothing! Of course only for a little while--a few days, a few hours.
+The love of work and the necessity for it soon revive. But just for
+those few harmless hours to let the world and its duties and cares
+alike slip by, to be absolutely idle, to fold one's hands and look
+at the sea and the sky, thinking of nothing at all, except perhaps
+to count and watch for every ninth wave--said to be the biggest
+always--and wonder how big it will be, and whether it will reach that
+stone with the little colony of limpets and two red anemones beside
+them, or stop short at the rock where we sit placidly dangling our
+feet, waiting, Canute-like, for the supreme moment when the will of
+humanity sinks conquered by the immutable powers of nature. Then,
+greatest crisis of all, the sea will attack that magnificent castle and
+moat, which we grown-up babies have constructed with such pride. Well,
+have we not all built our sand-castles and seen them swept away? happy
+if by no unkinder force than the remorseless wave of Time, which will
+soon flow over us all.
+
+But how foolish is moralising--making my narrative halt like that horse
+whom we amused ourselves with half the afternoon. He was tied by the
+leg, poor beast, the fore leg fastened to the hind one, as seemed to be
+the ordinary Cornish fashion with all animals--horses, cows, and sheep.
+It certainly saves a deal of trouble, preventing them from climbing the
+"hedges" which form the sole boundary of property, but it makes the
+creatures go limping about in rather a melancholy fashion. However,
+as it is their normal condition, probably they communicate it to one
+another, and each generation accepts its lot.
+
+This horse did. He was a handsome animal, who came and peered at
+the sketch which one of us was doing, after the solemn fashion of
+quadrupedal connoisseurship, and kept us company all the afternoon. We
+sat in a row on the top of the "hedge," enjoying the golden afternoon,
+and scarcely believing it possible that yesterday had been yesterday.
+Of the wild storm and deluge of rain there was not a single trace;
+everything looked as lovely as if it had been, and was going to be,
+summer all the year.
+
+We were so contented, and were making such progress in our sketch and
+distant view of Kynance over the now dry and smiling cornfield, that we
+had nigh forgotten the duties of civilisation, until some one brought
+the news that all the household was apparently dressing itself in its
+very best, to attend the rectory tea. We determined to do the same,
+though small were our possibilities of toilette.
+
+"But what does it matter?" argued we. "Nobody knows us, and we know
+nobody."
+
+A position rather rare to those who "dwell among their own people,"
+who take a kindly interest in everybody, and believe with a pardonable
+credulity that everybody takes a kindly interest in them.
+
+But human nature is the same all the world over. And here we saw it in
+its pleasantest phase; rich and poor meeting together, not for charity,
+but courtesy--a courtesy that was given with a kindliness and accepted
+with a quiet independence which seemed characteristic of these Cornish
+folk.
+
+Among the little crowd, gentle and simple, we, of course, did not know
+a single soul. Nevertheless, delivering up our tickets to the gardener
+at the gate, we entered, and wandered at ease through the pretty
+garden, gorgeous with asters, marigolds, carnations, and all sorts of
+rich-coloured and rich-scented autumn flowers; where the hydrangeas
+grew in enormous bushes, and the fuchsias had stems as thick and solid
+as trees.
+
+In front of the open hall door was a gravel sweep where were ranged
+two long tea-tables filled with the humbler but respectable class of
+parishioners, chiefly elderly people, and some very old. The Lizard is
+a place noted for longevity, as is proved by the register books, where
+several deaths at over a hundred may be found recorded, and one--he was
+the rector of Landewednack in 1683--is said to have died at the age of
+120 years.
+
+The present rector is no such Methuselah. He moved actively to and fro
+among his people, and so did his wife, whom we should have recognised
+by her omnipresent kindliness, even if she had not come and welcomed
+us strangers--easily singled out as strangers, where all the rest were
+friends.
+
+Besides the poor and the aged, there was a goodly number of guests
+who were neither the one nor the other, playing energetically at
+lawn-tennis behind the house, on a "lawn" composed of sea-sand. All
+seemed determined to amuse themselves and everybody else, and all did
+their very best--including the band.
+
+Alas, that band! I would fain pass it over in silence (would it
+had returned the compliment!); but truth is truth, and may benefit
+rather than harm. The calm composure with which those half-dozen
+wind-instruments sat in a row, playing determinedly flat, bass coming
+in with a tremendous boom here and there, entirely at his own volition,
+without regard to time or tune, was the most awful thing I ever heard
+in music! Agony, pure and simple, was the only sensation it produced.
+When they struck up, we just ran away till the tune was ended--what
+tune, familiar or unfamiliar, it was impossible to say. Between us
+three, all blessed, or cursed, with musical ears, there existed such
+difference of opinion on this head, that decision became vain. And
+when at last, as the hour of service approached, little groups began
+strolling towards the church, the musicians began a final "God save the
+Queen," barely recognisable, a feeling of thankfulness was the only
+sensation left.
+
+[Illustration: THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER--A CORNISH STUDY.]
+
+Now, let me not be hard upon these village Orpheuses. They did their
+best, and for a working man to study music in any form is a good and
+desirable thing. But whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing
+well. The great bane of provincial life is that people have so few
+opportunities of finding out when they do _not_ do things well, and so
+little ambition to learn to do them better. If these few severe remarks
+should spur on that anonymous band to try and emulate the Philharmonic
+or the Crystal Palace orchestra, it will be all the better for the
+little community at the Lizard.
+
+The music in the church was beautiful. A crowded congregation--not a
+seat vacant--listened to the excellent chanting, hymns, and a harvest
+anthem, most accurately and correctly sung. The organist too--it was
+a pleasure to watch that young man's face and see with what interest
+and enthusiasm he entered into it all. Besides the rector, there were
+several other clergymen, one of whom, an old man, read the prayers
+with an intonation and expression which I have rarely heard equalled,
+and another preached what would have been called anywhere a thoroughly
+good sermon. All the statelier guests at the Rectory tea--probably
+county families (one stout lady had the dignity of a duchess at
+least)--"assisted" at this evening service, and behind them was a
+throng of humbler folk, among whom we recognised our sole friend here,
+John Curgenven. We had passed him at the church door, and he had lifted
+his hat with the air of a _preux chevalier_ of the olden time; "more
+like King Arthur than ever"--we observed to one another.
+
+He, and we, and the aristocratic groups, with a few more of the
+congregation, lingered for several minutes after service was over,
+admiring the beautiful flowers and fruit. I think I never saw any
+decorations so rich or so tasteful. And then, as the organ played us
+out with an exceedingly brilliant voluntary, the vision of light and
+colour melted away, and we came out upon the quiet churchyard, lying in
+the cold, still moonlight.
+
+But what a moonlight! Clear as day, the round silver orb sailing
+through a cloudless sky of that deep dark which we know is blue, only
+moonlight shows no colours. Oh, Lady Moon, Lady Moon, what a dangerous
+night for some of those groups to go walking home in! We saw them in
+twos and threes, various young people whom we had got to know by sight,
+and criticise, and take an interest in, wandering slowly on through
+Lizard Town, and then diverging into quieter paths.
+
+As we gladly did too. For there, in an open space near the two hotels
+which co-exist close together--I hope amicably, and divide the tourist
+custom of the place--in front of a row of open windows which showed the
+remains of a _table d'hôte_, and playing lively tunes to a group of
+delighted listeners, including some children, who had struck up a merry
+dance--stood that terrible wind band!
+
+It was too much! All our sympathy with our fellow-creatures, our
+pleasure in watching them enjoy themselves, our interest in studying
+human nature in the abstract, nay, even the picturesqueness of the
+charming moonlight scene, could not tempt us to stay. We paused a
+minute, then put our fingers in our ears and fled. Gradually those
+fearful sounds melted away into distance, and left us to the silence of
+moonshine, and the sight, now grown familiar, but never less beautiful,
+of the far-gleaming Lizard Lights.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE SEVENTH
+
+
+John Curgenven had said last night, with his air of tender patronising,
+half regal, half paternal, which we declared always reminded us of King
+Arthur--"Ladies, whenever you settle to go to Kynance, I'll take you."
+
+And sure enough there he stood, at eight in the morning, quite a
+picture, his cap in one hand, a couple of fishes dangling from the
+other--he had brought them as a present, and absolutely refused to be
+paid--smiling upon us at our breakfast, as benignly as did the sun. He
+came to say that he was at our service till 10 A.M.; when he
+had an engagement.
+
+Our countenances fell. We did not like venturing in strange and
+dangerous ground, or rather sea, without our protector. But this was
+our last chance, and such a lovely day.
+
+"You won't come to any harm, ladies," said the consoling John. "I'll
+take you by a short cut across the down, much better than the cliff.
+You can't possibly miss your way: it'll lead you straight to Kynance,
+and then you go down a steep path to the Cove. You'll have plenty of
+time before the tide comes in to see everything."
+
+"And to bathe?"
+
+"Oh yes, miss, there's the Drawing-room, the Dining-room, and the
+Kitchen--all capital caves close together; I wouldn't advise you to
+swim out far, though. And keep a sharp look out for the tide--it runs
+in pretty fast."
+
+"And the scrambling?"
+
+"Oh, you can easy get on Asparagus Island, miss; it's quite safe. Only
+don't try the Devil's Throat--or Hell's Mouth, as some folk call it."
+
+Neither name was inviting; but studying our guide-books, we thought we
+could manage even without our friend. So, long ere the dew was dried on
+the sunshiny down, we all started off together, Curgenven slackening
+his quick active steps--very light and most enviably active for a man
+of his years--to accommodate us, and conversing courteously with us all
+the way.
+
+[Illustration: KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL.]
+
+"Ower the muir amang the heather" have I tramped many a mile in
+bonnie Scotland, but this Cornish moor and Cornish heather were quite
+different. As different as the Cornishman with his bright, frank face,
+and his mixture of British honesty and Gallic courtesy, from the Scotch
+peasant--equally worthy, but sometimes just a trifle "dour."
+
+John had plenty to say for himself, and said it well, with a quiet
+independence that there was no mistaking; never forgetting meanwhile to
+stop and offer a helping hand over every bit of rough road, puddle, or
+bog. He gave us a vivid picture of winter life at the Lizard: when the
+little community has to hybernate, like the squirrels and field-mice,
+upon its summer savings.
+
+"Sometimes we don't earn a halfpenny for weeks and months, and then if
+we've got nothing to fall back upon it's a bad job, you see, ma'am."
+
+I asked him if much money went for drink; they seemed to me a
+remarkably sober set at the Lizard.
+
+"Yes, I think we are; we're obliged to be; we can't spend money at the
+public-house, for we've got none to spend. I'm no teetotaller myself,"
+added John boldly. "I don't dislike a glass of beer now and then, if I
+can afford it, and when I can't afford it I can do without it, and if I
+do take it I always know when to stop."
+
+Ay, that is the crucial test--the knowing when to stop. It is this
+which makes all the difference between a good man and a villain, a wise
+man and a fool. Self-control--a quality which, guided by conscience and
+common sense, is the best possession of any human being. And looking at
+the honest fisherman, one felt pretty sure he had his share of it.
+
+"Now I must leave you, ladies," said he, a great deal sooner than we
+wished, for we much liked talking to him. "My time's nearly up, and I
+mustn't keep my gentleman waiting; he goes out in my boat every day,
+and has been a good friend to me. The road's straight before you,
+ladies; and there's another party just ahead of you. Follow the track,
+and you'll soon be at Kynance. It's a lovely day for the Cove, and I
+hope you'll enjoy yourselves."
+
+John bared his grey head, with a salutation worthy of some old knight
+of the Round Table, and then strode back, in double-quick time, as
+active and upright as any young fellow of twenty-five, across the level
+down.
+
+Beautiful Kynance! When, afterwards, I stood one dull winter day
+in a London Art Gallery, opposite the _Cornish Lions_, how well I
+recalled this day! How truly Brett's picture gives the long roll of
+the wave upon the silver sands, the richly-tinted rocks and caves, the
+brightness and freshness of everything. And those merry girls beside
+me, who had the faculty of enjoying all they had, and all they did,
+without regretting what they had not or what they might not do--with
+heroic resignation they promised not to attempt to swim in the tempting
+smooth water beyond the long rollers. Though knocked down again and
+again, they always emerged from the waves with shouts of laughter. Mere
+dots they looked to my anxious eyes--a couple of corks tossed hither
+and thither on the foaming billows--and very thankful I was to get them
+safe back into the "drawing-room," the loveliest of lovely caves.
+
+There was no time to lose; by noon our parlour floor--what a fairy
+floor it was! of the softest, most delicious sand--would be all covered
+with waves. And before then there was a deal to be seen and done, the
+Bellows, the Gull Rock, Asparagus Island--even if we left out the
+dangerous points with the ugly names that Curgenven had warned us
+against.
+
+What is there in humanity, certainly in youthful humanity, that if
+it can attain its end in two ways, one quiet and decorous, the other
+difficult and dangerous, is certain to choose the latter?
+
+"We must manage to get you to the Bellows, it is such a curious sight,"
+said my girls as they returned from it. "Don't be frightened--come
+along!"
+
+By dint of pulling, pushing, and the help of stick and arm, I came:
+stood watching the spout of water which, in certain conditions of the
+tide, forces itself through a tiny fissure in the rock with a great
+roar, and joined in the childish delight of waiting, minute by minute,
+for the biggest spout, the loudest roar.
+
+But Asparagus Island (where was no asparagus at all) I totally
+declined. Not being a goat or a chamois, I contented myself with
+sitting where I could gain the best view of the almost invisible
+path by which my adventurous young "kids" disappeared. Happily they
+had both steady heads and cool nerves; they were neither rash nor
+unconscientious. I knew they would come back as soon as they could. So
+I waited patiently, contemplating a fellow-victim who seemed worse off
+than myself; a benign-looking clergyman, who kept walking up and down
+the soppy sands, and shouting at intervals to two young people, a man
+and a woman, who appeared to be crawling like flies along the face of
+the rock towards another rock, with a yawning cave and a wide fissure
+between.
+
+"Don't attempt it!" the clergyman cried at the top of his voice.
+"That's the Devil's Throat. She'll never manage it. Come down. Do make
+her come down."
+
+"Your young people seem rather venturesome," said I sympathetically.
+
+[Illustration: THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE.]
+
+"Not _my_ young people," was the dignified answer. "My girls are up
+there, on Asparagus Rock, which is easy enough climbing. They promised
+not to go farther, and they never disobey their mother and me. But
+those two! I declare he is taking her to the most dangerous part, that
+rock where you have to jump--a good jump it is, and if you miss your
+footing you are done for, you go right into the boiling waves below.
+Well, it's no business of mine; she is his own property; he is engaged
+to her, but"--
+
+I fear I made some very severe remarks on the folly of a young man who
+could thus risk life and limbs--not only his own, but those of his wife
+to be; and on the weakness of a girl who could allow herself to be
+tempted, even by a lover, into such selfish foolhardiness.
+
+"They must manage their own affairs," said the old gentleman
+sententiously, perhaps not being so much given to preaching (out of the
+pulpit) as I was. "My daughters are wiser. Here come two of them."
+
+And very sensible girls they looked, clad in a practical, convenient
+fashion, just fitted for scrambling. By them I sent a message to my own
+girls, explaining the best descent from Asparagus Island, and repeating
+the warning against attempting Hell's Mouth.
+
+"Yes, you are quite right," said my elderly friend, as we sat down
+together on the least uncomfortable stone we could find, and watched
+the juniors disappear over the rocks. "I like to see girls active and
+brave; I never hinder them in any reasonable enjoyment, even though
+there may be risk in it--one must run some risk--and a woman may
+have to save life as well as a man. But foolhardy bravado I not only
+dislike--I _despise_ it."
+
+In which sentiments I so entirely agreed that we fraternised there
+and then; began talking on all sorts of subjects--some of them the
+very serious and earnest subjects that one occasionally drops into by
+mere chance, with mere strangers. I recall that half hour on Kynance
+Sands as one of the pleasant memories of our tour, though to this day
+I have not the remotest idea who my companion was. Except that as soon
+as he spoke I recognised the reader whose voice had so struck me in
+last night's thanksgiving service; reminding me of Frederick Denison
+Maurice, whom this generation is almost beginning to forget, but whom
+we elders never can forget.
+
+The tide was creeping on now--nay, striding, wave after wave, through
+"parlour" and "drawing-room," making ingress and egress alike
+impossible. In fact, a newly arrived party of tourists, who had stood
+unwisely long contemplating the Bellows, were seen to gaze in despair
+from their rock which had suddenly become an island. No chance for them
+except to wade--and in a few minutes more they would probably have
+to swim ashore. What became of them we did not stay to see, for an
+anxious, prudent little voice, always thoughtful for "mother," insisted
+on our precipitate flight before the advancing tide. Kynance, lovely as
+it is, has its inconveniences.
+
+Departing, we met a whole string of tourist-looking people, whom we
+benevolently warned that they were too late, at which they did not
+seem in the least disappointed. Probably they were one of the numerous
+pic-nic parties who come here from Falmouth or Helstone, to spend a
+jovial day of eating and drinking, and enjoy the delights of the flesh
+rather than the spirit.
+
+At any rate the romance and solitude of the place were gone. The quaint
+old woman at the serpentine shop--a mild little wooden erection under
+the cliff--was being chaffed and bargained with by three youths with
+cigars, which defiled the whole air around, and made us take refuge up
+the hill. But even there a white umbrella had sprung up like a gigantic
+mushroom, and under it sat an energetic lady artist, who, entering at
+once into conversation, with a cheerful avidity that implied her not
+having talked for a week, informed us of all she was painting, and all
+she had meant to paint, where she lodged, and how much she paid for her
+lodging--evidently expecting the same confidences from us in return.
+
+But we were getting hungry, and between us and dinner was a long
+two-miles walk over the steep downs, that were glowing, nay, burning,
+under the September sun. So we turned homeward, glad of more than one
+rest by the way, and a long pause beside a pretty little stream; where
+we were able to offer the immemorial cup of cold water to several
+thirsty souls besides ourselves. Some of us by this time were getting
+to feel not so young as we had fancied ourselves in the early morning,
+and to wish regretfully for Charles and his carriage.
+
+However, we got home at last--to find that sad accompaniment of many a
+holiday--tidings of sickness and death. Nothing very near us--nothing
+that need hurry us home--but enough to sadden us, and make our evening
+walk, which we bravely carried out, a far less bright one than that of
+the forenoon.
+
+The girls had found a way, chiefly on the tops of "hedges," to the
+grand rock called Lizard Point. Thither we went, and watched the
+sunset--a very fine one; then came back through the village, and made
+various purchases of serpentine from John Curgenven's wife, who was
+a great deal younger than himself, but not near so handsome or so
+original.
+
+But a cloud had come over us; it did not, and must not stay--still,
+there it was for the time. When the last thing at night I went out into
+the glorious moonlight--bright as day--and thought of the soul who had
+just passed out of a long and troubled life into the clearness of life
+eternal, it seemed as if all was right still. Small cares and worries
+dwindled down or melted away--as the petty uglinesses around melted
+in the radiance of this glorious harvest moon, which seemed to wrap
+one round in a silent peace, like the "garment of praise," which David
+speaks about--in exchange for "the spirit of heaviness."
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE EIGHTH
+
+
+And seven days were all we could allow ourselves at the Lizard, if we
+meant to see the rest of Cornwall. We began to reckon with sore hearts
+that five days were already gone, and it seemed as if we had not seen
+half we ought to see, even of our near surroundings.
+
+"We will take no excursion to-day. We will just have our bath at Housel
+Cove and then we will wander about the shore, and examine the Lizard
+Lights. Only fancy, our going away to-morrow without having seen the
+inside of the Lizard Lights! Oh, I wish we were not leaving so soon. We
+shall never like any place as we like the Lizard."
+
+It was indeed very delightful. Directly after breakfast--and we are
+people who never vary from our eight o'clock breakfast, so that we
+always see the world in its early morning brightness and freshness--we
+went
+
+  "Brushing with hasty steps the dew away,"
+
+along the fields, which led down to Housel or Househole Cove. Before
+us, clear in the sunshine, rose the fine headland of Penolver, and
+the green slopes of the amphitheatre of Belidden, supposed to be the
+remains of a Druidical temple. That, and the chair of Belidden, a
+recess in the rock, whence there is a splendid view, with various
+archæological curiosities, true or traditionary, we ought to have
+examined, I know. But--we didn't do it. Some of us were content to
+rejoice in the general atmosphere of beauty and peace without minute
+investigation, and some of us were so eminently practical that "a good
+bathe" appeared more important than all the poetry and archæology in
+the world.
+
+So we wandered slowly on, rejoicing at having the place all to
+ourselves, when we came suddenly upon a tall black figure intently
+watching three other black figures, or rather dots, which were climbing
+slowly over Penolver.
+
+It was our clerical friend of Kynance; with whom, in the natural and
+right civility of holiday-makers, we exchanged a courteous good morning.
+
+[Illustration: THE LION ROCKS--A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE.]
+
+"Yes, those are my girls up on the cliff there. They have been bathing,
+and are now going to walk to Cadgwith."
+
+"Then nobody fell into the Devil's Throat at Kynance? They all came
+back to you with whole limbs?"
+
+"Yes," said he smiling, "and they went again for another long walk
+in the afternoon. At night, when it turned out to be such splendid
+moonlight, they actually insisted on going launce-fishing. Of course
+you know about launce-fishing?"
+
+I pleaded my utter ignorance of that noble sport.
+
+"Oh, it is _the_ thing at the Lizard. My boys--and girls too--consider
+it the best fun going. The launce is a sort of sand-eel peculiar to
+these coasts. It swims about all day, and at night burrows in the sand
+just above the waterline, where, when the moon shines on it, you can
+trace the silvery gleam of the creature. So you stand up to your ankles
+on wet sand, with a crooked iron spear which you dart in and hook him
+up, keeping your left hand free to seize him with."
+
+"Easy fishing," said I, with a certain pity for the sand-eel.
+
+"Not so easy as appears. You are apt either to chop him right in
+two, or miss him altogether, when off he wriggles in the sand and
+disappears. My young people say it requires a practised hand and a
+peculiar twist of the wrist, to have any success at all in launce
+fishing. It can only be done on moonlight nights--the full moon and
+a day or two after--and they are out half the night. They go about
+barefoot, which is much safer than soaked shoes and stockings. About
+midnight they light a fire on the sand, cook all the fish they have
+caught, and have a grand supper, as they had last night. They came home
+as merry as crickets about two o'clock this morning. Perhaps you might
+not have noticed what a wonderful moonlight night it was?"
+
+I had; but it would not have occurred to me to spend it in standing for
+hours up to the knees in salt water, catching unfortunate fish.
+
+However, tastes differ, and launce-fishing may be a prime delight to
+some people; so I faithfully chronicle it, and the proper mode of
+pursuing it, as one of the attractions at the Lizard. I am not aware
+that it is practised at any other part of the Cornish coast, nor can
+I say whether or not it was a pastime of King Arthur and his Knights.
+One cannot imagine Sir Tristram or Sir Launcelot occupied in spearing a
+small sand-eel.
+
+The bathing at Housel Cove was delightful as ever. And afterwards we
+saw that very rare and beautiful sight, a perfect solar rainbow. Not
+the familiar bow of Noah, but a great luminous circle round the sun,
+like the halo often seen round the moon, extending over half the sky;
+yellow at first, then gradually assuming faint prismatic tints. This
+colouring, though never so bright as the ordinary arched rainbow, was
+wonderfully tender and delicate. We stood a long time watching it,
+till at last it melted slowly out of the sky, leaving behind a sense of
+mystery, as of something we had never seen before and might never see
+again in all our lives.
+
+It was a lovely day, bright and warm as midsummer, tempting us to some
+distant excursion; but we had decided to investigate the Lizard Lights.
+We should have been content to take them for granted, in their purely
+poetical phase, as we had watched them night after night. But some of
+us were blessed with scientific relatives, who would have despised us
+utterly if we had spent a whole week at the Lizard and never gone to
+see the Lizard Lights. So we felt bound to do our duty, and admire, if
+we could not understand.
+
+Which we certainly did not. I chronicle with shame that the careful and
+courteous explanations of that most intelligent young man, who met us
+at the door of the huge white building, apparently quite glad to have
+an opportunity of conducting us through it, were entirely thrown away.
+We mounted ladders, we looked at Brobdingnagian lamps, we poked into
+mysterious machinery for lighting them and for sounding the fog-horn,
+we listened to all that was told us, and tried to look as if we took it
+in. Very much interested we could not but be at such wonderful results
+of man's invention, but as for comprehending! we came away with our
+minds as dark as when we went in.
+
+I have always found through life that, next to being clever, the safest
+thing is to know one's own ignorance and acknowledge it. Therefore let
+me leave all description of the astonishing mechanism of the Lizard
+Lights--I believe the first experiment of their kind, and not very
+long established--to abler pens and more intelligent brains. To see
+that young man, scarcely above the grade of a working man, handling
+his instruments and explaining them and their uses, seeming to take
+for granted that we could understand--which alas! we didn't, not
+an atom!--inspired me with a sense of humiliation and awe. Also of
+pride at the wonders this generation has accomplished, and is still
+accomplishing; employing the gradually comprehended forces of Nature
+against herself, as it were, and dominating her evil by ever-new
+discoveries and applications of the recondite powers of good.
+
+The enormous body of light produced nightly--equal, I think he said,
+to 30,000 candles--and the complicated machinery for keeping the
+fog-horn continually at work, when even that gigantic blaze became
+invisible--all this amount of skill, science, labour, and money,
+freely expended for the saving of life, gave one a strong impression of
+not only British power but British beneficence. Could King Arthur have
+come back again from his sea-engulfed Land of Lyonesse, and stood where
+we stood, beside the Lizard Lights, what would he have said to it all?
+
+[Illustration: HAULING IN THE BOATS.]
+
+Even though we did not understand, we were keenly interested in all we
+saw, and still more so in the stories of wrecks which this young man
+had witnessed even during the few years, or months--I forget which--of
+his stay at the Lizard. He, too, agreed, that the rocks there, called
+by the generic name of the Stags, were the most fatal of all on our
+coasts to ships outward and homeward bound. Probably because in the
+latter case, captain and crews get a trifle careless; and in the
+former--as I have heard in sad explanation of many emigrant ships being
+lost almost immediately after quitting port--they get drunk. Many of
+the sailors are said to come on board "half-seas over," and could the
+skilfullest of pilots save a ship with a drunken crew?
+
+Be that as it may, the fact remains, that throughout winter almost
+every week's chronicle at the Lizard is the same story--wild storms, or
+dense fogs, guns of distress heard, a hasty manning of the life-boat,
+dragged with difficulty down the steep cliff-road, a brief struggle
+with the awful sea, and then, even if a few lives are saved, with the
+ship herself all is over.
+
+"Only last Christmas I saw a vessel go to pieces in ten minutes on the
+rocks below there," said the man, after particularising several wrecks,
+which seemed to have imprinted themselves on his memory with all their
+incidents. "Yes, we have a bad time in winter, and the coastguard
+men lead a risky life. They are the picked men of the service, and
+tolerably well paid, but no money could ever pay them for what they go
+through--or the fishermen, who generally are volunteers, and get little
+or nothing."
+
+"It must be a hard life in these parts, especially in winter," we
+observed.
+
+"Well, perhaps it is, but it's our business, you see."
+
+Yes, but not all people do their business, as the mismanagements and
+mistakes of this world plainly show.
+
+Still, it is a good world, and we felt it so as we strolled along the
+sunshiny cliff, talking over all these stories, tragical or heroic,
+which had been told us in such a simple matter-of-fact way, as if they
+were every-day occurrences. And then, while the young folks went on
+"for a good scramble" over Penolver, I sat down for a quiet "think";
+that enforced rest, which, as years advance, becomes not painful, but
+actually pleasant; in which, if one fails to solve the problems of the
+universe, one is prone to con them over, wondering at them all.
+
+From the sunny sea and sunny sky, full of a silence so complete that I
+could hear every wave as it broke on the unseen rocks below, my mind
+wandered to that young fellow among his machinery, with his sickly
+eager face and his short cough--indicating that _his_ "business" in
+this world, over which he seemed so engrossed, might only too soon
+come to an end. Between these apparently eternal powers of Nature,
+so strong, so fierce, so irresistible, against which man fought so
+magnificently with all his perfection of scientific knowledge and
+accuracy of handiwork--and this poor frail human life, which in a
+moment might be blown out like a candle, suddenly quenched in darkness,
+"there is no skill or knowledge in the grave whither thou goest"--what
+a contrast it was!
+
+And yet--and yet?--We shall sleep with our fathers, and some of us feel
+sometimes so tired that we do not in the least mind going to sleep. But
+notwithstanding this, notwithstanding everything without that seems to
+imply our perishableness, we are conscious of something within which
+is absolutely imperishable. We feel it only stronger and clearer as
+life begins to melt away from us; as "the lights in the windows are
+darkened, and the daughters of music are brought low." To the young,
+death is often a terror, for it seems to put an end to the full, rich,
+passionate life beyond which they can see nothing; but to the old,
+conscious that this their tabernacle is being slowly dissolved, and yet
+its mysterious inhabitant, the wonderful, incomprehensible _me_, is
+exactly the same--thinks, loves, suffers, and enjoys, precisely as it
+did heaven knows how many years ago--to them, death appears in quite
+another shape. He is no longer Death the Enemy, but Death the Friend,
+who may--who can tell?--give back all that life has denied or taken
+away. He cannot harm us, and he may bless us, with the blessing of
+loving children, who believe that, whatever happens, nothing can take
+them out of their Father's arms.
+
+But I had not come to Cornwall to preach, except to myself now and
+then, as this day. My silent sermon was all done by the time the
+young folks came back, full of the beauties of their cliff walk, and
+their affectionate regrets that I "could never manage it," but must
+have felt so dull, sitting on a stone and watching the sheep and the
+sea-gulls. Not at all! I was obliged to confess that I never am "dull,"
+as people call it, and love solitude almost as much as society.
+
+[Illustration: ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS.]
+
+So, each contented in our own way, we went merrily home, to find
+waiting for us our cosy tea--the last!--and our faithful Charles, who,
+according to agreement, appeared overnight, to take charge of us till
+we got back to civilisation and railways.
+
+"Yes, ladies, here I am," said he with a beaming countenance. "And
+I've got you the same carriage and the same horse, as you wished, and
+I've come in time to give him a good night's rest. Now, when shall you
+start, and what do you want to do to-morrow?"
+
+Our idea had been to take for our next resting-place Marazion. This
+queer-named town had attracted us ever since the days when we learnt
+geography. Since, we had heard a good deal about it: how it had
+been inhabited by Jewish colonists, who bought tin from the early
+Ph[oe]nician workers of the Cornish mines, and been called by them
+Mara-Zion--bitter Zion--corrupted by the common people into Market-Jew.
+It was a quiet place, with St. Michael's Mount opposite; and attracted
+us much more than genteel Penzance. So did a letter we got from the
+landlord of its one hotel, promising to take us in, and make us
+thoroughly comfortable.
+
+Could we get there in one day? Charles declared we could, and even see
+a good deal on the road.
+
+"We'll go round by Mullion. Mary will be delighted to get another
+peep at you ladies, and while I rest the horse you can go in and look
+at the old church--it's very curious, they say. And then we'll go on
+to Gunwalloe,--there's another church there, close by the sea, built
+by somebody who was shipwrecked. But then it's so old and so small.
+However, we can stop and look at it if you like."
+
+His good common sense, and kindliness, when he might so easily have
+done his mere duty and taken us the shortest and ugliest route, showing
+us nothing, decided us to leave all in Charles's hands, and start at
+10 A.M. for Penzance, _viâ_ Helstone, where we all wished to
+stay an hour or two, and find out a "friend," the only one we had in
+Cornwall.
+
+So all was settled, with but a single regret, that several boating
+excursions we had planned with John Curgenven had all fallen through,
+and we should never behold some wonderful sea-caves between the Lizard
+and Cadgwith, which we had set our hearts upon visiting.
+
+Charles fingered his cap with a thoughtful air. "I don't see why you
+shouldn't, ladies. If I was to go direct and tell John Curgenven to
+have a boat ready at Church Cove, and we was to start at nine instead
+of ten, and drive there, the carriage might wait while you rowed to
+the caves and back; we should still reach Helstone by dinner-time, and
+Marazion before dark."
+
+"We'll do it!" was the unanimous resolve. And at this addition to his
+work Charles looked actually pleased!
+
+So--all was soon over, our easy packing done, our bill paid--a very
+small one--our goodnights said to the kindly handmaid, Esther, who
+hoped we would come back again some time, and promised to keep the
+artistic mural decorations of our little parlour in memory of us. My
+young folks went to bed, and then, a little before midnight, when all
+the house was quiet, I put a shawl over my head, unlatched the innocent
+door--no bolts or bars at the Lizard--and went out into the night.
+
+What a night it was!--mild as summer, clear as day: the full moon
+sailing aloft in an absolutely cloudless sky. Not a breath, not a
+sound--except the faint thud-thud of the in-coming waves, two miles
+off, at Kynance, the outline of which, and of the whole coast, was
+distinctly visible. A silent earth, lying under a silent heaven.
+Looking up, one felt almost like a disembodied soul, free to cleave
+through infinite space and gain--what?
+
+Is it human or divine, this ceaseless longing after something never
+attained, this craving after the eternal life, which, if fully believed
+in, fully understood, would take all the bitterness out of this life?
+And yet, that knowledge is not given.
+
+But so much is given, and all given is so infinitely good, except where
+we ourselves turn it into evil, that surely more, and better, will be
+given to us by and by.
+
+And so, to bed--to bed! Those only truly enjoy life who fear not death:
+who can say of the grave as if it were their bed: "I will lay me down
+in peace and take my rest, for it is Thou only, O God, who makest me to
+dwell in safety."
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE NINTH
+
+
+And our last at the Lizard, which a week ago had been to us a mere word
+or dot in a map; now we carried away from it a living human interest in
+everything and everybody.
+
+Esther bade us a cordial farewell: Mrs. Curgenven, standing at the
+door of her serpentine shop, repeated the good wishes, and informed
+us that John and his boat had already started for Church Cove. As we
+drove through the bright little Lizard Town, and past the Church of
+Landewednack, wondering if we should ever see either again, we felt
+quite sad.
+
+But sentimental considerations soon vanished in practical alarms.
+Leaving the carriage and Charles at the nearest point to the Cove, we
+went down the steep descent, and saw John rocking in his boat, and
+beckoning to us with a bland and smiling countenance. But between us
+and him lay a sort of causeway, of the very roughest rocks, slippery
+with sea-weed, and beat upon by waves--such waves! Yet clearly, if we
+meant to get into the boat at all, we must seize our opportunity and
+jump in between the flux and reflux of that advancing tide.
+
+I am not a coward: I love boats, and was well used to them in my youth,
+but now--my heart misgave me. There were but two alternatives--to
+stop the pleasure of the whole party, and leave Cornwall with these
+wonderful sea-caves unseen, or to let my children go alone. Neither was
+possible; so I hailed a sturdy youth at work hard by, and asked him if
+he would take charge of an old lady across the rocks. He grinned from
+ear to ear, but came forward, and did his duty manfully and kindly. My
+young folks, light as feathers, bounded after; and with the help of
+John Curgenven, chivalrous and careful as ever, we soon found ourselves
+safely in the boat.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING.]
+
+Safe, but not quite happy. "Here we go up, up, up, and here we go down,
+down, down," was the principle of our voyage, the most serious one we
+ever took in an open boat with a single pair of oars. Never did I see
+such waves,--at least, never did I float upon them, in a boat that went
+tossing like a bit of cork out into the open sea.
+
+John seemed not to mind them in the least. His strong arms swept the
+boat along, and he still found breath to talk to us, pointing out the
+great gloomy cliffs we were passing under, and telling us stories of
+wrecks, the favourite theme--and no wonder.
+
+This sunshiny morning that iron-bound coast looked awful enough; what
+must it have looked like, on the winter night when the emigrant ship
+_Brest_ went down!
+
+"Yes, it was about ten o'clock at night," said John. "I was fast asleep
+in bed, but they knocked me up; I got on my clothes and was off in
+five minutes. They are always glad enough to get us fishermen, the
+coastguard are. Mine was the first boat-load we brought ashore; we
+would only take women and children that time. They were all in their
+night-gowns, and they couldn't speak a word of English, but we made
+them understand somehow. One woman threw her three children down to me,
+and stayed behind on the wreck with two more."
+
+"Were the women frightened?"
+
+"Oh, no, they were very quiet, dazed like. Some of them seemed to be
+saying their prayers. But they made no fuss at all, not even the little
+ones. They lay down in the bottom of the boat, and we rowed ashore
+as fast as we could, to Cadgwith. Then we rowed back and fetched two
+boatloads more. We saved a lot of lives that wreck, but only their
+lives; they had scarcely a rag of clothes on, and some of the babies
+were as naked as when they were born."
+
+"And who took them in?"
+
+"Everybody: we always do it," answered John, as if surprised at
+the question. "The fishermen's cottages were full, and so was the
+parsonage. We gave them clothes, and kept them till they could be sent
+away. Yes, it was an awful night; I got something to remember it by,
+here."
+
+He held out his hand, from which we noticed half of one finger was
+missing.
+
+"It got squeezed off with a rope somehow. I didn't heed it much at
+the time," said John carelessly. "But look, we're at the first of the
+caves. I'll row in close, ladies, and let you see it."
+
+So we had to turn our minds from the vision of the wreck of the
+_Brest_, which John's simple words made so terribly vivid, to examine
+Raven's Ugo, and Dolor Ugo; _ugo_ is Cornish for cave. Over the
+entrance of the first a pair of ravens have built from time immemorial.
+It is just accessible, the opening being above the sea-line, and hung
+with quantities of sea-ferns. Here in smuggling days, many kegs of
+spirits used to be secreted: and many a wild drama no doubt has been
+acted there--daring encounters between smugglers and coastguard men,
+not bloodless on either side.
+
+Dolor Ugo is now inaccessible and unusable. Its only floor is of
+heaving water, a deep olive green, and so clear that we could see the
+fishes swimming about pursuing a shoal of launce. Its high-vaulted roof
+and sides were tinted all colours--rose-pink, rich dark brown, and
+purple. The entrance was wide enough to admit a boat, but it gradually
+narrowed into impenetrable darkness. How far inland it goes no one can
+tell, as it could only be investigated by swimming, a rather dangerous
+experiment. Boats venture as far as the daylight goes; and it is a
+favourite trick of the boatman suddenly to fire off a pistol, which
+reverberates like thunder through the mysterious gloom of the cave.
+
+A solemn place; an awful place, some of us thought, as we rowed in, and
+out again, into the sunshiny open sea. Which we had now got used to;
+and it was delicious to go dancing like a feather up and down, trusting
+to John Curgenven's stout arm and fearless, honest face. We felt sad to
+think this would be our last sight of him and of the magnificent Lizard
+coast. But the minutes were lessening, and we had some way still to
+row. Also to land, which meant a leap between the waves upon slippery
+sea-weedy rocks. In silent dread I watched my children accomplish this
+feat, and then--
+
+Well, it is over, and I sit here writing these details. But I would
+not do it again, not even for the pleasure of revisiting Dolor Ugo and
+having a row with John Curgenven.
+
+Honest fellow! he looked relieved when he saw "the old lady" safe on
+_terra firma_, and we left him waving adieux, as he "rocked in his
+boat in the bay." May his stout arms and kindly heart long remain to
+him! May his summer tourists be many and his winter shipwrecks few!
+I am sure he will always do his duty, and see that other people do
+theirs, or, like the proverbial Cornishmen, he "will know the reason
+why."
+
+Charles was ready; waiting patiently in front of a blacksmith's shop.
+But, alas! fate had overtaken us in the shape of an innocent leak in
+John Curgenven's boat; nothing, doubtless, to him, who was in the habit
+of baling it out with his boots, and then calmly putting them on again,
+but a little inconvenient to us. To drive thirty miles with one's
+garments soaked up to the knees was not desirable.
+
+There was a cottage close by, whence came the gleam of a delicious fire
+and the odour of ironing clothes. We went in: the mistress, evidently
+a laundress, advanced and offered to dry us--which she did, chattering
+all the while in the confidential manner of country folks.
+
+A hard working, decent body she was, and as for her house, it was a
+perfect picture of cleanliness and tidiness. Its two rooms, kitchen and
+bedroom, were absolutely speckless. When we noticed this, and said we
+found the same in many Cornish cottages; she almost seemed offended at
+the praise.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing, ma'am. We hereabouts all likes to have our places
+tidy. Mine's not over tidy to-day because of the washing. I hadn't time
+to clean up. But if you was to come of a Sunday. Look there!" Her eye
+caught something in a dark corner, at which she flew, apron in hand. "I
+declare, I'm quite ashamed. I didn't think we had one in the house."
+
+"One what?"
+
+"One spider web!"
+
+Dried, warmed, and refreshed, but having found the greatest difficulty
+in inducing the good woman to receive any tangible thanks for her
+kindness, we proceeded on our journey; going over the same ground which
+we had traversed already, and finding Pradenack Down as bleak and
+beautiful as ever. Our first halt was at the door of Mary Mundy, who,
+with her unappreciated brother, ran out to meet us, and looked much
+disappointed when she found we had not come to stay.
+
+"But you will come some time, ladies, and I'll make you so comfortable.
+And you'll give my duty to the professor"--it was vain to explain that
+four hundred miles lay between our home and his. "I hope he's quite
+well. He was a very nice gentleman, please'm. I shall be delighted to
+see him again, please'm," &c., &c.
+
+We left the three--Mary, her brother, and Charles--chattering together
+in a dialect which I do not attempt to reproduce, and sometimes could
+hardly understand. Us, the natives indulged with their best English,
+but among themselves they talked the broadest Cornish.
+
+It was a very old church, and a preternaturally old beadle showed it in
+a passive manner, not recognising in the least its points of interest
+and beauty, except some rows of open benches with ancient oak backs,
+wonderfully carved.
+
+"Our vicar dug them up from under the flooring and turned them into
+pews. There was a gentleman here the other day who said there was
+nothing like them in all England."
+
+Most curious, in truth, they were, and suited well the fine old
+building--a specimen of how carefully and lavishly our forefathers
+built "for God." We, who build for ourselves, are rather surprised
+to find in out-of-the-way nooks like this, churches that in size and
+adornment must have cost years upon years of loving labour as well as
+money.
+
+It was pleasant to know that the present incumbent, a man of
+archæological tastes, appreciated his blessings, and took the utmost
+care of his beautiful old church. Success to him! even though he cannot
+boast the power of his predecessor, the Reverend Thomas Flavel, who
+died in 1682, and whose monument in the chancel really expresses the
+sentiments--in epitaph--of the period:
+
+  "Earth, take thine earth; my sin, let Satan have it;
+  The world my goods; my soul my God who gave it.
+  For from these four, Earth, Satan, World, and God,
+  My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul, I had."
+
+But it does not mention that the reverend gentleman was the best
+_ghost-layer_ in all England, and that when he died his ghost also
+required to be laid, by a brother clergyman, in a spot on the down
+still pointed out by the people of Mullion, who, being noted for
+extreme longevity, have passed down this tradition from generation
+to generation, with an earnest credulity that we of more enlightened
+counties can hardly understand.
+
+From Mullion we went on to Gunwalloe. Its church, "small and old," as
+Charles had depreciatingly said, had been so painfully "restored,"
+and looked so bran-new and uninteresting that we contented ourselves
+with a distant look. It was close to the sea--probably built on the
+very spot where its pious founder had been cast ashore. The one curious
+point about it was the detached belfry, some yards distant from the
+church itself. It sat alone in a little cove, down which a sluggish
+river crawled quietly seaward. A sweet quiet place, but haunted, as
+usual, by tales of cruel shipwrecks--of sailors huddled for hours on
+a bit of rock just above the waves, till a boat could put out and
+save the few survivors; of sea treasures continually washed ashore
+from lost ships--Indian corn, coffee, timber, dollars--many are still
+found in the sand after a storm. And one treasure more, of which the
+recollection is still kept at Gunwalloe, "a little dead baby in its cap
+and night-gown, with a necklace of coral beads."
+
+After this our road turned inland. Our good horse, with the dogged
+persistency of Cornish horses and Cornish men, plodded on mile after
+mile. Sometimes for an hour or more we did not meet a living soul;
+then we came upon a stray labourer, or passed through a village where
+healthy-looking children, big-eyed, brown-faced, and dirty-handed,
+picturesque if not pretty, stared at us from cottage doors, or from the
+gates of cottage gardens full of flowers and apples.
+
+Those apples! They were a picture. Hungry and thirsty, we could not
+resist them. After passing several trees, hung thickly with delicious
+fruit, we attacked the owner of one of them, a comely young woman, with
+a baby in her arms and another at her gown.
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am, you may have as many apples as you like, if your young
+ladies will go and get them."
+
+And while they did it, she stood talking by the carriage door, pouring
+out to me her whole domestic history with a simple frankness worthy of
+the golden age.
+
+"No, really I couldn't," putting back my payment--little enough-- for
+the splendid basket of apples which the girls brought back in triumph.
+"This is such a good apple year; the pigs would get them if the young
+ladies didn't. You're kindly welcome to them--well then, if you are
+determined, say sixpence."
+
+On which magnificent "sixpenn'orth," we lived for days! Indeed I think
+we brought some of it home as a specimen of Cornish fruit and Cornish
+liberality.
+
+[Illustration: THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE.]
+
+Helstone was reached at last, and we were not sorry for rest and food
+in the old-fashioned inn, whence we could look out of window, and
+contemplate the humours of the little town, which doubtless considered
+itself a very great one. It was market day, and the narrow street was
+thronged with beasts and men--the latter as sober as the former,
+which spoke well for Cornwall. Sober and civil too was every one we
+addressed in asking our way to the house of our unknown friend, whose
+only address we had was Helstone. But he seemed well known in the town,
+though neither a rich man, nor a great man, nor--No, I cannot say he
+was not a clever man, for in his own line, mechanical engineering, he
+must have been exceedingly clever. And he was what people call "a great
+character;" would have made such an admirable study for a novelist,
+manipulated into an unrecognisable ideal--the only way in which it is
+fair to put people in books. When I saw him I almost regretted that I
+write novels no more.
+
+We passed through the little garden--all ablaze with autumn colour,
+every inch utilised for either flowers, vegetables, or fruit--went into
+the parlour, sent our cards and waited the result.
+
+In two minutes our friend appeared, and gave us such a welcome! But to
+explain it I must trench a little upon the sanctities of private life,
+and tell the story of this honest Cornishman. It will not harm him.
+
+When still young he went to Brazil, and was employed by an English
+gold-mining company there, for some years. Afterwards he joined
+an engineering firm, and superintended dredging, the erection of
+saw-mills, &c., finally building a lighthouse, of which latter work he
+had the sole charge, and was exceedingly proud. His conscientiousness,
+probity, and entire reliableness made him most valuable to the
+firm; whom he served faithfully for many years. When they, as well
+as himself, returned to England, he still kept up a correspondence
+with them, preserving towards every member of the family the most
+enthusiastic regard and devotion.
+
+He rushed into the parlour, a tall, gaunt, middle-aged man, with a
+shrewd, kindly face, which beamed all over with delight, as he began
+shaking hands indiscriminately, saying how kind it was of us to come,
+and how welcome we were.
+
+It was explained which of us he had specially to welcome, the others
+being only humble appendages, friends of the family, this well-beloved
+family, whose likenesses for two generations we saw everywhere about
+the room.
+
+"Yes, miss, there they all are, your dear grandfather" (alas, only a
+likeness now!), "your father, and your uncle. They were all so good to
+me, and I would do anything for them, or for any one of their name. If
+I got a message that they wanted me for anything, I'd be off to London,
+or to Brazil, or anywhere, in half-an-hour."
+
+And he really looked as if he would.
+
+"But what will you take?" added the good man when the rapture and
+excitement of the moment had a little subsided, and his various
+questions as to the well-being of "the family" had been asked and
+answered. "You have dined, you say, but you'll have a cup of tea. My
+wife (that's the little maid I used to talk to your father about, miss;
+I always told him I wouldn't stay in Brazil, I must go back to England
+and marry my little maid), my wife makes the best cup of tea in all
+Cornwall. Here she is!"
+
+And there entered, in afternoon gown and cap, probably just put on, a
+middle-aged, but still comely matron, who insisted that, even at this
+early hour--3 P.M.--to get a cup of tea for us was "no trouble
+at all."
+
+"Indeed, she wouldn't think anything a trouble, no more than I should,
+miss, if it was for your family. They never forget me, nor I them."
+
+It was here suggested that they were not a "forgetting" family. Nor
+was he a man likely to be soon forgotten. While the cup of tea, which
+proved to be a most sumptuous meal, was preparing, he took us all over
+his house, which was full of foreign curiosities, and experimental
+inventions. One, I remember, being a musical instrument, a sort of
+organ, which he had begun making when a mere boy, and taken with him
+all the way to Brazil and back. It had now found refuge in the little
+room he called his "workshop," which was filled with odds and ends that
+would have been delightful to a mechanical mind. He expounded them with
+enthusiasm, and we tried not to betray an ignorance, which in some of
+us would have been a sort of hereditary degradation.
+
+"Ah! they were clever--your father and your uncle!--and how proud we
+all were when we finished our lighthouse, and got the Emperor to light
+it up for the first time. Look here, ladies, what do you think this is?"
+
+He took out a small parcel, and solemnly unwrapped from it fold after
+fold of paper, till he came to the heart of it--a small wax candle!
+
+"This was the candle the Emperor used to light our lighthouse. I've
+kept it for nearly thirty years, and I'll keep it as long as I live.
+Every year on the anniversary of the day I light it, drink his
+Majesty's health, and the health of all your family, miss, and then I
+put it out again. So"--carefully re-wrapping the relic in its numerous
+envelopes--"so I hope it will last my time."
+
+Here the mistress came behind her good man, and they exchanged a
+smile--the affectionate smile of two who had never been more than two,
+Darby and Joan, but all sufficient to each other. She announced that
+tea was ready. And such a tea! How we got through it I hardly know,
+but travelling is hungry work, and the viands were delicious. The
+beneficence of our kind hosts, however, was not nearly done.
+
+"Come, ladies, I'll show you my garden, and--(give me a basket and the
+grape-scissors,)" added he in a conjugal aside. Which resulted in our
+carrying away with us the biggest bunches in the whole vinery, as well
+as a quantity of rosy apples, stuffed into every available pocket and
+bag.
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," was the answer to vain remonstrances. "D'ye
+think I wouldn't give the best of everything I had to your family? and
+so would my missis too. How your father used to laugh at me about my
+little maid! But he understood it for all that. Oh yes, I'm glad I came
+home. And now your father and your uncle are home too, and perhaps some
+day they'll come to see me down here--wouldn't it be a proud day for
+me! You'll tell them so?"
+
+It was touching, and rare as touching, this passionate personal
+fidelity. It threw us back, at least such of us as were sentimentally
+inclined, upon that something in Cornish nature which found its
+exposition in Arthur and his faithful knights, down to "bold Sir
+Bedevere," and apparently, is still not lost in Cornwall.
+
+With a sense of real regret, feeling that it would be long ere we
+might meet his like--such shrewd simplicity, earnest enthusiasm, and
+exceeding faithfulness--we bade good-bye to the honest man; leaving him
+and his wife standing at their garden-gate, an elderly Adam and Eve,
+desiring nothing outside their own little paradise. Which of us could
+say more, or as much?
+
+Gratefully we "talked them over," as we drove on through the pretty
+country round Helstone--inland country; for we had no time to go and
+see the Loe Pool, a small lake, divided from the sea by a bar of sand.
+This is supposed to be the work of the Cornwall man-demon, Tregeagle;
+and periodically cut through, with solemn ceremonial, by the Mayor of
+Helstone, when the "meeting of the waters," fresh and salt, is said to
+be an extremely curious sight. But we did not see it, nor yet Nonsloe
+House, close by, which is held by the tenure of having to provide a
+boat and nets whenever the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cornwall
+wishes to fish in the Loe Pool. A circumstance which has never happened
+yet, certainly!
+
+Other curiosities _en route_ we also missed, the stones of
+Tremenkeverne, half a ton each, used as missiles in a notable fight
+between two saints, St. Just of the Land's End, and St. Keverne of the
+Lizard, and still lying in a field to prove the verity of the legend.
+Also the rock of Goldsithney, where, when the "fair land of Lyonesse"
+was engulfed by the sea, an ancestor of the Trevelyans saved himself by
+swimming his horse, and landing; and various other remarkable places,
+with legends attached, needing much credulity, or imagination, to
+believe in.
+
+But, fearing to be benighted ere reaching Marazion, we passed them all,
+and saw nothing more interesting than the ruins of disused tin mines,
+which Charles showed us, mournfully explaining how the mining business
+had of late years drifted away from Cornwall, and how hundreds of the
+once thriving community had been compelled to emigrate or starve. As we
+neared Marazion, these melancholy wrecks with their little hillocks of
+mining debris rose up against the evening sky, the image of desolation.
+And then St. Michael's Mount, the picture in little of Mont St. Michel,
+in Normandy, appeared in the middle of Mount's Bay. Lastly, after
+a gorgeous sunset, in a golden twilight and silvery moonlight, we
+entered Marazion;-and found it, despite its picturesque name, the most
+commonplace little town imaginable!
+
+We should have regretted our rash decision, and gone on to Penzance,
+but for the hearty welcome given us at a most comfortable and home-like
+inn, which determined us to keep to our first intention, and stay.
+
+So, after our habit of making the best of things, we walked down to the
+ugly beach, and investigated the dirty-looking bay--in the lowest of
+all low tides, with a soppy, sea-weedy causeway running across to St.
+Michael's Mount. By advice of Charles, we made acquaintance with an old
+boatman he knew, a Norwegian who had drifted hither--shipwrecked, I
+believe--settled down and married an English woman, but whose English
+was still of the feeblest kind. However, he had an honest face; so we
+engaged him to take us out bathing early to-morrow.
+
+"And to-night, ladies?" suggested the faithful Charles. "Wouldn't you
+like to row round the Mount?--When you've had your tea, I'll come back
+for you, and help you down to the shore--it's rather rough, but nothing
+like what you have done, ma'am," added he encouragingly. "And it will
+be bright moonlight, and the Mount will look so fine."
+
+So, the spirit of adventure conquering our weariness, we went. When
+I think how it looked next morning--the small, shallow bay, with its
+toy-castle in the centre, I am glad our first vision of it was under
+the glamour of moonlight, with the battlemented rock throwing dark
+shadows across the shimmering sea. In the mysterious beauty of that
+night row round the Mount, we could imagine anything; its earliest
+inhabitant, the giant Cormoran, killed by that "valiant Cornishman,"
+the illustrious Jack; the lovely St. Keyne, a king's daughter, who came
+thither on pilgrimage; and, passing down from legend to history, Henry
+de la Pomeroy, who, being taken prisoner, caused himself to be bled to
+death in the Castle; Sir John Arundel, slain on the sands, and buried
+in the Chapel; Perkin Warbeck's unfortunate wife, who took refuge at
+St. Michael's shrine, but was dragged thence. And so on, and so on,
+through the centuries, to the family of St. Aubyn, who bought it in
+1660, and have inhabited it ever since. "Very nice people," we heard
+they were; who have received here the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and
+other royal personages. What a contrast to the legendary Cormoran!
+
+Yet, looking up as we rowed under the gloomy rock, we could fancy his
+giant ghost sitting there, on the spot where he killed his wife, for
+bringing in her apron greenstone, instead of granite, to build the
+chapel with. Which being really built of greenstone the story must be
+true! What a pleasure it is to be able to believe anything!
+
+Some of us could have stayed out half the night, floating along in the
+mild soft air and dreamy moonlight, which made even the commonplace
+little town look like a fairy scene, and exalted St. Michael's Mount
+into a grand fortress, fit for its centuries of legendary lore--but
+others preferred going to bed.
+
+So we landed, and retired. Not however without taking a long look out
+of the window upon the bay, which now, at high tide, was one sheet of
+rippling moon-lit water, with the grim old Mount, full of glimmering
+lights like eyes, sitting silent in the midst of the silent sea.
+
+[Illustration: CORNISH FISHERMAN.]
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE TENTH
+
+
+I cannot advise Marazion as a bathing place. What a down-come from the
+picturesque vision of last night, to a small ugly fishy-smelling beach,
+which seemed to form a part of the town and its business, and was
+overlooked from everywhere! Yet on it two or three family groups were
+evidently preparing for a dip, or rather a wade of about a quarter of a
+mile in exceedingly dirty sea water.
+
+"This will never do," we said to our old Norwegian. "You must row us to
+some quiet cove along the shore, and away from the town."
+
+He nodded his head, solemn and mute as the dumb boatman of dead Elaine,
+rowed us out seaward for about half-a-mile, and then proceeded to
+fasten the boat to a big stone, and walk ashore. The water still did
+not come much above his knees--he seemed quite indifferent to it. But
+we?
+
+Well, we could but do at Rome as the Romans do. Toilette in an open
+boat was evidently the custom of the country. And the sun was warm, the
+sea safe and shallow. Indeed, so rapidly did it subside, that by the
+time the bath was done, we were aground, and had to call at the top of
+our voices to our old man, who sat, with his back to us, dim in the
+distance, on another big stone, calmly smoking the pipe of peace.
+
+"We'll not try this again," was the unanimous resolve, as, after
+politely declining a suggestion that "the ladies should walk ashore--"
+did he think we were amphibious?--we got ourselves floated off at last,
+and rowed to the nearest landing point, the entrance to St. Michael's
+Mount.
+
+Probably nowhere in England is found the like of this place. Such
+a curious mingling of a mediæval fortress and modern residence; of
+antiquarian treasures and everyday business; for at the foot of the
+rock is a fishing village of about thirty cottages, which carries
+on a thriving trade; and here also is a sort of station for the tiny
+underground-railway, which worked by a continuous chain, fulfils the
+very necessary purpose (failing Giant Cormoran, and wife) of carrying
+up coals, provisions, luggage, and all other domestic necessaries to
+the hill top.
+
+Thither we climbed by a good many weary steps, and thought, delightful
+as it may be to dwell on the top of a rock in the midst of the sea,
+like eagles in an eyrie, there are certain advantages in living on a
+level country road, or even in a town street. How in the world do the
+St. Aubyns manage when they go out to dinner? Two years afterwards,
+when I read in the paper that one of the daughters of the house,
+leaning over the battlements, had lost her balance and fallen down,
+mercifully unhurt, to the rocky slope below--the very spot where we
+to-day sat so quietly gazing out on the lovely sea view--I felt with
+a shudder that on the whole, it would be a trying thing to bring up a
+young family on St. Michael's Mount.
+
+Still, generation after generation of honourable St. Aubyns have
+brought up their families there, and oh! what a beautiful spot it is!
+How fresh, and yet mild blew the soft sea-wind outside of it, and
+inside, what endless treasures there were for the archæological mind!
+The chapel alone was worth a morning's study, even though shown--odd
+anachronism--by a footman in livery, who pointed out with great gusto
+the entrance to a vault discovered during the last repairs, where was
+found the skeleton of a large man--his bones only--no clue whatever as
+to who he was or when imprisoned there. The "Jeames" of modern days
+told us this tale with a noble indifference. Nothing of the kind was
+likely to happen to him.
+
+Further still we were fortunate enough to penetrate, and saw the Chevy
+Chase Hall, with its cornice of hunting scenes, the drawing-room, the
+school-room--only fancy learning lessons there, amidst the veritable
+evidence of the history one was studying! And perhaps the prettiest bit
+of it all was our young guide, herself a St. Aubyn, with her simple
+grace and sweet courtesy, worthy of one of the fair ladies worshipped
+by King Arthur's knights.
+
+[Illustration: THE SEINE BOAT--A PERILOUS MOMENT.]
+
+We did not like encroaching on her kindness, though we could have
+stayed all day, admiring the curious things she showed us. So we
+descended the rock, and crossed the causeway, now dry, but very rough
+walking--certainly St. Michael's Mount has its difficulties as a modern
+dwelling-house--and went back to our inn. For, having given our
+horse a forenoon's rest, we planned a visit to that spot immortalised
+by nursery rhyme--
+
+  "As I was going to St. Ives
+  I met a man with seven wives.
+  Each wife had seven sacks;
+  Each sack had seven cats;
+  Each cat had seven kits;
+  Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,--
+  How many were there going to St. Ives?"
+
+--One; and after we had been there, we felt sure he never went again!
+
+There were two roads, we learnt, to that immortal town; one very good,
+but dull; the other bad--and beautiful. We chose the latter, and never
+repented.
+
+Nor, in passing through Penzance, did we repent not having taken up our
+quarters there. It was pretty, but so terribly "genteel," so extremely
+civilised. Glancing up at the grand hotel, we thought with pleasure of
+our old-fashioned inn at Marazion, where the benign waiter took quite
+a fatherly interest in our proceedings, even to giving us for dinner
+our very own blackberries, gathered yesterday on the road, and politely
+hindering another guest from helping himself to half a dishful, as
+"they belonged to the young ladies." Truly, there are better things in
+life than fashionable hotels.
+
+But the neighbourhood of Penzance is lovely. Shrubs and flowers such
+as one sees on the shores of the Mediterranean grew and flourished in
+cottage-gardens, and the forest trees we drove under, whole avenues
+of them, were very fine; gentlemen's seats appeared here and there,
+surrounded with the richest vegetation, and commanding lovely views. As
+the road gradually mounted upwards, we saw, clear as in a panorama, the
+whole coast from the Lizard Point to the Land's End,--which we should
+behold to-morrow.
+
+For, hearing that every week-day about a hundred tourists in carriages,
+carts, and omnibuses, usually flocked thither, we decided that the
+desire of our lives, the goal of our pilgrimage, should be visited
+by us on a Sunday. We thought that to drive us thither in solitary
+Sabbatic peace would be fully as good for Charles's mind and morals as
+to hang all day idle about Marazion; and he seemed to think so himself.
+Therefore, in prospect of to-morrow, he dealt very tenderly with his
+horse to-day, and turned us out to walk up the heaviest hills, of which
+there were several, between Penzance and Castle-an-Dinas.
+
+"There it is," he said at last, stopping in the midst of a wide moor
+and pointing to a small building, sharp against the sky. "The carriage
+can't get further, but you can go on, ladies, and I'll stop and gather
+some blackberries for you."
+
+For brambles, gorse bushes, and clumps of fading heather, with one or
+two small stunted trees, were now the only curiosities of this, King
+Arthur's famed hunting castle, and hunting ground, which spread before
+us for miles and miles. Passing a small farm-house, we made our way to
+the building Charles pointed out, standing on the highest ridge of the
+promontory, whose furthest point is the Land's End. Standing there, we
+could see--or could have seen but that the afternoon had turned grey
+and slightly misty--the ocean on both sides. Inland, the view seemed
+endless. Roughtor and Brown Willy, two Dartmoor hills, are said to be
+visible sometimes. Nearer, little white dots of houses show the mining
+districts of Redruth and Camborne.
+
+But here, all was desolate solitude. A single wayfarer, looking like a
+working man in his Sunday best going to visit friends, but evidently
+tired, as if he had walked for miles, just glanced at us, and passed
+on. We stood, all alone, on the very spot where many a time must have
+stood King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Sir Launcelot, and the other
+knights--or the real human beings, whether barbarian or not, who formed
+the originals of those mythical personages.
+
+All had vanished now. Nothing was left but a common-place little tower,
+built up of the fragments of the old castle, and a wide, pathless
+moor, over which the wind sighed, and the mist crept. No memorial
+whatever of King Arthur, except the tradition--which time and change
+have been powerless to annihilate--that such a man once existed. The
+long vitality which the legend keeps proves that he must have been
+a remarkable man in his day. Romance itself cannot exist without a
+foundation in reality.
+
+So I preached to my incredulous juniors, who threw overboard King
+Arthur and took to blackberry-gathering; and to conversation with a
+most comely Cornishwoman, milking the prettiest of Cornish cows in the
+lonely farm-yard, which was the only sign of humanity for miles and
+miles. We admired herself and her cattle; we drank her milk, offering
+for it the usual payment. But the picturesque milkmaid shook her head
+and demanded just double what even the dearest of London milk-sellers
+would have asked for the quantity. Which sum we paid in silence,
+and I only record the fact here in order to state that spite of our
+foreboding railway friend at Falmouth, this was the only instance in
+which we were ever "taken in," or in the smallest degree imposed upon,
+in Cornwall.
+
+Another hour, slowly driving down the gradual slope of the country,
+through a mining district much more cheerful than that beyond Marazion.
+The mines were all apparently in full work, and the mining villages
+were pretty, tidy, and cosy-looking, even picturesque. Approaching St.
+Ives the houses had quite a foreign look, but when we descended to
+the town, its dark, narrow streets, pervaded by a "most ancient and
+fish-like smell," were anything but attractive.
+
+As was our hotel, where, as a matter of duty, we ordered tea, but
+doubted if we should enjoy it, and went out again to see what little
+there seemed to be seen, puzzling our way through the gloomy and not
+too fragrant streets, till at last in despair we stopped a bland,
+elderly, Methodist-minister-looking gentleman, and asked him the way to
+the sea.
+
+He eyed us over. "You're strangers here, ma'am?"
+
+I owned the humbling fact, as the inhabitant of St. Ives must doubtless
+consider it.
+
+"And is it the pilchard fishery you want to see? It is just beginning.
+A few pilchards have been seen already. There are the boats, the
+fishermen are all getting ready. It's a fine sight to see them start.
+Would you like to come and look at them?"
+
+He had turned back and was walking with us down the street, pointing
+out everything that occurred to him as noticeable, in the kindest and
+civilest way. When we apologised for troubling him, and would have
+parted company, our friend made no attempt to go.
+
+"Oh, I've nothing at all to do, except"--he took out the biggest and
+most respectable of watches--"except to attend a prayer-meeting at
+half-past six. I should have time to show you the town; we think it is
+a very nice little town. I ought to know it; I've lived in it, boy and
+man for thirty-seven years. But now I have left my business to my sons,
+and I just go about and amuse myself, looking into the shop now and
+then just for curiosity. You must have seen my old shop, ladies, if you
+came down that street."
+
+[Illustration: ST. IVES.]
+
+Which he named, and also gave us his own name, which we had seen over
+the shop door, but I shall not record either. Not that I think the
+honest man is ever likely to read such "light" literature as this book,
+or to recall the three wanderers to whom he was so civil and kind, and
+upon whom he poured out an amount of local and personal facts, which
+we listened to--as a student of human nature is prone to do--with an
+amused interest in which the comic verged on the pathetic. How large
+to each man seems his own little world, and what child-like faith he
+has in its importance to other people! I shall always recall our friend
+at St. Ives, with his prayer-meetings, his chapel-goings--I concluded
+he was a Methodist, a sect very numerous in Cornwall--his delight in
+his successful shop and well-brought-up sons, who managed it so well,
+leaving him to enjoy his _otium cum dignitate_--no doubt a municipal
+dignity, for he showed us the Town Hall with great gusto. Evidently to
+his honest, simple soul, St. Ives was the heart of the world.
+
+By and by again he pulled out the turnip-like watch. "Just ten minutes
+to get to my prayer-meeting, and I never like to be late, I have been a
+punctual man all my life, ma'am," added he, half apologetically, till
+I suggested that this was probably the cause of his peace and success.
+Upon which he smiled, lifted his hat with a benign adieu, hoped we had
+liked St. Ives--we had liked his company at any rate--and with a final
+pointing across the street, "There's my shop, ladies, if you would care
+to look at it," trotted away to his prayer-meeting.
+
+I believe the neighbourhood of St. Ives, especially Tregenna, its
+ancient mansion transformed into an hotel, is exceedingly pretty, but
+night was falling fast, and we saw nothing. Speedily we despatched a
+most untempting meal, and hurried Charles's departure, lest we should
+be benighted, as we nearly were, during the long miles of straight and
+unlovely road--the good road--between here and Penzance. We had done
+our duty, we had seen the place, but as, in leaving it behind us, we
+laughingly repeated the nursery rhyme, we came to the conclusion that
+the man who was "_going_ to St. Ives" was the least fortunate of all
+those notable individuals.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE ELEVENTH
+
+
+The last thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a
+starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on St.
+Michael's Mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. It would be hard,
+if after journeying thus far and looking forward to it so many years,
+the day on which we went to the Land's End should turn out a wet day!
+Still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. Some
+of us, I think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so
+till the hand is dust.
+
+It was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out
+on the dawn, grey and misty, but still not wet. To be just on the point
+of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare
+enough to have a certain pathos in it. We slept again, and trusted
+for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering
+sun-gleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky. We wondered for the last
+time, as we had wondered for half a century, "what the Land's End would
+be like," and then started, rather thoughtful than merry, to find out
+the truth of the case.
+
+Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead
+of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote us in driving through
+Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along
+to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage
+to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew
+by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted
+with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised
+faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."
+
+But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. I shall
+never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely
+roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about
+Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the
+high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island.
+The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was
+now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer
+leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three
+children trotting to school or church, with their books under their
+arms. Unquestionably Cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county;
+religious-minded too, whether Methodist, Quaker, or other nonconformist
+sects, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative Church
+of England.
+
+We passed St. Buryan's--a curious old church founded on the place where
+an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. A
+few stray cottages comprised the whole village. There was nothing
+special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and
+sunshine and solitude, till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the
+celebrated Logan or rocking-stone.
+
+From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in
+England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial,
+who can decide?
+
+  "Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving,
+  But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."
+
+Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant
+Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's
+crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point
+on which it rests. Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at
+great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked
+properly since.
+
+By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who
+stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the
+Lizard, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards.
+Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a
+labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.
+
+"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of
+them in answer to a question.
+
+And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been
+much readier than his tongue. I, at least, should never have got even
+so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself--a somewhat
+anxious-minded old hen--and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that
+enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the Logan.
+
+"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the
+lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must
+honestly confess _I_ could not see it stir a single inch.
+
+However, it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones
+around it were equally huge and most picturesquely thrown together.
+Also--delightful to my young folks!--they furnished the most
+adventurous scramble that heart could desire. I alone felt a certain
+relief when we were all again on smooth ground, with no legs or arms
+broken.
+
+The cliff-walk between the Logan and the Land's End is said to be one
+of the finest in England for coast scenery. Treryn or Treen Dinas,
+Pardeneck Point, and Tol Pedn Penwith had been named as places we ought
+to see, but this was impracticable. We had to content ourselves with a
+dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and
+ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of
+a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came
+forward to the carriage, and Charles jumped down from his box.
+
+"You can get out now, ladies. This is the Land's End."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+I forbear to translate the world of meaning implied in that brief
+exclamation.
+
+"Let us go in and get something. Perhaps we shall admire the place more
+when we have ceased to be hungry."
+
+The words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of
+an hour at the Land's End in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too
+daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour
+of the--let me give it its right name--First and Last Inn, of Great
+Britain.
+
+"We never provide for Sunday," said the waitress, responding to a
+sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here.
+"It's very seldom any tourists come on a Sunday."
+
+At which we felt altogether humbled; but in a few minutes more our
+contrition passed into sovereign content.
+
+We went out of doors, upon the narrow green plateau in front of the
+house, and then we recognised where we were--standing at the extreme
+end of a peninsula, with a long line of rocks running out still further
+into the sea. That "great and wide sea, wherein are moving things
+innumerable," the mysterious sea "kept in the hollow of His hand," who
+is Infinity, and looking at which, in the intense solitude and silence,
+one seems dimly to guess at what Infinity may be. Any one who wishes to
+go to church for once in the Great Temple which His hands have builded,
+should spend a Sunday at the Land's End.
+
+At first, our thought had been, What in the world shall we do here for
+two mortal hours! Now, we wished we had had two whole days. A sunset, a
+sunrise, a star-lit night, what would they not have been in this grand
+lonely place--almost as lonely as a ship at sea? It would be next best
+to finding ourselves in the middle of the Atlantic.
+
+But this bliss could not be; so we proceeded to make the best of what
+we had. The bright day was darkening, and a soft greyness began to
+creep over land and sea. No, not soft, that is the very last adjective
+applicable to the Land's End. Even on that calm day there was a fresh
+wind--there must be always wind--and the air felt sharper and more salt
+than any sea-air I ever knew. Stimulating too, so that one's nerves
+were strung to the highest pitch of excitement. We felt able to do
+anything, without fear and without fatigue. So that when a guide came
+forward--a regular man-of-war's-man he looked--we at once resolved to
+adventure along the line of rocks, seaward, "out as far as anybody was
+accustomed to go."
+
+"Ay, ay; I'll take you, ladies. That is--the young ladies might go--but
+you--" eying me over with his keen sailor's glance, full of honesty and
+good humour, "you're pretty well on in years, ma'am."
+
+Laughing, I told him how far on, but that I was able to do a good deal
+yet. He laughed too.
+
+"Oh, I've taken ladies much older than you. One the other day was
+nearly seventy. So we'll do our best, ma'am. Come along."
+
+He offered a rugged, brown hand, as firm and steady as a mast, to hold
+by, and nothing could exceed the care and kindliness with which he
+guided every step of every one of us, along that perilous path, that
+is, perilous except for cautious feet and steady heads.
+
+"Take care, young ladies. If you make one false step, you are done
+for," said our guide, composedly as he pointed to the boiling whirl of
+waters below.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK.]
+
+Still, though a narrow and giddy path, there was a path, and the
+exploit, though a little risky, was not fool-hardy. We should have
+been bitterly sorry not to have done it--not to have stood for one
+grand ten minutes, where in all our lives we may never stand again, at
+the farthest point where footing is possible, gazing out upon that
+magnificent circle of sea which sweeps over the submerged "land of
+Lyonesse," far, far away, into the wide Atlantic.
+
+There were just two people standing with us, clergymen evidently, and
+one, the guide told us, was "the parson at St. Sennen." We spoke to
+him, as people do speak, instinctively, when mutually watching such a
+scene, and by and by we mentioned the name of the long-dead curate of
+St. Sennen's.
+
+The "parson" caught instantly at the name.
+
+"Mr. ----? Oh, yes, my father knew him quite well. He used constantly
+to walk across from Sennen to our house, and take us children long
+rambles across the cliffs, with a volume of Southey or Wordsworth under
+his arm. He was a fine young fellow in those days, I have heard, and an
+excellent clergyman. And he afterwards married a very nice girl from
+the north somewhere."
+
+"Yes;" we smiled. The "nice girl" was now a sweet silver-haired little
+lady of nearly eighty; the "fine young fellow" had long since departed;
+and the boy was this grave middle-aged gentleman, who remembered both
+as a tradition of his youth. What a sermon it all preached, beside this
+eternal rock, this ever-moving, never-changing sea!
+
+But time was passing--how fast it does pass, minutes, ay, and years! We
+bade adieu to our known unknown friend, and turned our feet backwards,
+cautiously as ever, stopping at intervals to listen to the gossip of
+our guide.
+
+"Yes, ladies, that's the spot--you may see the hoof-mark--where General
+Armstrong's horse fell over; he just slipped off in time, but the poor
+beast was drowned. And here, over that rock, happened the most curious
+thing. I wouldn't have believed it myself, only I knew a man that saw
+it with his own eyes. Once a bullock fell off into the pool below
+there--just look, ladies." (We did look, into a perfect Maëlstrom of
+boiling waves.) "Everybody thought he was drowned, till he was seen
+swimming about unhurt. They fished him up, and exhibited him as a
+curiosity."
+
+And again, pointing to a rock far out in the sea.
+
+"That's the Brisons. Thirty years ago a ship went to pieces there, and
+the captain and his wife managed to climb on to that rock. They held
+on there for two days and a night, before a boat could get at them.
+At last they were taken off one at a time, with rockets and a rope;
+the wife first. But the rope slipped and she fell into the water. She
+was pulled out in a minute or so, and rowed ashore, but they durst
+not tell her husband she was drowned. I was standing on the beach at
+Whitesand Bay when the boat came in. I was only a lad, but I remember
+it well, and her too lifted out all dripping and quite dead. She was
+such a fine woman."
+
+"And the captain?"
+
+"They went back for him, and got him off safe, telling him nothing. But
+when he found she was dead he went crazy-like--kept for ever saying,
+'She saved my life, she saved my life,' till he was taken away by his
+friends. Look out, ma'am, mind your footing; just here a lady slipped
+and broke her leg a week ago. I had to carry her all the way to the
+hotel. I shouldn't like to carry you."
+
+We all smiled at the comical candour of the honest sailor, who
+proceeded to give us bits of his autobiography. He was Cornish born,
+but had seen a deal of the world as an A.B. on board her Majesty's ship
+_Agamemnon_.
+
+"Of course you have heard of the _Agamemnon_, ma'am. I was in her off
+Balaklava. You remember the Crimean war?"
+
+Yes, I did. His eyes brightened as we discussed names and places once
+so familiar, belonging to that time, which now seems so far back as to
+be almost historical.
+
+"Then you know what a winter we had, and what a summer afterwards. I
+came home invalided, and didn't attempt the service afterwards; but I
+never thought I should come home at all. Yes, it's a fine place the
+Land's End, though the air is so strong that it kills some folks right
+off. Once an invalid gentleman came, and he was dead in a fortnight.
+But I'm not dead yet, and I stop here mostly all the year round."
+
+He sniffed the salt air and smiled all over his weather-beaten
+face--keen, bronzed, blue-eyed, like one of the old Vikings. He was a
+fine specimen of a true British tar. When, having seen all we could, we
+gave him his small honorarium, he accepted it gratefully, and insisted
+on our taking in return a memento of the place in the shape of a stone
+weighing about two pounds, glittering with ore, and doubtless valuable,
+but ponderous. Oh, the trouble it gave me to carry it home, and pack
+and unpack it among my small luggage! But I did bring it home, and
+I keep it still in remembrance of the Land's End, and of the honest
+sailor of H.M.S. _Agamemnon_.
+
+So all was over. We could dream of an unknown Land's End no more. It
+became now a real place, of which the reality, though different from
+the imagination, was at least no disappointment. How few people in
+attaining a life-long desire can say as much!
+
+Our only regret, an endurable one now, was that we had not carried out
+our original plan of staying some days there--tourist-haunted, troubled
+days they might have been, but the evenings and mornings would have
+been glorious. With somewhat heavy hearts we summoned Charles and the
+carriage, for already a misty drift of rain began sweeping over the sea.
+
+"Still, we must see Whitesand Bay," said one of us, recalling a story
+a friend had once told how, staying at Land's End, she crossed the bay
+alone in a blinding storm, took refuge at the coastguard station, where
+she was hospitably received, and piloted back with most chivalric care
+by a coastguard, who did not tell her till their journey's end that he
+had left at home a wife, and a baby just an hour old.
+
+No such romantic adventure befell us. We only caught a glimmer of the
+bay through drizzling rain, which by the time we reached Sennen village
+had become a regular downpour. Evidently, we could do no more that day,
+which was fast melting into night.
+
+"We'll go home," was the sad resolve, glad nevertheless that we had a
+comfortable "home" to go to.
+
+So closing the carriage and protecting ourselves as well as we could
+from the driving rain, we went forward, passing the Quakers' burial
+ground, where is said to be one of the finest views in Cornwall; the
+Nine Maidens, a circle of Druidical stones, and many other interesting
+things, without once looking at or thinking of them.
+
+Half a mile from Marazion the rain ceased, and a light like that of the
+rising moon began to break through the clouds. What a night it might
+be, or might have been, could we have stayed at the Land's End!
+
+That ghostly "might have been!" It is in great things as in small, the
+worry, the torment, the paralysing burden of life. Away with it! We
+have done our best to be happy, and we have been happy. We have seen
+the Land's End.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE TWELFTH
+
+
+Monday morning. Black Monday we were half inclined to call it, knowing
+that by the week's end our travels must be over and done, and that if
+we wished still to see all we had planned, we must inevitably next
+morning return to civilisation and railways, a determination which
+involved taking this night "a long, a last farewell" of our comfortable
+carriage and our faithful Charles.
+
+"But it needn't be until night," said he, evidently loth to part from
+his ladies. "If I get back to Falmouth by daylight to-morrow morning,
+master will be quite satisfied. I can take you wherever you like
+to-day."
+
+"And the horse?"
+
+"Oh, he shall get a good feed and a rest till the middle of the night,
+then he'll do well enough. We shall have the old moon after one o'clock
+to get home by. Between Penzance and Falmouth it's a good road, though
+rather lonely."
+
+I should think it was, in the "wee hours" by the dim light of a waning
+moon. But Charles seemed to care nothing about it, so we said no more,
+but decided to take the drive--our last drive.
+
+Our minds were perplexed between Botallack Mine, the Gurnard's Head,
+Lamorna Cove, and several other places, which we were told we must on
+no account miss seeing, the first especially. Some of us, blessed with
+scientific relatives, almost dreaded returning home without having seen
+a single Cornish mine; others, lovers of scenery, longed for more of
+that magnificent coast. But finally, a meek little voice carried the
+day.
+
+[Illustration: SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS.]
+
+"I was so disappointed--more than I liked to say--when it rained,
+and I couldn't get my shells for our bazaar. How shall I ever get them
+now? If it wouldn't trouble anybody very much, mightn't we go again to
+Whitesand Bay?"
+
+A plan not wholly without charm. It was a heavenly day; to spend it
+in delicious idleness on that wide sweep of sunshiny sand would be a
+rest for the next day's fatigue. Besides, consolatory thought! there
+would be no temptation to put on miners' clothes, and go dangling in
+a basket down to the heart of the earth, as the Princess of Wales was
+reported to have done. The pursuit of knowledge may be delightful, but
+some of us owned to a secret preference for _terra firma_ and the upper
+air. We resolved to face opprobrium, and declare boldly we had "no
+time" (needless to add no inclination) to go and see Botallack Mine.
+The Gurnard's Head cost us a pang to miss; but then we should catch a
+second view of the Land's End. Yes, we would go to Whitesand Bay.
+
+It was a far shorter journey in sunshine than in rain, even though we
+made various divergencies for blackberries and other pleasures. Never
+had the sky looked bluer or the sea brighter, and much we wished that
+we could have wandered on in dreamy peace, day after day, or even gone
+through England, gipsy-fashion, in a house upon wheels, which always
+seemed to me the very ideal of travelling.
+
+We reached Sennen only too soon. Pretty little Sennen, with its ancient
+church and its new school house, where the civil schoolmaster gave me
+some ink to write a post-card for those to whom even the post-mark
+"Sennen" would have a touching interest, and where the boys and girls,
+released for dinner, were running about. Board school pupils, no doubt,
+weighted with an amount of learning which would have been appalling
+to their grandfathers and grandmothers, the simple parishioners of
+the "fine young fellow" half a century ago. As we passed through the
+village with its pretty cottages and "Lodgings to Let," we could not
+help thinking what a delightful holiday resort this would be for
+a large small family, who could be turned out as we were when the
+carriage could no farther go, on the wide sweep of green common,
+gradually melting into silvery sand, so fine and soft that it was
+almost a pleasure to tumble down the slopes, and get up again, shaking
+yourself like a dog, without any sense of dirt or discomfort. What a
+paradise for children, who might burrow like rabbits and wriggle about
+like sand-eels, and never come to any harm!
+
+Without thought of any danger, we began selecting our bathing-place,
+shallow enough, with long strips of wet shimmering sand to be crossed
+before reaching even the tiniest waves; when one of us, the cautious
+one, appealed to an old woman, the only human being in sight.
+
+"Bathe?" she said. "Folks ne'er bathe here. 'Tain't safe."
+
+"Why not? Quicksands?"
+
+She nodded her head. Whether she understood us or not, or whether we
+quite understood her, I am not sure, and should be sorry to libel such
+a splendid bathing ground--apparently. But maternal wisdom interposed,
+and the girls yielded. When, half an hour afterwards, we saw a solitary
+figure moving on a distant ledge of rock, and a black dot, doubtless
+a human head, swimming or bobbing about in the sea beneath--maternal
+wisdom was reproached as arrant cowardice. But the sand was delicious,
+the sea-wind so fresh, and the sea so bright, that disappointment could
+not last. We made an encampment of our various impedimenta, stretched
+ourselves out, and began the search for shells, in which every
+arm's-length involved a mine of wealth and beauty.
+
+Never except at one place, on the estuary of the Mersey, have I
+seen a beach made up of shells so lovely in colour and shape; very
+minute; some being no bigger than a grain of rice or a pin's head. The
+collecting of them was a fascination. We forgot all the historical
+interests that ought to have moved us, saw neither Athelstan, King
+Stephen, King John, nor Perkin Warbeck, each of whom is said to have
+landed here--what were they to a tiny shell, like that moralised over
+by Tennyson in "Maud"--"small, but a work divine"? I think infinite
+greatness sometimes touches one less than infinite littleness--the
+exceeding tenderness of Nature, or the Spirit which is behind Nature,
+who can fashion with equal perfectness a starry hemisphere and a
+glow-worm; an ocean and a little pink shell. The only imperfection in
+creation seems--oh, strange mystery!--to be man. Why?
+
+But away with moralising, or dreaming, though this was just a day for
+dreaming, clear, bright, warm, with not a sound except the murmur
+of the low waves, running in an enormous length--curling over and
+breaking on the soft sands. Everything was so heavenly calm, it seemed
+impossible to believe in that terrible scene when the captain and his
+wife were seen clinging to the Brisons rock, just ahead.
+
+Doubtless our friend of the _Agamemnon_ was telling this and all
+his other stories to an admiring circle of tourists, for we saw the
+Land's End covered with a moving swarm like black flies. How thankful
+we felt that we had "done" it on a Sunday! Still, we were pleased
+to have another gaze at it, with its line of picturesque rocks, the
+Armed Knight and the Irish Lady--though, I confess, I never could make
+out which was the knight and which was the lady. Can it be that some
+fragment of the legend of Tristram and Iseult originated these names?
+
+After several sweet lazy hours, we went through a "fish-cellar," a
+little group of cottages, and climbed a headland, to take our veritable
+farewell of the Land's End, and then decided to go home. We had rolled
+or thrown our provision basket, rugs, &c., down the sandy slope, but it
+was another thing to carry them up again. I went in quest of a small
+boy, and there presented himself a big man, coastguard, as the only
+unemployed hand in the place, who apologised with such a magnificent
+air for not having "cleaned" himself, that I almost blushed to ask
+him to do such a menial service as to carry a bundle of wraps. But
+he accepted it, conversing amiably as we went, and giving me a most
+graphic picture of life at Sennen during the winter. When he left me,
+making a short cut to our encampment--a black dot on the sands, with
+two moving black dots near it--a fisher wife joined me, and of her own
+accord began a conversation.
+
+She and I fraternised at once, chiefly on the subject of children, a
+group of whom were descending the road from Sennen School. She told me
+how many of them were hers, and what prizes they had gained, and what
+hard work it was. She could neither read nor write, she said, but she
+liked her children to be good scholars, and they learnt a deal up at
+Sennen.
+
+Apparently they did, and something else besides learning, for when I
+had parted from my loquacious friend, I came up to the group just in
+time to prevent a stand-up fight between two small mites, the _casus
+belli_ of which I could no more arrive at, than a great many wiser
+people can discover the origin of national wars. So I thought the
+strong hand of "intervention"--civilised intervention--was best, and
+put an end to it, administering first a good scolding, and then a coin.
+The division of this coin among the little party compelled an extempore
+sum in arithmetic, which I required them to do (for the excellent
+reason that I couldn't do it myself!)--and they did it! Therefore I
+conclude that the heads of the Sennen school-children are as solid as
+their fists, and equally good for use.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE.]
+
+Simple little community! which as the fisher wife told me, only goes to
+Penzance about once a year, and is, as yet, innocent of tourists, for
+the swarm at the Land's End seldom goes near Whitesand Bay. Existence
+here must be very much that of an oyster,--but perhaps oysters are
+happy.
+
+By the time we reached Penzance the lovely day was dying into an
+equally lovely evening. St. Michael's Mount shone in the setting sun.
+It was high water, the bay was all alive with boats, and there was
+quite a little crowd of people gathered at the mild little station of
+Marazion. What could be happening?
+
+A princess was expected, that young half-English, half-foreign
+princess, in whose romantic story the British public has taken such an
+interest, sympathising with the motherly kindness of our good Queen,
+with the wedding at Windsor, and the sad little infant funeral there,
+a year after. The Princess Frederica of Hanover, and the Baron Von
+Pawel-Rammingen, her father's secretary, who, like a stout mediæval
+knight, had loved, wooed, and married her, were coming to St. Michael's
+Mount on a visit to the St. Aubyns.
+
+Marazion had evidently roused itself, and risen to the occasion. Half
+the town must have turned out to the beach, and the other half secured
+every available boat, in which it followed, at respectful distance,
+the two boats, one full of luggage, the other of human beings, which
+were supposed to be the royal party. People speculated with earnest
+curiosity, which was the princess, and which her husband, and what the
+St. Aubyns would do with them; whether they would be taken to see the
+Land's End, and whether they would go there as ordinary tourists, or in
+a grand visit of state. How hard it is that royal folk can never see
+anything except in state, or in a certain adventitious garb, beautiful,
+no doubt, but satisfactorily hiding the real thing. How they must long
+sometimes for a walk, after the fashion of Haroun Alraschid, up and
+down Regent Street and Oxford Street! or an incognito foreign tour, or
+even a solitary country walk, without a "lady-in-waiting."
+
+We had no opera-glass to add to the many levelled at those two boats,
+so we went in--hoping host and guests would spend a pleasant evening in
+the lovely old rooms we knew. We spent ours in rest, and in arranging
+for to-morrow's flight. Also in consulting with our kindly landlady
+as to a possible house at Marazion for some friends whom the winter
+might drive southwards, like the swallows, to a climate which, in this
+one little bay shut out from east and north, is--they told us--during
+all the cruel months which to many of us means only enduring life, not
+living--as mild and equable almost as the Mediterranean shores. And
+finally, we settled all with our faithful Charles, who looked quite
+mournful at parting with his ladies.
+
+"Yes, it is rather a long drive, and pretty lonely," said he. "But I'll
+wait till the moons up, and that'll help us. We'll get into Falmouth
+by daylight. I've got to do the same thing often enough through the
+summer, so I don't mind it."
+
+Thus said the good fellow, putting a cheery face on it, then with a
+hasty "Good-bye, ladies," he rushed away. But we had taken his address,
+not meaning to lose sight of him. (Nor have we done so up to this date
+of writing; and the fidelity has been equal on both sides.)
+
+Then, in the midst of a peal of bells which was kept up unweariedly
+till 10 P.M.--evidently Marazion is not blessed with the sight
+of a princess every day--we closed our eyes upon all outward things,
+and went away to the Land of Nod.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE THIRTEENTH
+
+
+Into King Arthurs land--Tintagel his birth-place, and Camelford,
+where he fought his last battle--the legendary region of which one
+may believe as much or as little as one pleases--we were going
+to-day. With the good common sense which we flattered ourselves had
+accompanied every step of our unsentimental journey, we had arranged
+all before-hand, ordered a carriage to meet the mail train, and hoped
+to find at Tintagel--not King Uther Pendragon, King Arthur or King
+Mark, but a highly respectable landlord, who promised us a welcome at
+an inn--which we only trusted would be as warm and as kindly as that we
+left behind us at Marazion.
+
+The line of railway which goes to the far west of England is one of the
+prettiest in the kingdom on a fine day, which we were again blessed
+with. It had been a wet summer, we heard, throughout Cornwall, but
+in all our journey, save that one wild storm at the Lizard, sunshine
+scarcely ever failed us. Now--whether catching glimpses of St. Ives
+Bay or sweeping through the mining district of Redruth, and the wooded
+country near Truro, Grampound, and St. Austell, till we again saw the
+glittering sea on the other side of Cornwall--all was brightness. Then
+darting inland once more, our iron horse carried us past Lostwithiel,
+the little town which once boasted Joseph Addison, M.P., as its
+representative; gave us a fleeting vision of Ristormel, one of the
+ancient castles of Cornwall, and on through a leafy land, beginning to
+change from rich green to the still richer yellows and reds of autumn,
+till we stopped at Bodmin Road.
+
+[Illustration: TINTAGEL.]
+
+No difficulty in finding our carriage, for it was the only one there;
+a huge vehicle, of ancient build, the horses to match, capable of
+accommodating a whole family and its luggage. We missed our compact
+little machine, and our brisk, kindly Charles, but soon settled
+ourselves in dignified, roomy state, for the twenty miles, or rather
+more, which lay between us and the coast. Our way ran along lonely
+quiet country roads and woods almost as green as when Queen Guinevere
+rode through them "a maying," before the dark days of her sin and King
+Arthur's death.
+
+Here it occurs to me, as it did this day to a practical youthful mind,
+"What in the world do people know about King Arthur?"
+
+Well, most people have read Tennyson, and a few are acquainted with
+the "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. But, perhaps I had better
+briefly give the story, or as much of it as is necessary for the
+edification of outsiders.
+
+Uther Pendragon, King of Britain, falling in love with Ygrayne, wife of
+the duke of Cornwall, besieged them in their twin castles of Tintagel
+and Terrabil, slew the husband, and the same day married the wife. Unto
+whom a boy was born, and by advice of the enchanter Merlin, carried
+away, from the sea-shore beneath Tintagel, and confided to a good
+knight, Sir Ector, to be brought up as his own son, and christened
+Arthur. On the death of the king, Merlin produced the youth, who was
+recognized by his mother Ygrayne, and proclaimed king in the stead
+of Uther Pendragon. He instituted the Order of Knights of the Round
+Table, who were to go everywhere, punishing vice and rescuing oppressed
+virtue, for the love of God and of some noble lady. He married
+Guinevere, daughter of King Leodegrance, who forsook him for the love
+of Sir Launcelot, his bravest knight and dearest friend. One by one,
+his best knights fell away into sin, and his nephew Mordred raised a
+rebellion, fought with him, and conquered him at Camelford. Seeing his
+end was near, Arthur bade his last faithful knight, Sir Bedevere, carry
+him to the shore of a mere (supposed to be Dozmare Pool) and throw in
+there his sword Excalibur; when appeared a boat with three queens,
+who lifted him in, mourning over him. With them he sailed away across
+the mere, to be healed of his grievous wound. Some say that he was
+afterwards buried in a chapel near, others declare that he lives still
+in fairy land, and will reappear in latter days, to reinstate the Order
+of Knights of the Round Table, and rule his beloved England, which will
+then be perfect as he once tried to make it, but in vain.
+
+Camelford of to-day is certainly not the Camelot of King Arthur--but
+a very respectable, commonplace little town, much like other country
+towns; the same genteel linendrapers' and un-genteel ironmongers'
+shops; the same old-established commercial inn, and a few ugly, but
+solid-looking private houses, with their faces to the street and
+their backs nestled in gardens and fields. Some of the inhabitants of
+these said houses were to be seen taking a quiet afternoon stroll.
+Doubtless they are eminently respectable and worthy folk, leading a
+mild provincial life like the people in Miss Martineau's _Deerbrook_,
+or Miss Austen's _Pride and Prejudice_--of which latter quality they
+have probably a good share.
+
+We let our horses rest, but we ourselves felt not the slightest wish to
+rest at Camelford, so walked leisurely on till we came to the little
+river Camel, and to Slaughter Bridge, said to be the point where King
+Arthur's army was routed and where he received his death-wound. A
+slab of stone, some little distance up the stream, is still called
+"King Arthur's Tomb." But as his coffin is preserved, as well as his
+Round Table, at Winchester; where, according to mediæval tradition,
+the bodies of both Arthur and Guinevere were found, and the head
+of Guinevere had yellow hair; also that near the little village of
+Davidstow, is a long barrow, having in the centre a mound, which is
+called "King Arthur's grave"--inquiring minds have plenty of "facts" to
+choose from. Possibly at last they had better resort to fiction, and
+believe in Arthur's disappearance, as Tennyson makes him say,
+
+  "To the island-valley of Avillion ...
+  Where I may heal me of my grievous wound."
+
+Dozmare Pool we found so far out of our route that we had to make a
+virtue of necessity, and imagine it all; the melancholy moorland lake,
+with the bleak hill above it, and stray glimpses of the sea beyond.
+A ghostly spot, and full of many ghostly stories besides the legend
+of Arthur. Here Tregeagle, the great demon of Cornwall, once had his
+dwelling, until, selling his soul to the devil, his home was sunk to
+the bottom of the mere, and himself is heard of stormy nights, wailing
+round it with other ghost-demons, in which the Cornish mind still
+lingeringly believes. Visionary packs of hounds; a shadowy coach and
+horses, which drives round and round the pool, and then drives into it;
+flitting lights, kindled by no human hand, in places where no human
+foot could go--all these tales are still told by the country folk, and
+we might have heard them all. Might also have seen, in fancy, the flash
+of the "brand Excalibur"; heard the wailing song of the three queens;
+and pictured the dying Arthur lying on the lap of his sister Morgane la
+Faye. But, I forgot, this is an un-sentimental journey.
+
+The Delabole quarries are as un-sentimental a place as one could
+desire. It was very curious to come suddenly upon this world of slate,
+piled up in enormous masses on either side the road, and beyond them
+hills of debris, centuries old--for the mines have been worked ever
+since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Houses, walls, gates, fences,
+everything that can possibly be made of slate, is made. No green or
+other colour tempers the all-pervading shade of bluish-grey, for
+vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the quarries is abolished,
+the result of which would be rather dreary, save for the cheerful
+atmosphere of wholesome labour, the noise of waggons, horses,
+steam-engines--such a contrast to the silence of the deserted tin-mines.
+
+But, these Delabole quarries passed, silence and solitude come back
+again. Even the yearly-increasing influx of tourists fails to make
+the little village of Trevena anything but a village, where the
+said tourists lounge about in the one street, if it can be called a
+street, between the two inns and the often-painted, picturesque old
+post-office. Everything looked so simple, so home-like, that we were
+amused to find we had to get ready for a _table d'hôte_ dinner, in
+the only available eating room where the one indefatigable waitress,
+a comely Cornish girl, who seemed Argus and Briareus rolled into one,
+served us--a party small enough to make conversation general, and
+pleasant and intelligent enough to make it very agreeable, which does
+not always happen at an English hotel.
+
+Then we sallied out to find the lane which leads to Tintagel Castle,
+or Castles--for one sits in the sea, the other on the opposite heights
+in the mainland, with power of communicating by the narrow causeway
+which now at least exists between the rock and the shore. This seems to
+confirm the legend, how the luckless husband of Ygrayne shut up himself
+and his wife in two castles, he being slain in the one, and she married
+to the victorious King Uther Pendragon, in the other.
+
+Both looked so steep and dangerous in the fast-coming twilight that we
+thought it best to attempt neither, so contented ourselves with a walk
+on the cliffs and the smooth green field which led thither. Leaning
+against a gate, we stood and watched one of the grandest out of the
+many grand sunsets which had blessed us in Cornwall. The black rock of
+Tintagel filled the foreground; beyond, the eye saw nothing but sea,
+the sea which covers vanished Lyonesse, until it met the sky, a clear
+amber with long bars like waves, so that you could hardly tell where
+sea ended and sky began. Then into it there swam slowly a long low
+cloud, shaped like a boat, with a raised prow, and two or three figures
+sitting at the stern.
+
+"King Arthur and the three queens," we declared, and really a very
+moderate imagination could have fancied it this. "But what is that long
+black thing at the bow?"
+
+"Oh," observed drily the most practical of the three, "it's King
+Arthur's luggage."
+
+Sentiment could survive no more. We fell into fits of laughter, and
+went home to tea and bed.
+
+
+
+
+DAYS FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH--
+
+
+And all Arthurian days, so I will condense them into one chapter, and
+not spin out the hours that were flying so fast. Yet we hardly wished
+to stop them; for pleasant as travelling is, the best delight of all
+is--the coming home.
+
+Walking, to one more of those exquisite autumn days, warm as summer,
+yet with a tender brightness that hot summer never has, like the love
+between two old people, out of whom all passion has died--we remembered
+that we were at Tintagel, the home of Ygrayne and Arthur, of King Mark
+and Tristram and Iseult. I had to tell that story to my girls in the
+briefest form, how King Mark sent his nephew, Sir Tristram, to fetch
+home Iseult of Ireland for his queen, and on the voyage Bragswaine,
+her handmaiden, gave each a love-potion, which caused the usual fatal
+result; how at last Tristram fled from Tintagel into Brittany, where
+he married another Iseult "of the white hands," and lived peacefully,
+till, stricken by death, his fancy went back to his old love, whom he
+implored to come to him. She came, and found him dead. A tale--of which
+the only redeeming point is the innocence, simplicity, and dignity of
+the second Iseult, the unloved Breton wife, to whom none of our modern
+poets who have sung or travestied the wild, passionate, miserable, ugly
+story, have ever done full justice.
+
+These sinful lovers, the much-wronged but brutal King Mark, the
+scarcely less brutal Uther Pendragon, and hapless Ygrayne--what a
+curious condition of morals and manners the Arthurian legends unfold!
+A time when might was right; when every one seized what he wanted just
+because he wanted it, and kept it, if he could, till a stronger hand
+wrenched it from him. That in such a state of society there should
+ever have arisen the dimmest dream of a man like Arthur--not perhaps
+Tennyson's Arthur, the "blameless king," but even Sir Thomas Malory's,
+founded on mere tradition--is a remarkable thing. Clear through all
+the mists of ages shines that ideal of knighthood, enjoining courage,
+honour, faith, chastity, the worship of God and the service of men.
+Also, in the very highest degree, inculcating that chivalrous love of
+woman--not women--which barbaric nations never knew. As we looked at
+that hoar ruin sitting solitary in the sunny sea, and thought of the
+days when it was a complete fortress, inclosing a mass of human beings,
+all with human joys, sorrows, passions, crimes--things that must have
+existed in essence, however legend has exaggerated or altered them--we
+could not but feel that the mere possibility of a King Arthur shining
+down the dim vista of long-past centuries, is something to prove that
+goodness, like light, has an existence as indestructible as Him from
+whom it comes.
+
+We looked at Tintagel with its risky rock-path. "It will be a hot
+climb, and our bathing days are numbered. Let us go in the opposite
+direction to Bossinney Cove."
+
+Practicality when weighed against Poetry is poor--Poetry always kicks
+the beam. We went to Bossinney.
+
+Yet what a pretty cove it was! and how pleasant! While waiting for
+the tide to cover the little strip of sand, we re-mounted the winding
+path, and settled ourselves like seabirds on the furthermost point of
+rock, whence, just by extending a hand, we could have dropped anything,
+ourselves even, into a sheer abyss of boiling waves, dizzy to look down
+into, and yet delicious.
+
+So was the bath, though a little gloomy, for the sun could barely reach
+the shut-in cove; and we were interfered with considerably by--not
+tourists--but a line of donkeys! They were seen solemnly descending the
+narrow cliff-path one by one--eleven in all--each with an empty sack
+over his shoulder. Lastly came a very old man, who, without taking the
+least notice of us, disposed himself to fill these sacks with sand.
+One after the other the eleven meek animals came forward and submitted
+each to his load, which proceeding occupied a good hour and a half.
+I hardly know which was the most patient, the old man or his donkeys.
+
+[Illustration: CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY.]
+
+We began some of us to talk to his beasts, and others to himself. "Yes,
+it was hard work," he said, "but he managed to come down to the cove
+three times a day. And the asses were good asses. They all had their
+names; Lucy, Cherry, Sammy, Tom, Jack, Ned;" each animal pricked up its
+long ears and turned round its quiet eyes when called. Some were young
+and some old, but all were very sure-footed, which was necessary here.
+"The weight some of 'em would carry was wonderful."
+
+The old man seemed proud of the creatures, and kind to them too in a
+sort of way. He had been a fisherman, he said, but now was too old for
+that; so got his living by collecting sand.
+
+"It makes capital garden-paths, this sand. I'd be glad to bring you
+some, ladies," said he, evidently with an eye to business. When we
+explained that this was impracticable, unless he would come all the way
+to London, he merely said, "Oh," and accepted the disappointment. Then
+bidding us a civil "Good day," he disappeared with his laden train.
+
+Poor old fellow! Nothing of the past knightly days, nothing of the
+busy existing modern present affected him, or ever would do so. He
+might have been own brother, or cousin, to Wordsworth's "Leech-gatherer
+on the lonely moor." Whenever we think of Bossinney Cove, we shall
+certainly think of that mild old man and his eleven donkeys.
+
+The day was hot, and it had been a steep climb; we decided to drive in
+the afternoon, "for a rest," to Boscastle.
+
+Artists and tourists haunt this picturesque nook. A village built at
+the end of a deep narrow creek, which runs far inland, and is a safe
+shelter for vessels of considerable size. On either side is a high
+footpath, leading to two headlands, from both of which the views of
+sea and coast are very fine. And there are relics of antiquity and
+legends thereto belonging--a green mound, all that remains of Bottrieux
+Castle; and Ferrabury Church, with its silent tower. A peal of bells
+had been brought, and the ship which carried them had nearly reached
+the cove, when the pilot, bidding the captain "thank God for his safe
+voyage," was answered that he "thanked only himself and a fair wind."
+Immediately a storm arose; and the ship went down with every soul on
+board--except the pilot. So the church tower is mute--but on winter
+nights the lost bells are still heard, sounding mournfully from the
+depths of the sea.
+
+As we sat, watching with a vague fascination the spouting, minute by
+minute, of a "blow-hole," almost as fine as the Kynance post-office--we
+moralised on the story of the bells, and on the strange notions people
+have, even in these days, of Divine punishments; imputing to the
+Almighty Father all their own narrow jealousies and petty revenges,
+dragging down God into the likeness of men, such an one as themselves,
+instead of striving to lift man into the image of God.
+
+Meantime the young folks rambled and scrambled--watched with anxious
+and even envious eyes--for it takes one years to get entirely
+reconciled to the quiescence of the down-hill journey. And then we
+drove slowly back--just in time for another grand sunset, with Tintagel
+black in the foreground, until it and all else melted into darkness,
+and there was nothing left but to
+
+  "Watch the twilight stars come out
+    Above the lonely sea."
+
+Next morning we must climb Tintagel, for it would be our last day.
+
+And what a heavenly day it was! How softly the waves crept in upon the
+beach--just as they might have done when they laid at Merlin's feet
+"the little naked child," disowned of man but dear to Heaven, who was
+to grow up into the "stainless king."
+
+He and his knights--the "shadowy people of the realm of dream,"--were
+all about us, as, guided by a rheumatic old woman, who climbed feebly
+up the stair, where generations of ghostly feet must have ascended and
+descended, we reached a bastion and gateway, quite pre-historic. Other
+ruins apparently belong to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. But to
+this there is no clue. It may have been the very landing-place of King
+Uther or King Mark, or other Cornish heroes, who held this wonderful
+natural-artificial fortress in the dim days of old romance.
+
+"Here are King Arthur's cups and saucers," said the old woman, pausing
+in the midst of a long lament over her own ailments, to point out some
+holes in the slate rock. "And up there you'll find the chapel. It's an
+easy climb--if you mind the path--just where it passes the spring."
+
+[Illustration: BOSCASTLE.]
+
+That spring, trickling down from the very top of the rock, and making
+a verdant space all round it--what a treasure it must have been to the
+unknown inhabitants who, centuries ago, entrenched themselves here--for
+offence or defence--against the main-land. Peacefully it flowed on
+still, with the little ferns growing, and the sheep nibbling beside
+it. We idle tourists alone occupied that solitary height where those
+long-past warlike races--one succeeding the other--lived and loved,
+fought and died.
+
+The chapel--where the high altar and a little burial-ground beside it
+can still be traced--is clearly much later than Arthur's time. However,
+there are so few data to go upon, and the action of sea-storms destroys
+so much every year, that even to the learned archæologist, Tintagel is
+a great mystery, out of which the imaginative mind may evolve almost
+anything it likes.
+
+We sat a long time on the top of the rock--realising only the one
+obvious fact that our eyes were gazing on precisely the same scene,
+seawards and coastwards, that all these long-dead eyes were accustomed
+to behold. Beaten by winds and waves till the grey of its slate
+formation is nearly black; worn into holes by the constant action of
+the tide which widens yearly the space between it and the main-land,
+and gnaws the rock below into dangerous hollows that in time become
+sea-caves, Tintagel still remains--and one marvels that so much of it
+does still remain--a landmark of the cloudy time between legend and
+actual history.
+
+Whether the ruin on the opposite height was once a portion of
+Tintagel Castle, before the sea divided it, making a promontory into
+an island--or whether it was the Castle Terrabil, in which Gorlois,
+Ygrayne's husband, was slain--no one now can say. That both the twin
+fortresses were habitable till Elizabeth's time, there is evidence to
+prove. But since then they have been left to decay, to the silent sheep
+and the screeching ravens, including doubtless that ghostly chough, in
+whose shape the soul of King Arthur is believed still to revisit the
+familiar scene.
+
+We did not see that notable bird--though we watched with interest two
+tame and pretty specimens of its almost extinct species walking about
+in a flower-garden in the village, and superstitiously cherished there.
+We were told that to this day no Cornishman likes to shoot a chough
+or a raven. So they live and breed in peace among the twin ruins, and
+scream contentedly to the noisy stream which dances down the rocky
+hollow from Trevena, and leaps into the sea at Porth Hern--the "iron
+gate," over against Tintagel. Otherwise, all is solitude and silence.
+
+We thought we had seen everything, and come to an end, but at the hotel
+we found a party who had just returned from visiting some sea-caves
+beyond Tintagel, which they declared were "the finest things they had
+found in Cornwall."
+
+It was a lovely calm day, and it was our last day. A few hours of it
+alone remained. Should we use them? We might never be here again.
+And, I think, the looser grows one's grasp of life, the greater is
+one's longing to make the most of it, to see all we can see of this
+wonderful, beautiful world. So, after a hasty meal, we found ourselves
+once more down at Porth Hern, seeking a boat and man--alas! not John
+Curgenven--under whose guidance we might brave the stormy deep.
+
+It was indeed stormy! No sooner had we rounded the rock, than the baby
+waves of the tiny bay grew into hills and valleys, among which our boat
+went dancing up and down like a sea-gull!
+
+"Ay, there's some sea on, there always is here, but we'll be through it
+presently," indifferently said the elder of the two boatmen; and plied
+his oars, as, I think, only these Cornish boatmen can do, talking all
+the while. He pointed out a slate quarry, only accessible from the sea,
+unless the workmen liked to be let down by ropes, which sometimes had
+to be done. We saw them moving about like black emmets among the clefts
+of the rocks, and heard plainly above the sound of the sea the click
+of their hammers. Strange, lonely, perilous work it must be, even in
+summer. In winter--
+
+"Oh, they're used to it; we're all used to it," said our man, who was
+intelligent enough, though nothing equal to John Curgenven. "Many a
+time I've got sea-fowls' eggs on those rocks there," pointing to a
+cliff which did not seem to hold footing for a fly. "We all do it. The
+gentry buy them, and we're glad of the money. Dangerous?--yes, rather;
+but one must earn one's bread, and it's not so bad when you take to it
+young."
+
+Nevertheless, I think I shall never look at a collection of sea-birds'
+eggs without a slight shudder, remembering those awful cliffs.
+
+"Here you are, ladies, and the sea's down a bit, as I said. Hold on,
+mate, the boat will go right into the cave."
+
+And before we knew what was happening, we found ourselves floated out
+of daylight into darkness--very dark it seemed at first--and rocking
+on a mass of heaving waters, shut in between two high walls, so narrow
+that it seemed as if every heave would dash us in pieces against them;
+while beyond was a dense blackness, from which one heard the beat of
+the everlasting waves against a sort of tunnel, a stormy sea-grave from
+which no one could ever hope to come out alive.
+
+"I don't like this at all," said a small voice.
+
+"Hadn't we better get out again?" practically suggested another.
+
+But no sooner was this done than the third of the party longed to
+return; and begged for "only five minutes" in that wonderful place,
+compared to which Dolor Ugo, and the other Lizard caves, became as
+nothing. They were beautiful, but this was terrible. Yet with its
+terror was mingled an awful delight. "Give me but five, nay, two
+minutes more!"
+
+"Very well, just as you choose," was the response of meek despair.
+So of course, Poetry yielded. The boatmen were told to row on into
+daylight and sunshine--at least as much sunshine as the gigantic
+overhanging cliffs permitted. And never, never, never in this world
+shall I again behold that wonderful, mysterious sea-cave.
+
+But like all things incomplete, resigned, or lost, it has fixed itself
+on my memory with an almost painful vividness. However, I promised not
+to regret--not to say another word about it; and I will not. I did see
+it, for just a glimpse; and that will serve.
+
+Two more pictures remain, the last gorgeous sunset, which I watched in
+quiet solitude, sitting on a tombstone by Tintagel church--a building
+dating from Saxon times, perched on the very edge of a lofty cliff,
+and with a sea-view that reaches from Trevose Head on one side to Bude
+Haven on the other. Also, our last long dreamy drive; in the mild
+September sunshine, across the twenty-one miles of sparsely inhabited
+country which lie between Tintagel and Launceston. In the midst of
+it, on the top of a high flat of moorland, our driver turned round
+and pointed with his whip to a long low mound, faintly visible about
+half-a-mile off. "There, ladies, that's King Arthur's grave."
+
+The third, at least, that we had either seen or heard of. These varied
+records of the hero's last resting-place remind one of the three heads,
+said to be still extant, of Oliver Cromwell, one when he was a little
+boy, one as a young man, and the third as an old man.
+
+But after all my last and vividest recollection of King Arthur's
+country is that wild sail--so wild that I wished I had taken it
+alone--in the solitary boat, up and down the tossing waves in face of
+Tintagel rock; the dark, iron-bound coast with its awful caves, the
+bright sunshiny land, and ever-threatening sea. Just the region, in
+short, which was likely to create a race like that which Arthurian
+legend describes, full of passionate love and deadly hate, capable of
+barbaric virtues, and equally barbaric crimes. An age in which the mere
+idea of such a hero as that ideal knight
+
+  "Who reverenced his conscience as his God:
+  Whose glory was redressing human wrong:
+  Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it:
+  Who loved one only, and who clave to her--"
+
+rises over the blackness of darkness like a morning star.
+
+If Arthur could "come again"--perhaps in the person of one of the
+descendants of a prince who was not unlike him, who lived and died
+among us in this very nineteenth century--
+
+  "Wearing the white flower of a blameless life--"
+
+if this could be--what a blessing for Arthur's beloved England!
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA.]
+
+
+
+
+L'ENVOI
+
+
+Written more than a year after. The "old hen" and her chickens have
+long been safe at home. A dense December fog creeps in everywhere,
+choking and blinding, as I finish the history of those fifteen innocent
+days, calm as autumn, and bright as spring, when we three took our
+Unsentimental Journey together through Cornwall. Many a clever critic,
+like Sir Charles Coldstream when he looked into the crater of Vesuvius,
+may see "nothing in it"--a few kindly readers looking a little further,
+may see a little more: probably the writer only sees the whole.
+
+But such as it is, let it stay--simple memorial of what Americans would
+call "a good time," the sunshine of which may cast its brightness far
+forward, even into that quiet time "when travelling days are done."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+  LONDON:
+  R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
+  BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Unsentimental Journey through
+Cornwall, by Dinah Maria Craik
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44557 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44557 ***</div>
+
+<h1>AN<br /><br /> UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY<br /><br />
+
+THROUGH<br /><br />
+
+ CORNWALL</h1>
+
+
+<p><a name="ST_MICHAELS_MOUNT" id="ST_MICHAELS_MOUNT"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 422px;">
+<img src="images/004.jpg" width="422" height="600" alt="ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT." />
+<div class="caption">ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="ph3"><span class="smcap">BY</span></p>
+
+<p class="ph2"><span class="smcap">The Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman"</span><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="ph3">WITH ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+
+<p class="ph3">BY</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">C. NAPIER HEMY</p>
+
+<p class="center">London</p>
+
+<p class="center">MACMILLAN AND CO.</p>
+
+<p class="center">1884</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON:</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor</span>,</p>
+
+<p class="center">BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.</p>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the First</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Second</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Third</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Fourth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Fifth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Sixth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_53">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Seventh</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Eighth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Ninth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Tenth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Eleventh</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Twelfth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Thirteenth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Days Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</a></h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT</td><td align="right"><a href="#ST_MICHAELS_MOUNT"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING</td><td align="right"><a href="#FALMOUTH">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY</td><td align="right"><a href="#MAWES">5</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH</td><td align="right"><a href="#VIEW">7</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD</td><td align="right"><a href="#FISHERMANS">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT</td><td align="right"><a href="#CORNISH">15</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT</td><td align="right"><a href="#LIZARD">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CORNISH FISH</td><td align="right"><a href="#FISH">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">POLTESCO</td><td align="right"><a href="#POLTESCO">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CADGWITH COVE</td><td align="right"><a href="#CADGWITH">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH</td><td align="right"><a href="#DEVIL">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">MULLION COVE, CORNWALL</td><td align="right"><a href="#MULLION">38</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY</td><td align="right"><a href="#CRABBER">41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT</td><td align="right"><a href="#STEAM">46</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">HAULING IN THE BOATS&mdash;EVENING</td><td align="right"><a href="#HAULING">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">HAULING IN THE LINES</td><td align="right"><a href="#LINES">55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY</td><td align="right"><a href="#LIGHTS">60</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER&mdash;A CORNISH STUDY</td><td align="right"><a href="#DAUGHTER">63</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL</td><td align="right"><a href="#KYNANCE">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE</td><td align="right"><a href="#STEEPLE">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE LION ROCKS&mdash;A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE</td><td align="right"><a href="#LION">76</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">HAULING IN THE BOATS</td><td align="right"><a href="#BOATS">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS</td><td align="right"><a href="#ENYS">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING</td><td align="right"><a href="#CURGENVEN">87</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE</td><td align="right"><a href="#ARMED">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CORNISH FISHERMAN</td><td align="right"><a href="#CORNISH_FISHERMAN">100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE SEINE BOAT&mdash;A PERILOUS MOMENT</td><td align="right"><a href="#SEINE">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ST. IVES</td><td align="right"><a href="#IVES">108</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK</td><td align="right"><a href="#LAND">114</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">SENNEN COVE, WAITING FOR THE BOATS</td><td align="right"><a href="#SENNEN">119</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE</td><td align="right"><a href="#ROAD">124</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">TINTAGEL</td><td align="right"><a href="#TINTAGEL">128</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY</td><td align="right"><a href="#CRESWICK">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">BOSCASTLE</td><td align="right"><a href="#BOSCASTLE">139</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA</td><td align="right"><a href="#OLD">145</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2">AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY<br /><br />
+
+THROUGH CORNWALL</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+<p><a name="FALMOUTH" id="FALMOUTH"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/013.jpg" width="600" height="401" alt="FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING." />
+<div class="caption">FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_FIRST" id="DAY_THE_FIRST">DAY THE FIRST</a></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I believe</span> in holidays. Not in a frantic rushing about from place to
+place, glancing at everything and observing nothing; flying from town
+to town, from hotel to hotel, eager to "do" and to see a country, in
+order that when they get home they may say they have done it, and seen
+it. Only to say;&mdash;as for any real vision of eye, heart, and brain, they
+might as well go through the world blindfold. It is not the things
+we see, but the mind we see them with, which makes the real interest
+of travelling. "Eyes and No Eyes,"&mdash;an old-fashioned story about two
+little children taking a walk; one seeing everything, and enjoying
+everything, and the other seeing nothing, and thinking the expedition
+the dullest imaginable. This simple tale, which the present generation
+has probably never read, contains the essence of all rational
+travelling.</p>
+
+<p>So when, as the "old hen," (which I am sometimes called, from my habit><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+of going about with a brood of "chickens," my own or other people's) I
+planned a brief tour with two of them, one just entered upon her teens,
+the other in her twenties, I premised that it must be a tour after my
+own heart.</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place, my children, you must obey orders implicitly. I
+shall collect opinions, and do my best to please everybody; but in
+travelling one only must decide, the others coincide. It will save them
+a world of trouble, and their 'conductor' also; who, if competent to be
+trusted at all, should be trusted absolutely. Secondly, take as little
+luggage as possible. No sensible people travel with their point-lace
+and diamonds. Two 'changes of raiment,' good, useful dresses, prudent
+boots, shawls, and waterproofs&mdash;these I shall insist upon, and nothing
+more. Nothing for show, as I shall take you to no place where you can
+show off. We will avoid all huge hotels, all fashionable towns; we
+will study life in its simplicity, and make ourselves happy in our own
+humble, feminine way. Not 'roughing it' in any needless or reckless
+fashion&mdash;the 'old hen' is too old for that; yet doing everything with
+reasonable economy. Above all, rushing into no foolhardy exploits, and
+taking every precaution to keep well and strong, so as to enjoy the
+journey from beginning to end, and hinder no one else from enjoying
+it. There are four things which travellers ought never to lose: their
+luggage, their temper, their health, and their spirits. I will make
+you as happy as I possibly can, but you must also make me happy by
+following my rules: especially the one golden rule, Obey orders."</p>
+
+<p>So preached the "old hen," with a vague fear that her chickens might
+turn out to be ducklings, which would be a little awkward in the
+region whither she proposed to take them. For if there is one place
+more risky than another for adventurous young people with a talent
+for "perpetuating themselves down prejudices," as Mrs. Malaprop would
+say, it is that grandest, wildest, most dangerous coast, the coast of
+Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>I had always wished to investigate Cornwall. This desire had existed
+ever since, at five years old, I made acquaintance with Jack the
+Giantkiller, and afterwards, at fifteen or so, fell in love with my
+life's one hero, King Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>Between these two illustrious Cornishmen,&mdash;equally mythical, practical
+folk would say&mdash;there exists more similarity than at first appears.
+The aim of both was to uphold right and to redress wrong. Patience,
+self-denial; tenderness to the weak and helpless, dauntless courage
+against the wicked and the strong: these, the essential elements of
+true manliness, characterise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> both the humble Jack and the kingly
+Arthur. And the qualities seem to have descended to more modern times.
+The well-known ballad:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"And shall they scorn Tre, Pol, and Pen?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And shall Trelawny die?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There's twenty thousand Cornishmen</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Will know the reason why,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>has a ring of the same tone, indicating the love of justice, the spirit
+of fidelity and bravery, as well as of that common sense which is at
+the root of all useful valour.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to see if the same spirit lingered yet, as I had heard it did
+among Cornish folk, which, it was said, were a race by themselves,
+honest, simple, shrewd, and kind. Also, I wished to see the Cornish
+land, and especially the Land's End, which I had many a time beheld in
+fancy, for it was a favourite landscape-dream of my rather imaginative
+childhood, recurring again and again, till I could almost have painted
+it from memory. And as year after year every chance of seeing it in its
+reality seemed to melt away, the desire grew into an actual craving.</p>
+
+<p>After waiting patiently for nearly half a century, I said to myself, "I
+will conquer Fate; I <i>will</i> go and see the Land's End."</p>
+
+<p>And it was there that, after making a circuit round the coast, I
+proposed finally to take my "chickens."</p>
+
+<p>We concocted a plan, definite yet movable, as all travelling plans
+should be, clear in its dates, its outline, and intentions, but
+subject to modifications, according to the exigency of the times
+and circumstances. And with that prudent persistency, without which
+all travelling is a mere muddle, all discomfort, disappointment,
+and distaste&mdash;for on whatever terms you may be with your travelling
+companions when you start, you are quite sure either to love them or
+hate them when you get home&mdash;we succeeded in carrying it out.</p>
+
+<p>The 1st of September, 1881, and one of the loveliest of September
+days, was the day we started from Exeter, where we had agreed to meet
+and stay the night. There, the previous afternoon, we had whiled away
+an hour in the dim cathedral, and watched, not without anxiety, the
+flood of evening sunshine which poured through the great west window,
+lighting the tombs, old and new, from the Crusader, cross-legged and
+broken-nosed, to the white marble bas-relief which tells the story of a
+not less noble Knight of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> the Cross, Bishop Patteson. Then we wandered
+round the quaint old town, in such a lovely twilight, such a starry
+night! But&mdash;will it be a fine day to-morrow? We could but live in hope:
+and hope did not deceive us.</p>
+
+<p>To start on a journey in sunshine feels like beginning life well.
+Clouds may come&mdash;are sure to come: I think no one past earliest youth
+goes forth into a strange region without a feeling akin to Saint Paul's
+"not knowing what things may befall me there." But it is always best
+for each to keep to himself all the shadows, and give his companions
+the brightness, especially if they be young companions.</p>
+
+<p>And very bright were the eyes that watched the swift-moving landscape
+on either side of the railway: the estuary of Exe; Dawlish, with its
+various colouring of rock and cliff, and its pretty little sea-side
+houses, where family groups stood photographing themselves on our
+vision, as the train rushed unceremoniously between the beach and their
+parlour windows; then Plymouth and Saltash, where the magnificent
+bridge reminded us of the one over the Tay, which we had once crossed,
+not long before that Sunday night when, sitting in a quiet sick-room
+in Edinburgh, we heard the howl outside of the fearful blast which
+destroyed such a wonderful work of engineering art, and whirled so many
+human beings into eternity.</p>
+
+<p>But this Saltash bridge, spanning placidly a smiling country,
+how pretty and safe it looked! There was a general turning to
+carriage-windows, and then a courteous drawing back, that we,
+the strangers, should see it, which broke the ice with our
+fellow-travellers. To whom we soon began to talk, as is our
+conscientious custom when we see no tangible objection thereto, and
+gained, now, as many a time before, much pleasant as well as useful
+information. Every one evinced an eager politeness to show us the
+country, and an innocent anxiety that we should admire it; which we
+could honestly do.</p>
+
+<p>I shall long remember, as a dream of sunshiny beauty and peace, this
+journey between Plymouth and Falmouth, passing Liskeard, Lostwithiel,
+St. Austell, &amp;c. The green-wooded valleys, the rounded hills, on one of
+which we were shown the remains of the old castle of Ristormel, noted
+among the three castles of Cornwall; all this, familiar to so many,
+was to us absolutely new, and we enjoyed it and the kindly interest
+that was taken in pointing it out to us, as happy-minded simple folk do
+always enjoy the sight of a new country.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="MAWES" id="MAWES"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px;">
+<img src="images/017.jpg" width="525" height="600" alt="ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY." />
+<div class="caption">ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Our pleasure seemed to amuse an old gentleman who sat in the corner.
+He at last addressed us, with an unctuous west-country accent which
+suited well his comfortable stoutness. He might have fed all his life
+upon Dorset butter and Devonshire cream, to one of which counties
+he certainly belonged. Not, I think, to the one we were now passing
+through, and admiring so heartily.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So you're going to travel in Cornwall. Well, take care, they're sharp
+folk, the Cornish folk. They'll take you in if they can." (Then, he
+must be a Devon man. It is so easy to sit in judgment upon next-door
+neighbours.) "I don't mean to say they'll actually cheat you, but
+they'll take you in, and they'll be careful that you don't take them
+in&mdash;no, not to the extent of a brass farthing."</p>
+
+<p>We explained, smiling, that we had not the slightest intention of
+taking anybody in, that we liked justice, and blamed no man, Cornishman
+or otherwise, for trying to do the best he could for himself, so that
+it was not to the injury of other people.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, perhaps you're right. But they are sharp, for all that,
+especially in the towns."</p>
+
+<p>We replied that we meant to escape towns, whenever possible, and encamp
+in some quiet places, quite out of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Our friend opened his eyes, evidently thinking this a most singular
+taste.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you really want a quiet place, I can tell you of one, almost
+as quiet as your grave. I ought to know, for I lived there sixteen
+years." (At any rate, it seemed to have agreed with him.) "Gerrans is
+its name&mdash;a fishing village. You get there from Falmouth by boat. The
+fare is "&mdash;(I regret to say my memory is not so accurate as his in the
+matter of pennies), "and mind you don't pay one farthing more. Then you
+have to drive across country; the distance is&mdash;and the fare per mile&mdash;"
+(Alas! again I have totally forgotten.) "They'll be sure to ask you
+double the money, but never you mind! refuse to pay it, and they'll
+give in. You must always hold your own against extortion in Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>I thanked him, with a slightly troubled mind. But I have always noticed
+that in travelling "with such measure as ye mete it shall be meted
+to you again," and that those who come to a country expecting to be
+cheated generally are cheated. Having still a lingering belief in human
+nature, and especially in Cornish nature, I determined to set down the
+old gentleman's well-meant advice for what it was worth, no more, and
+cease to perplex myself about it. For which resolve I have since been
+exceedingly thankful.</p>
+
+<p>He gave us, however, much supplementary advice which was rather useful,
+and parted from us in the friendliest fashion, with that air of bland
+complaisance natural to those who assume the character of adviser in
+general.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mind you go to Gerrans. They'll not take you in more than they do
+everywhere else, and you'll find it a healthy place, and a quiet
+place&mdash;as quiet, I say, as your grave. It will make you feel exactly as
+if you were dead and buried."</p>
+
+<p>That not being the prominent object of our tour in Cornwall, we thanked
+him again, but as soon as he left the carriage determined among
+ourselves to take no further steps about visiting Gerrans.</p>
+
+<p><a name="VIEW" id="VIEW"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/019.jpg" width="600" height="395" alt="VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH." />
+<div class="caption">VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>However, in spite of the urgency of another fellow-traveller&mdash;it is
+always good to hear everybody's advice, and follow your own&mdash;we carried
+our love of quietness so far that we eschewed the magnificent new
+Falmouth Hotel, with its <i>table d'hôte</i>, lawn tennis ground, sea baths
+and promenade, for the old-fashioned Green Bank, which though it had no
+green banks, boasted, we had been told, a pleasant little sea view and
+bay view, and was a resting-place full of comfort and homely peace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Which we found true, and would have liked to stay longer in its
+pleasant shelter, which almost conquered our horror of hotels; but we
+had now fairly weighed anchor and must sail on.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to go at once to the Lizard," said the friend who met us,
+and did everything for us at Falmouth&mdash;and the remembrance of whom, and
+of all that happened in our brief stay, will make the very name of the
+place sound sweet in our ears for ever. "The Lizard is the real point
+for sightseers, almost better than the Land's End. Let us see if we can
+hear of lodgings."</p>
+
+<p>She made inquiries, and within half an hour we did hear of some most
+satisfactory ones. "The very thing! We will telegraph at once&mdash;answer
+paid," said this good genius of practicality, as sitting in her
+carriage she herself wrote the telegram and despatched it. Telegrams to
+the Lizard! We were not then at the Ultima Thule of civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>"Still," she said, "you had better provide yourself with some food,
+such as groceries and hams. You can't always get what you want at the
+Lizard."</p>
+
+<p>So, having the very dimmest idea what the Lizard was&mdash;whether a town,
+a village, or a bare rock&mdash;when we had secured the desired lodgings
+("quite ideal lodgings," remarked our guardian angel), I proceeded to
+lay in a store of provisions, doing it as carefully as if fitting out
+a ship for the North Pole&mdash;and afterwards found out it was a work of
+supererogation entirely.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing to secure was an "ideal" carriage, horse, and man, which
+our good genius also succeeded in providing. And now, our minds being
+at rest, we were able to write home a fixed address for a week, and
+assure our expectant and anxious friends that all was going well with
+us.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a twilight wander round the quaint old town&mdash;so like a
+foreign town&mdash;and other keen enjoyments, which, as belonging to the
+sanctity of private life I here perforce omit, we laid us down to
+sleep, and slept in peace, having really achieved much; considering it
+was only the first day of our journey.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_SECOND" id="DAY_THE_SECOND">DAY THE SECOND</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Is</span> there anything more delightful than to start on a smiling morning
+in a comfortable carriage, with all one's <i>impedimenta</i> (happily not
+much!) safely stowed away under one's eyes, with a good horse, over
+which one's feelings of humanity need not be always agonising, and a
+man to drive, whom one can trust to have as much sense as the brute,
+especially in the matter of "refreshment." Our letters that morning had
+brought us a comico-tragic story of a family we knew, who, migrating
+with a lot of children and luggage, and requiring to catch a train
+thirteen miles off, had engaged a driver who "refreshed himself" so
+successfully at every public-house on the way, that he took five hours
+to accomplish the journey, and finally had to be left at the road-side,
+and the luggage transferred to another vehicle, which of course lost
+the train. We congratulated ourselves that no such disaster was likely
+to happen to us.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I've been a teetotaller all my life," said our driver, a
+bright-looking, intelligent young fellow, whom, as he became rather a
+prominent adjunct to our life and decidedly to our comfort, I shall
+individualise by calling him Charles. "I had good need to avoid
+drinking. My father drank through a small property. No fear of me,
+ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>So at once between him and us, or him and "we," according to the
+Cornish habit of transposing pronouns, was established a feeling of
+fraternity, which, during the six days that we had to do with him,
+deepened into real regard. Never failing when wanted, never presuming
+when not wanted, straightforward, independent, yet full of that
+respectful kindliness which servants can always show and masters
+should always appreciate, giving us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> a chivalrous care, which, being
+"unprotected females," was to us extremely valuable, I here record that
+much of the pleasure of our tour was owing to this honest Cornishman,
+who served us, his horse, and his master&mdash;he was one of the employés of
+a livery-stable keeper&mdash;with equal fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, numerous as were the parties he had driven&mdash;("I go to the
+Lizard about three times a week," he said)&mdash;Charles could seldom have
+driven a merrier trio than that which leisurely mounted the upland road
+from Falmouth, leading to the village of Constantine.</p>
+
+<p>"Just turn and look behind you, ladies" (we had begged to be shown
+everything and told everything); "isn't that a pretty view?"</p>
+
+<p>It certainly was. From the high ground we could see Falmouth with its
+sheltered bay and glittering sea beyond. Landward were the villages of
+Mabe and Constantine, with their great quarries of granite, and in the
+distance lay wide sweeps of undulating land, barren and treeless, but
+still beautiful&mdash;not with the rich pastoral beauty of our own Kent, yet
+having a charm of its own. And the air, so fresh and pure, yet soft and
+balmy, it felt to tender lungs like the difference between milk and
+cream. To breathe became a pleasure instead of a pain. I could quite
+understand how the semi-tropical plants that we had seen in a lovely
+garden below, grew and flourished, how the hydrangeas became huge
+bushes, and the eucalyptus an actual forest tree.</p>
+
+<p>But this was in the sheltered valley, and we had gained the hill-top,
+emerging out of one of those deep-cut lanes peculiar to Devon and
+Cornwall, and so pretty in themselves, a perfect garden of wild flowers
+and ferns, except that they completely shut out the view. This did not
+much afflict the practical minds of my two juniors. Half an hour before
+they had set up a shout&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Stop the carriage! <i>Do</i> stop the carriage! Just look there! Did you
+ever see such big blackberries? and what a quantity! Let us get out;
+we'll gather them for to-morrow's pudding."</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly a dinner earned is the sweetest of all dinners. I remember
+once thinking that our cowslip tea (I should not like to drink it
+now) was better than our grandmother's best Bohea or something out
+of her lovely old tea-caddy. So the carriage, lightened of all but
+myself, crawled leisurely up and waited on the hill-top for the busy
+blackberry-gatherers.</p>
+
+<p>While our horse stood cropping an extempore meal, I and his driver<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+began to talk about him and other cognate topics, including the
+permanent one of the great advantage to both body and soul in being
+freed all one's life long from the necessity of getting "something to
+drink" stronger than water.</p>
+
+<p><a name="FISHERMANS" id="FISHERMANS"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 472px;">
+<img src="images/023.jpg" width="472" height="600" alt="A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD." />
+<div class="caption">A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "I find I can do as much upon tea or coffee as other
+men upon beer. I'm just as strong and as active, and can stand weather
+quite as well. It's a pretty hard life, winter and summer, driving all
+day,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> coming in soaked, sometimes in the middle of the night, having to
+turn in for an hour or two, and then turn out again. And you must look
+after your horse, of course, before you think of yourself. Still, I
+stand it well, and that without a drop of beer from years end to years
+end."</p>
+
+<p>I congratulated and sympathised; in return for which Charles entered
+heart and soul into the blackberry question, pointed out where the
+biggest blackberries hung, and looked indeed&mdash;he was still such a young
+fellow!&mdash;as if he would have liked to go blackberry-hunting himself.</p>
+
+<p>I put, smiling, the careless question, "Have you any little folks of
+your own? Are you married?"</p>
+
+<p>How cautious one should be over an idle word! All of a sudden the
+cheerful face clouded, the mouth began to quiver, with difficulty I
+saw he kept back the tears. It was a version in every-day life of
+Longfellow's most pathetic little poem, "The Two Locks of Hair."</p>
+
+<p>"My wife broke her heart after the baby, I think. It died. She went off
+in consumption. It's fifteen months now"&mdash;(he had evidently counted
+them)&mdash;"fifteen months since I have been alone. I didn't like to give
+up my home and my bits of things; still, when a man has to come in wet
+and tired to an empty house&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He turned suddenly away and busied himself over his horse, for just
+that minute the two girls came running back, laughing heartily, and
+showing their baskets full of "the very biggest blackberries you ever
+saw!" I took them back into the carriage; the driver mounted his box,
+and drove on for some miles in total silence. As, when I had whispered
+that little episode to my two companions, so did we.</p>
+
+<p>There are two ways of going from Falmouth to the Lizard&mdash;the regular
+route through the town of Helstone, and another, a trifle longer,
+through the woods of Trelowarren, the seat of the old Cornish family of
+Vyvyan.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take you that road, ma'am, it's much the prettiest," said Charles
+evidently exerting himself to recover his cheerful looks and be the
+civil driver and guide, showing off all the curiosities and beauties
+of the neighbourhood. And very pretty Trelowarren was, though nothing
+remarkable to us who came from the garden of England. Still, the trees
+were big&mdash;for Cornwall, and in the ferny glade grew abundantly the
+<i>Osmunda regalis</i>, a root of which we greatly coveted, and Charles
+offered to get. He seemed to take a pride in showing us everything,
+except what he probably did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> not know of, and which, when I heard of
+too late, was to me a real regret.</p>
+
+<p>At Trelowarren, not far from the house, are a series of subterranean
+chambers and galleries, in all ninety feet long and about the height
+of a man. The entrance is very low. Still it is possible to get into
+them and traverse them from end to end, the walls being made of blocks
+of unhewn stone, leaning inward towards the roof, which is formed of
+horizontal blocks. How, when, and for what purpose this mysterious
+underground dwelling was made, is utterly lost in the mists of time.
+I should exceedingly have liked to examine it, and to think we passed
+close by and never knew of it will always be a certain regret, of which
+I relieve my mind by telling it for the guidance of other archæological
+travellers.</p>
+
+<p>One of the charms of Cornwall is that it gives one the sense of being
+such an old country, as if things had gone exactly as they do now, not
+merely since the days of King Arthur, but for ever so long before then.
+The Romans, the Ph&oelig;nicians, nay, the heroes of pre-historic ages,
+such as Jack the Giantkiller and the giant Cormoran, seemed to be not
+impossible myths, as we gradually quitted civilisation in the shape of
+a village or two, and a few isolated farm-houses, and came out upon the
+wild district known as Goonhilly Down.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly not from its hills, for it is as flat as the back of your
+hand, and as bare. But the word, which is old Cornish&mdash;that now extinct
+tongue, which only survives in the names of places and people&mdash;means a
+<i>hunting ground</i>; and there is every reason to believe that this wide
+treeless waste was once an enormous forest, full of wild beasts. There
+St. Rumon, an Irish bishop, long before there were any Saxon bishops
+or saints, is said to have settled, far away from the world, and made
+a cell and oratory, the memory of which, and of himself, is still kept
+up by the name of the two villages, Ruan Major and Ruan Minor, on the
+outskirts of this Goonhilly Down.</p>
+
+<p>In later times the down was noted for a breed of small, strong ponies,
+called "Goonhillies." Charles had heard of them, but I do not suppose
+he had ever heard of St. Rumon, or of the primeval forest. At present,
+the fauna of Goonhilly is represented by no animal more dangerous
+than a rabbit or a field-mouse, and its vegetation includes nothing
+bigger than the <i>erica vagans</i>&mdash;the lovely Cornish heath, lilac,
+flesh-coloured and white which will grow nowhere else, except in a
+certain district of Portugal.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There it is!" we cried, at the pleasant first sight of a new flower:
+for though not scientific botanists, we have what I may call a speaking
+acquaintance with almost every wild flower that grows. To see one that
+we had never seen before was quite an excitement. Instantly we were out
+of the carriage, and gathering it by handfuls.</p>
+
+<p>Botanists know this heath well&mdash;it has the peculiarity of the anthers
+being outside instead of inside the bell&mdash;but we only noticed the
+beauty of it, the masses in which it grew, and how it would grow only
+within a particular line&mdash;the sharp geological line of magnesian earth,
+which forms the serpentine district. Already we saw, forcing itself
+up through the turf, blocks of this curious stone, and noticed how
+cottage-walls were built, and fences made of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's the serpentine," said Charles, now in his depth once more;
+we could not have expected him to know about St. Rumon, &amp;c. "You'll see
+plenty of it when you get to the Lizard. All the coast for miles and
+miles is serpentine. Such curious rocks, reddish and greenish; they
+look so pretty when the water washes against them, and when polished,
+and made into ornaments, candlesticks, brooches and the like. But I'll
+show you the shops as we pass. We shall be at Lizard Town directly."</p>
+
+<p>So it was a town, and it had shops. We should not have thought so,
+judging by the slender line of white dots which now was appearing on
+the horizon&mdash;Cornish folk seemed to have a perfect mania for painting
+their houses a glistening white. Yes, that was the Lizard; we were
+nearing our journey's end. At which we were a little sorry, even though
+already an hour or two behind-hand&mdash;that is, behind the hour we had
+ordered dinner. But "time was made for slaves"&mdash;and railway travellers,
+and we were beyond railways.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, what does dinner matter?" (It did not seriously, as we had
+taken the precaution, which I recommend to all travellers, of never
+starting on any expedition without a good piece of bread, a bunch of
+raisins, and a flask of cold tea or coffee.) "What's the odds so long
+as you're happy? Let us linger and make the drive as long as we can.
+The horse will not object, nor Charles either."</p>
+
+<p>Evidently not; our faithful steed cropped contentedly an extempore
+meal, and Charles, who would have scrambled anywhere or dug up anything
+"to please the young ladies," took out his pocket-knife, and devoted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+himself to the collection of all the different coloured heaths; roots
+which we determined to send home in the hope, alas! I fear vain, that
+they would grow in our garden, afar from their native magnesia.</p>
+
+<p><a name="CORNISH" id="CORNISH"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/027.jpg" width="600" height="475" alt="THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT." />
+<div class="caption">THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>So for another peaceful hour we stayed; wandering about upon Goonhilly
+Down. How little it takes to make one happy, when one wants to be
+happy, and knows enough of the inevitable sorrows of life to be glad to
+be happy&mdash;as long as fate allows. Each has his burthen to bear, seen or
+unseen by the world outside, and some of us that day had not a light
+one; yet was it a bright day, a white day, a day to be thankful for.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did it end when, arriving at the "ideal" lodgings, and being
+received with a placidity which we felt we had not quite deserved, and
+fed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> in a manner which reflected much credit not only on the cook's
+skill, but her temper&mdash;we sallied out to see the place.</p>
+
+<p>Not a picturesque place exactly. A high plain, with the sparkling sea
+beyond it; the principal object near being the Lizard Lights, a huge
+low building, with a tower at either side, not unlike the Sydenham
+Crystal palace, only dazzling white, as every building apparently was
+at the Lizard.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go out and adventure," cried the young folks; and off
+they started down the garden, over a stile&mdash;made of serpentine
+of course&mdash;and across what seemed a field, till they disappeared
+mysteriously where the line of sea cut the line of cliffs, and were
+heard of no more for two hours.</p>
+
+<p>Then they returned, all delight and excitement. They had found such
+a lovely little cove, full of tiny pools, a perfect treasure-house
+of sea-weeds and sea-anemones; and the rocks, so picturesque, and
+"so grand to scramble over." (I must confess that to these, my
+practically-minded "chickens," the picturesque or the romantic always
+ranked second to the fun of a scramble.) The descent to this marine
+paradise also seemed difficult enough to charm anybody.</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>you</i> wouldn't do it. Quite impossible! You would break all your
+legs and arms, and sprain both your ankles."</p>
+
+<p>Alas, for a hen&mdash;and an old hen&mdash;with ducklings! But mine, though
+daring, were not rash, and had none of that silly fool-hardiness
+which for the childish vanity of doing, or of saying one has done, a
+dangerous thing, risks health, comfort, life, and delights selfishly
+in making other people utterly miserable. So, being feeble on my feet,
+though steady in my head, I agreed to sit like a cormorant on the
+nearest cliff, and look down placidly upon the young adventurers in
+their next delightful scramble.</p>
+
+<p>It could not be to-night, however, for the tide was coming in fast; the
+fairy cove would soon be all under water.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we get a boat? It will soon be sunset and moon-rise; we can
+watch both from the sea."</p>
+
+<p>That sea! Its broad circle had no other bound than the shores of
+America, and its blueness, or the strange, changing tint often called
+blue, almost equalled the blue of the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am, it's a fine evening for a row," said the faithful Charles.
+"And it isn't often you can get a row here; the sea is so rough, and
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> landing so difficult. But there's a man I know; he has a good
+boat, he knows the coast well, and he'll not go out unless it's really
+safe."</p>
+
+<p>This seemed ultra-prudent, with such a smiling sky and sea; but we
+soon found it was not unnecessary at the Lizard. Indeed all along the
+Cornish coast the great Atlantic waves come in with such a roll or a
+heavy ground-swell, windless, but the precursor of a storm that is
+slowly arriving from across the ocean, that boating here at best is no
+child's play.</p>
+
+<p>We had been fair-weather sailors, over shut-in lochs or smooth rivers;
+all of us could handle an oar, or had handled it in old days, but
+this was a different style of thing. Descending the steep zigzag path
+to the next cove&mdash;the only one where there was anything like a fair
+landing&mdash;we found we still had to walk through a long bed of sea-weed,
+and manage somehow to get into the boat between the recoil and advance
+of a wave. Not one of the tiny waves of quiet bays, but an Atlantic
+roller, which, even if comparatively small and tame, comes in with a
+force that will take you off your feet at any time.</p>
+
+<p>However, we managed it, and found ourselves floating among an
+archipelago of rocks, where the solemn cormorants sat in rows, and
+affectionate families of gulls kept swimming about in a large flotilla
+of white dots on the dark water. Very dark the sea was: heaving and
+sinking in great hills and valleys, which made rowing difficult. Also,
+for several yards round every rock extended a perfect whirlpool of
+foaming waves, which, if any boat chanced to be caught therein, would
+have dashed it to pieces in no time. But our boatmen seemed used to the
+danger, and took us as near it as possible, without actually running
+into it.</p>
+
+<p>They were both far from commonplace-looking men, especially the elder,
+our stroke-oar. Being rather given to ethnological tastes, we had
+already noticed the characteristic Cornish face, not unlike the Norman
+type, and decidedly superior to that of the inland counties of England.
+But this was a face by itself, which would have attracted any artist or
+student of human nature; weather-beaten, sharp-lined, wrinkled as it
+was&mdash;the man must have been fully sixty&mdash;there was in it a sweetness,
+an absolute beauty, which struck us at once. The smile, placid and
+paternal, came often, though words were few; and the keen, kindly eyes
+were blue as a child's, or as Tennyson describes King Arthur's.</p>
+
+<p>"I can imagine," whispered one of us who had imaginative tendencies,
+"that King Arthur might have looked thus, had he lived to grow old."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe King Arthur ever lived at all," was the knock-me-down
+utilitarian answer, to which the other had grown accustomed and
+indifferent. Nevertheless, there was such a refinement about the man,
+spite of his rough fisherman's dress, and he had been so kind to the
+young folks, so considerate to "the old lady," as Cornish candour
+already called me, that, intending to employ him again, we asked his
+name.</p>
+
+<p>"John Curgenven."</p>
+
+<p>"John what?" We made several hopeless plunges at it, and finally asked
+him to spell it.</p>
+
+<p>"Cur-gen-ven," said he; adding, with a slight air of pride, "one of the
+oldest families in Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>(I have no hesitation in stating this, because, when we afterwards
+became great friends, I told John Curgenven I should probably "put
+him in a book"&mdash;if he had no objection. To which he answered with his
+usual composure, "No, he did not think it would harm him." He evidently
+considered "writing a book" was a very inferior sort of trade.)</p>
+
+<p>But looking at him, one could not help speculating as to how far the
+legend of King Arthur had been really true, and whether the type of
+man which Tennyson has preserved&mdash;or created&mdash;in this his "own ideal
+knight," did once exist, and still exists, in a modified modern form,
+throughout Cornwall. A fancy upon which we then only argued; now I, at
+least, am inclined to believe it.</p>
+
+<p>"There is Lord Brougham's head, his wig and his turn-up nose, you can
+see all distinctly. At least, you could if there was light enough."</p>
+
+<p>But there was not light, for the sun was setting, and the moon only
+just rising. Black looked the heaving sea, except where rings of white
+foam encircled each group of rocks, blacker still. And blackest of all
+looked the iron-bound coast, sharp against the amber western sky.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's Kynance Cove, and the Gull Rock and Asparagus Island.
+Shall we row there? It's only about two miles."</p>
+
+<p>Two miles there, and two back, through this angry sea, and then to land
+in the dim light about 9 p.m.! Courage failed us. We did not own this;
+we merely remarked that we would rather see Kynance by daylight, but I
+think each of us felt a sensation of relief when the boat's head was
+turned homewards.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet how beautiful it all was! Many a night afterwards we watched
+the same scene, but never lovelier than that night, the curved line
+of coast traceable distinctly up to Mount's Bay, and then the long
+peninsula which they told us was the Land's End, stretching out into
+the horizon, where sea and sky met in a mist of golden light, through
+which the sun was slowly dropping right from the sky into the sea.
+Beyond was a vague cloud-land, which might be the fair land of Lyonesse
+itself, said still to lie there submerged, with all its cities and
+towers and forests; or the "island-valley of Avillion," whither Arthur
+sailed with the three queens to be healed of his "grievous wound," and
+whence he is to come again some day. Popular superstition still expects
+him, and declares that he haunts this coast even now in the shape of a
+Cornish chough.</p>
+
+<p>Modern ghosts, too, exist, decidedly more alarming.</p>
+
+<p>"Look up there, ladies, that green slope is Pistol Meadow. Nobody likes
+to walk there after dark. Other things walk as well."</p>
+
+<p>"What things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two hundred and more of foreign sailors, whose ship went to pieces in
+the little cove below. They're buried under the green mounds you see.
+Out of a crew of seven hundred only two men were washed ashore alive,
+and they were in irons, which the captain had put on them because
+they said he was going too near in shore. It was called Pistol Meadow
+because most of 'em were found with pistols in their hands, which may
+have been true or may not, since it happened more than a hundred years
+ago. However, there are the green mounds, you see, and Lizard folk
+don't much like passing the place after dark."</p>
+
+<p>"But you?"</p>
+
+<p>John Curgenven smiled. "Oh, us and the coast-guards! Us goes anywhere,
+at all hours, and never meets nothing. D'ye see those white marks all
+along the coast every few yards? They're rocks, kept white-washed, to
+guide the men of dark nights between here and Kynance. It's a ticklish
+path, when all's as black as pitch, with a stiff wind blowing."</p>
+
+<p>I should think it was! One almost shuddered at the idea, and then
+felt proud of the steady heads and cool courage of these coast-guard
+men&mdash;always the pick of the service, true Englishmen, fearless
+and faithful&mdash;the business of whose whole lives is to save other
+lives&mdash;that is, now that smuggling has abated, and those dreadful
+stories once current all along the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> coast of Cornwall have become
+mostly legends of the past. No tales of wreckers, or of fights between
+smugglers and revenue officers, reached our ears, but the stories of
+shipwrecks were endless. Every winter, and many times through the
+winter, some ghastly tragedy had happened. Every half-mile along this
+picturesque shore was recorded the place where some good ship went to
+pieces, often with the brief addendum, "all hands lost."</p>
+
+<p>"The sun's just setting. Look out for the Lizard Lights," called out
+Charles, who sat in the bow of the boat in faithful attendance upon his
+"ladies,"&mdash;another Knight of the Round Table in humble life&mdash;we met
+many such in Cornwall. "Look! There they are."</p>
+
+<p>And sure enough, the instant the sun's last spark was quenched in
+the sea, into which he dropped like a red round ball, out burst two
+substitute suns, and very fair substitutes too, making the poor little
+moon in the east of no importance whatever. The gleam of them extended
+far out upon the darkening ocean, and we could easily believe that
+their light was "equal to 20,000 candles," and that they were seen out
+at sea to a distance of twenty, some said even thirty, miles.</p>
+
+<p>"Except in a fog; and the fogs at the Lizard are very bad. Then you
+can see nothing, not even the Lights, but they keep sounding the
+fog-horn every minute or so. It works by the same machinery as works
+the Lights&mdash;a big steam-engine; you can hear it bum-bumming now, if you
+listen."</p>
+
+<p>So we could, a mysterious noise like that of a gigantic bumble-bee,
+coming across the water from that curious building, long and white,
+with its two towers and those great eyes in each of them, at either end.</p>
+
+<p>"They're wonderful bright;" said John Curgenven; "many's the time I've
+sat and read my newspaper by them a quarter of a mile off. They're seen
+through the blackest night, the blacker the brighter, seen through
+everything&mdash;except fog. Now, ladies, d'ye think you can jump ashore?"</p>
+
+<p>Some of us did, airily enough, though it required to choose your
+moment pretty cleverly so as to escape the incoming wave. And some of
+us&mdash;well, we accepted the inevitable, and were only too thankful to
+scramble anyhow, wet or dry, on terra firma.</p>
+
+<p>And then we had to ascend the zigzag path, slippery with loose stones,
+and uncertainly seen in the dim half-twilight, half-moonlight. At
+last we came out safe by the life-boat house, which we had noticed in
+passing, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> the slit in its door for "Contributions," and a notice
+below that the key was kept at such and such a house&mdash;I forget the
+man's name&mdash;"and at the Rectory."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="LIZARD" id="LIZARD"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 409px;">
+<img src="images/033.jpg" width="409" height="600" alt="THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT." />
+<div class="caption">THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>"Yes," said Curgenven, "in many places along this coast, when there's a
+wreck, and we're called out, the parson's generally at the head of us.
+Volunteers? Of course we're all volunteers, except the coast-guard, who
+are paid. But they're often glad enough of us and of our boats too. The
+life-boat isn't enough. They keep her here, the only place they can,
+but it's tough work running her down to the beach on a black winter's
+night, with a ship going to pieces before your eyes, as ships do here
+in no time. I've seen it myself&mdash;watched her strike, and in ten minutes
+there was not a bit of her left."</p>
+
+<p>We could well imagine it. Even on this calm evening the waves kept
+dashing themselves against every rock with a roar and a swell and a
+circle of boiling foam. What must it be on a stormy winter night, or
+through the deathly quiet of a white mist, with nothing visible or
+audible except the roar of the waters and the shriek of the fog-horn!</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's full time we were in-doors," suggested a practical and
+prudent little voice; "we can come again and see it in the daylight.
+Here's the road."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way you came, Miss," said Charles, "but I can take you a
+much shorter one on the top of the hedges"&mdash;or edges, we never quite
+knew which they were, though on the whole the letter <i>h</i> is tolerably
+well treated in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>These "hedges" were startling to any one not Cornish-born. In the
+Lizard district the divisions of land are made not by fences, but by
+walls, built in a peculiar fashion, half stones, half earth, varying
+from six to ten feet high, and about two feet broad. On the top of this
+narrow giddy path, fringed on either side by deceitful grass, you are
+expected to walk!&mdash;in fact, are obliged to walk, for there is often no
+other road. There was none here.</p>
+
+<p>I looked round in despair. Once upon a time I could have walked upon
+walls as well as anybody, but now&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>"I'll help you, ma'am; and I'm sure you can manage it," said Charles
+consolingly. "It's only three-quarters of a mile."</p>
+
+<p>Three-quarters of a mile along a two-foot path on the top of a wall,
+and in this deceitful light, when one false step would entail a certain
+fall. And at my age one doesn't fall exactly like a feather or an
+india-rubber ball.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ma'am, if you go slow and steady, with me before and Curgenven behind,
+you'll <i>not</i> fall."</p>
+
+<p>Nor did I. I record it with gratitude to those two honest men&mdash;true
+<i>gentlemen</i>, such as I have found at times in all ranks&mdash;who never
+once grumbled or relaxed in their care of their tardy and troublesome
+charge; one instance more of that kindly courtesy which it does any
+man good to offer, and which any woman, "lady" though she be, may feel
+proud to receive.</p>
+
+<p>When we reached "home," as we had already begun to call it, a smiling
+face and a comfortable tea justified the word. And when we retired,
+a good deal fatigued, but quite happy, we looked out upon the night,
+where the fiery stream of the Lizard Lights was contending with the
+brightest of harvest moons. It was a hopeful ending of our second day.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="FISH" id="FISH"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/036.jpg" width="600" height="459" alt="" />
+<div class="caption">CORNISH FISH.</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_THIRD" id="DAY_THE_THIRD">DAY THE THIRD</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">"And</span> a beautiful day it is, ladies, though it won't do for Kynance."</p>
+
+<p>Only 8 a.m., yet there stood the faithful Charles, hat in hand, having
+heard that his ladies were at breakfast, and being evidently anxious
+that they should not lose an hour of him and his carriage, which were
+both due at Falmouth to-night. For this day was Saturday, and we were
+sending him home for Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>"As I found out last night, the tide won't suit for Kynance till
+Wednesday or Thursday, and you'll be too tired to walk much to-day.
+I've been thinking it all over. Suppose I were to drive you to Kennack
+Sands, back by the serpentine works to Cadgwith, and home to dinner?
+Then after dinner I'll give the horse a rest for two hours, and take
+you to Mullion; we can order tea at Mary Mundy's, and go on to the cove
+as far as I can get with the carriage. I'll leave it at the farm and be
+in time to help you over the rocks to see the caves, run ahead and meet
+you again with the carriage, and drive you back to Mary Mundy's. You
+can have tea and be home in the moonlight before nine o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"And you?" we asked, a good deal bewildered by this carefully-outlined
+plan and all the strange names of places and people, yet not a little
+touched by the kindly way in which we were "taken in and done for" by
+our faithful squire of dames.</p>
+
+<p>"Me, ma'am? Oh, after an hour or two's rest the horse can start
+again&mdash;say at midnight, and be home by daylight. Or we could go to bed
+and be up early at four, and still get to Falmouth by eight, in time
+for the church work. Don't you trouble about us, we'll manage. He" (the
+other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and four-footed half of the "we") "is a capital animal, and he'd
+get much harder work than this if he was at home."</p>
+
+<p>So we decided to put ourselves entirely in the hands of Charles,
+who seemed to have our interest so much at heart, and yet evinced a
+tenderness over his horse that is not too common among hired drivers.
+We promised to be ready in half an hour, so as to waste nothing of this
+lovely day, in which we had determined to enjoy ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Who could help it? It was delightful to wake up early and refreshed,
+and come down to this sunshiny, cheerful breakfast-table, where, though
+nothing was grand, all was thoroughly comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you're very kind, ladies, to be so pleased with everything,"
+apologised our bright-looking handmaiden; "and since you really wish
+to keep this room"&mdash;a very homely parlour which we had chosen in
+preference to a larger one, because it looked on the sea&mdash;"I only wish
+things was better for you; still, if you can make shift&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Well, if travellers cannot "make shift" with perfectly clean tidy
+rooms, well-cooked plain food, and more than civil, actually kindly,
+attendance, they ought to be ashamed of themselves! So we declared we
+would settle down in the evidently despised little parlour.</p>
+
+<p>It was not an æsthetic apartment, certainly. The wall-paper and carpet
+would have driven Morris and Co. nearly frantic; the furniture&mdash;mere
+chairs and a table&mdash;belonged "to the year one"&mdash;but (better than many
+modern chairs and tables) you could sit down upon the first and dine
+upon the second, in safety. There was no sofa, so we gladly accepted
+an offered easy-chair, and felt that all really useful things were now
+ours.</p>
+
+<p>But the ornamental? There was a paper arrangement in the grate, and
+certain vases on the chimney-piece which literally made our hair stand
+on end! After a private consultation as to how far we might venture,
+without wounding the feelings of our landlady, we mildly suggested that
+"perhaps we could do without these ornaments." All we wanted in their
+stead were a few jars, salt-jars or jam-pots, in which to arrange our
+wild flowers, of which yesterday the girls had gathered a quantity.</p>
+
+<p>The exchange was accepted, though with some surprise. But when, half
+an hour afterwards, the parlour appeared quite transformed, decorated
+in every available corner with brilliant autumn flowers&mdash;principally
+yellow&mdash;intermixed with the lovely Cornish heath; when, on some excuse
+or other, the hideous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> "ornament for your fire-stoves" was abolished,
+and the grate filled with a mass of green fern and grey sea-holly&mdash;I
+know no combination more exquisite both as to colour and form&mdash;then we
+felt that we could survive, at least for a week, even if shut up within
+this humble room, innocent of the smallest attraction as regarded art,
+music, or literature.</p>
+
+<p>But without doors? There Nature beat Art decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>What a world it was! Literally swimming in sunshine, from the sparkling
+sea in the distance, to the beds of marigolds close by&mdash;huge marigolds,
+double and single, mingled with carnations that filled the air with
+rich autumnal scent, all the more delicious because we feel it is
+autumnal, and therefore cannot last. It was a very simple garden,
+merely a square grass-plot with a walk and a border round it, and its
+only flowers were these marigolds, carnations, with quantities of
+mignonette, and bounded all round with a hedge of tamarisk; yet I think
+we shall always remember it as if it were the Garden of Armida&mdash;without
+a Tancred to spoil it!</p>
+
+<p>For&mdash;under the rose&mdash;one of the pleasures of our tour was that it was
+so exclusively feminine. We could feed as we liked, dress as we liked,
+talk to whom we liked, without any restriction, from the universal
+masculine sense of dignity and decorum in travelling. We felt ourselves
+unconventional, incognito, able to do exactly as we chose, provided we
+did nothing wrong.</p>
+
+<p>So off we drove through Lizard Town into the "wide, wide world;" and
+I repeat, what a world it was! Full filled with sunlight, and with an
+atmosphere so fresh and bracing, yet so dry and mild and balmy, that
+every breath was a pleasure to draw. We had felt nothing like it since
+we stood on the top of the highest peak in the Island of Capri, looking
+down on the blue Mediterranean. But this sea was equally blue, the sky
+equally clear, yet it was home&mdash;dear old England, so often misprized.
+Yet, I believe, when one does get really fine English weather, there is
+nothing like it in the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>The region we traversed was not picturesque&mdash;neither mountains, nor
+glens, nor rivers, nor woods; all was level and bare, for the road lay
+mostly inland, until we came out upon Kennack Sands.</p>
+
+<p>They might have been the very "yellow sands" where Shakespeare's elves
+were bidden to "take hands" and "foot it featly here and there."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> You
+might almost have searched for the sea-maids' footsteps along the
+smooth surface where the long Atlantic waves crept harmlessly in,
+making a glittering curve, and falling with a gentle "thud"&mdash;the only
+sound in the solitary bay, until all at once we caught voices and
+laughter, and from among some rock, emerged a party of girls.</p>
+
+<p>They had evidently come in a cart, which took up its station beside
+our carriage, laden with bundles which looked uncommonly like bathing
+gowns; and were now seeking a convenient dressing-room&mdash;one of
+those rock-parlours, roofed with serpentine and floored with silver
+sand&mdash;which are the sole bathing establishments here.</p>
+
+<p>All along the Cornish coast the bathing is delightful&mdash;when you can
+get it; but sometimes for miles and miles the cliffs rise in a huge
+impregnable wall, without a single break. Then perhaps there comes a
+sudden cleft in the rock, a green descent, possibly with a rivulet
+trickling through it, and leading to a sheltered cove or a sea-cave,
+accessible only at low water, but one of the most delicious little
+nooks that could be imagined. Kynance, we were told, with its "kitchen"
+and "drawing-room," was the most perfect specimen of the kind; but
+Kennack was sufficiently lovely. With all sorts of fun, shouting, and
+laughter, the girls disappeared to their evidently familiar haunts, to
+reappear as merry mermaids playing about in a crystalline sea.</p>
+
+<p>A most tantalising sight to my two, who vowed never again to attempt
+a day's excursion without taking bathing dresses, towels, and the
+inevitable fish-line, to be tied round the waist,&mdash;with a mother
+holding the other end. For we had been warned against these long and
+strong Atlantic waves, the recoil of which takes you off your feet even
+in calm weather. As bathing must generally be done at low water, to
+ensure a sandy floor and a comfortable cave, it is easy enough to be
+swept out of one's depth; and the cleverest swimmer, if tossed about
+among these innumerable rocks circled round by eddies of boiling white
+water, would have small chance of returning with whole bones, or of
+returning at all.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, along this Cornish coast, life and death seem very near
+together. Every pleasure carries with it a certain amount of risk; the
+utmost caution is required both on land and sea, and I cannot advise
+either rash or nervous people to go travelling in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>Bathing being impracticable, we consoled ourselves with ascending the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+sandy hillock, which bounded one side of the bay, and sat looking from
+it towards the coast-line eastwards.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="POLTESCO" id="POLTESCO"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/041.jpg" width="600" height="600" alt="POLTESCO." />
+<div class="caption">POLTESCO.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>What a strange peace there is in a solitary shore, an empty sea, for
+the one or two white dots of silent ships seemed rather to add to than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+diminish its loneliness&mdash;lonelier in sunshine, I think, than even in
+storm. The latter gives a sense of human life, of struggle and of
+pain; while the former is all repose, the bright but solemn repose of
+infinity or eternity.</p>
+
+<p>But these thoughts were for older heads; the only idea of the young
+heads&mdash;uncommonly steady they must have been!&mdash;was of scrambling
+into the most inaccessible places, and getting as near to the sea as
+possible without actually tumbling into it. After a while the land
+attracted them in turn, and they came back with their hands full of
+flowers, some known, some unknown; great bunches of honeysuckle,
+curious sand-plants, and cliff-plants; also water-plants, which fringed
+a little rivulet that ran into the bay, while, growing everywhere
+abundantly, was the lovely grey-green cringo, or sea-holly.</p>
+
+<p>All these treasures, to make the parlour pretty, required much
+ingenuity to carry home safely, the sun withered them so fast. But
+there was the pleasure of collecting.</p>
+
+<p>We could willingly have stayed here all day&mdash;how natural is that wish
+of poor young Shelley, that in every pretty place he saw he might
+remain "for ever"!&mdash;but the forenoon was passing, and we had much to
+see.</p>
+
+<p>"Poltesco, everybody goes to Poltesco," observed the patient Charles.</p>
+
+<p>So of course we went there too. At Poltesco are the principal
+serpentine works&mdash;the one commerce of the district. The monotonous hum
+of its machinery mingled oddly with the murmur of a trout-stream which
+ran through the pretty little valley, crossed by a wooden bridge, where
+a solitary angler stood fishing in imperturbable content.</p>
+
+<p>There were only about a dozen workmen visible; one of whom came
+forward and explained to us the mode of work, afterwards taking us
+to the show-room, which contained everything possible to be made of
+serpentine, from mantelpieces and tombstones, down to brooches and
+studs. Very delicate and beautiful was the workmanship; the forms of
+some of the things&mdash;vases and candlesticks especially&mdash;were quite
+Pompeian. In truth, throughout Cornwall, we often came upon shapes,
+Roman or Greek, proving how even yet relics of its early masters or
+colonisers linger in this western corner of England.</p>
+
+<p>In its inhabitants too. When, as we passed, more than one busy
+workman lifted up his head for a moment, we noticed faces almost
+classic in type, quite different from the bovine, agricultural
+Hodge of the midland counties.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> In manner different likewise.
+There was neither stupidity nor servility, but a sort of dignified
+independence. No pressing to buy, no looking out for gratuities,
+only a kindly politeness, which did not fail even when we departed,
+taking only a few little ornaments. We should have liked to carry off
+a cart-load&mdash;especially two enormous vases and a chimney-piece&mdash;but
+travellers have limits to luggage, and purse as well.</p>
+
+<p>Pretty Poltesco! we left it with regret, but we were in the hands
+of the ever-watchful Charles, anxious that we should see as much as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>"The driving-road goes far inland, but there's a splendid cliff-walk
+from Poltesco to Cadgwith direct. The young ladies might do it with a
+guide&mdash;here he is, a man I know, quite reliable. They'll walk it easily
+in half an hour. But you, ma'am, I think you'd better come with me."</p>
+
+<p>No fighting against fate. So I put my "chickens" in safe charge, meekly
+re-entered the carriage, and drove, humbly and alone, across a flat
+dull country, diversified here and there by a few cottages, politely
+called a village&mdash;the two villages of Ruan Minor and Ruan Major. I
+afterwards found that they were not without antiquarian interest, that
+I might have gone to examine a curious old church, well, and oratory,
+supposed to have been inhabited by St. Rumon. But we had left the
+guide-book at home, with the so longed-for bathing gowns, and Charles
+was not of archæological mind, so I heard nothing and investigated
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Except, indeed, numerous huge hand-bills, posted on barn doors and
+gates, informing the inhabitants that an Exhibition of Fine Arts,
+admittance one shilling, was on view close by. Charles was most anxious
+I should stop and visit it, saying it was "very fine." But as within
+the last twelvemonth I had seen the Royal Academy, Grosvenor Gallery,
+and most of the galleries and museums in Italy, the Fine Art Exhibition
+of Ruan Minor was not overwhelmingly attractive. However, not to wound
+the good Cornishman, who was evidently proud of it, I explained that,
+on the whole, I preferred nature to art.</p>
+
+<p>And how grand nature was in this fishing-village of Cadgwith, to which
+after a long round, we came at last!</p>
+
+<p><a name="CADGWITH" id="CADGWITH"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 516px;">
+<img src="images/044.jpg" width="516" height="600" alt="CADGWITH COVE." />
+<div class="caption">CADGWITH COVE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nestled snugly in a bend of the coast which shelters it from north
+and east, leaving it open to southern sunshine, while another curve
+of land protects it from the dense fogs which are so common at the
+Lizard, Cadgwith is, summer and winter, one of the pleasantest nooks
+imaginable. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> climate, Charles told me, is so mild, that invalids
+often settle down in the one inn&mdash;a mere village inn externally, but
+very comfortable. And, as I afterwards heard at Lizard Town, the parson
+and his wife&mdash;"didn't I know them?" and I felt myself rather looked
+down upon because I did not know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> them&mdash;are the kindest of people,
+who take pleasure in looking after the invalids, rich or poor. "Yes,"
+Charles considered Cadgwith was a nice place to winter in, "only just a
+trifle dull."</p>
+
+<p>Probably so, to judge by the interest which, even in this
+tourist-season, our carriage excited, as we wound down one side and
+up another of the ravine in which the village is built, with a small
+fishing-station at the bottom, rather painfully odoriferous. The
+fisher-wives came to their doors, the old fisher-men stood, hands in
+pockets, the roly-poly healthy fisher-children stopped playing, to
+turn round and stare. In these parts everybody stares at everybody,
+and generally everybody speaks to everybody&mdash;a civil "good-day" at any
+rate, sometimes more.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a heavy pull for you," said a sympathetic old woman, who had
+watched me leave the carriage and begin mounting the cliff towards the
+Devil's Frying-pan&mdash;the principal thing to be seen at Cadgwith. She
+followed me, and triumphantly passed me, though she had to carry a bag
+of potatoes on her back. I wondered if her feeling was pity or envy
+towards another old person who had to carry nothing but her own self.
+Which, alas! was enough!</p>
+
+<p>She and I sat down together on the hill-side and had a chat, while I
+waited for the two little black dots which I could see moving round the
+opposite headland. She gave me all kinds of information, in the simple
+way peculiar to country folk, whose innocent horizon comprises the
+whole world, which, may be, is less pleasant than the little world of
+Cadgwith. Then we parted for ever and aye.</p>
+
+<p>The Devil's Frying-pan is a wonderful sight. Imagine a natural
+amphitheatre two acres in extent, inclosed by a semi-circular slope
+about two hundred feet high, covered with grass and flowers and low
+bushes. Outside, the wide, open sea, which pours in to the shingly
+beach at the bottom through an arch of serpentine, the colouring of
+which, and of the other rocks surrounding it, is most exquisite,
+varying from red to green, with sometimes a tint of grey. Were Cadgwith
+a little nearer civilisation, what a show-place it would become!</p>
+
+<p>But happily civilisation leaves it alone. The tiny farm-house on the
+hill-side near the Frying-pan looked, within and without, much as it
+must have looked for the last hundred years; and the ragged, unkempt,
+tongue-tied little girl, from whom we succeeded in getting a drink
+of milk in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> tumbler which she took five minutes to search for, had
+certainly never been to a Board School. She investigated the penny
+which we deposited as if it were a great natural curiosity rarely
+attainable, and she gazed after us as we climbed the stile leading to
+the Frying-pan as if wondering what on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> earth could tempt respectable
+people, who had nothing to do, into such a very uncomfortable place.</p>
+
+<p><a name="DEVIL" id="DEVIL"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 476px;">
+<img src="images/046.jpg" width="476" height="600" alt="THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH." />
+<div class="caption">THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Uncomfortable, certainly, as we sat with our feet stuck in the long
+grass to prevent slipping down the slope&mdash;a misadventure which would
+have been, to say the least, awkward. Those boiling waves, roaring each
+after each through the arch below; and those jagged rocks, round which
+innumerable sea-birds were flying&mdash;one could quite imagine that were
+any luckless vessel to find itself in or near the Frying-pan, it would
+never get out again.</p>
+
+<p>To meditative minds there is something very startling in the perpetual
+contrast between the summer tourist-life, so cheerful and careless,
+and the winter life of the people here, which must be so full of
+privations; for one half the year there is nothing to do, no market
+for serpentine, and almost no fishing possible: they have to live
+throughout the dark days upon the hay made while the sun shines.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," said one of the Lizard folk, whom I asked if there was much
+drunkenness thereabout, for I had seen absolutely none; "no, us don't
+drink; us can't afford it. Winter's a bad time for we&mdash;sometimes for
+four months a man doesn't earn a halfpenny. He has to save in summer,
+or he'd starve the rest of the year."</p>
+
+<p>Which apparently is not altogether bad for him. I have seldom seen,
+in any part of England or Scotland, such an honest, independent,
+respectable race as the working people on this coast, and indeed
+throughout Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>We left with regret the pretty village, resolving to come back again
+in a day or two; it was barely three miles from the Lizard, though the
+difference in climate was said to be so great. And then we drove back
+across the bleak down and through the keen "hungry" sea-air, which made
+dinner a matter of welcome importance. And without dwelling too much
+on the delights of the flesh&mdash;very mild delights after all&mdash;I will say
+that the vegetables grown in the garden, and the grapes in the simple
+green-house beside it, were a credit to Cornwall, especially so near
+the sea-coast.</p>
+
+<p>We had just time to dine, repose a little, and communicate our address
+to our affectionate friends at home&mdash;so as to link ourselves for a few
+brief days with the outside world&mdash;when appeared the punctual Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid, ladies, he's had a good rest,"&mdash;this was the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+important animal about whose well-being we were naturally anxious.
+Charles patted his shoulder, and a little person much given to deep
+equine affections tenderly stroked his nose. He seemed sensible of the
+attention and of what was expected from him, and started off, as lively
+as if he had been idle for a week, across the Lizard Down and Pradenack
+Down to Mullion.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope Mary will be at home," said Charles, turning round as usual to
+converse; "she'll be sure to make you comfortable. Of course you've
+heard of Mary Mundy?"</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately we had. There was in one of our guide-books a most
+glowing description of the Old Inn, and also an extract from a poem,
+apostrophising the charms of Mary Mundy. When we said we knew the
+enthusiastic Scotch Professor who had written it, we felt that we rose
+a step in the estimation of Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"And Mary will be so pleased to see anybody who knows the
+gentleman"&mdash;in Cornwall the noted Greek Professor was merely "the
+gentleman." "She's got his poem in her visitors' book and his portrait
+in her album. I do hope Mary will be at home."</p>
+
+<p>But fate was against us. When we reached Mullion and drove up to the
+door of the Old Inn, there darted out to meet us, not Mary, but an
+individual concerning whom Fame has been unjustly silent.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only Mary's brother," said Charles, with an accent of deep
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>But as the honest man who had apparently gone through life as "Mary's
+brother" stood patting our horse and talking to our driver, with both
+of whom he seemed on terms of equal intimacy, his welcome to ourselves
+was such a mixture of cordiality and despair that we could scarcely
+keep from laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary's gone to Helstone, ladies; her would have been delighted, but
+her's gone marketing to Helstone. I hope her'll be back soon, for I
+doesn't know what to do without she. The house is full, and there's a
+party of eleven come to tea, and actually wanting it sent down to them
+at the Cove. They won't get it though. And you shall get your tea,
+ladies, even if they have to go without."</p>
+
+<p>We expressed our gratitude, and left Charles to arrange all for us,
+which he did in the most practical way.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And you think Mary may be back at six?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her said her would, and I hope her will," answered the brother
+despondently. "Her's very seldom out; us can't get on at all without
+she."</p>
+
+<p>This, and several more long and voluble speeches given in broad
+Cornish, with the true Cornish confusion of pronouns, and with an air
+of piteous perplexity&mdash;nay, abject helplessness, the usual helplessness
+of man without woman&mdash;proved too much for our risible nerves. We
+maintained a decorous gravity till we had driven away, and then fell
+into shouts of laughter&mdash;the innocent laughter of happy-minded people
+over the smallest joke or the mildest species of fun.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, ladies, you'll get your tea all right. If Mary said she'd
+be back at six, back she'll be. And you'll find a capital tea waiting
+for you; there isn't a more comfortable inn in all Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>Which, we afterwards found, was saying a great deal.</p>
+
+<p>Mullion Cove is a good mile from Mullion village, and as we jolted over
+the rough road I was remorseful over both carriage and horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, ma'am, he's used to it. Often and often he comes here with
+pic-nic parties, all the way from Falmouth. I'll put him in at the
+farm, and be down with you at the Cove directly. You'll find the rocks
+pretty bad walking, but there's a cave which you ought to see. We'll
+try it."</p>
+
+<p>There was no resisting the way the kindly young Cornishman thus
+identified himself with our interests, and gave himself all sorts
+of extra trouble on our account. And when after a steep and not too
+savoury descent&mdash;the cove being used as a fish cellar&mdash;we found
+ourselves on the beach, shut in by those grand rocks of serpentine,
+with Mullion Island lying ahead about a quarter of a mile off, we felt
+we had not come here for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The great feature of Mullion Cove is its sea-caves, of which there are
+two, one on the beach, the other round the point, and only accessible
+at low water. Now, we saw the tide was rising fast.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll have to wade; I told them they would have to wade!" cried an
+anxious voice behind me; and "I was ware," as ancient chroniclers say,
+of the presence of another "old hen," the same whom we had noticed
+conducting her brood of chickens, or ducklings&mdash;they seemed more like
+the latter now&mdash;to bathe on Kennack Sands.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they have been away more than half an hour, all my children
+except this one"&mdash;a small boy who looked as if he wished he had gone
+too. "They would go, though I warned them they would have to wade. And
+there they are, just going into the cave. One, two, three, four, five,
+six," counting the black specks that were seen moving on, or rather in,
+the water. "Oh dear, they've <i>all</i> gone in! I wish they were safe out
+again."</p>
+
+<p><a name="MULLION" id="MULLION"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/050.jpg" width="600" height="424" alt="MULLION COVE, CORNWALL." />
+<div class="caption">MULLION COVE, CORNWALL.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, in the midst of her distress, the benevolent lady stopped
+to give me a helping hand into the near cave, a long, dark passage,
+with light at either end. My girls had already safely threaded it and
+come triumphantly out at the other side. But what with the darkness and
+the uncertain footing over what felt like beds of damp seaweed, with
+occasional stones, through which one had to grope every inch of one's
+way, my heart rather misgave me, until I was cheered by the apparition
+of the faithful Charles.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't go back, ma'am, you'll be so sorry afterwards. I'll strike a
+light and help you. Slow and steady, you'll come to no harm. And it's
+beautiful when you get out at the other end."</p>
+
+<p>So it was. The most exquisite little nook; where you could have
+imagined a mermaid came daily to comb her hair; one can easily believe
+in mermaids or anything else in Cornwall. What a charming dressing-room
+she would have, shut in on three sides by those great walls of
+serpentine, and in front the glittering sea, rolling in upon a floor of
+the loveliest silver sand.</p>
+
+<p>But the only mermaid there was an artist's wife, standing beside her
+husband's easel, at which he was painting away so earnestly that he
+scarcely noticed us. Very picturesque he looked, and she too, in her
+rough serge dress, with her pretty bare feet and ankles, the shoes and
+stockings lying in a corner as if they had not been worn for hours.
+Why should they be? they were quite unnecessary on those soft sands,
+and their owner stood and talked with me as composedly as if it were
+the height of the fashion to go barefoot. And far more than anything
+concerning herself, she seemed interested in my evident interest in the
+picture, which promised to be a remarkably good one, and which, if I
+see it on the R. A. walls next year will furnish my only clue to the
+identity of the couple, or theirs to mine.</p>
+
+<p>But the tide was fast advancing; they began to take down the easel, and
+I remembered that the narrow winding cave was our only way out from
+this rock-inclosed fairy paradise to the prosaic beach.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, they are wading ashore up to the knees! And we shall have to
+wade too if we don't make haste back."</p>
+
+<p>So cried the perplexed mother of the six too-adventurous ducklings.
+But mine, more considerate, answered me from the rocks where they were
+scrambling, and helped me back through the cave into safe quarters,
+where we stood watching the waders with mingled excitement and&mdash;envy?</p>
+
+<p>Alas! I can still recall the delicious sensation of paddling across the
+smooth sea-sand, and of walking up the bed of a Highland burn. But "Oh!
+the change twixt Now and Then," I sat calmly on a stone, dry-shod; as
+was best. Still, is it not a benign law of nature, that the things we
+are no longer able to do, we almost cease to wish to do? Perhaps even
+the last cessation of all things will come naturally at the end, as
+naturally as we turn round and go to sleep at night?</p>
+
+<p>But it was not night yet. I am proud to think how high and steep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> was
+the cliff we re-ascended, all three of us, and from which we stood
+and looked at sky and sea. Such a sea and such a sky: amber clear, so
+that one could trace the whole line of coast&mdash;Mount's Bay, with St.
+Michael's Mount dotted in the midst of it, and even the Land's End,
+beyond which the sun, round and red, was just touching the top of the
+waves. We should have liked to watch him drop below them&mdash;that splendid
+sea-sunset of which one never tires, but we had some distance to walk,
+and we began to rejoice in the prospect of Mary Mundy's tea.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go on ahead and have the carriage ready," said the ever
+thoughtful Charles. "You can't miss your way, ladies. Just follow the
+hedges"&mdash;that tempting aerial promenade, to which we were now getting
+accustomed, becoming veritable Blondins in petticoats&mdash;"then cross the
+cornfield; and take to the hedges again. You'll be at the farm-yard
+directly."</p>
+
+<p>Not quite&mdash;for we lingered, tempted by the abundance of corn-flowers,
+of which we gathered, not handfuls but armfuls. When we reached
+it, what a picture of an English farm-yard it was! With a regular
+old-fashioned English milk-maid&mdash;such as Izaak Walton would have loved
+to describe&mdash;sitting amidst her shining pails, her cows standing round
+her, meekly waiting their turn. Sleek, calm creatures they were,
+Juno-eyed and soft-skinned&mdash;of that peculiar shade of grey which I
+have seen only in Cornwall. And, being rather a connoisseur in cows,
+I have often amused myself to notice how the kine of each country
+have their own predominant colour, which seems to harmonise with its
+special landscape. The curious yellow tint of Highland cattle, the red,
+white, or brown of those of the midland counties, and the delicate
+grey of Cornish cows, alike suit the scene around them, and belong to
+it as completely as the dainty little Swiss herds do to their Alpine
+pastures, or the large, mild, cream-coloured oxen to the Campagna at
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>But we had to tear ourselves away from this Arcadia, for in the midst
+of the farm-yard appeared the carriage and Charles. So we jolted
+back&mdash;it seemed as if Cornish carriages and horses could go anywhere
+and over everything&mdash;to the Old Inn and Mary Mundy.</p>
+
+<p>She <i>had</i> come home, and everything was right. As we soon found,
+everything and everybody was accustomed to be put to rights by Miss
+Mary Mundy.</p>
+
+<p>She stood at the door to greet us&mdash;a bright, brown-faced little
+woman with the reddest of cheeks and the blackest of eyes; I have no
+hesitation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> in painting her portrait here, as she is, so to speak,
+public property, known and respected far and wide.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="CRABBER" id="CRABBER"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/053.jpg" width="600" height="403" alt="A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY." />
+<div class="caption">A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>"Delighted to see you, ladies; delighted to see any friends of the
+Professor's; and I hope you enjoyed the Cove, and that you're all
+hungry, and will find your tea to your liking. It's the best we can do;
+we're very homely folk here, but we try to make people comfortable,"
+and so on and so on, a regular stream of chatty conversation, given in
+the strongest Cornish, with the kindliest of Cornish hearts, as she
+ushered us into a neat little parlour at the back of the inn.</p>
+
+<p>There lay spread, not one of your dainty afternoon teas, with two or
+three wafery slices of bread and butter, but a regular substantial
+meal. Cheerful candles&mdash;of course in serpentine candlesticks&mdash;were
+already lit, and showed us the bright teapot full of that welcome drink
+to weary travellers, hot, strong and harmless; the gigantic home-baked
+loaf, which it seemed sacrilegious to have turned into toast; the rich,
+yellow butter&mdash;I am sure those lovely cows had something to do with
+it, and also with the cream, so thick that the spoon could almost have
+stood upright in it. Besides, there was a quantity of that delicious
+clotted cream, which here accompanies every meal and of which I had
+vainly tried to get the receipt, but was answered with polite scorn,
+"Oh, ma'am, it would be of no use to <i>you</i>: Cornish cream can only be
+made from Cornish cows!"</p>
+
+<p>Whether this remarkable fact in natural history be true or not, let me
+record the perfection of Mary Mundy's cream, which, together with her
+jam and her marmalade, was a refection worthy of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>She pressed us again and again to "have some more," and her charge for
+our magnificent meal was as small as her gratitude was great for the
+slight addition we made to it.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll not say no, ma'am, it'll come in handy; us has got a young
+niece to bring up&mdash;my brother and me&mdash;please'm. Yes, I'm glad you came,
+and I hope you'll come again, please'm. And if you see the Professor,
+you'll tell him he's not forgotten, please'm."</p>
+
+<p>This garniture of "please'm" at the end of every sentence reminded
+us of the Venetian "probbedirla," <i>per ubbedirla</i>, with which our
+gondolier Giovanna used to amuse us, often dragging it in in the oddest
+way. "Yes, the Signora will get a beautiful day, probbedirla," or "My
+wife has just lost her baby, probbedirla." Mary Mundy's "please'm"
+often came in with equal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> incongruity, and her voluble tongue ran on
+nineteen to the dozen; but her talk was so shrewd and her looks so
+pleasant&mdash;once, no doubt, actually pretty, and still comely enough for
+a middle-aged woman&mdash;that we departed, fully agreeing with her admiring
+Professor that</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"The brightest thing on Cornish land</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is the face of Miss Mary Mundy."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Recrossing Pradenack down in the dim light of a newly-risen moon,
+everything looked so solitary and ghostly that we started to see moving
+from behind a furz-bush, a mysterious figure, which crossed the road
+slowly, and stood waiting for us. Was it man or ghost, or&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Only a donkey! A ridiculous grey donkey. It might have been Tregeagle
+himself&mdash;Tregeagle, the grim mad-demon of Cornish tradition, once a
+dishonest steward, who sold his soul to the devil, and is doomed to
+keep on emptying Dozmare Pool, near St. Neots (the same mere wherein
+Excalibur was thrown), with a limpet-shell; and to spend his nights in
+other secluded places balancing interminable accounts, which are always
+just sixpence wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Tregeagle! I fear some of us, weak in arithmetic, had a secret
+sympathy for him! But we never met him&mdash;nor anything worse than that
+spectral donkey, looming large and placid against the level horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Soon, "the stars came out by twos and threes,"&mdash;promising a fine night
+and finer morning, during which, while we were comfortably asleep,
+our good horse and man would be driving across this lonely region to
+Falmouth, in time to take the good people to church on Sunday morning.</p>
+
+<p>"And we'll do it, too&mdash;don't you be anxious about us, ladies," insisted
+Charles. "I'll feed him well, and groom him well. I likes to take care
+of a good horse, and you'll see, he'll take no harm. I'll be back when
+you want me, at the week's end, or perhaps before then, with some party
+or other&mdash;we're always coming to the Lizard&mdash;and I'll just look in and
+see how you're getting on, and how you liked Kynance. But take care of
+the tide."</p>
+
+<p>We thanked our kindly charioteer, bade him and his horse good-bye,
+wished him a pleasant journey through the moonlight, which was every
+minute growing more beautiful, then went indoors to supper&mdash;no! supper
+would have been an insult to Mary Mundy's tea&mdash;to bed.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_FOURTH" id="DAY_THE_FOURTH">DAY THE FOURTH</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sunday</span>, September 4th&mdash;and we had started on September 1st; was it
+possible we had only been travelling four days?</p>
+
+<p>It felt like fourteen at least. We had seen so much, taken in so many
+new interests&mdash;nay, made several new friends. Already we began to plan
+another meeting with John Curgenven, who we found was a relation of
+our landlady, or of our bright-faced serving maiden, Esther&mdash;I forget
+which. But everybody seemed connected with everybody at the Lizard,
+and everybody took a friendly interest in everybody. The arrival of
+new lodgers in the "genteel" parlour which we had not appreciated
+was important information, and we were glad to hear that Charles had
+started about four in the morning quite cheery.</p>
+
+<p>And what a morning it was!&mdash;a typical Sabbath, a day of rest, a day
+to rejoice in. Strolling round the garden at eight o'clock, while the
+dew still lay thick on the grass, and glittered like diamonds on the
+autumnal spider-webs, even the flowers seemed to know it was Sunday,
+the mignonette bed to smell sweeter, the marigolds&mdash;yes! æsthetic
+fashion is right in its love for marigolds&mdash;burnt in a perfect blaze
+of golden colour and aromatic scent. The air was so mild that we could
+imagine summer was still with us: and the great wide circle of sea
+gleamed in the sunshine as if there never had been, never could be,
+such a thing as cloud or storm.</p>
+
+<p>Having ascertained that there was no service nearer than Grade, some
+miles off, until the afternoon, we "went to church" on the cliffs, in
+Pistol Meadow, beside the green mounds where the two hundred drowned
+sailors sleep in peace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="STEAM" id="STEAM"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 385px;">
+<img src="images/058.jpg" width="385" height="600" alt="STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT." />
+<div class="caption">STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And such a peaceful place! Absolutely solitary: not a living creature,
+not even a sheep came near me the whole morning:&mdash;and in the silence
+I could hear almost every word said by my young folks, searching for
+sea-treasures among the rocks and little pools far below. Westwards
+towards Kynance, and eastwards towards Landewednack&mdash;the church we were
+to go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> to in the afternoon&mdash;the cliff path was smooth and green, the
+short grass full of those curious dainty flowers, some of which were
+new to our eager eyes. At other times the road was so precipitous that
+we did not wonder at those carefully white-washed stones every few
+yards, which are the sole guide to the coastguard men of dark nights.
+Even in daylight, if the wind were high, or the footing slippery with
+rain, the cliff-walk from the Lizard to Kynance would be no joke to
+uninitiated feet.</p>
+
+<p>Now, all was so still that the wind never once fluttered the letter I
+was writing, and so warm that we were glad to escape the white glare of
+the wall of the Lizard Lights and sit in a cool hollow, watching sky
+and ocean, with now and then a sea-bird floating lazily between, a dark
+speck on the perpetual blue.</p>
+
+<p>"If it will only keep like this all week!" And, as we sat, we planned
+out each day, so as to miss nothing, and lose nothing&mdash;either of time
+or strength: doing enough, but never too much&mdash;as is often the fatal
+mistake of tourists. And then, following the grand law of travelling,
+to have one's "meals reg'lar"&mdash;we went indoors and dined. Afterwards in
+honour of the day</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">"that comes between</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Saturday and Monday,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>we dressed ourselves in all our best&mdash;very humble best it was!&mdash;to join
+the good people going to church at Landewednack.</p>
+
+<p>This, which in ancient Cornish means "the white-roofed church of St.
+Wednack"&mdash;hagiologists must decide who that individual was!&mdash;is the
+name of the parish to which the comparatively modern Lizard Town
+belongs. The church is in a very picturesque corner, close to the sea,
+though both it and the rectory are protected by a sudden dip in the
+ground, so that you see neither till you are close upon them. A fine
+Norman doorway, a curious hagioscope, and other points, interesting to
+archaeologists&mdash;also the neatest and prettiest of churchyards&mdash;make
+note-worthy this, the most southerly church in England. A fine old
+building, not spoiled though "restored." The modern open pews, and a
+modern memorial pulpit of serpentine, jarred less than might have been
+expected with the carefully-preserved remains of the past.</p>
+
+<p>In Landewednack church is said to have been preached the last sermon in
+Cornish. This was in 1678. Since, the ancient tongue has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> completely
+died out, and the people of King Arthur's country have become wholly
+English.</p>
+
+<p>Still, they are not the English of the midland and northern districts,
+but of a very different type and race. I have heard it said that a
+seaboard population, accustomed to wrestle with the dangers of the
+coast, to move about from place to place, see foreign countries, and
+carry on its business in the deep waters, is always more capable, more
+intelligent, as a whole, than an inland people, whether agricultural
+or manufacturing. It may be so: but certainly the aborigines of
+Lizard Town, who could easily be distinguished from the visitors&mdash;of
+whom there was yet a tolerable sprinkling&mdash;made a very interesting
+congregation; orderly, respectable, reverent; simple in dress and
+manner, yet many of them, both the men and women, exceedingly
+picturesque. That is, the old men and the old women: the younger ones
+aped modern fashion even here, in this out-of-the-way corner, and
+consequently did not look half so well as their seniors.</p>
+
+<p>I must name one more member of the congregation&mdash;a large black dog,
+who walked in and settled himself in the pew behind, where he behaved
+during half the service in an exemplary manner, worthy of the Highland
+shepherds' dogs, who always come to church with their masters, and
+conduct themselves with equal decorum.</p>
+
+<p>There is always a certain pathos in going in to worship in a strange
+church, with a strange congregation, of whom you are as ignorant as
+they of you. In the intervals of kneeling with them as "miserable
+sinners," one finds oneself speculating upon them, their possible
+faults and virtues, joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, watching the
+unknown faces, and trying to read thereon the records of a common
+humanity. A silent homily, better perhaps than most sermons.</p>
+
+<p>Not that there was aught to complain of in the sermon, and the singing
+was especially good. Many a London choir might have taken a lesson from
+this village church at the far end of Cornwall. When service was over,
+we lingered in the pretty and carefully tended churchyard, where the
+evening light fell softly upon many curious gravestones, of seafaring
+men, and a few of wrecked sailors&mdash;only a few, since it is but within
+a generation that bodies washed ashore from the deep were allowed to
+be buried in consecrated ground; most of them, like the two hundred in
+Pistol Meadow, being interred as near as convenient to where they were
+found,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> without any burial rites. Still, in all the churchyards along
+this coast are graves with a story. A little corner railed off has an
+old and sad one. There lie buried the victims of the plague, which in
+1645 devastated the village. No one since has ever ventured to disturb
+their resting-place.</p>
+
+<p>Very green and peaceful the churchyard looked: the beautiful day was
+dying, beautiful to the last. We stood and watched the congregation
+melt slowly away, disappearing down the lane, and then, attracted by
+the sound of music, we re-entered the church. There we sat and listened
+for another half-hour to the practising of an anthem ready for the
+harvest festival, which had been announced for the following Tuesday;
+exceedingly well done too, the rector's voice leading it all, with an
+energy and enthusiasm that at once accounted for the capital condition
+of the choir.</p>
+
+<p>"If this weather will only last!" was our earnest sigh as we walked
+home; and anxious not to lose a minute of it, we gave ourselves the
+briefest rest, and turned out again, I to watch the sunset from the
+cliffs, while the others descended once more to their beloved sea-pools.</p>
+
+<p>"Such anemones, such sea-weed! and scrambling is so delicious! Besides,
+sunsets are all alike," added the youthful, practical, and slightly
+unpoetical mind.</p>
+
+<p>No, they are not alike. Every one has a mysterious charm of its
+own&mdash;just like that in every new human face. I have seen hundreds of
+sunsets in my time, and those I shall see are narrowing down now, but
+I think to the end of my life I shall always feel a day incomplete of
+which I did not see the sunset.</p>
+
+<p>This one was splendid. The usual place where the sun dropped into the
+sea, just beyond the point of the Land's End, was all a golden mist.
+I hastened west, climbing one intervening cliff after the other,
+anxious not to miss the clear sight of him as he set his glowing
+feet, or rather his great round disc, on the sea. At last I found a
+"comfortable" stone, sheltered from the wind, which blew tolerably
+fresh, and utterly solitary (as I thought), the intense silence
+being such that one could almost hear the cropping of three placid
+sheep&mdash;evidently well accustomed to sunsets, and thinking them of
+little consequence.</p>
+
+<p>There I sat until the last red spark had gone out, quenched in the
+Atlantic waters, and from behind the vanished sun sprung a gleam of
+absolutely green light, "like a firework out of a rocket," the young
+people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> said; such as I had never seen before, though we saw it once
+afterwards. Nature's fireworks they were; and I could see even the two
+little black figures moving along the rocks below stand still to watch
+them. I watched too, with that sort of lonely delight&mdash;the one shadow
+upon it being that it is so lonely&mdash;with which all one's life one is
+accustomed to watch beautiful and vanishing things. Then seeing how
+fast the colours were fading and the sky darkening, I rose; but just
+took a step or two farther to look over the edge of my stone into the
+next dip of the cliff, and there I saw&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><a name="HAULING" id="HAULING"></a></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/062.jpg" width="600" height="435" alt="HAULING IN THE BOATS&mdash;EVENING." />
+<div class="caption">HAULING IN THE BOATS&mdash;EVENING.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Actually, two human beings! Lovers, of course. Nothing else would have
+sat so long and so silently, for I had been within three yards of them
+all the time, and had never discovered them, nor they me. Poor young
+things! they did not discover me even yet. They sat, quite absorbed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> in
+one another, hand in hand, looking quietly seaward, their faces bathed
+in the rosy sunset&mdash;which to them was a sunrise, the sort of sun which
+never rises twice in a life-time.</p>
+
+<p>I left them to it. Evidently they did not see me, in fact I just
+peered over the rock's edge and drew back again; any slight sound they
+probably attributed to the harmless sheep. Well, it was but an equally
+harmless old woman, who did not laugh at them, as some might have done,
+but smiled and wished them well, as she left them to their sunset, and
+turned to face the darkening east, where the sun would rise to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>The moon was rising there now, and it was a picture to behold. Indeed,
+all these Cornish days seemed so full of moonrises and sunsets&mdash;and
+sunrises too&mdash;that it was really inconvenient. Going to bed seemed
+almost a sin&mdash;as on this night, when, opening our parlour door, which
+looked right on to the garden, we saw the whole world lying in a flood
+of moonlight peace, the marigolds and carnations leaning cheek to
+cheek, as motionless as the two young lovers on the cliff. Who, alas!
+must long ago have had their dream broken, for five minutes afterwards
+I had met a most respectable fat couple from Lizard Town taking their
+Sunday evening stroll, in all their Sunday best, along those very
+cliffs. Most painful interruption! But perhaps, the good folks had once
+been lovers too.</p>
+
+<p>What a night it was! fit night to such a perfect day. How the stars
+shone, without a mist or a cloud; how the Lizard Lights gleamed, even
+in spite of the moonlight, and how clear showed the black outline of
+Kynance Cove, from which came through the silence a dull murmur of
+waves! It was, as we declared, a sin and a shame to go to bed at all
+though we had been out the whole day, and hoped to be out the whole of
+to-morrow. Still, human nature could not keep awake for ever. We passed
+from the poetical to the practical, and decided to lay us down and
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>But, in the middle of the night I woke, rose, and looked out of the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>What a change! Sea and sky were one blackness, literally as "black as
+ink," and melting into one another so that both were undistinguishable.
+As for the moon and stars&mdash;heaven knows where they had gone to, for
+they seemed utterly blotted out. The only light visible was the ghostly
+gleam of those two great eyes, the Lizard Lights, stretching far out
+into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> the intense darkness. I never saw such darkness&mdash;unbroken even by
+the white crest of a wave. And the stillness was like the stillness of
+death, with a heavy weight in the air which made me involuntarily go
+to sleep again, though with an awed impression of "something going to
+happen."</p>
+
+<p>And sure enough in another hour something did happen. I started awake,
+feeling as if a volley of artillery had been poured in at my window.
+It was the wildest deluge of rain, beating against the panes, and with
+it came a wind that howled and shrieked round the house as if all the
+demons in Cornwall, Tregeagle himself included, were let loose at once.</p>
+
+<p>Now we understood what a Lizard storm could be. I have seen
+Mediterranean storms, sweeping across the Campagna like armed
+battalions of avenging angels, pouring out their vials of wrath&mdash;rain,
+hail, thunder, and lightning&mdash;unceasingly for two whole days. I have
+been in Highland storms, so furious that one had to sit down in the
+middle of the road with one's plaid over one's head, till the worst of
+their rage was spent. But I never saw or heard anything more awful than
+this Lizard storm, to which I lay and listened till the day began to
+dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Then the wind lulled a little, but the rain still fell in torrents,
+and the sky and sea were as black as ever. The weather had evidently
+broken for good&mdash;that is, for evil. Alas! the harvest, and the harvest
+festival! And alas&mdash;of minor importance, but still some, to us at
+least&mdash;alas for our holiday in Cornwall! Only four days, and&mdash;this!</p>
+
+<p>It was with a heavy heart that, feeling there was not the slightest use
+in getting up, I turned round and took another sleep.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_FIFTH" id="DAY_THE_FIFTH">DAY THE FIFTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">"Hope</span> for the best, and be prepared for the worst," had been the motto
+of our journey. So when we rose to one of the wettest mornings that
+ever came out of the sky, there was a certain satisfaction in being
+prepared for it.</p>
+
+<p>"We must have a fire, that is certain," was our first decision. This
+entailed the abolition of our beautiful decorations&mdash;our sea-holly
+and ferns; also some anxious looks from our handmaiden. Apparently no
+fire, had been lit in this rather despised room for many months&mdash;years
+perhaps&mdash;and the chimney rather resented being used. A few agonised
+down-puffs greatly interfered with the comfort of the breakfast table,
+and an insane attempt to open the windows made matters worse.</p>
+
+<p>Which was most preferable&mdash;to be stifled or deluged? We were just
+considering the question, when the chimney took a new and kinder
+thought, or the wind took a turn&mdash;it seemed to blow alternately from
+every quarter, and then from all quarters at once&mdash;the smoke went up
+straight, the room grew warm and bright, with the cosy peace of the
+first fire of the season. Existence became once more endurable, nay,
+pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall survive, spite of the rain!" And we began to laugh over our
+lost day which we had meant to begin by bathing in Housel Cove; truly,
+just to stand outside the door would give an admirable douche bath in
+three minutes. "But how nice it is to be inside, with a roof over our
+heads, and no necessity for travelling. Fancy the unfortunate tourists
+who have fixed on to-day for visiting the Lizard!" (Charles had told us
+that Monday was a favourite day for excursions.) "Fancy anybody being
+obliged to go out such weather as this!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And in our deep pity for our fellow-creatures we forgot to pity
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was there much pity needed; we had provided against emergencies,
+with a good store of needlework and knitting, anything that would
+pack in small compass, also a stock of unquestionably "light"
+literature&mdash;paper-covered, double-columned, sixpenny volumes, inclosing
+an amount of enjoyment which those only can understand who are true
+lovers of Walter Scott. We had enough of him to last for a week of wet
+days. And we had a one-volume Tennyson, all complete, and a "Morte
+d'Arthur"&mdash;Sir Thomas Malory's. On this literary provender we felt that
+as yet we should not starve.</p>
+
+<p>Also, some little fingers having a trifling turn for art, brought out
+triumphantly a colour-box, pencils, and pictures. And the wall-paper
+being one of the very ugliest that ever eye beheld, we sought and
+obtained permission to adorn it with these, our <i>chefs-d'&oelig;uvre</i>,
+pasted at regular intervals. Where we hope they still remain, for the
+edification of succeeding lodgers.</p>
+
+<p>We read the "Idylls of the King" all through, finishing with "The
+Passing of Arthur," where the "bold Sir Bedivere" threw Excalibur into
+the mere&mdash;which is supposed to be Dozmare Pool. Here King Arthur's
+faithful lover was so melted&mdash;for the hundredth time&mdash;by the pathos
+of the story, and by many old associations, that the younger and
+more practical minds grew scornful, and declared that probably King
+Arthur had never existed at all&mdash;or if he had, was nothing but a rough
+barbarian, unlike even the hero of Sir Thomas Malory, and far more
+unlike the noble modern gentleman of Tennyson's verse. Maybe: and yet,
+seeing that</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"'Tis better to have loved and lost</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Than never to have loved at all,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>may it not be better to have believed in an impossible ideal man, than
+to accept contentedly a low ideal, and worship blindly the worldly, the
+mean, or the base?</p>
+
+<p>This topic furnished matter for so much hot argument, that, besides
+doing a quantity of needlework, we succeeded in making our one wet day
+by no means the least amusing of our seventeen days in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="LINES" id="LINES"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 444px;">
+<img src="images/067.jpg" width="444" height="600" alt="HAULING IN THE LINES." />
+<div class="caption">HAULING IN THE LINES.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hour after hour we watched the rain&mdash;an even down-pour. In the midst
+of it we heard a rumour that Charles had been seen about the town, and
+soon after he appeared at the door, hat in hand, soaked but smiling,
+to inquire for and sympathise with his ladies. Yes, he <i>had</i> brought a
+party to the Lizard that day!&mdash;unfortunate souls (or bodies), for there
+could not have been a dry thread left on them! We gathered closer round
+our cosy fire; ate our simple dinner with keen enjoyment, and agreed
+that after all we had much to be thankful for.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>In the afternoon the storm abated a little, and we thought we would
+seize the chance of doing some shopping, if there was a shop in Lizard
+Town. So we walked&mdash;I ought rather to say waded, for the road was
+literally swimming&mdash;meeting not one living creature, except a family of
+young ducks, who, I need scarcely say, were enjoying supreme felicity.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ladies, this is the sort of weather we have pretty well all
+winter. Very little frost or snow, but rain and storm, and plenty of
+it. Also fogs; I've heard there's nothing anywhere like the fogs at the
+Lizard."</p>
+
+<p>So said the woman at the post-office, which, except the serpentine
+shops, seemed to be the one emporium of commerce in the place. There we
+could get all we wanted, and a good deal that we were very thankful we
+did not want, of eatables, drinkables, and wearables. Also ornaments,
+china vases, &amp;c., of a kind that would have driven frantic any person
+of æsthetic tastes. Among them an active young Cornishman of about a
+year old was meandering aimlessly, or with aims equally destructive
+to himself and the community. He all but succeeded in bringing down a
+row of plates upon his devoted head, and then tied himself up, one fat
+finger after another, in a ball of twine, upon which he began to howl
+violently.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a regular little trial," said the young mother proudly. "He's
+only sixteen months old, and yet he's up to all sorts of mischief. I
+don't know what in the world I shall do with he, presently. Naughty
+boy!" with a delighted scowl.</p>
+
+<p>"Not naughty, only active," suggested another maternal spirit, and
+pleaded that the young jackanapes should be found something to do that
+was not mischief, but yet would occupy his energies, and fill his mind.
+At which, the bright bold face looked up as if he had understood it
+all&mdash;an absolutely fearless face, brimming with fun, and shrewdness
+too. Who knows? The "regular little trial" may grow into a valuable
+member of society&mdash;fisherman, sailor, coastguardman&mdash;daring and doing
+heroic deeds;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> perhaps saving many a life on nights such as last night,
+which had taught us what Cornish coast-life was all winter through.</p>
+
+<p>The storm was now gradually abating; the wind had lulled entirely, the
+rain had ceased, and by sunset a broad yellow streak all along the west
+implied that it might possibly be a fine day to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>But the lane was almost a river still, and the slippery altitudes of
+the "hedges" were anything but desirable. As the only possible place
+for a walk I ventured into a field where two or three cows cropped
+their supper of damp grass round one of those green hillocks seen in
+every Cornish pasture field&mdash;a manure heap planted with cabbages, which
+grow there with a luxuriance that turns ugliness into positive beauty.
+Very dreary everything was&mdash;the soaking grass, the leaden sky, the
+angry-looking sea, over which a rainy moon was just beginning to throw
+a faint glimmer; while shorewards one could just trace the outline of
+Lizard Point and the wheat-field behind it. Yesterday those fields had
+looked so sunshiny and fair, but to-night they were all dull and grey,
+with rows of black dots indicating the soppy, sodden harvest sheaves.</p>
+
+<p>Which reminded me that to-morrow was the harvest festival at
+Landewednack, when all the world and his wife was invited by shilling
+tickets to have tea in the rectory garden, and afterwards to assist at
+the evening thanksgiving service in the church.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanksgiving! What for?" some poor farmer might well exclaim,
+especially on such a day as this. Some harvest festivals must
+occasionally seem a bitter mockery. Indeed, I doubt if the next
+generation will not be wise in taking our "Prayers for Rain,"
+"Prayers for Fair Weather," clean out of the liturgy. Such conceited
+intermeddling with the government of the world sounds to some
+ridiculous, to others actually profane. "Snow and hail, mists and
+vapours, wind and storm, fulfilling His Word." And it must be
+fulfilled, no matter at what cost to individuals or to nations. The
+laws of the universe must be carried out, even though the mystery
+of sorrow, like the still greater mystery of evil, remains for ever
+unexplained. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"</p>
+
+<p>And how right is His right! How marvellously beautiful He can make this
+world! until we can hardly imagine anything more beautiful in the world
+everlasting. Ay, even after such a day as to-day, when the world seems
+hardly worth living in, yet we live on, live to wake up unto such a
+to-morrow&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But I must wait to speak of it in another page.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_SIXTH" id="DAY_THE_SIXTH">DAY THE SIXTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">And</span> a day absolutely divine! Not a cloud upon the sky, not a ripple
+upon the water, or it appeared so in the distance. Nearer, no doubt,
+there would have been that heavy ground-swell which is so long in
+subsiding, in fact is scarcely ever absent on this coast. The land,
+like the sea, was all one smile; the pasture fields shone in brilliant
+green, the cornfields gleaming yellow&mdash;at once a beauty and a
+thanksgiving.</p>
+
+<p>It was the very perfection of an autumn morning. We would not lose
+an hour of it, but directly after breakfast started leisurely to
+find Housel Cove and try our first experiment of bathing in the wide
+Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>The Atlantic it certainly was. Not a rood of land lay between us and
+America. Yet the illimitable ocean "where the great ships go down,"
+rolled in to our feet in baby ripples, disporting itself harmlessly,
+and tempting my two little mermaids to swim out to the utmost limit
+that prudence allowed. And how delightful it was to run back barefoot
+across the soft sand to the beautiful dressing-room of serpentine
+rock, where one could sit and watch the glittering sea, untroubled by
+any company save the gulls and cormorants. What a contrast to other
+bathing places&mdash;genteel Eastbourne and Brighton, or vulgar Margate and
+Ramsgate, where, nevertheless, the good folks look equally happy. But
+our happiness! No words could describe it. Shall we stamp ourselves
+as persons of little mind, easily satisfied, if I confess that we
+spent the whole morning in Housel Cove without band or promenade,
+without even a Christy Minstrel or a Punch and Judy, our sole amusement
+being the vain attempt to catch a tiny fish, the Robinson Crusoe of
+a small pool in the rock above high-water mark, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> by some ill
+chance he found himself. But he looked extremely contented with his
+sea hermitage, and evaded so cleverly all our efforts to get hold of
+him, that after a while we left him to his solitude&mdash;where possibly he
+resides still.</p>
+
+<p><a name="LIGHTS" id="LIGHTS"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/072.jpg" width="600" height="413" alt="THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY." />
+<div class="caption">THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>How delicious it is for hard-worked people to do nothing, absolutely
+nothing! Of course only for a little while&mdash;a few days, a few hours.
+The love of work and the necessity for it soon revive. But just for
+those few harmless hours to let the world and its duties and cares
+alike slip by, to be absolutely idle, to fold one's hands and look
+at the sea and the sky, thinking of nothing at all, except perhaps
+to count and watch for every ninth wave&mdash;said to be the biggest
+always&mdash;and wonder how big it will be, and whether it will reach that
+stone with the little colony of limpets and two red anemones beside
+them, or stop short at the rock where we sit placidly dangling our
+feet, waiting, Canute-like, for the supreme moment when the will of
+humanity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> sinks conquered by the immutable powers of nature. Then,
+greatest crisis of all, the sea will attack that magnificent castle and
+moat, which we grown-up babies have constructed with such pride. Well,
+have we not all built our sand-castles and seen them swept away? happy
+if by no unkinder force than the remorseless wave of Time, which will
+soon flow over us all.</p>
+
+<p>But how foolish is moralising&mdash;making my narrative halt like that horse
+whom we amused ourselves with half the afternoon. He was tied by the
+leg, poor beast, the fore leg fastened to the hind one, as seemed to be
+the ordinary Cornish fashion with all animals&mdash;horses, cows, and sheep.
+It certainly saves a deal of trouble, preventing them from climbing the
+"hedges" which form the sole boundary of property, but it makes the
+creatures go limping about in rather a melancholy fashion. However,
+as it is their normal condition, probably they communicate it to one
+another, and each generation accepts its lot.</p>
+
+<p>This horse did. He was a handsome animal, who came and peered at
+the sketch which one of us was doing, after the solemn fashion of
+quadrupedal connoisseurship, and kept us company all the afternoon. We
+sat in a row on the top of the "hedge," enjoying the golden afternoon,
+and scarcely believing it possible that yesterday had been yesterday.
+Of the wild storm and deluge of rain there was not a single trace;
+everything looked as lovely as if it had been, and was going to be,
+summer all the year.</p>
+
+<p>We were so contented, and were making such progress in our sketch and
+distant view of Kynance over the now dry and smiling cornfield, that we
+had nigh forgotten the duties of civilisation, until some one brought
+the news that all the household was apparently dressing itself in its
+very best, to attend the rectory tea. We determined to do the same,
+though small were our possibilities of toilette.</p>
+
+<p>"But what does it matter?" argued we. "Nobody knows us, and we know
+nobody."</p>
+
+<p>A position rather rare to those who "dwell among their own people,"
+who take a kindly interest in everybody, and believe with a pardonable
+credulity that everybody takes a kindly interest in them.</p>
+
+<p>But human nature is the same all the world over. And here we saw it in
+its pleasantest phase; rich and poor meeting together, not for charity,
+but courtesy&mdash;a courtesy that was given with a kindliness and accepted
+with a quiet independence which seemed characteristic of these Cornish
+folk.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Among the little crowd, gentle and simple, we, of course, did not know
+a single soul. Nevertheless, delivering up our tickets to the gardener
+at the gate, we entered, and wandered at ease through the pretty
+garden, gorgeous with asters, marigolds, carnations, and all sorts of
+rich-coloured and rich-scented autumn flowers; where the hydrangeas
+grew in enormous bushes, and the fuchsias had stems as thick and solid
+as trees.</p>
+
+<p>In front of the open hall door was a gravel sweep where were ranged
+two long tea-tables filled with the humbler but respectable class of
+parishioners, chiefly elderly people, and some very old. The Lizard is
+a place noted for longevity, as is proved by the register books, where
+several deaths at over a hundred may be found recorded, and one&mdash;he was
+the rector of Landewednack in 1683&mdash;is said to have died at the age of
+120 years.</p>
+
+<p>The present rector is no such Methuselah. He moved actively to and fro
+among his people, and so did his wife, whom we should have recognised
+by her omnipresent kindliness, even if she had not come and welcomed
+us strangers&mdash;easily singled out as strangers, where all the rest were
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the poor and the aged, there was a goodly number of guests
+who were neither the one nor the other, playing energetically at
+lawn-tennis behind the house, on a "lawn" composed of sea-sand. All
+seemed determined to amuse themselves and everybody else, and all did
+their very best&mdash;including the band.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, that band! I would fain pass it over in silence (would it
+had returned the compliment!); but truth is truth, and may benefit
+rather than harm. The calm composure with which those half-dozen
+wind-instruments sat in a row, playing determinedly flat, bass coming
+in with a tremendous boom here and there, entirely at his own volition,
+without regard to time or tune, was the most awful thing I ever heard
+in music! Agony, pure and simple, was the only sensation it produced.
+When they struck up, we just ran away till the tune was ended&mdash;what
+tune, familiar or unfamiliar, it was impossible to say. Between us
+three, all blessed, or cursed, with musical ears, there existed such
+difference of opinion on this head, that decision became vain. And
+when at last, as the hour of service approached, little groups began
+strolling towards the church, the musicians began a final "God save the
+Queen," barely recognisable, a feeling of thankfulness was the only
+sensation left.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><a name="DAUGHTER" id="DAUGHTER"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 459px;">
+<img src="images/075.jpg" width="459" height="600" alt="THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER&mdash;A CORNISH STUDY." />
+<div class="caption">THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER&mdash;A CORNISH STUDY.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+
+<p>Now, let me not be hard upon these village Orpheuses. They did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> their
+best, and for a working man to study music in any form is a good and
+desirable thing. But whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing
+well. The great bane of provincial life is that people have so few
+opportunities of finding out when they do <i>not</i> do things well, and so
+little ambition to learn to do them better. If these few severe remarks
+should spur on that anonymous band to try and emulate the Philharmonic
+or the Crystal Palace orchestra, it will be all the better for the
+little community at the Lizard.</p>
+
+<p>The music in the church was beautiful. A crowded congregation&mdash;not a
+seat vacant&mdash;listened to the excellent chanting, hymns, and a harvest
+anthem, most accurately and correctly sung. The organist too&mdash;it was
+a pleasure to watch that young man's face and see with what interest
+and enthusiasm he entered into it all. Besides the rector, there were
+several other clergymen, one of whom, an old man, read the prayers
+with an intonation and expression which I have rarely heard equalled,
+and another preached what would have been called anywhere a thoroughly
+good sermon. All the statelier guests at the Rectory tea&mdash;probably
+county families (one stout lady had the dignity of a duchess at
+least)&mdash;"assisted" at this evening service, and behind them was a
+throng of humbler folk, among whom we recognised our sole friend here,
+John Curgenven. We had passed him at the church door, and he had lifted
+his hat with the air of a <i>preux chevalier</i> of the olden time; "more
+like King Arthur than ever"&mdash;we observed to one another.</p>
+
+<p>He, and we, and the aristocratic groups, with a few more of the
+congregation, lingered for several minutes after service was over,
+admiring the beautiful flowers and fruit. I think I never saw any
+decorations so rich or so tasteful. And then, as the organ played us
+out with an exceedingly brilliant voluntary, the vision of light and
+colour melted away, and we came out upon the quiet churchyard, lying in
+the cold, still moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>But what a moonlight! Clear as day, the round silver orb sailing
+through a cloudless sky of that deep dark which we know is blue, only
+moonlight shows no colours. Oh, Lady Moon, Lady Moon, what a dangerous
+night for some of those groups to go walking home in! We saw them in
+twos and threes, various young people whom we had got to know by sight,
+and criticise, and take an interest in, wandering slowly on through
+Lizard Town, and then diverging into quieter paths.</p>
+
+<p>As we gladly did too. For there, in an open space near the two hotels<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+which co-exist close together&mdash;I hope amicably, and divide the tourist
+custom of the place&mdash;in front of a row of open windows which showed the
+remains of a <i>table d'hôte</i>, and playing lively tunes to a group of
+delighted listeners, including some children, who had struck up a merry
+dance&mdash;stood that terrible wind band!</p>
+
+<p>It was too much! All our sympathy with our fellow-creatures, our
+pleasure in watching them enjoy themselves, our interest in studying
+human nature in the abstract, nay, even the picturesqueness of the
+charming moonlight scene, could not tempt us to stay. We paused a
+minute, then put our fingers in our ears and fled. Gradually those
+fearful sounds melted away into distance, and left us to the silence of
+moonshine, and the sight, now grown familiar, but never less beautiful,
+of the far-gleaming Lizard Lights.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_SEVENTH" id="DAY_THE_SEVENTH">DAY THE SEVENTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">John</span> Curgenven had said last night, with his air of tender patronising,
+half regal, half paternal, which we declared always reminded us of King
+Arthur&mdash;"Ladies, whenever you settle to go to Kynance, I'll take you."</p>
+
+<p>And sure enough there he stood, at eight in the morning, quite a
+picture, his cap in one hand, a couple of fishes dangling from the
+other&mdash;he had brought them as a present, and absolutely refused to be
+paid&mdash;smiling upon us at our breakfast, as benignly as did the sun. He
+came to say that he was at our service till 10 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>; when he
+had an engagement.</p>
+
+<p>Our countenances fell. We did not like venturing in strange and
+dangerous ground, or rather sea, without our protector. But this was
+our last chance, and such a lovely day.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't come to any harm, ladies," said the consoling John. "I'll
+take you by a short cut across the down, much better than the cliff.
+You can't possibly miss your way: it'll lead you straight to Kynance,
+and then you go down a steep path to the Cove. You'll have plenty of
+time before the tide comes in to see everything."</p>
+
+<p>"And to bathe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, miss, there's the Drawing-room, the Dining-room, and the
+Kitchen&mdash;all capital caves close together; I wouldn't advise you to
+swim out far, though. And keep a sharp look out for the tide&mdash;it runs
+in pretty fast."</p>
+
+<p>"And the scrambling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you can easy get on Asparagus Island, miss; it's quite safe. Only
+don't try the Devil's Throat&mdash;or Hell's Mouth, as some folk call it."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Neither name was inviting; but studying our guide-books, we thought we
+could manage even without our friend. So, long ere the dew was dried on
+the sunshiny down, we all started off together, Curgenven slackening
+his quick active steps&mdash;very light and most enviably active for a man
+of his years&mdash;to accommodate us, and conversing courteously with us all
+the way.</p>
+
+<p><a name="KYNANCE" id="KYNANCE"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/080.jpg" width="600" height="380" alt="KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL." />
+<div class="caption">KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Ower the muir amang the heather" have I tramped many a mile in
+bonnie Scotland, but this Cornish moor and Cornish heather were quite
+different. As different as the Cornishman with his bright, frank face,
+and his mixture of British honesty and Gallic courtesy, from the Scotch
+peasant&mdash;equally worthy, but sometimes just a trifle "dour."</p>
+
+<p>John had plenty to say for himself, and said it well, with a quiet
+independence that there was no mistaking; never forgetting meanwhile to
+stop and offer a helping hand over every bit of rough road, puddle, or
+bog. He gave us a vivid picture of winter life at the Lizard: when the
+little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> community has to hybernate, like the squirrels and field-mice,
+upon its summer savings.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes we don't earn a halfpenny for weeks and months, and then if
+we've got nothing to fall back upon it's a bad job, you see, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>I asked him if much money went for drink; they seemed to me a
+remarkably sober set at the Lizard.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think we are; we're obliged to be; we can't spend money at the
+public-house, for we've got none to spend. I'm no teetotaller myself,"
+added John boldly. "I don't dislike a glass of beer now and then, if I
+can afford it, and when I can't afford it I can do without it, and if I
+do take it I always know when to stop."</p>
+
+<p>Ay, that is the crucial test&mdash;the knowing when to stop. It is this
+which makes all the difference between a good man and a villain, a wise
+man and a fool. Self-control&mdash;a quality which, guided by conscience and
+common sense, is the best possession of any human being. And looking at
+the honest fisherman, one felt pretty sure he had his share of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I must leave you, ladies," said he, a great deal sooner than we
+wished, for we much liked talking to him. "My time's nearly up, and I
+mustn't keep my gentleman waiting; he goes out in my boat every day,
+and has been a good friend to me. The road's straight before you,
+ladies; and there's another party just ahead of you. Follow the track,
+and you'll soon be at Kynance. It's a lovely day for the Cove, and I
+hope you'll enjoy yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>John bared his grey head, with a salutation worthy of some old knight
+of the Round Table, and then strode back, in double-quick time, as
+active and upright as any young fellow of twenty-five, across the level
+down.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful Kynance! When, afterwards, I stood one dull winter day
+in a London Art Gallery, opposite the <i>Cornish Lions</i>, how well I
+recalled this day! How truly Brett's picture gives the long roll of
+the wave upon the silver sands, the richly-tinted rocks and caves, the
+brightness and freshness of everything. And those merry girls beside
+me, who had the faculty of enjoying all they had, and all they did,
+without regretting what they had not or what they might not do&mdash;with
+heroic resignation they promised not to attempt to swim in the tempting
+smooth water beyond the long rollers. Though knocked down again and
+again, they always emerged from the waves with shouts of laughter. Mere
+dots they looked to my anxious eyes&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> couple of corks tossed hither
+and thither on the foaming billows&mdash;and very thankful I was to get them
+safe back into the "drawing-room," the loveliest of lovely caves.</p>
+
+<p>There was no time to lose; by noon our parlour floor&mdash;what a fairy
+floor it was! of the softest, most delicious sand&mdash;would be all covered
+with waves. And before then there was a deal to be seen and done, the
+Bellows, the Gull Rock, Asparagus Island&mdash;even if we left out the
+dangerous points with the ugly names that Curgenven had warned us
+against.</p>
+
+<p>What is there in humanity, certainly in youthful humanity, that if
+it can attain its end in two ways, one quiet and decorous, the other
+difficult and dangerous, is certain to choose the latter?</p>
+
+<p>"We must manage to get you to the Bellows, it is such a curious sight,"
+said my girls as they returned from it. "Don't be frightened&mdash;come
+along!"</p>
+
+<p>By dint of pulling, pushing, and the help of stick and arm, I came:
+stood watching the spout of water which, in certain conditions of the
+tide, forces itself through a tiny fissure in the rock with a great
+roar, and joined in the childish delight of waiting, minute by minute,
+for the biggest spout, the loudest roar.</p>
+
+<p>But Asparagus Island (where was no asparagus at all) I totally
+declined. Not being a goat or a chamois, I contented myself with
+sitting where I could gain the best view of the almost invisible
+path by which my adventurous young "kids" disappeared. Happily they
+had both steady heads and cool nerves; they were neither rash nor
+unconscientious. I knew they would come back as soon as they could. So
+I waited patiently, contemplating a fellow-victim who seemed worse off
+than myself; a benign-looking clergyman, who kept walking up and down
+the soppy sands, and shouting at intervals to two young people, a man
+and a woman, who appeared to be crawling like flies along the face of
+the rock towards another rock, with a yawning cave and a wide fissure
+between.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't attempt it!" the clergyman cried at the top of his voice.
+"That's the Devil's Throat. She'll never manage it. Come down. Do make
+her come down."</p>
+
+<p>"Your young people seem rather venturesome," said I sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p><a name="STEEPLE" id="STEEPLE"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 390px;">
+<img src="images/083.jpg" width="390" height="600" alt="THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE." />
+<div class="caption">THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Not <i>my</i> young people," was the dignified answer. "My girls are up
+there, on Asparagus Rock, which is easy enough climbing. They promised<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+not to go farther, and they never disobey their mother and me. But
+those two! I declare he is taking her to the most dangerous part, that
+rock where you have to jump&mdash;a good jump it is, and if you miss your
+footing you are done for, you go right into the boiling waves below.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+Well, it's no business of mine; she is his own property; he is engaged
+to her, but"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I fear I made some very severe remarks on the folly of a young man who
+could thus risk life and limbs&mdash;not only his own, but those of his wife
+to be; and on the weakness of a girl who could allow herself to be
+tempted, even by a lover, into such selfish foolhardiness.</p>
+
+<p>"They must manage their own affairs," said the old gentleman
+sententiously, perhaps not being so much given to preaching (out of the
+pulpit) as I was. "My daughters are wiser. Here come two of them."</p>
+
+<p>And very sensible girls they looked, clad in a practical, convenient
+fashion, just fitted for scrambling. By them I sent a message to my own
+girls, explaining the best descent from Asparagus Island, and repeating
+the warning against attempting Hell's Mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are quite right," said my elderly friend, as we sat down
+together on the least uncomfortable stone we could find, and watched
+the juniors disappear over the rocks. "I like to see girls active and
+brave; I never hinder them in any reasonable enjoyment, even though
+there may be risk in it&mdash;one must run some risk&mdash;and a woman may
+have to save life as well as a man. But foolhardy bravado I not only
+dislike&mdash;I <i>despise</i> it."</p>
+
+<p>In which sentiments I so entirely agreed that we fraternised there
+and then; began talking on all sorts of subjects&mdash;some of them the
+very serious and earnest subjects that one occasionally drops into by
+mere chance, with mere strangers. I recall that half hour on Kynance
+Sands as one of the pleasant memories of our tour, though to this day
+I have not the remotest idea who my companion was. Except that as soon
+as he spoke I recognised the reader whose voice had so struck me in
+last night's thanksgiving service; reminding me of Frederick Denison
+Maurice, whom this generation is almost beginning to forget, but whom
+we elders never can forget.</p>
+
+<p>The tide was creeping on now&mdash;nay, striding, wave after wave, through
+"parlour" and "drawing-room," making ingress and egress alike
+impossible. In fact, a newly arrived party of tourists, who had stood
+unwisely long contemplating the Bellows, were seen to gaze in despair
+from their rock which had suddenly become an island. No chance for them
+except to wade&mdash;and in a few minutes more they would probably have
+to swim<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> ashore. What became of them we did not stay to see, for an
+anxious, prudent little voice, always thoughtful for "mother," insisted
+on our precipitate flight before the advancing tide. Kynance, lovely as
+it is, has its inconveniences.</p>
+
+<p>Departing, we met a whole string of tourist-looking people, whom we
+benevolently warned that they were too late, at which they did not
+seem in the least disappointed. Probably they were one of the numerous
+pic-nic parties who come here from Falmouth or Helstone, to spend a
+jovial day of eating and drinking, and enjoy the delights of the flesh
+rather than the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate the romance and solitude of the place were gone. The quaint
+old woman at the serpentine shop&mdash;a mild little wooden erection under
+the cliff&mdash;was being chaffed and bargained with by three youths with
+cigars, which defiled the whole air around, and made us take refuge up
+the hill. But even there a white umbrella had sprung up like a gigantic
+mushroom, and under it sat an energetic lady artist, who, entering at
+once into conversation, with a cheerful avidity that implied her not
+having talked for a week, informed us of all she was painting, and all
+she had meant to paint, where she lodged, and how much she paid for her
+lodging&mdash;evidently expecting the same confidences from us in return.</p>
+
+<p>But we were getting hungry, and between us and dinner was a long
+two-miles walk over the steep downs, that were glowing, nay, burning,
+under the September sun. So we turned homeward, glad of more than one
+rest by the way, and a long pause beside a pretty little stream; where
+we were able to offer the immemorial cup of cold water to several
+thirsty souls besides ourselves. Some of us by this time were getting
+to feel not so young as we had fancied ourselves in the early morning,
+and to wish regretfully for Charles and his carriage.</p>
+
+<p>However, we got home at last&mdash;to find that sad accompaniment of many a
+holiday&mdash;tidings of sickness and death. Nothing very near us&mdash;nothing
+that need hurry us home&mdash;but enough to sadden us, and make our evening
+walk, which we bravely carried out, a far less bright one than that of
+the forenoon.</p>
+
+<p>The girls had found a way, chiefly on the tops of "hedges," to the
+grand rock called Lizard Point. Thither we went, and watched the
+sunset&mdash;a very fine one; then came back through the village, and made
+various<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> purchases of serpentine from John Curgenven's wife, who was
+a great deal younger than himself, but not near so handsome or so
+original.</p>
+
+<p>But a cloud had come over us; it did not, and must not stay&mdash;still,
+there it was for the time. When the last thing at night I went out into
+the glorious moonlight&mdash;bright as day&mdash;and thought of the soul who had
+just passed out of a long and troubled life into the clearness of life
+eternal, it seemed as if all was right still. Small cares and worries
+dwindled down or melted away&mdash;as the petty uglinesses around melted
+in the radiance of this glorious harvest moon, which seemed to wrap
+one round in a silent peace, like the "garment of praise," which David
+speaks about&mdash;in exchange for "the spirit of heaviness."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_EIGHTH" id="DAY_THE_EIGHTH">DAY THE EIGHTH</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">And</span> seven days were all we could allow ourselves at the Lizard, if we
+meant to see the rest of Cornwall. We began to reckon with sore hearts
+that five days were already gone, and it seemed as if we had not seen
+half we ought to see, even of our near surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>"We will take no excursion to-day. We will just have our bath at Housel
+Cove and then we will wander about the shore, and examine the Lizard
+Lights. Only fancy, our going away to-morrow without having seen the
+inside of the Lizard Lights! Oh, I wish we were not leaving so soon. We
+shall never like any place as we like the Lizard."</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed very delightful. Directly after breakfast&mdash;and we are
+people who never vary from our eight o'clock breakfast, so that we
+always see the world in its early morning brightness and freshness&mdash;we
+went</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Brushing with hasty steps the dew away,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>along the fields, which led down to Housel or Househole Cove. Before
+us, clear in the sunshine, rose the fine headland of Penolver, and
+the green slopes of the amphitheatre of Belidden, supposed to be the
+remains of a Druidical temple. That, and the chair of Belidden, a
+recess in the rock, whence there is a splendid view, with various
+archæological curiosities, true or traditionary, we ought to have
+examined, I know. But&mdash;we didn't do it. Some of us were content to
+rejoice in the general atmosphere of beauty and peace without minute
+investigation, and some of us were so eminently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> practical that "a good
+bathe" appeared more important than all the poetry and archæology in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>So we wandered slowly on, rejoicing at having the place all to
+ourselves, when we came suddenly upon a tall black figure intently
+watching three other black figures, or rather dots, which were climbing
+slowly over Penolver.</p>
+
+<p>It was our clerical friend of Kynance; with whom, in the natural and
+right civility of holiday-makers, we exchanged a courteous good morning.</p>
+
+<p><a name="LION" id="LION"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/088.jpg" width="600" height="430" alt="THE LION ROCKS" />
+<div class="caption">THE LION ROCKS&mdash;A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Yes, those are my girls up on the cliff there. They have been bathing,
+and are now going to walk to Cadgwith."</p>
+
+<p>"Then nobody fell into the Devil's Throat at Kynance? They all came
+back to you with whole limbs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he smiling, "and they went again for another long walk
+in the afternoon. At night, when it turned out to be such splendid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+moonlight, they actually insisted on going launce-fishing. Of course
+you know about launce-fishing?"</p>
+
+<p>I pleaded my utter ignorance of that noble sport.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it is <i>the</i> thing at the Lizard. My boys&mdash;and girls too&mdash;consider
+it the best fun going. The launce is a sort of sand-eel peculiar to
+these coasts. It swims about all day, and at night burrows in the sand
+just above the waterline, where, when the moon shines on it, you can
+trace the silvery gleam of the creature. So you stand up to your ankles
+on wet sand, with a crooked iron spear which you dart in and hook him
+up, keeping your left hand free to seize him with."</p>
+
+<p>"Easy fishing," said I, with a certain pity for the sand-eel.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so easy as appears. You are apt either to chop him right in
+two, or miss him altogether, when off he wriggles in the sand and
+disappears. My young people say it requires a practised hand and a
+peculiar twist of the wrist, to have any success at all in launce
+fishing. It can only be done on moonlight nights&mdash;the full moon and
+a day or two after&mdash;and they are out half the night. They go about
+barefoot, which is much safer than soaked shoes and stockings. About
+midnight they light a fire on the sand, cook all the fish they have
+caught, and have a grand supper, as they had last night. They came home
+as merry as crickets about two o'clock this morning. Perhaps you might
+not have noticed what a wonderful moonlight night it was?"</p>
+
+<p>I had; but it would not have occurred to me to spend it in standing for
+hours up to the knees in salt water, catching unfortunate fish.</p>
+
+<p>However, tastes differ, and launce-fishing may be a prime delight to
+some people; so I faithfully chronicle it, and the proper mode of
+pursuing it, as one of the attractions at the Lizard. I am not aware
+that it is practised at any other part of the Cornish coast, nor can
+I say whether or not it was a pastime of King Arthur and his Knights.
+One cannot imagine Sir Tristram or Sir Launcelot occupied in spearing a
+small sand-eel.</p>
+
+<p>The bathing at Housel Cove was delightful as ever. And afterwards we
+saw that very rare and beautiful sight, a perfect solar rainbow. Not
+the familiar bow of Noah, but a great luminous circle round the sun,
+like the halo often seen round the moon, extending over half the sky;
+yellow at first, then gradually assuming faint prismatic tints. This
+colouring, though never so bright as the ordinary arched rainbow, was
+wonderfully tender and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> delicate. We stood a long time watching it,
+till at last it melted slowly out of the sky, leaving behind a sense of
+mystery, as of something we had never seen before and might never see
+again in all our lives.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely day, bright and warm as midsummer, tempting us to some
+distant excursion; but we had decided to investigate the Lizard Lights.
+We should have been content to take them for granted, in their purely
+poetical phase, as we had watched them night after night. But some of
+us were blessed with scientific relatives, who would have despised us
+utterly if we had spent a whole week at the Lizard and never gone to
+see the Lizard Lights. So we felt bound to do our duty, and admire, if
+we could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>Which we certainly did not. I chronicle with shame that the careful and
+courteous explanations of that most intelligent young man, who met us
+at the door of the huge white building, apparently quite glad to have
+an opportunity of conducting us through it, were entirely thrown away.
+We mounted ladders, we looked at Brobdingnagian lamps, we poked into
+mysterious machinery for lighting them and for sounding the fog-horn,
+we listened to all that was told us, and tried to look as if we took it
+in. Very much interested we could not but be at such wonderful results
+of man's invention, but as for comprehending! we came away with our
+minds as dark as when we went in.</p>
+
+<p>I have always found through life that, next to being clever, the safest
+thing is to know one's own ignorance and acknowledge it. Therefore let
+me leave all description of the astonishing mechanism of the Lizard
+Lights&mdash;I believe the first experiment of their kind, and not very
+long established&mdash;to abler pens and more intelligent brains. To see
+that young man, scarcely above the grade of a working man, handling
+his instruments and explaining them and their uses, seeming to take
+for granted that we could understand&mdash;which alas! we didn't, not
+an atom!&mdash;inspired me with a sense of humiliation and awe. Also of
+pride at the wonders this generation has accomplished, and is still
+accomplishing; employing the gradually comprehended forces of Nature
+against herself, as it were, and dominating her evil by ever-new
+discoveries and applications of the recondite powers of good.</p>
+
+<p>The enormous body of light produced nightly&mdash;equal, I think he said,
+to 30,000 candles&mdash;and the complicated machinery for keeping the
+fog-horn continually at work, when even that gigantic blaze became
+invisible&mdash;all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> this amount of skill, science, labour, and money,
+freely expended for the saving of life, gave one a strong impression of
+not only British power but British beneficence. Could King Arthur have
+come back again from his sea-engulfed Land of Lyonesse, and stood where
+we stood, beside the Lizard Lights, what would he have said to it all?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="BOATS" id="BOATS"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/091.jpg" width="600" height="473" alt="HAULING IN THE BOATS." />
+<div class="caption">HAULING IN THE BOATS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Even though we did not understand, we were keenly interested in all we
+saw, and still more so in the stories of wrecks which this young man
+had witnessed even during the few years, or months&mdash;I forget which&mdash;of
+his stay at the Lizard. He, too, agreed, that the rocks there, called
+by the generic name of the Stags, were the most fatal of all on our
+coasts to ships outward and homeward bound. Probably because in the
+latter case, captain and crews get a trifle careless; and in the
+former&mdash;as I have heard in sad explanation of many emigrant ships being
+lost almost immediately after quitting port&mdash;they get drunk. Many of
+the sailors are said to come on board "half-seas over," and could the
+skilfullest of pilots save a ship with a drunken crew?</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, the fact remains, that throughout winter almost
+every week's chronicle at the Lizard is the same story&mdash;wild storms, or
+dense fogs, guns of distress heard, a hasty manning of the life-boat,
+dragged with difficulty down the steep cliff-road, a brief struggle
+with the awful sea, and then, even if a few lives are saved, with the
+ship herself all is over.</p>
+
+<p>"Only last Christmas I saw a vessel go to pieces in ten minutes on the
+rocks below there," said the man, after particularising several wrecks,
+which seemed to have imprinted themselves on his memory with all their
+incidents. "Yes, we have a bad time in winter, and the coastguard
+men lead a risky life. They are the picked men of the service, and
+tolerably well paid, but no money could ever pay them for what they go
+through&mdash;or the fishermen, who generally are volunteers, and get little
+or nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be a hard life in these parts, especially in winter," we
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps it is, but it's our business, you see."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, but not all people do their business, as the mismanagements and
+mistakes of this world plainly show.</p>
+
+<p>Still, it is a good world, and we felt it so as we strolled along the
+sunshiny cliff, talking over all these stories, tragical or heroic,
+which had been told us in such a simple matter-of-fact way, as if they
+were every-day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> occurrences. And then, while the young folks went on
+"for a good scramble" over Penolver, I sat down for a quiet "think";
+that enforced rest, which, as years advance, becomes not painful, but
+actually pleasant; in which, if one fails to solve the problems of the
+universe, one is prone to con them over, wondering at them all.</p>
+
+<p>From the sunny sea and sunny sky, full of a silence so complete that I
+could hear every wave as it broke on the unseen rocks below, my mind
+wandered to that young fellow among his machinery, with his sickly
+eager face and his short cough&mdash;indicating that <i>his</i> "business" in
+this world, over which he seemed so engrossed, might only too soon
+come to an end. Between these apparently eternal powers of Nature,
+so strong, so fierce, so irresistible, against which man fought so
+magnificently with all his perfection of scientific knowledge and
+accuracy of handiwork&mdash;and this poor frail human life, which in a
+moment might be blown out like a candle, suddenly quenched in darkness,
+"there is no skill or knowledge in the grave whither thou goest"&mdash;what
+a contrast it was!</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;and yet?&mdash;We shall sleep with our fathers, and some of us feel
+sometimes so tired that we do not in the least mind going to sleep. But
+notwithstanding this, notwithstanding everything without that seems to
+imply our perishableness, we are conscious of something within which
+is absolutely imperishable. We feel it only stronger and clearer as
+life begins to melt away from us; as "the lights in the windows are
+darkened, and the daughters of music are brought low." To the young,
+death is often a terror, for it seems to put an end to the full, rich,
+passionate life beyond which they can see nothing; but to the old,
+conscious that this their tabernacle is being slowly dissolved, and yet
+its mysterious inhabitant, the wonderful, incomprehensible <i>me</i>, is
+exactly the same&mdash;thinks, loves, suffers, and enjoys, precisely as it
+did heaven knows how many years ago&mdash;to them, death appears in quite
+another shape. He is no longer Death the Enemy, but Death the Friend,
+who may&mdash;who can tell?&mdash;give back all that life has denied or taken
+away. He cannot harm us, and he may bless us, with the blessing of
+loving children, who believe that, whatever happens, nothing can take
+them out of their Father's arms.</p>
+
+<p>But I had not come to Cornwall to preach, except to myself now and
+then, as this day. My silent sermon was all done by the time the
+young folks came back, full of the beauties of their cliff walk, and
+their affectionate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> regrets that I "could never manage it," but must
+have felt so dull, sitting on a stone and watching the sheep and the
+sea-gulls. Not at all! I was obliged to confess that I never am "dull,"
+as people call it, and love solitude almost as much as society.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ENYS" id="ENYS"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 485px;">
+<img src="images/095.jpg" width="485" height="600" alt="ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS." />
+<div class="caption">ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So, each contented in our own way, we went merrily home, to find
+waiting for us our cosy tea&mdash;the last!&mdash;and our faithful Charles, who,
+according to agreement, appeared overnight, to take charge of us till
+we got back to civilisation and railways.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ladies, here I am," said he with a beaming countenance. "And
+I've got you the same carriage and the same horse, as you wished, and
+I've come in time to give him a good night's rest. Now, when shall you
+start, and what do you want to do to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>Our idea had been to take for our next resting-place Marazion. This
+queer-named town had attracted us ever since the days when we learnt
+geography. Since, we had heard a good deal about it: how it had
+been inhabited by Jewish colonists, who bought tin from the early
+Ph&oelig;nician workers of the Cornish mines, and been called by them
+Mara-Zion&mdash;bitter Zion&mdash;corrupted by the common people into Market-Jew.
+It was a quiet place, with St. Michael's Mount opposite; and attracted
+us much more than genteel Penzance. So did a letter we got from the
+landlord of its one hotel, promising to take us in, and make us
+thoroughly comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Could we get there in one day? Charles declared we could, and even see
+a good deal on the road.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go round by Mullion. Mary will be delighted to get another
+peep at you ladies, and while I rest the horse you can go in and look
+at the old church&mdash;it's very curious, they say. And then we'll go on
+to Gunwalloe,&mdash;there's another church there, close by the sea, built
+by somebody who was shipwrecked. But then it's so old and so small.
+However, we can stop and look at it if you like."</p>
+
+<p>His good common sense, and kindliness, when he might so easily have
+done his mere duty and taken us the shortest and ugliest route, showing
+us nothing, decided us to leave all in Charles's hands, and start at
+10 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> for Penzance, <i>viâ</i> Helstone, where we all wished to
+stay an hour or two, and find out a "friend," the only one we had in
+Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>So all was settled, with but a single regret, that several boating
+excursions we had planned with John Curgenven had all fallen through,
+and we should never behold some wonderful sea-caves between the Lizard
+and Cadgwith, which we had set our hearts upon visiting.</p>
+
+<p>Charles fingered his cap with a thoughtful air. "I don't see why you
+shouldn't, ladies. If I was to go direct and tell John Curgenven to
+have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> a boat ready at Church Cove, and we was to start at nine instead
+of ten, and drive there, the carriage might wait while you rowed to
+the caves and back; we should still reach Helstone by dinner-time, and
+Marazion before dark."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll do it!" was the unanimous resolve. And at this addition to his
+work Charles looked actually pleased!</p>
+
+<p>So&mdash;all was soon over, our easy packing done, our bill paid&mdash;a very
+small one&mdash;our goodnights said to the kindly handmaid, Esther, who
+hoped we would come back again some time, and promised to keep the
+artistic mural decorations of our little parlour in memory of us. My
+young folks went to bed, and then, a little before midnight, when all
+the house was quiet, I put a shawl over my head, unlatched the innocent
+door&mdash;no bolts or bars at the Lizard&mdash;and went out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>What a night it was!&mdash;mild as summer, clear as day: the full moon
+sailing aloft in an absolutely cloudless sky. Not a breath, not a
+sound&mdash;except the faint thud-thud of the in-coming waves, two miles
+off, at Kynance, the outline of which, and of the whole coast, was
+distinctly visible. A silent earth, lying under a silent heaven.
+Looking up, one felt almost like a disembodied soul, free to cleave
+through infinite space and gain&mdash;what?</p>
+
+<p>Is it human or divine, this ceaseless longing after something never
+attained, this craving after the eternal life, which, if fully believed
+in, fully understood, would take all the bitterness out of this life?
+And yet, that knowledge is not given.</p>
+
+<p>But so much is given, and all given is so infinitely good, except where
+we ourselves turn it into evil, that surely more, and better, will be
+given to us by and by.</p>
+
+<p>And so, to bed&mdash;to bed! Those only truly enjoy life who fear not death:
+who can say of the grave as if it were their bed: "I will lay me down
+in peace and take my rest, for it is Thou only, O God, who makest me to
+dwell in safety."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_NINTH" id="DAY_THE_NINTH">DAY THE NINTH</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">And</span> our last at the Lizard, which a week ago had been to us a mere word
+or dot in a map; now we carried away from it a living human interest in
+everything and everybody.</p>
+
+<p>Esther bade us a cordial farewell: Mrs. Curgenven, standing at the
+door of her serpentine shop, repeated the good wishes, and informed
+us that John and his boat had already started for Church Cove. As we
+drove through the bright little Lizard Town, and past the Church of
+Landewednack, wondering if we should ever see either again, we felt
+quite sad.</p>
+
+<p>But sentimental considerations soon vanished in practical alarms.
+Leaving the carriage and Charles at the nearest point to the Cove, we
+went down the steep descent, and saw John rocking in his boat, and
+beckoning to us with a bland and smiling countenance. But between us
+and him lay a sort of causeway, of the very roughest rocks, slippery
+with sea-weed, and beat upon by waves&mdash;such waves! Yet clearly, if we
+meant to get into the boat at all, we must seize our opportunity and
+jump in between the flux and reflux of that advancing tide.</p>
+
+<p>I am not a coward: I love boats, and was well used to them in my youth,
+but now&mdash;my heart misgave me. There were but two alternatives&mdash;to
+stop the pleasure of the whole party, and leave Cornwall with these
+wonderful sea-caves unseen, or to let my children go alone. Neither was
+possible; so I hailed a sturdy youth at work hard by, and asked him if
+he would take charge of an old lady across the rocks. He grinned from
+ear to ear, but came forward, and did his duty manfully and kindly. My
+young folks, light as feathers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> bounded after; and with the help of
+John Curgenven, chivalrous and careful as ever, we soon found ourselves
+safely in the boat.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><a name="CURGENVEN" id="CURGENVEN"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 420px;">
+<img src="images/099.jpg" width="420" height="600" alt="JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING." />
+<div class="caption">JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Safe, but not quite happy. "Here we go up, up, up, and here we go down,
+down, down," was the principle of our voyage, the most serious one we
+ever took in an open boat with a single pair of oars. Never did I see
+such waves,&mdash;at least, never did I float upon them, in a boat that went
+tossing like a bit of cork out into the open sea.</p>
+
+<p>John seemed not to mind them in the least. His strong arms swept the
+boat along, and he still found breath to talk to us, pointing out the
+great gloomy cliffs we were passing under, and telling us stories of
+wrecks, the favourite theme&mdash;and no wonder.</p>
+
+<p>This sunshiny morning that iron-bound coast looked awful enough; what
+must it have looked like, on the winter night when the emigrant ship
+<i>Brest</i> went down!</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was about ten o'clock at night," said John. "I was fast asleep
+in bed, but they knocked me up; I got on my clothes and was off in
+five minutes. They are always glad enough to get us fishermen, the
+coastguard are. Mine was the first boat-load we brought ashore; we
+would only take women and children that time. They were all in their
+night-gowns, and they couldn't speak a word of English, but we made
+them understand somehow. One woman threw her three children down to me,
+and stayed behind on the wreck with two more."</p>
+
+<p>"Were the women frightened?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, they were very quiet, dazed like. Some of them seemed to be
+saying their prayers. But they made no fuss at all, not even the little
+ones. They lay down in the bottom of the boat, and we rowed ashore
+as fast as we could, to Cadgwith. Then we rowed back and fetched two
+boatloads more. We saved a lot of lives that wreck, but only their
+lives; they had scarcely a rag of clothes on, and some of the babies
+were as naked as when they were born."</p>
+
+<p>"And who took them in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody: we always do it," answered John, as if surprised at
+the question. "The fishermen's cottages were full, and so was the
+parsonage. We gave them clothes, and kept them till they could be sent
+away. Yes, it was an awful night; I got something to remember it by,
+here."</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand, from which we noticed half of one finger was
+missing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It got squeezed off with a rope somehow. I didn't heed it much at
+the time," said John carelessly. "But look, we're at the first of the
+caves. I'll row in close, ladies, and let you see it."</p>
+
+<p>So we had to turn our minds from the vision of the wreck of the
+<i>Brest</i>, which John's simple words made so terribly vivid, to examine
+Raven's Ugo, and Dolor Ugo; <i>ugo</i> is Cornish for cave. Over the
+entrance of the first a pair of ravens have built from time immemorial.
+It is just accessible, the opening being above the sea-line, and hung
+with quantities of sea-ferns. Here in smuggling days, many kegs of
+spirits used to be secreted: and many a wild drama no doubt has been
+acted there&mdash;daring encounters between smugglers and coastguard men,
+not bloodless on either side.</p>
+
+<p>Dolor Ugo is now inaccessible and unusable. Its only floor is of
+heaving water, a deep olive green, and so clear that we could see the
+fishes swimming about pursuing a shoal of launce. Its high-vaulted roof
+and sides were tinted all colours&mdash;rose-pink, rich dark brown, and
+purple. The entrance was wide enough to admit a boat, but it gradually
+narrowed into impenetrable darkness. How far inland it goes no one can
+tell, as it could only be investigated by swimming, a rather dangerous
+experiment. Boats venture as far as the daylight goes; and it is a
+favourite trick of the boatman suddenly to fire off a pistol, which
+reverberates like thunder through the mysterious gloom of the cave.</p>
+
+<p>A solemn place; an awful place, some of us thought, as we rowed in, and
+out again, into the sunshiny open sea. Which we had now got used to;
+and it was delicious to go dancing like a feather up and down, trusting
+to John Curgenven's stout arm and fearless, honest face. We felt sad to
+think this would be our last sight of him and of the magnificent Lizard
+coast. But the minutes were lessening, and we had some way still to
+row. Also to land, which meant a leap between the waves upon slippery
+sea-weedy rocks. In silent dread I watched my children accomplish this
+feat, and then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Well, it is over, and I sit here writing these details. But I would
+not do it again, not even for the pleasure of revisiting Dolor Ugo and
+having a row with John Curgenven.</p>
+
+<p>Honest fellow! he looked relieved when he saw "the old lady" safe on
+<i>terra firma</i>, and we left him waving adieux, as he "rocked in his
+boat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> in the bay." May his stout arms and kindly heart long remain to
+him! May his summer tourists be many and his winter shipwrecks few!
+I am sure he will always do his duty, and see that other people do
+theirs, or, like the proverbial Cornishmen, he "will know the reason
+why."</p>
+
+<p>Charles was ready; waiting patiently in front of a blacksmith's shop.
+But, alas! fate had overtaken us in the shape of an innocent leak in
+John Curgenven's boat; nothing, doubtless, to him, who was in the habit
+of baling it out with his boots, and then calmly putting them on again,
+but a little inconvenient to us. To drive thirty miles with one's
+garments soaked up to the knees was not desirable.</p>
+
+<p>There was a cottage close by, whence came the gleam of a delicious fire
+and the odour of ironing clothes. We went in: the mistress, evidently
+a laundress, advanced and offered to dry us&mdash;which she did, chattering
+all the while in the confidential manner of country folks.</p>
+
+<p>A hard working, decent body she was, and as for her house, it was a
+perfect picture of cleanliness and tidiness. Its two rooms, kitchen and
+bedroom, were absolutely speckless. When we noticed this, and said we
+found the same in many Cornish cottages; she almost seemed offended at
+the praise.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's nothing, ma'am. We hereabouts all likes to have our places
+tidy. Mine's not over tidy to-day because of the washing. I hadn't time
+to clean up. But if you was to come of a Sunday. Look there!" Her eye
+caught something in a dark corner, at which she flew, apron in hand. "I
+declare, I'm quite ashamed. I didn't think we had one in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"One what?"</p>
+
+<p>"One spider web!"</p>
+
+<p>Dried, warmed, and refreshed, but having found the greatest difficulty
+in inducing the good woman to receive any tangible thanks for her
+kindness, we proceeded on our journey; going over the same ground which
+we had traversed already, and finding Pradenack Down as bleak and
+beautiful as ever. Our first halt was at the door of Mary Mundy, who,
+with her unappreciated brother, ran out to meet us, and looked much
+disappointed when she found we had not come to stay.</p>
+
+<p>"But you will come some time, ladies, and I'll make you so comfortable.
+And you'll give my duty to the professor"&mdash;it was vain to explain that
+four hundred miles lay between our home and his. "I hope he's quite
+well.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> He was a very nice gentleman, please'm. I shall be delighted to
+see him again, please'm," &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>We left the three&mdash;Mary, her brother, and Charles&mdash;chattering together
+in a dialect which I do not attempt to reproduce, and sometimes could
+hardly understand. Us, the natives indulged with their best English,
+but among themselves they talked the broadest Cornish.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very old church, and a preternaturally old beadle showed it in
+a passive manner, not recognising in the least its points of interest
+and beauty, except some rows of open benches with ancient oak backs,
+wonderfully carved.</p>
+
+<p>"Our vicar dug them up from under the flooring and turned them into
+pews. There was a gentleman here the other day who said there was
+nothing like them in all England."</p>
+
+<p>Most curious, in truth, they were, and suited well the fine old
+building&mdash;a specimen of how carefully and lavishly our forefathers
+built "for God." We, who build for ourselves, are rather surprised
+to find in out-of-the-way nooks like this, churches that in size and
+adornment must have cost years upon years of loving labour as well as
+money.</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant to know that the present incumbent, a man of
+archæological tastes, appreciated his blessings, and took the utmost
+care of his beautiful old church. Success to him! even though he cannot
+boast the power of his predecessor, the Reverend Thomas Flavel, who
+died in 1682, and whose monument in the chancel really expresses the
+sentiments&mdash;in epitaph&mdash;of the period:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Earth, take thine earth; my sin, let Satan have it;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The world my goods; my soul my God who gave it.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For from these four, Earth, Satan, World, and God,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul, I had."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>But it does not mention that the reverend gentleman was the best
+<i>ghost-layer</i> in all England, and that when he died his ghost also
+required to be laid, by a brother clergyman, in a spot on the down
+still pointed out by the people of Mullion, who, being noted for
+extreme longevity, have passed down this tradition from generation
+to generation, with an earnest credulity that we of more enlightened
+counties can hardly understand.</p>
+
+<p>From Mullion we went on to Gunwalloe. Its church, "small and old," as
+Charles had depreciatingly said, had been so painfully "restored,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+and looked so bran-new and uninteresting that we contented ourselves
+with a distant look. It was close to the sea&mdash;probably built on the
+very spot where its pious founder had been cast ashore. The one curious
+point about it was the detached belfry, some yards distant from the
+church itself. It sat alone in a little cove, down which a sluggish
+river crawled quietly seaward. A sweet quiet place, but haunted, as
+usual, by tales of cruel shipwrecks&mdash;of sailors huddled for hours on
+a bit of rock just above the waves, till a boat could put out and
+save the few survivors; of sea treasures continually washed ashore
+from lost ships&mdash;Indian corn, coffee, timber, dollars&mdash;many are still
+found in the sand after a storm. And one treasure more, of which the
+recollection is still kept at Gunwalloe, "a little dead baby in its cap
+and night-gown, with a necklace of coral beads."</p>
+
+<p>After this our road turned inland. Our good horse, with the dogged
+persistency of Cornish horses and Cornish men, plodded on mile after
+mile. Sometimes for an hour or more we did not meet a living soul;
+then we came upon a stray labourer, or passed through a village where
+healthy-looking children, big-eyed, brown-faced, and dirty-handed,
+picturesque if not pretty, stared at us from cottage doors, or from the
+gates of cottage gardens full of flowers and apples.</p>
+
+<p>Those apples! They were a picture. Hungry and thirsty, we could not
+resist them. After passing several trees, hung thickly with delicious
+fruit, we attacked the owner of one of them, a comely young woman, with
+a baby in her arms and another at her gown.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, ma'am, you may have as many apples as you like, if your young
+ladies will go and get them."</p>
+
+<p>And while they did it, she stood talking by the carriage door, pouring
+out to me her whole domestic history with a simple frankness worthy of
+the golden age.</p>
+
+<p>"No, really I couldn't," putting back my payment&mdash;little enough&mdash; for
+the splendid basket of apples which the girls brought back in triumph.
+"This is such a good apple year; the pigs would get them if the young
+ladies didn't. You're kindly welcome to them&mdash;well then, if you are
+determined, say sixpence."</p>
+
+<p>On which magnificent "sixpenn'orth," we lived for days! Indeed I think
+we brought some of it home as a specimen of Cornish fruit and Cornish
+liberality.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="ARMED" id="ARMED"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 430px;">
+<img src="images/106.jpg" width="430" height="600" alt="THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE." />
+<div class="caption">THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Helstone was reached at last, and we were not sorry for rest and food
+in the old-fashioned inn, whence we could look out of window, and
+contemplate the humours of the little town, which doubtless considered
+itself a very great one. It was market day, and the narrow street was
+thronged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> with beasts and men&mdash;the latter as sober as the former,
+which spoke well for Cornwall. Sober and civil too was every one we
+addressed in asking our way to the house of our unknown friend, whose
+only address we had was Helstone. But he seemed well known in the town,
+though neither a rich man, nor a great man, nor&mdash;No, I cannot say he
+was not a clever man, for in his own line, mechanical engineering, he
+must have been exceedingly clever. And he was what people call "a great
+character;" would have made such an admirable study for a novelist,
+manipulated into an unrecognisable ideal&mdash;the only way in which it is
+fair to put people in books. When I saw him I almost regretted that I
+write novels no more.</p>
+
+<p>We passed through the little garden&mdash;all ablaze with autumn colour,
+every inch utilised for either flowers, vegetables, or fruit&mdash;went into
+the parlour, sent our cards and waited the result.</p>
+
+<p>In two minutes our friend appeared, and gave us such a welcome! But to
+explain it I must trench a little upon the sanctities of private life,
+and tell the story of this honest Cornishman. It will not harm him.</p>
+
+<p>When still young he went to Brazil, and was employed by an English
+gold-mining company there, for some years. Afterwards he joined
+an engineering firm, and superintended dredging, the erection of
+saw-mills, &amp;c., finally building a lighthouse, of which latter work he
+had the sole charge, and was exceedingly proud. His conscientiousness,
+probity, and entire reliableness made him most valuable to the
+firm; whom he served faithfully for many years. When they, as well
+as himself, returned to England, he still kept up a correspondence
+with them, preserving towards every member of the family the most
+enthusiastic regard and devotion.</p>
+
+<p>He rushed into the parlour, a tall, gaunt, middle-aged man, with a
+shrewd, kindly face, which beamed all over with delight, as he began
+shaking hands indiscriminately, saying how kind it was of us to come,
+and how welcome we were.</p>
+
+<p>It was explained which of us he had specially to welcome, the others
+being only humble appendages, friends of the family, this well-beloved
+family, whose likenesses for two generations we saw everywhere about
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss, there they all are, your dear grandfather" (alas, only a
+likeness now!), "your father, and your uncle. They were all so good to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+me, and I would do anything for them, or for any one of their name. If
+I got a message that they wanted me for anything, I'd be off to London,
+or to Brazil, or anywhere, in half-an-hour."</p>
+
+<p>And he really looked as if he would.</p>
+
+<p>"But what will you take?" added the good man when the rapture and
+excitement of the moment had a little subsided, and his various
+questions as to the well-being of "the family" had been asked and
+answered. "You have dined, you say, but you'll have a cup of tea. My
+wife (that's the little maid I used to talk to your father about, miss;
+I always told him I wouldn't stay in Brazil, I must go back to England
+and marry my little maid), my wife makes the best cup of tea in all
+Cornwall. Here she is!"</p>
+
+<p>And there entered, in afternoon gown and cap, probably just put on, a
+middle-aged, but still comely matron, who insisted that, even at this
+early hour&mdash;3 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>&mdash;to get a cup of tea for us was "no trouble
+at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, she wouldn't think anything a trouble, no more than I should,
+miss, if it was for your family. They never forget me, nor I them."</p>
+
+<p>It was here suggested that they were not a "forgetting" family. Nor
+was he a man likely to be soon forgotten. While the cup of tea, which
+proved to be a most sumptuous meal, was preparing, he took us all over
+his house, which was full of foreign curiosities, and experimental
+inventions. One, I remember, being a musical instrument, a sort of
+organ, which he had begun making when a mere boy, and taken with him
+all the way to Brazil and back. It had now found refuge in the little
+room he called his "workshop," which was filled with odds and ends that
+would have been delightful to a mechanical mind. He expounded them with
+enthusiasm, and we tried not to betray an ignorance, which in some of
+us would have been a sort of hereditary degradation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! they were clever&mdash;your father and your uncle!&mdash;and how proud we
+all were when we finished our lighthouse, and got the Emperor to light
+it up for the first time. Look here, ladies, what do you think this is?"</p>
+
+<p>He took out a small parcel, and solemnly unwrapped from it fold after
+fold of paper, till he came to the heart of it&mdash;a small wax candle!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"This was the candle the Emperor used to light our lighthouse. I've
+kept it for nearly thirty years, and I'll keep it as long as I live.
+Every year on the anniversary of the day I light it, drink his
+Majesty's health, and the health of all your family, miss, and then I
+put it out again. So"&mdash;carefully re-wrapping the relic in its numerous
+envelopes&mdash;"so I hope it will last my time."</p>
+
+<p>Here the mistress came behind her good man, and they exchanged a
+smile&mdash;the affectionate smile of two who had never been more than two,
+Darby and Joan, but all sufficient to each other. She announced that
+tea was ready. And such a tea! How we got through it I hardly know,
+but travelling is hungry work, and the viands were delicious. The
+beneficence of our kind hosts, however, was not nearly done.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, ladies, I'll show you my garden, and&mdash;(give me a basket and the
+grape-scissors,)" added he in a conjugal aside. Which resulted in our
+carrying away with us the biggest bunches in the whole vinery, as well
+as a quantity of rosy apples, stuffed into every available pocket and
+bag.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, nonsense," was the answer to vain remonstrances. "D'ye
+think I wouldn't give the best of everything I had to your family? and
+so would my missis too. How your father used to laugh at me about my
+little maid! But he understood it for all that. Oh yes, I'm glad I came
+home. And now your father and your uncle are home too, and perhaps some
+day they'll come to see me down here&mdash;wouldn't it be a proud day for
+me! You'll tell them so?"</p>
+
+<p>It was touching, and rare as touching, this passionate personal
+fidelity. It threw us back, at least such of us as were sentimentally
+inclined, upon that something in Cornish nature which found its
+exposition in Arthur and his faithful knights, down to "bold Sir
+Bedevere," and apparently, is still not lost in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>With a sense of real regret, feeling that it would be long ere we
+might meet his like&mdash;such shrewd simplicity, earnest enthusiasm, and
+exceeding faithfulness&mdash;we bade good-bye to the honest man; leaving him
+and his wife standing at their garden-gate, an elderly Adam and Eve,
+desiring nothing outside their own little paradise. Which of us could
+say more, or as much?</p>
+
+<p>Gratefully we "talked them over," as we drove on through the pretty
+country round Helstone&mdash;inland country; for we had no time to go and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+see the Loe Pool, a small lake, divided from the sea by a bar of sand.
+This is supposed to be the work of the Cornwall man-demon, Tregeagle;
+and periodically cut through, with solemn ceremonial, by the Mayor of
+Helstone, when the "meeting of the waters," fresh and salt, is said to
+be an extremely curious sight. But we did not see it, nor yet Nonsloe
+House, close by, which is held by the tenure of having to provide a
+boat and nets whenever the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cornwall
+wishes to fish in the Loe Pool. A circumstance which has never happened
+yet, certainly!</p>
+
+<p>Other curiosities <i>en route</i> we also missed, the stones of
+Tremenkeverne, half a ton each, used as missiles in a notable fight
+between two saints, St. Just of the Land's End, and St. Keverne of the
+Lizard, and still lying in a field to prove the verity of the legend.
+Also the rock of Goldsithney, where, when the "fair land of Lyonesse"
+was engulfed by the sea, an ancestor of the Trevelyans saved himself by
+swimming his horse, and landing; and various other remarkable places,
+with legends attached, needing much credulity, or imagination, to
+believe in.</p>
+
+<p>But, fearing to be benighted ere reaching Marazion, we passed them all,
+and saw nothing more interesting than the ruins of disused tin mines,
+which Charles showed us, mournfully explaining how the mining business
+had of late years drifted away from Cornwall, and how hundreds of the
+once thriving community had been compelled to emigrate or starve. As we
+neared Marazion, these melancholy wrecks with their little hillocks of
+mining debris rose up against the evening sky, the image of desolation.
+And then St. Michael's Mount, the picture in little of Mont St. Michel,
+in Normandy, appeared in the middle of Mount's Bay. Lastly, after
+a gorgeous sunset, in a golden twilight and silvery moonlight, we
+entered Marazion;-and found it, despite its picturesque name, the most
+commonplace little town imaginable!</p>
+
+<p>We should have regretted our rash decision, and gone on to Penzance,
+but for the hearty welcome given us at a most comfortable and home-like
+inn, which determined us to keep to our first intention, and stay.</p>
+
+<p>So, after our habit of making the best of things, we walked down to the
+ugly beach, and investigated the dirty-looking bay&mdash;in the lowest of
+all low tides, with a soppy, sea-weedy causeway running across to St.
+Michael's Mount. By advice of Charles, we made acquaintance with an old
+boatman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> he knew, a Norwegian who had drifted hither&mdash;shipwrecked, I
+believe&mdash;settled down and married an English woman, but whose English
+was still of the feeblest kind. However, he had an honest face; so we
+engaged him to take us out bathing early to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"And to-night, ladies?" suggested the faithful Charles. "Wouldn't you
+like to row round the Mount?&mdash;When you've had your tea, I'll come back
+for you, and help you down to the shore&mdash;it's rather rough, but nothing
+like what you have done, ma'am," added he encouragingly. "And it will
+be bright moonlight, and the Mount will look so fine."</p>
+
+<p>So, the spirit of adventure conquering our weariness, we went. When
+I think how it looked next morning&mdash;the small, shallow bay, with its
+toy-castle in the centre, I am glad our first vision of it was under
+the glamour of moonlight, with the battlemented rock throwing dark
+shadows across the shimmering sea. In the mysterious beauty of that
+night row round the Mount, we could imagine anything; its earliest
+inhabitant, the giant Cormoran, killed by that "valiant Cornishman,"
+the illustrious Jack; the lovely St. Keyne, a king's daughter, who came
+thither on pilgrimage; and, passing down from legend to history, Henry
+de la Pomeroy, who, being taken prisoner, caused himself to be bled to
+death in the Castle; Sir John Arundel, slain on the sands, and buried
+in the Chapel; Perkin Warbeck's unfortunate wife, who took refuge at
+St. Michael's shrine, but was dragged thence. And so on, and so on,
+through the centuries, to the family of St. Aubyn, who bought it in
+1660, and have inhabited it ever since. "Very nice people," we heard
+they were; who have received here the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and
+other royal personages. What a contrast to the legendary Cormoran!</p>
+
+<p>Yet, looking up as we rowed under the gloomy rock, we could fancy his
+giant ghost sitting there, on the spot where he killed his wife, for
+bringing in her apron greenstone, instead of granite, to build the
+chapel with. Which being really built of greenstone the story must be
+true! What a pleasure it is to be able to believe anything!</p>
+
+<p>Some of us could have stayed out half the night, floating along in the
+mild soft air and dreamy moonlight, which made even the commonplace
+little town look like a fairy scene, and exalted St. Michael's Mount
+into a grand fortress, fit for its centuries of legendary lore&mdash;but
+others preferred going to bed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So we landed, and retired. Not however without taking a long look out
+of the window upon the bay, which now, at high tide, was one sheet of
+rippling moon-lit water, with the grim old Mount, full of glimmering
+lights like eyes, sitting silent in the midst of the silent sea.</p>
+
+<p><a name="CORNISH_FISHERMAN" id="CORNISH_FISHERMAN"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 448px;">
+<img src="images/112.jpg" width="448" height="600" alt="CORNISH FISHERMAN." />
+<div class="caption">CORNISH FISHERMAN.</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_TENTH" id="DAY_THE_TENTH">DAY THE TENTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I cannot</span> advise Marazion as a bathing place. What a down-come from the
+picturesque vision of last night, to a small ugly fishy-smelling beach,
+which seemed to form a part of the town and its business, and was
+overlooked from everywhere! Yet on it two or three family groups were
+evidently preparing for a dip, or rather a wade of about a quarter of a
+mile in exceedingly dirty sea water.</p>
+
+<p>"This will never do," we said to our old Norwegian. "You must row us to
+some quiet cove along the shore, and away from the town."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded his head, solemn and mute as the dumb boatman of dead Elaine,
+rowed us out seaward for about half-a-mile, and then proceeded to
+fasten the boat to a big stone, and walk ashore. The water still did
+not come much above his knees&mdash;he seemed quite indifferent to it. But
+we?</p>
+
+<p>Well, we could but do at Rome as the Romans do. Toilette in an open
+boat was evidently the custom of the country. And the sun was warm, the
+sea safe and shallow. Indeed, so rapidly did it subside, that by the
+time the bath was done, we were aground, and had to call at the top of
+our voices to our old man, who sat, with his back to us, dim in the
+distance, on another big stone, calmly smoking the pipe of peace.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll not try this again," was the unanimous resolve, as, after
+politely declining a suggestion that "the ladies should walk ashore&mdash;"
+did he think we were amphibious?&mdash;we got ourselves floated off at last,
+and rowed to the nearest landing point, the entrance to St. Michael's
+Mount.</p>
+
+<p>Probably nowhere in England is found the like of this place. Such
+a curious mingling of a mediæval fortress and modern residence; of
+antiquarian treasures and everyday business; for at the foot of the
+rock is a fishing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> village of about thirty cottages, which carries
+on a thriving trade; and here also is a sort of station for the tiny
+underground-railway, which worked by a continuous chain, fulfils the
+very necessary purpose (failing Giant Cormoran, and wife) of carrying
+up coals, provisions, luggage, and all other domestic necessaries to
+the hill top.</p>
+
+<p>Thither we climbed by a good many weary steps, and thought, delightful
+as it may be to dwell on the top of a rock in the midst of the sea,
+like eagles in an eyrie, there are certain advantages in living on a
+level country road, or even in a town street. How in the world do the
+St. Aubyns manage when they go out to dinner? Two years afterwards,
+when I read in the paper that one of the daughters of the house,
+leaning over the battlements, had lost her balance and fallen down,
+mercifully unhurt, to the rocky slope below&mdash;the very spot where we
+to-day sat so quietly gazing out on the lovely sea view&mdash;I felt with
+a shudder that on the whole, it would be a trying thing to bring up a
+young family on St. Michael's Mount.</p>
+
+<p>Still, generation after generation of honourable St. Aubyns have
+brought up their families there, and oh! what a beautiful spot it is!
+How fresh, and yet mild blew the soft sea-wind outside of it, and
+inside, what endless treasures there were for the archæological mind!
+The chapel alone was worth a morning's study, even though shown&mdash;odd
+anachronism&mdash;by a footman in livery, who pointed out with great gusto
+the entrance to a vault discovered during the last repairs, where was
+found the skeleton of a large man&mdash;his bones only&mdash;no clue whatever as
+to who he was or when imprisoned there. The "Jeames" of modern days
+told us this tale with a noble indifference. Nothing of the kind was
+likely to happen to him.</p>
+
+<p>Further still we were fortunate enough to penetrate, and saw the Chevy
+Chase Hall, with its cornice of hunting scenes, the drawing-room, the
+school-room&mdash;only fancy learning lessons there, amidst the veritable
+evidence of the history one was studying! And perhaps the prettiest bit
+of it all was our young guide, herself a St. Aubyn, with her simple
+grace and sweet courtesy, worthy of one of the fair ladies worshipped
+by King Arthur's knights.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="SEINE" id="SEINE"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 800px;">
+<img src="images/115.jpg" width="800" height="545" alt="THE SEINE BOAT&mdash;A PERILOUS MOMENT." />
+<div class="caption">THE SEINE BOAT&mdash;A PERILOUS MOMENT.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>We did not like encroaching on her kindness, though we could have
+stayed all day, admiring the curious things she showed us. So we
+descended the rock, and crossed the causeway, now dry, but very rough
+walking&mdash;certainly St. Michael's Mount has its difficulties as a modern
+dwelling-house&mdash;and went back to our inn. For, having given our
+horse a forenoon's rest, we planned a visit to that spot immortalised
+by nursery rhyme&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"As I was going to St. Ives</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I met a man with seven wives.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Each wife had seven sacks;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Each sack had seven cats;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Each cat had seven kits;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How many were there going to St. Ives?"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&mdash;One; and after we had been there, we felt sure he never went again!</p>
+
+<p>There were two roads, we learnt, to that immortal town; one very good,
+but dull; the other bad&mdash;and beautiful. We chose the latter, and never
+repented.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, in passing through Penzance, did we repent not having taken up our
+quarters there. It was pretty, but so terribly "genteel," so extremely
+civilised. Glancing up at the grand hotel, we thought with pleasure of
+our old-fashioned inn at Marazion, where the benign waiter took quite
+a fatherly interest in our proceedings, even to giving us for dinner
+our very own blackberries, gathered yesterday on the road, and politely
+hindering another guest from helping himself to half a dishful, as
+"they belonged to the young ladies." Truly, there are better things in
+life than fashionable hotels.</p>
+
+<p>But the neighbourhood of Penzance is lovely. Shrubs and flowers such
+as one sees on the shores of the Mediterranean grew and flourished in
+cottage-gardens, and the forest trees we drove under, whole avenues
+of them, were very fine; gentlemen's seats appeared here and there,
+surrounded with the richest vegetation, and commanding lovely views. As
+the road gradually mounted upwards, we saw, clear as in a panorama, the
+whole coast from the Lizard Point to the Land's End,&mdash;which we should
+behold to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>For, hearing that every week-day about a hundred tourists in carriages,
+carts, and omnibuses, usually flocked thither, we decided that the
+desire of our lives, the goal of our pilgrimage, should be visited
+by us on a Sunday. We thought that to drive us thither in solitary
+Sabbatic peace would be fully as good for Charles's mind and morals as
+to hang all day idle about Marazion; and he seemed to think so himself.
+Therefore, in prospect of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> to-morrow, he dealt very tenderly with his
+horse to-day, and turned us out to walk up the heaviest hills, of which
+there were several, between Penzance and Castle-an-Dinas.</p>
+
+<p>"There it is," he said at last, stopping in the midst of a wide moor
+and pointing to a small building, sharp against the sky. "The carriage
+can't get further, but you can go on, ladies, and I'll stop and gather
+some blackberries for you."</p>
+
+<p>For brambles, gorse bushes, and clumps of fading heather, with one or
+two small stunted trees, were now the only curiosities of this, King
+Arthur's famed hunting castle, and hunting ground, which spread before
+us for miles and miles. Passing a small farm-house, we made our way to
+the building Charles pointed out, standing on the highest ridge of the
+promontory, whose furthest point is the Land's End. Standing there, we
+could see&mdash;or could have seen but that the afternoon had turned grey
+and slightly misty&mdash;the ocean on both sides. Inland, the view seemed
+endless. Roughtor and Brown Willy, two Dartmoor hills, are said to be
+visible sometimes. Nearer, little white dots of houses show the mining
+districts of Redruth and Camborne.</p>
+
+<p>But here, all was desolate solitude. A single wayfarer, looking like a
+working man in his Sunday best going to visit friends, but evidently
+tired, as if he had walked for miles, just glanced at us, and passed
+on. We stood, all alone, on the very spot where many a time must have
+stood King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Sir Launcelot, and the other
+knights&mdash;or the real human beings, whether barbarian or not, who formed
+the originals of those mythical personages.</p>
+
+<p>All had vanished now. Nothing was left but a common-place little tower,
+built up of the fragments of the old castle, and a wide, pathless
+moor, over which the wind sighed, and the mist crept. No memorial
+whatever of King Arthur, except the tradition&mdash;which time and change
+have been powerless to annihilate&mdash;that such a man once existed. The
+long vitality which the legend keeps proves that he must have been
+a remarkable man in his day. Romance itself cannot exist without a
+foundation in reality.</p>
+
+<p>So I preached to my incredulous juniors, who threw overboard King
+Arthur and took to blackberry-gathering; and to conversation with a
+most comely Cornishwoman, milking the prettiest of Cornish cows in the
+lonely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> farm-yard, which was the only sign of humanity for miles and
+miles. We admired herself and her cattle; we drank her milk, offering
+for it the usual payment. But the picturesque milkmaid shook her head
+and demanded just double what even the dearest of London milk-sellers
+would have asked for the quantity. Which sum we paid in silence,
+and I only record the fact here in order to state that spite of our
+foreboding railway friend at Falmouth, this was the only instance in
+which we were ever "taken in," or in the smallest degree imposed upon,
+in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>Another hour, slowly driving down the gradual slope of the country,
+through a mining district much more cheerful than that beyond Marazion.
+The mines were all apparently in full work, and the mining villages
+were pretty, tidy, and cosy-looking, even picturesque. Approaching St.
+Ives the houses had quite a foreign look, but when we descended to
+the town, its dark, narrow streets, pervaded by a "most ancient and
+fish-like smell," were anything but attractive.</p>
+
+<p>As was our hotel, where, as a matter of duty, we ordered tea, but
+doubted if we should enjoy it, and went out again to see what little
+there seemed to be seen, puzzling our way through the gloomy and not
+too fragrant streets, till at last in despair we stopped a bland,
+elderly, Methodist-minister-looking gentleman, and asked him the way to
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>He eyed us over. "You're strangers here, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>I owned the humbling fact, as the inhabitant of St. Ives must doubtless
+consider it.</p>
+
+<p>"And is it the pilchard fishery you want to see? It is just beginning.
+A few pilchards have been seen already. There are the boats, the
+fishermen are all getting ready. It's a fine sight to see them start.
+Would you like to come and look at them?"</p>
+
+<p>He had turned back and was walking with us down the street, pointing
+out everything that occurred to him as noticeable, in the kindest and
+civilest way. When we apologised for troubling him, and would have
+parted company, our friend made no attempt to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've nothing at all to do, except"&mdash;he took out the biggest and
+most respectable of watches&mdash;"except to attend a prayer-meeting at
+half-past six. I should have time to show you the town; we think it is
+a very nice little town. I ought to know it; I've lived in it, boy and
+man for thirty-seven years. But now I have left my business to my sons,
+and I just go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> about and amuse myself, looking into the shop now and
+then just for curiosity. You must have seen my old shop, ladies, if you
+came down that street."</p>
+
+<p><a name="IVES" id="IVES"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 800px;">
+<img src="images/120.jpg" width="800" height="419" alt="ST. IVES." />
+<div class="caption">ST. IVES.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Which he named, and also gave us his own name, which we had seen over
+the shop door, but I shall not record either. Not that I think the
+honest man is ever likely to read such "light" literature as this book,
+or to recall the three wanderers to whom he was so civil and kind, and
+upon whom he poured out an amount of local and personal facts, which
+we listened to&mdash;as a student of human nature is prone to do&mdash;with an
+amused interest in which the comic verged on the pathetic. How large
+to each man seems his own little world, and what child-like faith he
+has in its importance to other people! I shall always recall our friend
+at St. Ives, with his prayer-meetings, his chapel-goings&mdash;I concluded
+he was a Methodist, a sect very numerous in Cornwall&mdash;his delight in
+his successful shop and well-brought-up sons, who managed it so well,
+leaving him to enjoy his <i>otium cum dignitate</i>&mdash;no doubt a municipal
+dignity, for he showed us the Town Hall with great gusto. Evidently to
+his honest, simple soul, St. Ives was the heart of the world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By and by again he pulled out the turnip-like watch. "Just ten minutes
+to get to my prayer-meeting, and I never like to be late, I have been a
+punctual man all my life, ma'am," added he, half apologetically, till
+I suggested that this was probably the cause of his peace and success.
+Upon which he smiled, lifted his hat with a benign adieu, hoped we had
+liked St. Ives&mdash;we had liked his company at any rate&mdash;and with a final
+pointing across the street, "There's my shop, ladies, if you would care
+to look at it," trotted away to his prayer-meeting.</p>
+
+<p>I believe the neighbourhood of St. Ives, especially Tregenna, its
+ancient mansion transformed into an hotel, is exceedingly pretty, but
+night was falling fast, and we saw nothing. Speedily we despatched a
+most untempting meal, and hurried Charles's departure, lest we should
+be benighted, as we nearly were, during the long miles of straight and
+unlovely road&mdash;the good road&mdash;between here and Penzance. We had done
+our duty, we had seen the place, but as, in leaving it behind us, we
+laughingly repeated the nursery rhyme, we came to the conclusion that
+the man who was "<i>going</i> to St. Ives" was the least fortunate of all
+those notable individuals.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_ELEVENTH" id="DAY_THE_ELEVENTH">DAY THE ELEVENTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> last thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a
+starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on St.
+Michael's Mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. It would be hard,
+if after journeying thus far and looking forward to it so many years,
+the day on which we went to the Land's End should turn out a wet day!
+Still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. Some
+of us, I think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so
+till the hand is dust.</p>
+
+<p>It was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out
+on the dawn, grey and misty, but still not wet. To be just on the point
+of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare
+enough to have a certain pathos in it. We slept again, and trusted
+for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering
+sun-gleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky. We wondered for the last
+time, as we had wondered for half a century, "what the Land's End would
+be like," and then started, rather thoughtful than merry, to find out
+the truth of the case.</p>
+
+<p>Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead
+of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote us in driving through
+Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along
+to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage
+to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew
+by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted
+with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised
+faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."</p>
+
+<p>But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> shall
+never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely
+roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about
+Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the
+high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island.
+The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was
+now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer
+leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three
+children trotting to school or church, with their books under their
+arms. Unquestionably Cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county;
+religious-minded too, whether Methodist, Quaker, or other nonconformist
+sects, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative Church
+of England.</p>
+
+<p>We passed St. Buryan's&mdash;a curious old church founded on the place where
+an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. A
+few stray cottages comprised the whole village. There was nothing
+special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and
+sunshine and solitude, till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the
+celebrated Logan or rocking-stone.</p>
+
+<p>From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in
+England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial,
+who can decide?</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant
+Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's
+crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point
+on which it rests. Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at
+great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked
+properly since.</p>
+
+<p>By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who
+stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the
+Lizard, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards.
+Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a
+labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of
+them in answer to a question.</p>
+
+<p>And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+much readier than his tongue. I, at least, should never have got even
+so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself&mdash;a somewhat
+anxious-minded old hen&mdash;and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that
+enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the Logan.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the
+lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must
+honestly confess <i>I</i> could not see it stir a single inch.</p>
+
+<p>However, it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones
+around it were equally huge and most picturesquely thrown together.
+Also&mdash;delightful to my young folks!&mdash;they furnished the most
+adventurous scramble that heart could desire. I alone felt a certain
+relief when we were all again on smooth ground, with no legs or arms
+broken.</p>
+
+<p>The cliff-walk between the Logan and the Land's End is said to be one
+of the finest in England for coast scenery. Treryn or Treen Dinas,
+Pardeneck Point, and Tol Pedn Penwith had been named as places we ought
+to see, but this was impracticable. We had to content ourselves with a
+dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and
+ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of
+a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came
+forward to the carriage, and Charles jumped down from his box.</p>
+
+<p>"You can get out now, ladies. This is the Land's End."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>I forbear to translate the world of meaning implied in that brief
+exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go in and get something. Perhaps we shall admire the place more
+when we have ceased to be hungry."</p>
+
+<p>The words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of
+an hour at the Land's End in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too
+daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour
+of the&mdash;let me give it its right name&mdash;First and Last Inn, of Great
+Britain.</p>
+
+<p>"We never provide for Sunday," said the waitress, responding to a
+sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here.
+"It's very seldom any tourists come on a Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>At which we felt altogether humbled; but in a few minutes more our
+contrition passed into sovereign content.</p>
+
+<p>We went out of doors, upon the narrow green plateau in front of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+house, and then we recognised where we were&mdash;standing at the extreme
+end of a peninsula, with a long line of rocks running out still further
+into the sea. That "great and wide sea, wherein are moving things
+innumerable," the mysterious sea "kept in the hollow of His hand," who
+is Infinity, and looking at which, in the intense solitude and silence,
+one seems dimly to guess at what Infinity may be. Any one who wishes to
+go to church for once in the Great Temple which His hands have builded,
+should spend a Sunday at the Land's End.</p>
+
+<p>At first, our thought had been, What in the world shall we do here for
+two mortal hours! Now, we wished we had had two whole days. A sunset, a
+sunrise, a star-lit night, what would they not have been in this grand
+lonely place&mdash;almost as lonely as a ship at sea? It would be next best
+to finding ourselves in the middle of the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>But this bliss could not be; so we proceeded to make the best of what
+we had. The bright day was darkening, and a soft greyness began to
+creep over land and sea. No, not soft, that is the very last adjective
+applicable to the Land's End. Even on that calm day there was a fresh
+wind&mdash;there must be always wind&mdash;and the air felt sharper and more salt
+than any sea-air I ever knew. Stimulating too, so that one's nerves
+were strung to the highest pitch of excitement. We felt able to do
+anything, without fear and without fatigue. So that when a guide came
+forward&mdash;a regular man-of-war's-man he looked&mdash;we at once resolved to
+adventure along the line of rocks, seaward, "out as far as anybody was
+accustomed to go."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay; I'll take you, ladies. That is&mdash;the young ladies might go&mdash;but
+you&mdash;" eying me over with his keen sailor's glance, full of honesty and
+good humour, "you're pretty well on in years, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>Laughing, I told him how far on, but that I was able to do a good deal
+yet. He laughed too.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've taken ladies much older than you. One the other day was
+nearly seventy. So we'll do our best, ma'am. Come along."</p>
+
+<p>He offered a rugged, brown hand, as firm and steady as a mast, to hold
+by, and nothing could exceed the care and kindliness with which he
+guided every step of every one of us, along that perilous path, that
+is, perilous except for cautious feet and steady heads.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, young ladies. If you make one false step, you are done
+for," said our guide, composedly as he pointed to the boiling whirl of
+waters below.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="LAND" id="LAND"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 622px;">
+<img src="images/126.jpg" width="622" height="800" alt="THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK." />
+<div class="caption">THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Still, though a narrow and giddy path, there was a path, and the
+exploit, though a little risky, was not fool-hardy. We should have
+been bitterly sorry not to have done it&mdash;not to have stood for one
+grand ten minutes, where in all our lives we may never stand again, at
+the farthest point where footing is possible, gazing out upon that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+magnificent circle of sea which sweeps over the submerged "land of
+Lyonesse," far, far away, into the wide Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>There were just two people standing with us, clergymen evidently, and
+one, the guide told us, was "the parson at St. Sennen." We spoke to
+him, as people do speak, instinctively, when mutually watching such a
+scene, and by and by we mentioned the name of the long-dead curate of
+St. Sennen's.</p>
+
+<p>The "parson" caught instantly at the name.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. &mdash;&mdash;? Oh, yes, my father knew him quite well. He used constantly
+to walk across from Sennen to our house, and take us children long
+rambles across the cliffs, with a volume of Southey or Wordsworth under
+his arm. He was a fine young fellow in those days, I have heard, and an
+excellent clergyman. And he afterwards married a very nice girl from
+the north somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;" we smiled. The "nice girl" was now a sweet silver-haired little
+lady of nearly eighty; the "fine young fellow" had long since departed;
+and the boy was this grave middle-aged gentleman, who remembered both
+as a tradition of his youth. What a sermon it all preached, beside this
+eternal rock, this ever-moving, never-changing sea!</p>
+
+<p>But time was passing&mdash;how fast it does pass, minutes, ay, and years! We
+bade adieu to our known unknown friend, and turned our feet backwards,
+cautiously as ever, stopping at intervals to listen to the gossip of
+our guide.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ladies, that's the spot&mdash;you may see the hoof-mark&mdash;where General
+Armstrong's horse fell over; he just slipped off in time, but the poor
+beast was drowned. And here, over that rock, happened the most curious
+thing. I wouldn't have believed it myself, only I knew a man that saw
+it with his own eyes. Once a bullock fell off into the pool below
+there&mdash;just look, ladies." (We did look, into a perfect Maëlstrom of
+boiling waves.) "Everybody thought he was drowned, till he was seen
+swimming about unhurt. They fished him up, and exhibited him as a
+curiosity."</p>
+
+<p>And again, pointing to a rock far out in the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the Brisons. Thirty years ago a ship went to pieces there, and
+the captain and his wife managed to climb on to that rock. They held
+on there for two days and a night, before a boat could get at them.
+At last they were taken off one at a time, with rockets and a rope;
+the wife first. But the rope slipped and she fell into the water. She
+was pulled out in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> a minute or so, and rowed ashore, but they durst
+not tell her husband she was drowned. I was standing on the beach at
+Whitesand Bay when the boat came in. I was only a lad, but I remember
+it well, and her too lifted out all dripping and quite dead. She was
+such a fine woman."</p>
+
+<p>"And the captain?"</p>
+
+<p>"They went back for him, and got him off safe, telling him nothing. But
+when he found she was dead he went crazy-like&mdash;kept for ever saying,
+'She saved my life, she saved my life,' till he was taken away by his
+friends. Look out, ma'am, mind your footing; just here a lady slipped
+and broke her leg a week ago. I had to carry her all the way to the
+hotel. I shouldn't like to carry you."</p>
+
+<p>We all smiled at the comical candour of the honest sailor, who
+proceeded to give us bits of his autobiography. He was Cornish born,
+but had seen a deal of the world as an A.B. on board her Majesty's ship
+<i>Agamemnon</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you have heard of the <i>Agamemnon</i>, ma'am. I was in her off
+Balaklava. You remember the Crimean war?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I did. His eyes brightened as we discussed names and places once
+so familiar, belonging to that time, which now seems so far back as to
+be almost historical.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you know what a winter we had, and what a summer afterwards. I
+came home invalided, and didn't attempt the service afterwards; but I
+never thought I should come home at all. Yes, it's a fine place the
+Land's End, though the air is so strong that it kills some folks right
+off. Once an invalid gentleman came, and he was dead in a fortnight.
+But I'm not dead yet, and I stop here mostly all the year round."</p>
+
+<p>He sniffed the salt air and smiled all over his weather-beaten
+face&mdash;keen, bronzed, blue-eyed, like one of the old Vikings. He was a
+fine specimen of a true British tar. When, having seen all we could, we
+gave him his small honorarium, he accepted it gratefully, and insisted
+on our taking in return a memento of the place in the shape of a stone
+weighing about two pounds, glittering with ore, and doubtless valuable,
+but ponderous. Oh, the trouble it gave me to carry it home, and pack
+and unpack it among my small luggage! But I did bring it home, and
+I keep it still in remembrance of the Land's End, and of the honest
+sailor of H.M.S. <i>Agamemnon</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So all was over. We could dream of an unknown Land's End no more. It
+became now a real place, of which the reality, though different from
+the imagination, was at least no disappointment. How few people in
+attaining a life-long desire can say as much!</p>
+
+<p>Our only regret, an endurable one now, was that we had not carried out
+our original plan of staying some days there&mdash;tourist-haunted, troubled
+days they might have been, but the evenings and mornings would have
+been glorious. With somewhat heavy hearts we summoned Charles and the
+carriage, for already a misty drift of rain began sweeping over the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, we must see Whitesand Bay," said one of us, recalling a story
+a friend had once told how, staying at Land's End, she crossed the bay
+alone in a blinding storm, took refuge at the coastguard station, where
+she was hospitably received, and piloted back with most chivalric care
+by a coastguard, who did not tell her till their journey's end that he
+had left at home a wife, and a baby just an hour old.</p>
+
+<p>No such romantic adventure befell us. We only caught a glimmer of the
+bay through drizzling rain, which by the time we reached Sennen village
+had become a regular downpour. Evidently, we could do no more that day,
+which was fast melting into night.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go home," was the sad resolve, glad nevertheless that we had a
+comfortable "home" to go to.</p>
+
+<p>So closing the carriage and protecting ourselves as well as we could
+from the driving rain, we went forward, passing the Quakers' burial
+ground, where is said to be one of the finest views in Cornwall; the
+Nine Maidens, a circle of Druidical stones, and many other interesting
+things, without once looking at or thinking of them.</p>
+
+<p>Half a mile from Marazion the rain ceased, and a light like that of the
+rising moon began to break through the clouds. What a night it might
+be, or might have been, could we have stayed at the Land's End!</p>
+
+<p>That ghostly "might have been!" It is in great things as in small, the
+worry, the torment, the paralysing burden of life. Away with it! We
+have done our best to be happy, and we have been happy. We have seen
+the Land's End.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_TWELFTH" id="DAY_THE_TWELFTH">DAY THE TWELFTH</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Monday</span> morning. Black Monday we were half inclined to call it, knowing
+that by the week's end our travels must be over and done, and that if
+we wished still to see all we had planned, we must inevitably next
+morning return to civilisation and railways, a determination which
+involved taking this night "a long, a last farewell" of our comfortable
+carriage and our faithful Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"But it needn't be until night," said he, evidently loth to part from
+his ladies. "If I get back to Falmouth by daylight to-morrow morning,
+master will be quite satisfied. I can take you wherever you like
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"And the horse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he shall get a good feed and a rest till the middle of the night,
+then he'll do well enough. We shall have the old moon after one o'clock
+to get home by. Between Penzance and Falmouth it's a good road, though
+rather lonely."</p>
+
+<p>I should think it was, in the "wee hours" by the dim light of a waning
+moon. But Charles seemed to care nothing about it, so we said no more,
+but decided to take the drive&mdash;our last drive.</p>
+
+<p>Our minds were perplexed between Botallack Mine, the Gurnard's Head,
+Lamorna Cove, and several other places, which we were told we must on
+no account miss seeing, the first especially. Some of us, blessed with
+scientific relatives, almost dreaded returning home without having seen
+a single Cornish mine; others, lovers of scenery, longed for more of
+that magnificent coast. But finally, a meek little voice carried the
+day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><a name="SENNEN" id="SENNEN"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 1195px;">
+<img src="images/131.jpg" width="800" height="600" alt="SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS." />
+<div class="caption">SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I was so disappointed&mdash;more than I liked to say&mdash;when it rained,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+and I couldn't get my shells for our bazaar. How shall I ever get them
+now? If it wouldn't trouble anybody very much, mightn't we go again to
+Whitesand Bay?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A plan not wholly without charm. It was a heavenly day; to spend it
+in delicious idleness on that wide sweep of sunshiny sand would be a
+rest for the next day's fatigue. Besides, consolatory thought! there
+would be no temptation to put on miners' clothes, and go dangling in
+a basket down to the heart of the earth, as the Princess of Wales was
+reported to have done. The pursuit of knowledge may be delightful, but
+some of us owned to a secret preference for <i>terra firma</i> and the upper
+air. We resolved to face opprobrium, and declare boldly we had "no
+time" (needless to add no inclination) to go and see Botallack Mine.
+The Gurnard's Head cost us a pang to miss; but then we should catch a
+second view of the Land's End. Yes, we would go to Whitesand Bay.</p>
+
+<p>It was a far shorter journey in sunshine than in rain, even though we
+made various divergencies for blackberries and other pleasures. Never
+had the sky looked bluer or the sea brighter, and much we wished that
+we could have wandered on in dreamy peace, day after day, or even gone
+through England, gipsy-fashion, in a house upon wheels, which always
+seemed to me the very ideal of travelling.</p>
+
+<p>We reached Sennen only too soon. Pretty little Sennen, with its ancient
+church and its new school house, where the civil schoolmaster gave me
+some ink to write a post-card for those to whom even the post-mark
+"Sennen" would have a touching interest, and where the boys and girls,
+released for dinner, were running about. Board school pupils, no doubt,
+weighted with an amount of learning which would have been appalling
+to their grandfathers and grandmothers, the simple parishioners of
+the "fine young fellow" half a century ago. As we passed through the
+village with its pretty cottages and "Lodgings to Let," we could not
+help thinking what a delightful holiday resort this would be for
+a large small family, who could be turned out as we were when the
+carriage could no farther go, on the wide sweep of green common,
+gradually melting into silvery sand, so fine and soft that it was
+almost a pleasure to tumble down the slopes, and get up again, shaking
+yourself like a dog, without any sense of dirt or discomfort. What a
+paradise for children, who might burrow like rabbits and wriggle about
+like sand-eels, and never come to any harm!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Without thought of any danger, we began selecting our bathing-place,
+shallow enough, with long strips of wet shimmering sand to be crossed
+before reaching even the tiniest waves; when one of us, the cautious
+one, appealed to an old woman, the only human being in sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Bathe?" she said. "Folks ne'er bathe here. 'Tain't safe."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Quicksands?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head. Whether she understood us or not, or whether we
+quite understood her, I am not sure, and should be sorry to libel such
+a splendid bathing ground&mdash;apparently. But maternal wisdom interposed,
+and the girls yielded. When, half an hour afterwards, we saw a solitary
+figure moving on a distant ledge of rock, and a black dot, doubtless
+a human head, swimming or bobbing about in the sea beneath&mdash;maternal
+wisdom was reproached as arrant cowardice. But the sand was delicious,
+the sea-wind so fresh, and the sea so bright, that disappointment could
+not last. We made an encampment of our various impedimenta, stretched
+ourselves out, and began the search for shells, in which every
+arm's-length involved a mine of wealth and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Never except at one place, on the estuary of the Mersey, have I
+seen a beach made up of shells so lovely in colour and shape; very
+minute; some being no bigger than a grain of rice or a pin's head. The
+collecting of them was a fascination. We forgot all the historical
+interests that ought to have moved us, saw neither Athelstan, King
+Stephen, King John, nor Perkin Warbeck, each of whom is said to have
+landed here&mdash;what were they to a tiny shell, like that moralised over
+by Tennyson in "Maud"&mdash;"small, but a work divine"? I think infinite
+greatness sometimes touches one less than infinite littleness&mdash;the
+exceeding tenderness of Nature, or the Spirit which is behind Nature,
+who can fashion with equal perfectness a starry hemisphere and a
+glow-worm; an ocean and a little pink shell. The only imperfection in
+creation seems&mdash;oh, strange mystery!&mdash;to be man. Why?</p>
+
+<p>But away with moralising, or dreaming, though this was just a day for
+dreaming, clear, bright, warm, with not a sound except the murmur
+of the low waves, running in an enormous length&mdash;curling over and
+breaking on the soft sands. Everything was so heavenly calm, it seemed
+impossible to believe in that terrible scene when the captain and his
+wife were seen clinging to the Brisons rock, just ahead.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Doubtless our friend of the <i>Agamemnon</i> was telling this and all
+his other stories to an admiring circle of tourists, for we saw the
+Land's End covered with a moving swarm like black flies. How thankful
+we felt that we had "done" it on a Sunday! Still, we were pleased
+to have another gaze at it, with its line of picturesque rocks, the
+Armed Knight and the Irish Lady&mdash;though, I confess, I never could make
+out which was the knight and which was the lady. Can it be that some
+fragment of the legend of Tristram and Iseult originated these names?</p>
+
+<p>After several sweet lazy hours, we went through a "fish-cellar," a
+little group of cottages, and climbed a headland, to take our veritable
+farewell of the Land's End, and then decided to go home. We had rolled
+or thrown our provision basket, rugs, &amp;c., down the sandy slope, but it
+was another thing to carry them up again. I went in quest of a small
+boy, and there presented himself a big man, coastguard, as the only
+unemployed hand in the place, who apologised with such a magnificent
+air for not having "cleaned" himself, that I almost blushed to ask
+him to do such a menial service as to carry a bundle of wraps. But
+he accepted it, conversing amiably as we went, and giving me a most
+graphic picture of life at Sennen during the winter. When he left me,
+making a short cut to our encampment&mdash;a black dot on the sands, with
+two moving black dots near it&mdash;a fisher wife joined me, and of her own
+accord began a conversation.</p>
+
+<p>She and I fraternised at once, chiefly on the subject of children, a
+group of whom were descending the road from Sennen School. She told me
+how many of them were hers, and what prizes they had gained, and what
+hard work it was. She could neither read nor write, she said, but she
+liked her children to be good scholars, and they learnt a deal up at
+Sennen.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently they did, and something else besides learning, for when I
+had parted from my loquacious friend, I came up to the group just in
+time to prevent a stand-up fight between two small mites, the <i>casus
+belli</i> of which I could no more arrive at, than a great many wiser
+people can discover the origin of national wars. So I thought the
+strong hand of "intervention"&mdash;civilised intervention&mdash;was best, and
+put an end to it, administering first a good scolding, and then a coin.
+The division of this coin among the little party compelled an extempore
+sum in arithmetic, which I required them to do (for the excellent
+reason that I couldn't do it myself!)&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> they did it! Therefore I
+conclude that the heads of the Sennen school-children are as solid as
+their fists, and equally good for use.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ROAD" id="ROAD"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 636px;">
+<img src="images/136.jpg" width="636" height="800" alt="ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE." />
+<div class="caption">ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Simple little community! which as the fisher wife told me, only goes to
+Penzance about once a year, and is, as yet, innocent of tourists, for
+the swarm at the Land's End seldom goes near Whitesand Bay. Existence
+here must be very much that of an oyster,&mdash;but perhaps oysters are
+happy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By the time we reached Penzance the lovely day was dying into an
+equally lovely evening. St. Michael's Mount shone in the setting sun.
+It was high water, the bay was all alive with boats, and there was
+quite a little crowd of people gathered at the mild little station of
+Marazion. What could be happening?</p>
+
+<p>A princess was expected, that young half-English, half-foreign
+princess, in whose romantic story the British public has taken such an
+interest, sympathising with the motherly kindness of our good Queen,
+with the wedding at Windsor, and the sad little infant funeral there,
+a year after. The Princess Frederica of Hanover, and the Baron Von
+Pawel-Rammingen, her father's secretary, who, like a stout mediæval
+knight, had loved, wooed, and married her, were coming to St. Michael's
+Mount on a visit to the St. Aubyns.</p>
+
+<p>Marazion had evidently roused itself, and risen to the occasion. Half
+the town must have turned out to the beach, and the other half secured
+every available boat, in which it followed, at respectful distance,
+the two boats, one full of luggage, the other of human beings, which
+were supposed to be the royal party. People speculated with earnest
+curiosity, which was the princess, and which her husband, and what the
+St. Aubyns would do with them; whether they would be taken to see the
+Land's End, and whether they would go there as ordinary tourists, or in
+a grand visit of state. How hard it is that royal folk can never see
+anything except in state, or in a certain adventitious garb, beautiful,
+no doubt, but satisfactorily hiding the real thing. How they must long
+sometimes for a walk, after the fashion of Haroun Alraschid, up and
+down Regent Street and Oxford Street! or an incognito foreign tour, or
+even a solitary country walk, without a "lady-in-waiting."</p>
+
+<p>We had no opera-glass to add to the many levelled at those two boats,
+so we went in&mdash;hoping host and guests would spend a pleasant evening in
+the lovely old rooms we knew. We spent ours in rest, and in arranging
+for to-morrow's flight. Also in consulting with our kindly landlady
+as to a possible house at Marazion for some friends whom the winter
+might drive southwards, like the swallows, to a climate which, in this
+one little bay shut out from east and north, is&mdash;they told us&mdash;during
+all the cruel months which to many of us means only enduring life, not
+living&mdash;as mild and equable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> almost as the Mediterranean shores. And
+finally, we settled all with our faithful Charles, who looked quite
+mournful at parting with his ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is rather a long drive, and pretty lonely," said he. "But I'll
+wait till the moons up, and that'll help us. We'll get into Falmouth
+by daylight. I've got to do the same thing often enough through the
+summer, so I don't mind it."</p>
+
+<p>Thus said the good fellow, putting a cheery face on it, then with a
+hasty "Good-bye, ladies," he rushed away. But we had taken his address,
+not meaning to lose sight of him. (Nor have we done so up to this date
+of writing; and the fidelity has been equal on both sides.)</p>
+
+<p>Then, in the midst of a peal of bells which was kept up unweariedly
+till 10 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>&mdash;evidently Marazion is not blessed with the sight
+of a princess every day&mdash;we closed our eyes upon all outward things,
+and went away to the Land of Nod.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_THIRTEENTH" id="DAY_THE_THIRTEENTH">DAY THE THIRTEENTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Into</span> King Arthurs land&mdash;Tintagel his birth-place, and Camelford,
+where he fought his last battle&mdash;the legendary region of which one
+may believe as much or as little as one pleases&mdash;we were going
+to-day. With the good common sense which we flattered ourselves had
+accompanied every step of our unsentimental journey, we had arranged
+all before-hand, ordered a carriage to meet the mail train, and hoped
+to find at Tintagel&mdash;not King Uther Pendragon, King Arthur or King
+Mark, but a highly respectable landlord, who promised us a welcome at
+an inn&mdash;which we only trusted would be as warm and as kindly as that we
+left behind us at Marazion.</p>
+
+<p>The line of railway which goes to the far west of England is one of the
+prettiest in the kingdom on a fine day, which we were again blessed
+with. It had been a wet summer, we heard, throughout Cornwall, but
+in all our journey, save that one wild storm at the Lizard, sunshine
+scarcely ever failed us. Now&mdash;whether catching glimpses of St. Ives
+Bay or sweeping through the mining district of Redruth, and the wooded
+country near Truro, Grampound, and St. Austell, till we again saw the
+glittering sea on the other side of Cornwall&mdash;all was brightness. Then
+darting inland once more, our iron horse carried us past Lostwithiel,
+the little town which once boasted Joseph Addison, M.P., as its
+representative; gave us a fleeting vision of Ristormel, one of the
+ancient castles of Cornwall, and on through a leafy land, beginning to
+change from rich green to the still richer yellows and reds of autumn,
+till we stopped at Bodmin Road.</p>
+
+<p><a name="TINTAGEL" id="TINTAGEL"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/140.jpg" width="500" height="600" alt="TINTAGEL." />
+<div class="caption">TINTAGEL.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>No difficulty in finding our carriage, for it was the only one there;
+a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> huge vehicle, of ancient build, the horses to match, capable of
+accommodating a whole family and its luggage. We missed our compact
+little machine, and our brisk, kindly Charles, but soon settled
+ourselves in dignified, roomy state, for the twenty miles, or rather
+more, which lay between us and the coast.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> Our way ran along lonely
+quiet country roads and woods almost as green as when Queen Guinevere
+rode through them "a maying," before the dark days of her sin and King
+Arthur's death.</p>
+
+<p>Here it occurs to me, as it did this day to a practical youthful mind,
+"What in the world do people know about King Arthur?"</p>
+
+<p>Well, most people have read Tennyson, and a few are acquainted with
+the "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. But, perhaps I had better
+briefly give the story, or as much of it as is necessary for the
+edification of outsiders.</p>
+
+<p>Uther Pendragon, King of Britain, falling in love with Ygrayne, wife of
+the duke of Cornwall, besieged them in their twin castles of Tintagel
+and Terrabil, slew the husband, and the same day married the wife. Unto
+whom a boy was born, and by advice of the enchanter Merlin, carried
+away, from the sea-shore beneath Tintagel, and confided to a good
+knight, Sir Ector, to be brought up as his own son, and christened
+Arthur. On the death of the king, Merlin produced the youth, who was
+recognized by his mother Ygrayne, and proclaimed king in the stead
+of Uther Pendragon. He instituted the Order of Knights of the Round
+Table, who were to go everywhere, punishing vice and rescuing oppressed
+virtue, for the love of God and of some noble lady. He married
+Guinevere, daughter of King Leodegrance, who forsook him for the love
+of Sir Launcelot, his bravest knight and dearest friend. One by one,
+his best knights fell away into sin, and his nephew Mordred raised a
+rebellion, fought with him, and conquered him at Camelford. Seeing his
+end was near, Arthur bade his last faithful knight, Sir Bedevere, carry
+him to the shore of a mere (supposed to be Dozmare Pool) and throw in
+there his sword Excalibur; when appeared a boat with three queens,
+who lifted him in, mourning over him. With them he sailed away across
+the mere, to be healed of his grievous wound. Some say that he was
+afterwards buried in a chapel near, others declare that he lives still
+in fairy land, and will reappear in latter days, to reinstate the Order
+of Knights of the Round Table, and rule his beloved England, which will
+then be perfect as he once tried to make it, but in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Camelford of to-day is certainly not the Camelot of King Arthur&mdash;but
+a very respectable, commonplace little town, much like other country
+towns; the same genteel linendrapers' and un-genteel ironmongers'
+shops; the same old-established commercial inn, and a few ugly, but
+solid-looking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> private houses, with their faces to the street and
+their backs nestled in gardens and fields. Some of the inhabitants of
+these said houses were to be seen taking a quiet afternoon stroll.
+Doubtless they are eminently respectable and worthy folk, leading a
+mild provincial life like the people in Miss Martineau's <i>Deerbrook</i>,
+or Miss Austen's <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>&mdash;of which latter quality they
+have probably a good share.</p>
+
+<p>We let our horses rest, but we ourselves felt not the slightest wish to
+rest at Camelford, so walked leisurely on till we came to the little
+river Camel, and to Slaughter Bridge, said to be the point where King
+Arthur's army was routed and where he received his death-wound. A
+slab of stone, some little distance up the stream, is still called
+"King Arthur's Tomb." But as his coffin is preserved, as well as his
+Round Table, at Winchester; where, according to mediæval tradition,
+the bodies of both Arthur and Guinevere were found, and the head
+of Guinevere had yellow hair; also that near the little village of
+Davidstow, is a long barrow, having in the centre a mound, which is
+called "King Arthur's grave"&mdash;inquiring minds have plenty of "facts" to
+choose from. Possibly at last they had better resort to fiction, and
+believe in Arthur's disappearance, as Tennyson makes him say,</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"To the island-valley of Avillion ...</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where I may heal me of my grievous wound."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Dozmare Pool we found so far out of our route that we had to make a
+virtue of necessity, and imagine it all; the melancholy moorland lake,
+with the bleak hill above it, and stray glimpses of the sea beyond.
+A ghostly spot, and full of many ghostly stories besides the legend
+of Arthur. Here Tregeagle, the great demon of Cornwall, once had his
+dwelling, until, selling his soul to the devil, his home was sunk to
+the bottom of the mere, and himself is heard of stormy nights, wailing
+round it with other ghost-demons, in which the Cornish mind still
+lingeringly believes. Visionary packs of hounds; a shadowy coach and
+horses, which drives round and round the pool, and then drives into it;
+flitting lights, kindled by no human hand, in places where no human
+foot could go&mdash;all these tales are still told by the country folk, and
+we might have heard them all. Might also have seen, in fancy, the flash
+of the "brand Excalibur"; heard the wailing song of the three queens;
+and pictured the dying Arthur lying on the lap of his sister Morgane la
+Faye. But, I forgot, this is an un-sentimental journey.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Delabole quarries are as un-sentimental a place as one could
+desire. It was very curious to come suddenly upon this world of slate,
+piled up in enormous masses on either side the road, and beyond them
+hills of debris, centuries old&mdash;for the mines have been worked ever
+since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Houses, walls, gates, fences,
+everything that can possibly be made of slate, is made. No green or
+other colour tempers the all-pervading shade of bluish-grey, for
+vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the quarries is abolished,
+the result of which would be rather dreary, save for the cheerful
+atmosphere of wholesome labour, the noise of waggons, horses,
+steam-engines&mdash;such a contrast to the silence of the deserted tin-mines.</p>
+
+<p>But, these Delabole quarries passed, silence and solitude come back
+again. Even the yearly-increasing influx of tourists fails to make
+the little village of Trevena anything but a village, where the
+said tourists lounge about in the one street, if it can be called a
+street, between the two inns and the often-painted, picturesque old
+post-office. Everything looked so simple, so home-like, that we were
+amused to find we had to get ready for a <i>table d'hôte</i> dinner, in
+the only available eating room where the one indefatigable waitress,
+a comely Cornish girl, who seemed Argus and Briareus rolled into one,
+served us&mdash;a party small enough to make conversation general, and
+pleasant and intelligent enough to make it very agreeable, which does
+not always happen at an English hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Then we sallied out to find the lane which leads to Tintagel Castle,
+or Castles&mdash;for one sits in the sea, the other on the opposite heights
+in the mainland, with power of communicating by the narrow causeway
+which now at least exists between the rock and the shore. This seems to
+confirm the legend, how the luckless husband of Ygrayne shut up himself
+and his wife in two castles, he being slain in the one, and she married
+to the victorious King Uther Pendragon, in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Both looked so steep and dangerous in the fast-coming twilight that we
+thought it best to attempt neither, so contented ourselves with a walk
+on the cliffs and the smooth green field which led thither. Leaning
+against a gate, we stood and watched one of the grandest out of the
+many grand sunsets which had blessed us in Cornwall. The black rock of
+Tintagel filled the foreground; beyond, the eye saw nothing but sea,
+the sea which covers vanished Lyonesse, until it met the sky, a clear
+amber with long bars like waves, so that you could hardly tell where
+sea ended and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> sky began. Then into it there swam slowly a long low
+cloud, shaped like a boat, with a raised prow, and two or three figures
+sitting at the stern.</p>
+
+<p>"King Arthur and the three queens," we declared, and really a very
+moderate imagination could have fancied it this. "But what is that long
+black thing at the bow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," observed drily the most practical of the three, "it's King
+Arthur's luggage."</p>
+
+<p>Sentiment could survive no more. We fell into fits of laughter, and
+went home to tea and bed.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAYS_FOURTEENTH_FIFTEENTH_AND_SIXTEENTH" id="DAYS_FOURTEENTH_FIFTEENTH_AND_SIXTEENTH">DAYS FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH&mdash;</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">And</span> all Arthurian days, so I will condense them into one chapter, and
+not spin out the hours that were flying so fast. Yet we hardly wished
+to stop them; for pleasant as travelling is, the best delight of all
+is&mdash;the coming home.</p>
+
+<p>Walking, to one more of those exquisite autumn days, warm as summer,
+yet with a tender brightness that hot summer never has, like the love
+between two old people, out of whom all passion has died&mdash;we remembered
+that we were at Tintagel, the home of Ygrayne and Arthur, of King Mark
+and Tristram and Iseult. I had to tell that story to my girls in the
+briefest form, how King Mark sent his nephew, Sir Tristram, to fetch
+home Iseult of Ireland for his queen, and on the voyage Bragswaine,
+her handmaiden, gave each a love-potion, which caused the usual fatal
+result; how at last Tristram fled from Tintagel into Brittany, where
+he married another Iseult "of the white hands," and lived peacefully,
+till, stricken by death, his fancy went back to his old love, whom he
+implored to come to him. She came, and found him dead. A tale&mdash;of which
+the only redeeming point is the innocence, simplicity, and dignity of
+the second Iseult, the unloved Breton wife, to whom none of our modern
+poets who have sung or travestied the wild, passionate, miserable, ugly
+story, have ever done full justice.</p>
+
+<p>These sinful lovers, the much-wronged but brutal King Mark, the
+scarcely less brutal Uther Pendragon, and hapless Ygrayne&mdash;what a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+curious condition of morals and manners the Arthurian legends unfold!
+A time when might was right; when every one seized what he wanted just
+because he wanted it, and kept it, if he could, till a stronger hand
+wrenched it from him. That in such a state of society there should
+ever have arisen the dimmest dream of a man like Arthur&mdash;not perhaps
+Tennyson's Arthur, the "blameless king," but even Sir Thomas Malory's,
+founded on mere tradition&mdash;is a remarkable thing. Clear through all
+the mists of ages shines that ideal of knighthood, enjoining courage,
+honour, faith, chastity, the worship of God and the service of men.
+Also, in the very highest degree, inculcating that chivalrous love of
+woman&mdash;not women&mdash;which barbaric nations never knew. As we looked at
+that hoar ruin sitting solitary in the sunny sea, and thought of the
+days when it was a complete fortress, inclosing a mass of human beings,
+all with human joys, sorrows, passions, crimes&mdash;things that must have
+existed in essence, however legend has exaggerated or altered them&mdash;we
+could not but feel that the mere possibility of a King Arthur shining
+down the dim vista of long-past centuries, is something to prove that
+goodness, like light, has an existence as indestructible as Him from
+whom it comes.</p>
+
+<p>We looked at Tintagel with its risky rock-path. "It will be a hot
+climb, and our bathing days are numbered. Let us go in the opposite
+direction to Bossinney Cove."</p>
+
+<p>Practicality when weighed against Poetry is poor&mdash;Poetry always kicks
+the beam. We went to Bossinney.</p>
+
+<p>Yet what a pretty cove it was! and how pleasant! While waiting for
+the tide to cover the little strip of sand, we re-mounted the winding
+path, and settled ourselves like seabirds on the furthermost point of
+rock, whence, just by extending a hand, we could have dropped anything,
+ourselves even, into a sheer abyss of boiling waves, dizzy to look down
+into, and yet delicious.</p>
+
+<p>So was the bath, though a little gloomy, for the sun could barely reach
+the shut-in cove; and we were interfered with considerably by&mdash;not
+tourists&mdash;but a line of donkeys! They were seen solemnly descending the
+narrow cliff-path one by one&mdash;eleven in all&mdash;each with an empty sack
+over his shoulder. Lastly came a very old man, who, without taking the
+least notice of us, disposed himself to fill these sacks with sand.
+One after the other the eleven meek animals came forward and submitted
+each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> to his load, which proceeding occupied a good hour and a half.
+I hardly know which was the most patient, the old man or his donkeys.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="CRESWICK" id="CRESWICK"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 629px;">
+<img src="images/147.jpg" width="529" height="700" alt="CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY." />
+<div class="caption">CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We began some of us to talk to his beasts, and others to himself. "Yes,
+it was hard work," he said, "but he managed to come down to the cove
+three times a day. And the asses were good asses. They all had their
+names; Lucy, Cherry, Sammy, Tom, Jack, Ned;" each animal pricked up its
+long ears and turned round its quiet eyes when called. Some were young
+and some old, but all were very sure-footed, which was necessary here.
+"The weight some of 'em would carry was wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>The old man seemed proud of the creatures, and kind to them too in a
+sort of way. He had been a fisherman, he said, but now was too old for
+that; so got his living by collecting sand.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes capital garden-paths, this sand. I'd be glad to bring you
+some, ladies," said he, evidently with an eye to business. When we
+explained that this was impracticable, unless he would come all the way
+to London, he merely said, "Oh," and accepted the disappointment. Then
+bidding us a civil "Good day," he disappeared with his laden train.</p>
+
+<p>Poor old fellow! Nothing of the past knightly days, nothing of the
+busy existing modern present affected him, or ever would do so. He
+might have been own brother, or cousin, to Wordsworth's "Leech-gatherer
+on the lonely moor." Whenever we think of Bossinney Cove, we shall
+certainly think of that mild old man and his eleven donkeys.</p>
+
+<p>The day was hot, and it had been a steep climb; we decided to drive in
+the afternoon, "for a rest," to Boscastle.</p>
+
+<p>Artists and tourists haunt this picturesque nook. A village built at
+the end of a deep narrow creek, which runs far inland, and is a safe
+shelter for vessels of considerable size. On either side is a high
+footpath, leading to two headlands, from both of which the views of
+sea and coast are very fine. And there are relics of antiquity and
+legends thereto belonging&mdash;a green mound, all that remains of Bottrieux
+Castle; and Ferrabury Church, with its silent tower. A peal of bells
+had been brought, and the ship which carried them had nearly reached
+the cove, when the pilot, bidding the captain "thank God for his safe
+voyage," was answered that he "thanked only himself and a fair wind."
+Immediately a storm arose; and the ship went down with every soul on
+board&mdash;except the pilot. So the church tower is mute&mdash;but on winter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+nights the lost bells are still heard, sounding mournfully from the
+depths of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>As we sat, watching with a vague fascination the spouting, minute by
+minute, of a "blow-hole," almost as fine as the Kynance post-office&mdash;we
+moralised on the story of the bells, and on the strange notions people
+have, even in these days, of Divine punishments; imputing to the
+Almighty Father all their own narrow jealousies and petty revenges,
+dragging down God into the likeness of men, such an one as themselves,
+instead of striving to lift man into the image of God.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the young folks rambled and scrambled&mdash;watched with anxious
+and even envious eyes&mdash;for it takes one years to get entirely
+reconciled to the quiescence of the down-hill journey. And then we
+drove slowly back&mdash;just in time for another grand sunset, with Tintagel
+black in the foreground, until it and all else melted into darkness,
+and there was nothing left but to</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Watch the twilight stars come out</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Above the lonely sea."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Next morning we must climb Tintagel, for it would be our last day.</p>
+
+<p>And what a heavenly day it was! How softly the waves crept in upon the
+beach&mdash;just as they might have done when they laid at Merlin's feet
+"the little naked child," disowned of man but dear to Heaven, who was
+to grow up into the "stainless king."</p>
+
+<p>He and his knights&mdash;the "shadowy people of the realm of dream,"&mdash;were
+all about us, as, guided by a rheumatic old woman, who climbed feebly
+up the stair, where generations of ghostly feet must have ascended and
+descended, we reached a bastion and gateway, quite pre-historic. Other
+ruins apparently belong to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. But to
+this there is no clue. It may have been the very landing-place of King
+Uther or King Mark, or other Cornish heroes, who held this wonderful
+natural-artificial fortress in the dim days of old romance.</p>
+
+<p>"Here are King Arthur's cups and saucers," said the old woman, pausing
+in the midst of a long lament over her own ailments, to point out some
+holes in the slate rock. "And up there you'll find the chapel. It's an
+easy climb&mdash;if you mind the path&mdash;just where it passes the spring."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="BOSCASTLE" id="BOSCASTLE"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 586px;">
+<img src="images/151.jpg" width="550" height="700" alt="BOSCASTLE." />
+<div class="caption">BOSCASTLE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a><br /><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That spring, trickling down from the very top of the rock, and making
+a verdant space all round it&mdash;what a treasure it must have been to the
+unknown inhabitants who, centuries ago, entrenched themselves here&mdash;for
+offence or defence&mdash;against the main-land. Peacefully it flowed on
+still, with the little ferns growing, and the sheep nibbling beside
+it. We idle tourists alone occupied that solitary height where those
+long-past warlike races&mdash;one succeeding the other&mdash;lived and loved,
+fought and died.</p>
+
+<p>The chapel&mdash;where the high altar and a little burial-ground beside it
+can still be traced&mdash;is clearly much later than Arthur's time. However,
+there are so few data to go upon, and the action of sea-storms destroys
+so much every year, that even to the learned archæologist, Tintagel is
+a great mystery, out of which the imaginative mind may evolve almost
+anything it likes.</p>
+
+<p>We sat a long time on the top of the rock&mdash;realising only the one
+obvious fact that our eyes were gazing on precisely the same scene,
+seawards and coastwards, that all these long-dead eyes were accustomed
+to behold. Beaten by winds and waves till the grey of its slate
+formation is nearly black; worn into holes by the constant action of
+the tide which widens yearly the space between it and the main-land,
+and gnaws the rock below into dangerous hollows that in time become
+sea-caves, Tintagel still remains&mdash;and one marvels that so much of it
+does still remain&mdash;a landmark of the cloudy time between legend and
+actual history.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the ruin on the opposite height was once a portion of
+Tintagel Castle, before the sea divided it, making a promontory into
+an island&mdash;or whether it was the Castle Terrabil, in which Gorlois,
+Ygrayne's husband, was slain&mdash;no one now can say. That both the twin
+fortresses were habitable till Elizabeth's time, there is evidence to
+prove. But since then they have been left to decay, to the silent sheep
+and the screeching ravens, including doubtless that ghostly chough, in
+whose shape the soul of King Arthur is believed still to revisit the
+familiar scene.</p>
+
+<p>We did not see that notable bird&mdash;though we watched with interest two
+tame and pretty specimens of its almost extinct species walking about
+in a flower-garden in the village, and superstitiously cherished there.
+We were told that to this day no Cornishman likes to shoot a chough
+or a raven. So they live and breed in peace among the twin ruins, and
+scream contentedly to the noisy stream which dances down the rocky
+hollow from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> Trevena, and leaps into the sea at Porth Hern&mdash;the "iron
+gate," over against Tintagel. Otherwise, all is solitude and silence.</p>
+
+<p>We thought we had seen everything, and come to an end, but at the hotel
+we found a party who had just returned from visiting some sea-caves
+beyond Tintagel, which they declared were "the finest things they had
+found in Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely calm day, and it was our last day. A few hours of it
+alone remained. Should we use them? We might never be here again.
+And, I think, the looser grows one's grasp of life, the greater is
+one's longing to make the most of it, to see all we can see of this
+wonderful, beautiful world. So, after a hasty meal, we found ourselves
+once more down at Porth Hern, seeking a boat and man&mdash;alas! not John
+Curgenven&mdash;under whose guidance we might brave the stormy deep.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed stormy! No sooner had we rounded the rock, than the baby
+waves of the tiny bay grew into hills and valleys, among which our boat
+went dancing up and down like a sea-gull!</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, there's some sea on, there always is here, but we'll be through it
+presently," indifferently said the elder of the two boatmen; and plied
+his oars, as, I think, only these Cornish boatmen can do, talking all
+the while. He pointed out a slate quarry, only accessible from the sea,
+unless the workmen liked to be let down by ropes, which sometimes had
+to be done. We saw them moving about like black emmets among the clefts
+of the rocks, and heard plainly above the sound of the sea the click
+of their hammers. Strange, lonely, perilous work it must be, even in
+summer. In winter&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they're used to it; we're all used to it," said our man, who was
+intelligent enough, though nothing equal to John Curgenven. "Many a
+time I've got sea-fowls' eggs on those rocks there," pointing to a
+cliff which did not seem to hold footing for a fly. "We all do it. The
+gentry buy them, and we're glad of the money. Dangerous?&mdash;yes, rather;
+but one must earn one's bread, and it's not so bad when you take to it
+young."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I think I shall never look at a collection of sea-birds'
+eggs without a slight shudder, remembering those awful cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>"Here you are, ladies, and the sea's down a bit, as I said. Hold on,
+mate, the boat will go right into the cave."</p>
+
+<p>And before we knew what was happening, we found ourselves floated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> out
+of daylight into darkness&mdash;very dark it seemed at first&mdash;and rocking
+on a mass of heaving waters, shut in between two high walls, so narrow
+that it seemed as if every heave would dash us in pieces against them;
+while beyond was a dense blackness, from which one heard the beat of
+the everlasting waves against a sort of tunnel, a stormy sea-grave from
+which no one could ever hope to come out alive.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like this at all," said a small voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't we better get out again?" practically suggested another.</p>
+
+<p>But no sooner was this done than the third of the party longed to
+return; and begged for "only five minutes" in that wonderful place,
+compared to which Dolor Ugo, and the other Lizard caves, became as
+nothing. They were beautiful, but this was terrible. Yet with its
+terror was mingled an awful delight. "Give me but five, nay, two
+minutes more!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, just as you choose," was the response of meek despair.
+So of course, Poetry yielded. The boatmen were told to row on into
+daylight and sunshine&mdash;at least as much sunshine as the gigantic
+overhanging cliffs permitted. And never, never, never in this world
+shall I again behold that wonderful, mysterious sea-cave.</p>
+
+<p>But like all things incomplete, resigned, or lost, it has fixed itself
+on my memory with an almost painful vividness. However, I promised not
+to regret&mdash;not to say another word about it; and I will not. I did see
+it, for just a glimpse; and that will serve.</p>
+
+<p>Two more pictures remain, the last gorgeous sunset, which I watched in
+quiet solitude, sitting on a tombstone by Tintagel church&mdash;a building
+dating from Saxon times, perched on the very edge of a lofty cliff,
+and with a sea-view that reaches from Trevose Head on one side to Bude
+Haven on the other. Also, our last long dreamy drive; in the mild
+September sunshine, across the twenty-one miles of sparsely inhabited
+country which lie between Tintagel and Launceston. In the midst of
+it, on the top of a high flat of moorland, our driver turned round
+and pointed with his whip to a long low mound, faintly visible about
+half-a-mile off. "There, ladies, that's King Arthur's grave."</p>
+
+<p>The third, at least, that we had either seen or heard of. These varied
+records of the hero's last resting-place remind one of the three heads,
+said to be still extant, of Oliver Cromwell, one when he was a little
+boy, one as a young man, and the third as an old man.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But after all my last and vividest recollection of King Arthur's
+country is that wild sail&mdash;so wild that I wished I had taken it
+alone&mdash;in the solitary boat, up and down the tossing waves in face of
+Tintagel rock; the dark, iron-bound coast with its awful caves, the
+bright sunshiny land, and ever-threatening sea. Just the region, in
+short, which was likely to create a race like that which Arthurian
+legend describes, full of passionate love and deadly hate, capable of
+barbaric virtues, and equally barbaric crimes. An age in which the mere
+idea of such a hero as that ideal knight</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Who reverenced his conscience as his God:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose glory was redressing human wrong:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who loved one only, and who clave to her&mdash;"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>rises over the blackness of darkness like a morning star.</p>
+
+<p>If Arthur could "come again"&mdash;perhaps in the person of one of the
+descendants of a prince who was not unlike him, who lived and died
+among us in this very nineteenth century&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Wearing the white flower of a blameless life&mdash;"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>if this could be&mdash;what a blessing for Arthur's beloved England!</p>
+
+<p><a name="OLD" id="OLD"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 586px;">
+<img src="images/157.jpg" width="486" height="700" alt="THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA." />
+<div class="caption">THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA.</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="LENVOI" id="LENVOI">L'ENVOI</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Written</span> more than a year after. The "old hen" and her chickens have
+long been safe at home. A dense December fog creeps in everywhere,
+choking and blinding, as I finish the history of those fifteen innocent
+days, calm as autumn, and bright as spring, when we three took our
+Unsentimental Journey together through Cornwall. Many a clever critic,
+like Sir Charles Coldstream when he looked into the crater of Vesuvius,
+may see "nothing in it"&mdash;a few kindly readers looking a little further,
+may see a little more: probably the writer only sees the whole.</p>
+
+<p>But such as it is, let it stay&mdash;simple memorial of what Americans would
+call "a good time," the sunshine of which may cast its brightness far
+forward, even into that quiet time "when travelling days are done."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">THE END.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">LONDON:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor</span>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44557 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #44557 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44557)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Unsentimental Journey through Cornwall, by 
+Dinah Maria Craik
+
+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: An Unsentimental Journey through Cornwall
+
+Author: Dinah Maria Craik
+
+Illustrator: C. Napier Hemy
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2014 [EBook #44557]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
+
+  THROUGH CORNWALL
+
+  [Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.]
+
+
+
+
+  AN
+
+  UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
+
+  THROUGH
+
+  CORNWALL
+
+  BY
+
+  THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN"
+
+  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  BY
+
+  C. NAPIER HEMY
+
+  London
+
+  MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+  1884
+
+  _The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved_
+
+  LONDON:
+
+  R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
+
+  BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+  DAY THE FIRST                                             1
+
+  DAY THE SECOND                                            9
+
+  DAY THE THIRD                                            25
+
+  DAY THE FOURTH                                           45
+
+  DAY THE FIFTH                                            53
+
+  DAY THE SIXTH                                            59
+
+  DAY THE SEVENTH                                          67
+
+  DAY THE EIGHTH                                           75
+
+  DAY THE NINTH                                            86
+
+  DAY THE TENTH                                           101
+
+  DAY THE ELEVENTH                                        110
+
+  DAY THE TWELFTH                                         118
+
+  DAY THE THIRTEENTH                                      127
+
+  DAYS FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH               133
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+  ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT                           _Frontispiece_
+
+  FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING                                   1
+
+  ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY                           5
+
+  VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH      7
+
+  A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD                     11
+
+  THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT         15
+
+  THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT                               23
+
+  CORNISH FISH                                             24
+
+  POLTESCO                                                 29
+
+  CADGWITH COVE                                            32
+
+  THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH                    34
+
+  MULLION COVE, CORNWALL                                   38
+
+  A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY                           41
+
+  STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT                              46
+
+  HAULING IN THE BOATS--EVENING                            50
+
+  HAULING IN THE LINES                                     55
+
+  THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY                                 60
+
+  THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER--A CORNISH STUDY                63
+
+  KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL                                   68
+
+  THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE                           71
+
+  THE LION ROCKS--A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE          76
+
+  HAULING IN THE BOATS                                     79
+
+  ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS                         83
+
+  JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING                                   87
+
+  THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE          94
+
+  CORNISH FISHERMAN                                       100
+
+  THE SEINE BOAT--A PERILOUS MOMENT                       103
+
+  ST. IVES      108
+
+  THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK                       114
+
+  SENNEN COVE, WAITING FOR THE BOATS                      119
+
+  ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE                      124
+
+  TINTAGEL                                                128
+
+  CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY                     135
+
+  BOSCASTLE                                               139
+
+  THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA                            145
+
+
+
+
+AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
+
+THROUGH CORNWALL
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING.]
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE FIRST
+
+
+I believe in holidays. Not in a frantic rushing about from place to
+place, glancing at everything and observing nothing; flying from town
+to town, from hotel to hotel, eager to "do" and to see a country, in
+order that when they get home they may say they have done it, and seen
+it. Only to say;--as for any real vision of eye, heart, and brain, they
+might as well go through the world blindfold. It is not the things
+we see, but the mind we see them with, which makes the real interest
+of travelling. "Eyes and No Eyes,"--an old-fashioned story about two
+little children taking a walk; one seeing everything, and enjoying
+everything, and the other seeing nothing, and thinking the expedition
+the dullest imaginable. This simple tale, which the present generation
+has probably never read, contains the essence of all rational
+travelling.
+
+So when, as the "old hen," (which I am sometimes called, from my habit
+of going about with a brood of "chickens," my own or other people's) I
+planned a brief tour with two of them, one just entered upon her teens,
+the other in her twenties, I premised that it must be a tour after my
+own heart.
+
+"In the first place, my children, you must obey orders implicitly. I
+shall collect opinions, and do my best to please everybody; but in
+travelling one only must decide, the others coincide. It will save them
+a world of trouble, and their 'conductor' also; who, if competent to be
+trusted at all, should be trusted absolutely. Secondly, take as little
+luggage as possible. No sensible people travel with their point-lace
+and diamonds. Two 'changes of raiment,' good, useful dresses, prudent
+boots, shawls, and waterproofs--these I shall insist upon, and nothing
+more. Nothing for show, as I shall take you to no place where you can
+show off. We will avoid all huge hotels, all fashionable towns; we
+will study life in its simplicity, and make ourselves happy in our own
+humble, feminine way. Not 'roughing it' in any needless or reckless
+fashion--the 'old hen' is too old for that; yet doing everything with
+reasonable economy. Above all, rushing into no foolhardy exploits, and
+taking every precaution to keep well and strong, so as to enjoy the
+journey from beginning to end, and hinder no one else from enjoying
+it. There are four things which travellers ought never to lose: their
+luggage, their temper, their health, and their spirits. I will make
+you as happy as I possibly can, but you must also make me happy by
+following my rules: especially the one golden rule, Obey orders."
+
+So preached the "old hen," with a vague fear that her chickens might
+turn out to be ducklings, which would be a little awkward in the
+region whither she proposed to take them. For if there is one place
+more risky than another for adventurous young people with a talent
+for "perpetuating themselves down prejudices," as Mrs. Malaprop would
+say, it is that grandest, wildest, most dangerous coast, the coast of
+Cornwall.
+
+I had always wished to investigate Cornwall. This desire had existed
+ever since, at five years old, I made acquaintance with Jack the
+Giantkiller, and afterwards, at fifteen or so, fell in love with my
+life's one hero, King Arthur.
+
+Between these two illustrious Cornishmen,--equally mythical, practical
+folk would say--there exists more similarity than at first appears.
+The aim of both was to uphold right and to redress wrong. Patience,
+self-denial; tenderness to the weak and helpless, dauntless courage
+against the wicked and the strong: these, the essential elements of
+true manliness, characterise both the humble Jack and the kingly
+Arthur. And the qualities seem to have descended to more modern times.
+The well-known ballad:--
+
+  "And shall they scorn Tre, Pol, and Pen?
+    And shall Trelawny die?
+  There's twenty thousand Cornishmen
+    Will know the reason why,"
+
+has a ring of the same tone, indicating the love of justice, the spirit
+of fidelity and bravery, as well as of that common sense which is at
+the root of all useful valour.
+
+I wanted to see if the same spirit lingered yet, as I had heard it did
+among Cornish folk, which, it was said, were a race by themselves,
+honest, simple, shrewd, and kind. Also, I wished to see the Cornish
+land, and especially the Land's End, which I had many a time beheld in
+fancy, for it was a favourite landscape-dream of my rather imaginative
+childhood, recurring again and again, till I could almost have painted
+it from memory. And as year after year every chance of seeing it in its
+reality seemed to melt away, the desire grew into an actual craving.
+
+After waiting patiently for nearly half a century, I said to myself, "I
+will conquer Fate; I _will_ go and see the Land's End."
+
+And it was there that, after making a circuit round the coast, I
+proposed finally to take my "chickens."
+
+We concocted a plan, definite yet movable, as all travelling plans
+should be, clear in its dates, its outline, and intentions, but
+subject to modifications, according to the exigency of the times
+and circumstances. And with that prudent persistency, without which
+all travelling is a mere muddle, all discomfort, disappointment,
+and distaste--for on whatever terms you may be with your travelling
+companions when you start, you are quite sure either to love them or
+hate them when you get home--we succeeded in carrying it out.
+
+The 1st of September, 1881, and one of the loveliest of September
+days, was the day we started from Exeter, where we had agreed to meet
+and stay the night. There, the previous afternoon, we had whiled away
+an hour in the dim cathedral, and watched, not without anxiety, the
+flood of evening sunshine which poured through the great west window,
+lighting the tombs, old and new, from the Crusader, cross-legged and
+broken-nosed, to the white marble bas-relief which tells the story of a
+not less noble Knight of the Cross, Bishop Patteson. Then we wandered
+round the quaint old town, in such a lovely twilight, such a starry
+night! But--will it be a fine day to-morrow? We could but live in hope:
+and hope did not deceive us.
+
+To start on a journey in sunshine feels like beginning life well.
+Clouds may come--are sure to come: I think no one past earliest youth
+goes forth into a strange region without a feeling akin to Saint Paul's
+"not knowing what things may befall me there." But it is always best
+for each to keep to himself all the shadows, and give his companions
+the brightness, especially if they be young companions.
+
+And very bright were the eyes that watched the swift-moving landscape
+on either side of the railway: the estuary of Exe; Dawlish, with its
+various colouring of rock and cliff, and its pretty little sea-side
+houses, where family groups stood photographing themselves on our
+vision, as the train rushed unceremoniously between the beach and their
+parlour windows; then Plymouth and Saltash, where the magnificent
+bridge reminded us of the one over the Tay, which we had once crossed,
+not long before that Sunday night when, sitting in a quiet sick-room
+in Edinburgh, we heard the howl outside of the fearful blast which
+destroyed such a wonderful work of engineering art, and whirled so many
+human beings into eternity.
+
+But this Saltash bridge, spanning placidly a smiling country,
+how pretty and safe it looked! There was a general turning to
+carriage-windows, and then a courteous drawing back, that we,
+the strangers, should see it, which broke the ice with our
+fellow-travellers. To whom we soon began to talk, as is our
+conscientious custom when we see no tangible objection thereto, and
+gained, now, as many a time before, much pleasant as well as useful
+information. Every one evinced an eager politeness to show us the
+country, and an innocent anxiety that we should admire it; which we
+could honestly do.
+
+I shall long remember, as a dream of sunshiny beauty and peace, this
+journey between Plymouth and Falmouth, passing Liskeard, Lostwithiel,
+St. Austell, &c. The green-wooded valleys, the rounded hills, on one of
+which we were shown the remains of the old castle of Ristormel, noted
+among the three castles of Cornwall; all this, familiar to so many,
+was to us absolutely new, and we enjoyed it and the kindly interest
+that was taken in pointing it out to us, as happy-minded simple folk do
+always enjoy the sight of a new country.
+
+[Illustration: ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY.]
+
+Our pleasure seemed to amuse an old gentleman who sat in the corner.
+He at last addressed us, with an unctuous west-country accent which
+suited well his comfortable stoutness. He might have fed all his life
+upon Dorset butter and Devonshire cream, to one of which counties
+he certainly belonged. Not, I think, to the one we were now passing
+through, and admiring so heartily.
+
+"So you're going to travel in Cornwall. Well, take care, they're sharp
+folk, the Cornish folk. They'll take you in if they can." (Then, he
+must be a Devon man. It is so easy to sit in judgment upon next-door
+neighbours.) "I don't mean to say they'll actually cheat you, but
+they'll take you in, and they'll be careful that you don't take them
+in--no, not to the extent of a brass farthing."
+
+We explained, smiling, that we had not the slightest intention of
+taking anybody in, that we liked justice, and blamed no man, Cornishman
+or otherwise, for trying to do the best he could for himself, so that
+it was not to the injury of other people.
+
+"Well, well, perhaps you're right. But they are sharp, for all that,
+especially in the towns."
+
+We replied that we meant to escape towns, whenever possible, and encamp
+in some quiet places, quite out of the world.
+
+Our friend opened his eyes, evidently thinking this a most singular
+taste.
+
+"Well, if you really want a quiet place, I can tell you of one, almost
+as quiet as your grave. I ought to know, for I lived there sixteen
+years." (At any rate, it seemed to have agreed with him.) "Gerrans is
+its name--a fishing village. You get there from Falmouth by boat. The
+fare is "--(I regret to say my memory is not so accurate as his in the
+matter of pennies), "and mind you don't pay one farthing more. Then you
+have to drive across country; the distance is--and the fare per mile--"
+(Alas! again I have totally forgotten.) "They'll be sure to ask you
+double the money, but never you mind! refuse to pay it, and they'll
+give in. You must always hold your own against extortion in Cornwall."
+
+I thanked him, with a slightly troubled mind. But I have always noticed
+that in travelling "with such measure as ye mete it shall be meted
+to you again," and that those who come to a country expecting to be
+cheated generally are cheated. Having still a lingering belief in human
+nature, and especially in Cornish nature, I determined to set down the
+old gentleman's well-meant advice for what it was worth, no more, and
+cease to perplex myself about it. For which resolve I have since been
+exceedingly thankful.
+
+He gave us, however, much supplementary advice which was rather useful,
+and parted from us in the friendliest fashion, with that air of bland
+complaisance natural to those who assume the character of adviser in
+general.
+
+"Mind you go to Gerrans. They'll not take you in more than they do
+everywhere else, and you'll find it a healthy place, and a quiet
+place--as quiet, I say, as your grave. It will make you feel exactly as
+if you were dead and buried."
+
+That not being the prominent object of our tour in Cornwall, we thanked
+him again, but as soon as he left the carriage determined among
+ourselves to take no further steps about visiting Gerrans.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH.]
+
+However, in spite of the urgency of another fellow-traveller--it is
+always good to hear everybody's advice, and follow your own--we carried
+our love of quietness so far that we eschewed the magnificent new
+Falmouth Hotel, with its _table d'hôte_, lawn tennis ground, sea baths
+and promenade, for the old-fashioned Green Bank, which though it had no
+green banks, boasted, we had been told, a pleasant little sea view and
+bay view, and was a resting-place full of comfort and homely peace.
+
+Which we found true, and would have liked to stay longer in its
+pleasant shelter, which almost conquered our horror of hotels; but we
+had now fairly weighed anchor and must sail on.
+
+"You ought to go at once to the Lizard," said the friend who met us,
+and did everything for us at Falmouth--and the remembrance of whom, and
+of all that happened in our brief stay, will make the very name of the
+place sound sweet in our ears for ever. "The Lizard is the real point
+for sightseers, almost better than the Land's End. Let us see if we can
+hear of lodgings."
+
+She made inquiries, and within half an hour we did hear of some most
+satisfactory ones. "The very thing! We will telegraph at once--answer
+paid," said this good genius of practicality, as sitting in her
+carriage she herself wrote the telegram and despatched it. Telegrams to
+the Lizard! We were not then at the Ultima Thule of civilisation.
+
+"Still," she said, "you had better provide yourself with some food,
+such as groceries and hams. You can't always get what you want at the
+Lizard."
+
+So, having the very dimmest idea what the Lizard was--whether a town,
+a village, or a bare rock--when we had secured the desired lodgings
+("quite ideal lodgings," remarked our guardian angel), I proceeded to
+lay in a store of provisions, doing it as carefully as if fitting out
+a ship for the North Pole--and afterwards found out it was a work of
+supererogation entirely.
+
+The next thing to secure was an "ideal" carriage, horse, and man, which
+our good genius also succeeded in providing. And now, our minds being
+at rest, we were able to write home a fixed address for a week, and
+assure our expectant and anxious friends that all was going well with
+us.
+
+Then, after a twilight wander round the quaint old town--so like a
+foreign town--and other keen enjoyments, which, as belonging to the
+sanctity of private life I here perforce omit, we laid us down to
+sleep, and slept in peace, having really achieved much; considering it
+was only the first day of our journey.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE SECOND
+
+
+Is there anything more delightful than to start on a smiling morning
+in a comfortable carriage, with all one's _impedimenta_ (happily not
+much!) safely stowed away under one's eyes, with a good horse, over
+which one's feelings of humanity need not be always agonising, and a
+man to drive, whom one can trust to have as much sense as the brute,
+especially in the matter of "refreshment." Our letters that morning had
+brought us a comico-tragic story of a family we knew, who, migrating
+with a lot of children and luggage, and requiring to catch a train
+thirteen miles off, had engaged a driver who "refreshed himself" so
+successfully at every public-house on the way, that he took five hours
+to accomplish the journey, and finally had to be left at the road-side,
+and the luggage transferred to another vehicle, which of course lost
+the train. We congratulated ourselves that no such disaster was likely
+to happen to us.
+
+"Yes; I've been a teetotaller all my life," said our driver, a
+bright-looking, intelligent young fellow, whom, as he became rather a
+prominent adjunct to our life and decidedly to our comfort, I shall
+individualise by calling him Charles. "I had good need to avoid
+drinking. My father drank through a small property. No fear of me,
+ma'am."
+
+So at once between him and us, or him and "we," according to the
+Cornish habit of transposing pronouns, was established a feeling of
+fraternity, which, during the six days that we had to do with him,
+deepened into real regard. Never failing when wanted, never presuming
+when not wanted, straightforward, independent, yet full of that
+respectful kindliness which servants can always show and masters
+should always appreciate, giving us a chivalrous care, which, being
+"unprotected females," was to us extremely valuable, I here record that
+much of the pleasure of our tour was owing to this honest Cornishman,
+who served us, his horse, and his master--he was one of the employés of
+a livery-stable keeper--with equal fidelity.
+
+Certainly, numerous as were the parties he had driven--("I go to the
+Lizard about three times a week," he said)--Charles could seldom have
+driven a merrier trio than that which leisurely mounted the upland road
+from Falmouth, leading to the village of Constantine.
+
+"Just turn and look behind you, ladies" (we had begged to be shown
+everything and told everything); "isn't that a pretty view?"
+
+It certainly was. From the high ground we could see Falmouth with its
+sheltered bay and glittering sea beyond. Landward were the villages of
+Mabe and Constantine, with their great quarries of granite, and in the
+distance lay wide sweeps of undulating land, barren and treeless, but
+still beautiful--not with the rich pastoral beauty of our own Kent, yet
+having a charm of its own. And the air, so fresh and pure, yet soft and
+balmy, it felt to tender lungs like the difference between milk and
+cream. To breathe became a pleasure instead of a pain. I could quite
+understand how the semi-tropical plants that we had seen in a lovely
+garden below, grew and flourished, how the hydrangeas became huge
+bushes, and the eucalyptus an actual forest tree.
+
+But this was in the sheltered valley, and we had gained the hill-top,
+emerging out of one of those deep-cut lanes peculiar to Devon and
+Cornwall, and so pretty in themselves, a perfect garden of wild flowers
+and ferns, except that they completely shut out the view. This did not
+much afflict the practical minds of my two juniors. Half an hour before
+they had set up a shout--
+
+"Stop the carriage! _Do_ stop the carriage! Just look there! Did you
+ever see such big blackberries? and what a quantity! Let us get out;
+we'll gather them for to-morrow's pudding."
+
+Undoubtedly a dinner earned is the sweetest of all dinners. I remember
+once thinking that our cowslip tea (I should not like to drink it
+now) was better than our grandmother's best Bohea or something out
+of her lovely old tea-caddy. So the carriage, lightened of all but
+myself, crawled leisurely up and waited on the hill-top for the busy
+blackberry-gatherers.
+
+While our horse stood cropping an extempore meal, I and his driver
+began to talk about him and other cognate topics, including the
+permanent one of the great advantage to both body and soul in being
+freed all one's life long from the necessity of getting "something to
+drink" stronger than water.
+
+[Illustration: A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD.]
+
+"Yes," he said, "I find I can do as much upon tea or coffee as other
+men upon beer. I'm just as strong and as active, and can stand weather
+quite as well. It's a pretty hard life, winter and summer, driving all
+day, coming in soaked, sometimes in the middle of the night, having to
+turn in for an hour or two, and then turn out again. And you must look
+after your horse, of course, before you think of yourself. Still, I
+stand it well, and that without a drop of beer from years end to years
+end."
+
+I congratulated and sympathised; in return for which Charles entered
+heart and soul into the blackberry question, pointed out where the
+biggest blackberries hung, and looked indeed--he was still such a young
+fellow!--as if he would have liked to go blackberry-hunting himself.
+
+I put, smiling, the careless question, "Have you any little folks of
+your own? Are you married?"
+
+How cautious one should be over an idle word! All of a sudden the
+cheerful face clouded, the mouth began to quiver, with difficulty I
+saw he kept back the tears. It was a version in every-day life of
+Longfellow's most pathetic little poem, "The Two Locks of Hair."
+
+"My wife broke her heart after the baby, I think. It died. She went off
+in consumption. It's fifteen months now"--(he had evidently counted
+them)--"fifteen months since I have been alone. I didn't like to give
+up my home and my bits of things; still, when a man has to come in wet
+and tired to an empty house----"
+
+He turned suddenly away and busied himself over his horse, for just
+that minute the two girls came running back, laughing heartily, and
+showing their baskets full of "the very biggest blackberries you ever
+saw!" I took them back into the carriage; the driver mounted his box,
+and drove on for some miles in total silence. As, when I had whispered
+that little episode to my two companions, so did we.
+
+There are two ways of going from Falmouth to the Lizard--the regular
+route through the town of Helstone, and another, a trifle longer,
+through the woods of Trelowarren, the seat of the old Cornish family of
+Vyvyan.
+
+"I'll take you that road, ma'am, it's much the prettiest," said Charles
+evidently exerting himself to recover his cheerful looks and be the
+civil driver and guide, showing off all the curiosities and beauties
+of the neighbourhood. And very pretty Trelowarren was, though nothing
+remarkable to us who came from the garden of England. Still, the trees
+were big--for Cornwall, and in the ferny glade grew abundantly the
+_Osmunda regalis_, a root of which we greatly coveted, and Charles
+offered to get. He seemed to take a pride in showing us everything,
+except what he probably did not know of, and which, when I heard of
+too late, was to me a real regret.
+
+At Trelowarren, not far from the house, are a series of subterranean
+chambers and galleries, in all ninety feet long and about the height
+of a man. The entrance is very low. Still it is possible to get into
+them and traverse them from end to end, the walls being made of blocks
+of unhewn stone, leaning inward towards the roof, which is formed of
+horizontal blocks. How, when, and for what purpose this mysterious
+underground dwelling was made, is utterly lost in the mists of time.
+I should exceedingly have liked to examine it, and to think we passed
+close by and never knew of it will always be a certain regret, of which
+I relieve my mind by telling it for the guidance of other archæological
+travellers.
+
+One of the charms of Cornwall is that it gives one the sense of being
+such an old country, as if things had gone exactly as they do now, not
+merely since the days of King Arthur, but for ever so long before then.
+The Romans, the Ph[oe]nicians, nay, the heroes of pre-historic ages,
+such as Jack the Giantkiller and the giant Cormoran, seemed to be not
+impossible myths, as we gradually quitted civilisation in the shape of
+a village or two, and a few isolated farm-houses, and came out upon the
+wild district known as Goonhilly Down.
+
+Certainly not from its hills, for it is as flat as the back of your
+hand, and as bare. But the word, which is old Cornish--that now extinct
+tongue, which only survives in the names of places and people--means a
+_hunting ground_; and there is every reason to believe that this wide
+treeless waste was once an enormous forest, full of wild beasts. There
+St. Rumon, an Irish bishop, long before there were any Saxon bishops
+or saints, is said to have settled, far away from the world, and made
+a cell and oratory, the memory of which, and of himself, is still kept
+up by the name of the two villages, Ruan Major and Ruan Minor, on the
+outskirts of this Goonhilly Down.
+
+In later times the down was noted for a breed of small, strong ponies,
+called "Goonhillies." Charles had heard of them, but I do not suppose
+he had ever heard of St. Rumon, or of the primeval forest. At present,
+the fauna of Goonhilly is represented by no animal more dangerous
+than a rabbit or a field-mouse, and its vegetation includes nothing
+bigger than the _erica vagans_--the lovely Cornish heath, lilac,
+flesh-coloured and white which will grow nowhere else, except in a
+certain district of Portugal.
+
+"There it is!" we cried, at the pleasant first sight of a new flower:
+for though not scientific botanists, we have what I may call a speaking
+acquaintance with almost every wild flower that grows. To see one that
+we had never seen before was quite an excitement. Instantly we were out
+of the carriage, and gathering it by handfuls.
+
+Botanists know this heath well--it has the peculiarity of the anthers
+being outside instead of inside the bell--but we only noticed the
+beauty of it, the masses in which it grew, and how it would grow only
+within a particular line--the sharp geological line of magnesian earth,
+which forms the serpentine district. Already we saw, forcing itself
+up through the turf, blocks of this curious stone, and noticed how
+cottage-walls were built, and fences made of it.
+
+"Yes, that's the serpentine," said Charles, now in his depth once more;
+we could not have expected him to know about St. Rumon, &c. "You'll see
+plenty of it when you get to the Lizard. All the coast for miles and
+miles is serpentine. Such curious rocks, reddish and greenish; they
+look so pretty when the water washes against them, and when polished,
+and made into ornaments, candlesticks, brooches and the like. But I'll
+show you the shops as we pass. We shall be at Lizard Town directly."
+
+So it was a town, and it had shops. We should not have thought so,
+judging by the slender line of white dots which now was appearing on
+the horizon--Cornish folk seemed to have a perfect mania for painting
+their houses a glistening white. Yes, that was the Lizard; we were
+nearing our journey's end. At which we were a little sorry, even though
+already an hour or two behind-hand--that is, behind the hour we had
+ordered dinner. But "time was made for slaves"--and railway travellers,
+and we were beyond railways.
+
+"Never mind, what does dinner matter?" (It did not seriously, as we had
+taken the precaution, which I recommend to all travellers, of never
+starting on any expedition without a good piece of bread, a bunch of
+raisins, and a flask of cold tea or coffee.) "What's the odds so long
+as you're happy? Let us linger and make the drive as long as we can.
+The horse will not object, nor Charles either."
+
+Evidently not; our faithful steed cropped contentedly an extempore
+meal, and Charles, who would have scrambled anywhere or dug up anything
+"to please the young ladies," took out his pocket-knife, and devoted
+himself to the collection of all the different coloured heaths; roots
+which we determined to send home in the hope, alas! I fear vain, that
+they would grow in our garden, afar from their native magnesia.
+
+[Illustration: THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT.]
+
+So for another peaceful hour we stayed; wandering about upon Goonhilly
+Down. How little it takes to make one happy, when one wants to be
+happy, and knows enough of the inevitable sorrows of life to be glad to
+be happy--as long as fate allows. Each has his burthen to bear, seen or
+unseen by the world outside, and some of us that day had not a light
+one; yet was it a bright day, a white day, a day to be thankful for.
+
+Nor did it end when, arriving at the "ideal" lodgings, and being
+received with a placidity which we felt we had not quite deserved, and
+fed in a manner which reflected much credit not only on the cook's
+skill, but her temper--we sallied out to see the place.
+
+Not a picturesque place exactly. A high plain, with the sparkling sea
+beyond it; the principal object near being the Lizard Lights, a huge
+low building, with a tower at either side, not unlike the Sydenham
+Crystal palace, only dazzling white, as every building apparently was
+at the Lizard.
+
+"We'll go out and adventure," cried the young folks; and off
+they started down the garden, over a stile--made of serpentine
+of course--and across what seemed a field, till they disappeared
+mysteriously where the line of sea cut the line of cliffs, and were
+heard of no more for two hours.
+
+Then they returned, all delight and excitement. They had found such
+a lovely little cove, full of tiny pools, a perfect treasure-house
+of sea-weeds and sea-anemones; and the rocks, so picturesque, and
+"so grand to scramble over." (I must confess that to these, my
+practically-minded "chickens," the picturesque or the romantic always
+ranked second to the fun of a scramble.) The descent to this marine
+paradise also seemed difficult enough to charm anybody.
+
+"But _you_ wouldn't do it. Quite impossible! You would break all your
+legs and arms, and sprain both your ankles."
+
+Alas, for a hen--and an old hen--with ducklings! But mine, though
+daring, were not rash, and had none of that silly fool-hardiness
+which for the childish vanity of doing, or of saying one has done, a
+dangerous thing, risks health, comfort, life, and delights selfishly
+in making other people utterly miserable. So, being feeble on my feet,
+though steady in my head, I agreed to sit like a cormorant on the
+nearest cliff, and look down placidly upon the young adventurers in
+their next delightful scramble.
+
+It could not be to-night, however, for the tide was coming in fast; the
+fairy cove would soon be all under water.
+
+"Shall we get a boat? It will soon be sunset and moon-rise; we can
+watch both from the sea."
+
+That sea! Its broad circle had no other bound than the shores of
+America, and its blueness, or the strange, changing tint often called
+blue, almost equalled the blue of the Mediterranean.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, it's a fine evening for a row," said the faithful Charles.
+"And it isn't often you can get a row here; the sea is so rough, and
+the landing so difficult. But there's a man I know; he has a good
+boat, he knows the coast well, and he'll not go out unless it's really
+safe."
+
+This seemed ultra-prudent, with such a smiling sky and sea; but we
+soon found it was not unnecessary at the Lizard. Indeed all along the
+Cornish coast the great Atlantic waves come in with such a roll or a
+heavy ground-swell, windless, but the precursor of a storm that is
+slowly arriving from across the ocean, that boating here at best is no
+child's play.
+
+We had been fair-weather sailors, over shut-in lochs or smooth rivers;
+all of us could handle an oar, or had handled it in old days, but
+this was a different style of thing. Descending the steep zigzag path
+to the next cove--the only one where there was anything like a fair
+landing--we found we still had to walk through a long bed of sea-weed,
+and manage somehow to get into the boat between the recoil and advance
+of a wave. Not one of the tiny waves of quiet bays, but an Atlantic
+roller, which, even if comparatively small and tame, comes in with a
+force that will take you off your feet at any time.
+
+However, we managed it, and found ourselves floating among an
+archipelago of rocks, where the solemn cormorants sat in rows, and
+affectionate families of gulls kept swimming about in a large flotilla
+of white dots on the dark water. Very dark the sea was: heaving and
+sinking in great hills and valleys, which made rowing difficult. Also,
+for several yards round every rock extended a perfect whirlpool of
+foaming waves, which, if any boat chanced to be caught therein, would
+have dashed it to pieces in no time. But our boatmen seemed used to the
+danger, and took us as near it as possible, without actually running
+into it.
+
+They were both far from commonplace-looking men, especially the elder,
+our stroke-oar. Being rather given to ethnological tastes, we had
+already noticed the characteristic Cornish face, not unlike the Norman
+type, and decidedly superior to that of the inland counties of England.
+But this was a face by itself, which would have attracted any artist or
+student of human nature; weather-beaten, sharp-lined, wrinkled as it
+was--the man must have been fully sixty--there was in it a sweetness,
+an absolute beauty, which struck us at once. The smile, placid and
+paternal, came often, though words were few; and the keen, kindly eyes
+were blue as a child's, or as Tennyson describes King Arthur's.
+
+"I can imagine," whispered one of us who had imaginative tendencies,
+"that King Arthur might have looked thus, had he lived to grow old."
+
+"I don't believe King Arthur ever lived at all," was the knock-me-down
+utilitarian answer, to which the other had grown accustomed and
+indifferent. Nevertheless, there was such a refinement about the man,
+spite of his rough fisherman's dress, and he had been so kind to the
+young folks, so considerate to "the old lady," as Cornish candour
+already called me, that, intending to employ him again, we asked his
+name.
+
+"John Curgenven."
+
+"John what?" We made several hopeless plunges at it, and finally asked
+him to spell it.
+
+"Cur-gen-ven," said he; adding, with a slight air of pride, "one of the
+oldest families in Cornwall."
+
+(I have no hesitation in stating this, because, when we afterwards
+became great friends, I told John Curgenven I should probably "put
+him in a book"--if he had no objection. To which he answered with his
+usual composure, "No, he did not think it would harm him." He evidently
+considered "writing a book" was a very inferior sort of trade.)
+
+But looking at him, one could not help speculating as to how far the
+legend of King Arthur had been really true, and whether the type of
+man which Tennyson has preserved--or created--in this his "own ideal
+knight," did once exist, and still exists, in a modified modern form,
+throughout Cornwall. A fancy upon which we then only argued; now I, at
+least, am inclined to believe it.
+
+"There is Lord Brougham's head, his wig and his turn-up nose, you can
+see all distinctly. At least, you could if there was light enough."
+
+But there was not light, for the sun was setting, and the moon only
+just rising. Black looked the heaving sea, except where rings of white
+foam encircled each group of rocks, blacker still. And blackest of all
+looked the iron-bound coast, sharp against the amber western sky.
+
+"Yes, that's Kynance Cove, and the Gull Rock and Asparagus Island.
+Shall we row there? It's only about two miles."
+
+Two miles there, and two back, through this angry sea, and then to land
+in the dim light about 9 p.m.! Courage failed us. We did not own this;
+we merely remarked that we would rather see Kynance by daylight, but I
+think each of us felt a sensation of relief when the boat's head was
+turned homewards.
+
+Yet how beautiful it all was! Many a night afterwards we watched
+the same scene, but never lovelier than that night, the curved line
+of coast traceable distinctly up to Mount's Bay, and then the long
+peninsula which they told us was the Land's End, stretching out into
+the horizon, where sea and sky met in a mist of golden light, through
+which the sun was slowly dropping right from the sky into the sea.
+Beyond was a vague cloud-land, which might be the fair land of Lyonesse
+itself, said still to lie there submerged, with all its cities and
+towers and forests; or the "island-valley of Avillion," whither Arthur
+sailed with the three queens to be healed of his "grievous wound," and
+whence he is to come again some day. Popular superstition still expects
+him, and declares that he haunts this coast even now in the shape of a
+Cornish chough.
+
+Modern ghosts, too, exist, decidedly more alarming.
+
+"Look up there, ladies, that green slope is Pistol Meadow. Nobody likes
+to walk there after dark. Other things walk as well."
+
+"What things?"
+
+"Two hundred and more of foreign sailors, whose ship went to pieces in
+the little cove below. They're buried under the green mounds you see.
+Out of a crew of seven hundred only two men were washed ashore alive,
+and they were in irons, which the captain had put on them because
+they said he was going too near in shore. It was called Pistol Meadow
+because most of 'em were found with pistols in their hands, which may
+have been true or may not, since it happened more than a hundred years
+ago. However, there are the green mounds, you see, and Lizard folk
+don't much like passing the place after dark."
+
+"But you?"
+
+John Curgenven smiled. "Oh, us and the coast-guards! Us goes anywhere,
+at all hours, and never meets nothing. D'ye see those white marks all
+along the coast every few yards? They're rocks, kept white-washed, to
+guide the men of dark nights between here and Kynance. It's a ticklish
+path, when all's as black as pitch, with a stiff wind blowing."
+
+I should think it was! One almost shuddered at the idea, and then
+felt proud of the steady heads and cool courage of these coast-guard
+men--always the pick of the service, true Englishmen, fearless
+and faithful--the business of whose whole lives is to save other
+lives--that is, now that smuggling has abated, and those dreadful
+stories once current all along the coast of Cornwall have become
+mostly legends of the past. No tales of wreckers, or of fights between
+smugglers and revenue officers, reached our ears, but the stories of
+shipwrecks were endless. Every winter, and many times through the
+winter, some ghastly tragedy had happened. Every half-mile along this
+picturesque shore was recorded the place where some good ship went to
+pieces, often with the brief addendum, "all hands lost."
+
+"The sun's just setting. Look out for the Lizard Lights," called out
+Charles, who sat in the bow of the boat in faithful attendance upon his
+"ladies,"--another Knight of the Round Table in humble life--we met
+many such in Cornwall. "Look! There they are."
+
+And sure enough, the instant the sun's last spark was quenched in
+the sea, into which he dropped like a red round ball, out burst two
+substitute suns, and very fair substitutes too, making the poor little
+moon in the east of no importance whatever. The gleam of them extended
+far out upon the darkening ocean, and we could easily believe that
+their light was "equal to 20,000 candles," and that they were seen out
+at sea to a distance of twenty, some said even thirty, miles.
+
+"Except in a fog; and the fogs at the Lizard are very bad. Then you
+can see nothing, not even the Lights, but they keep sounding the
+fog-horn every minute or so. It works by the same machinery as works
+the Lights--a big steam-engine; you can hear it bum-bumming now, if you
+listen."
+
+So we could, a mysterious noise like that of a gigantic bumble-bee,
+coming across the water from that curious building, long and white,
+with its two towers and those great eyes in each of them, at either end.
+
+"They're wonderful bright;" said John Curgenven; "many's the time I've
+sat and read my newspaper by them a quarter of a mile off. They're seen
+through the blackest night, the blacker the brighter, seen through
+everything--except fog. Now, ladies, d'ye think you can jump ashore?"
+
+Some of us did, airily enough, though it required to choose your
+moment pretty cleverly so as to escape the incoming wave. And some of
+us--well, we accepted the inevitable, and were only too thankful to
+scramble anyhow, wet or dry, on terra firma.
+
+And then we had to ascend the zigzag path, slippery with loose stones,
+and uncertainly seen in the dim half-twilight, half-moonlight. At
+last we came out safe by the life-boat house, which we had noticed in
+passing, with the slit in its door for "Contributions," and a notice
+below that the key was kept at such and such a house--I forget the
+man's name--"and at the Rectory."
+
+[Illustration: THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT.]
+
+"Yes," said Curgenven, "in many places along this coast, when there's a
+wreck, and we're called out, the parson's generally at the head of us.
+Volunteers? Of course we're all volunteers, except the coast-guard, who
+are paid. But they're often glad enough of us and of our boats too. The
+life-boat isn't enough. They keep her here, the only place they can,
+but it's tough work running her down to the beach on a black winter's
+night, with a ship going to pieces before your eyes, as ships do here
+in no time. I've seen it myself--watched her strike, and in ten minutes
+there was not a bit of her left."
+
+We could well imagine it. Even on this calm evening the waves kept
+dashing themselves against every rock with a roar and a swell and a
+circle of boiling foam. What must it be on a stormy winter night, or
+through the deathly quiet of a white mist, with nothing visible or
+audible except the roar of the waters and the shriek of the fog-horn!
+
+"I think it's full time we were in-doors," suggested a practical and
+prudent little voice; "we can come again and see it in the daylight.
+Here's the road."
+
+"That's the way you came, Miss," said Charles, "but I can take you a
+much shorter one on the top of the hedges"--or edges, we never quite
+knew which they were, though on the whole the letter _h_ is tolerably
+well treated in Cornwall.
+
+These "hedges" were startling to any one not Cornish-born. In the
+Lizard district the divisions of land are made not by fences, but by
+walls, built in a peculiar fashion, half stones, half earth, varying
+from six to ten feet high, and about two feet broad. On the top of this
+narrow giddy path, fringed on either side by deceitful grass, you are
+expected to walk!--in fact, are obliged to walk, for there is often no
+other road. There was none here.
+
+I looked round in despair. Once upon a time I could have walked upon
+walls as well as anybody, but now--!
+
+"I'll help you, ma'am; and I'm sure you can manage it," said Charles
+consolingly. "It's only three-quarters of a mile."
+
+Three-quarters of a mile along a two-foot path on the top of a wall,
+and in this deceitful light, when one false step would entail a certain
+fall. And at my age one doesn't fall exactly like a feather or an
+india-rubber ball.
+
+"Ma'am, if you go slow and steady, with me before and Curgenven behind,
+you'll _not_ fall."
+
+Nor did I. I record it with gratitude to those two honest men--true
+_gentlemen_, such as I have found at times in all ranks--who never
+once grumbled or relaxed in their care of their tardy and troublesome
+charge; one instance more of that kindly courtesy which it does any
+man good to offer, and which any woman, "lady" though she be, may feel
+proud to receive.
+
+When we reached "home," as we had already begun to call it, a smiling
+face and a comfortable tea justified the word. And when we retired,
+a good deal fatigued, but quite happy, we looked out upon the night,
+where the fiery stream of the Lizard Lights was contending with the
+brightest of harvest moons. It was a hopeful ending of our second day.
+
+[Illustration: CORNISH FISH.]
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE THIRD
+
+
+"And a beautiful day it is, ladies, though it won't do for Kynance."
+
+Only 8 a.m., yet there stood the faithful Charles, hat in hand, having
+heard that his ladies were at breakfast, and being evidently anxious
+that they should not lose an hour of him and his carriage, which were
+both due at Falmouth to-night. For this day was Saturday, and we were
+sending him home for Sunday.
+
+"As I found out last night, the tide won't suit for Kynance till
+Wednesday or Thursday, and you'll be too tired to walk much to-day.
+I've been thinking it all over. Suppose I were to drive you to Kennack
+Sands, back by the serpentine works to Cadgwith, and home to dinner?
+Then after dinner I'll give the horse a rest for two hours, and take
+you to Mullion; we can order tea at Mary Mundy's, and go on to the cove
+as far as I can get with the carriage. I'll leave it at the farm and be
+in time to help you over the rocks to see the caves, run ahead and meet
+you again with the carriage, and drive you back to Mary Mundy's. You
+can have tea and be home in the moonlight before nine o'clock."
+
+"And you?" we asked, a good deal bewildered by this carefully-outlined
+plan and all the strange names of places and people, yet not a little
+touched by the kindly way in which we were "taken in and done for" by
+our faithful squire of dames.
+
+"Me, ma'am? Oh, after an hour or two's rest the horse can start
+again--say at midnight, and be home by daylight. Or we could go to bed
+and be up early at four, and still get to Falmouth by eight, in time
+for the church work. Don't you trouble about us, we'll manage. He" (the
+other and four-footed half of the "we") "is a capital animal, and he'd
+get much harder work than this if he was at home."
+
+So we decided to put ourselves entirely in the hands of Charles,
+who seemed to have our interest so much at heart, and yet evinced a
+tenderness over his horse that is not too common among hired drivers.
+We promised to be ready in half an hour, so as to waste nothing of this
+lovely day, in which we had determined to enjoy ourselves.
+
+Who could help it? It was delightful to wake up early and refreshed,
+and come down to this sunshiny, cheerful breakfast-table, where, though
+nothing was grand, all was thoroughly comfortable.
+
+"I'm sure you're very kind, ladies, to be so pleased with everything,"
+apologised our bright-looking handmaiden; "and since you really wish
+to keep this room"--a very homely parlour which we had chosen in
+preference to a larger one, because it looked on the sea--"I only wish
+things was better for you; still, if you can make shift--"
+
+Well, if travellers cannot "make shift" with perfectly clean tidy
+rooms, well-cooked plain food, and more than civil, actually kindly,
+attendance, they ought to be ashamed of themselves! So we declared we
+would settle down in the evidently despised little parlour.
+
+It was not an æsthetic apartment, certainly. The wall-paper and carpet
+would have driven Morris and Co. nearly frantic; the furniture--mere
+chairs and a table--belonged "to the year one"--but (better than many
+modern chairs and tables) you could sit down upon the first and dine
+upon the second, in safety. There was no sofa, so we gladly accepted
+an offered easy-chair, and felt that all really useful things were now
+ours.
+
+But the ornamental? There was a paper arrangement in the grate, and
+certain vases on the chimney-piece which literally made our hair stand
+on end! After a private consultation as to how far we might venture,
+without wounding the feelings of our landlady, we mildly suggested that
+"perhaps we could do without these ornaments." All we wanted in their
+stead were a few jars, salt-jars or jam-pots, in which to arrange our
+wild flowers, of which yesterday the girls had gathered a quantity.
+
+The exchange was accepted, though with some surprise. But when, half
+an hour afterwards, the parlour appeared quite transformed, decorated
+in every available corner with brilliant autumn flowers--principally
+yellow--intermixed with the lovely Cornish heath; when, on some excuse
+or other, the hideous "ornament for your fire-stoves" was abolished,
+and the grate filled with a mass of green fern and grey sea-holly--I
+know no combination more exquisite both as to colour and form--then we
+felt that we could survive, at least for a week, even if shut up within
+this humble room, innocent of the smallest attraction as regarded art,
+music, or literature.
+
+But without doors? There Nature beat Art decidedly.
+
+What a world it was! Literally swimming in sunshine, from the sparkling
+sea in the distance, to the beds of marigolds close by--huge marigolds,
+double and single, mingled with carnations that filled the air with
+rich autumnal scent, all the more delicious because we feel it is
+autumnal, and therefore cannot last. It was a very simple garden,
+merely a square grass-plot with a walk and a border round it, and its
+only flowers were these marigolds, carnations, with quantities of
+mignonette, and bounded all round with a hedge of tamarisk; yet I think
+we shall always remember it as if it were the Garden of Armida--without
+a Tancred to spoil it!
+
+For--under the rose--one of the pleasures of our tour was that it was
+so exclusively feminine. We could feed as we liked, dress as we liked,
+talk to whom we liked, without any restriction, from the universal
+masculine sense of dignity and decorum in travelling. We felt ourselves
+unconventional, incognito, able to do exactly as we chose, provided we
+did nothing wrong.
+
+So off we drove through Lizard Town into the "wide, wide world;" and
+I repeat, what a world it was! Full filled with sunlight, and with an
+atmosphere so fresh and bracing, yet so dry and mild and balmy, that
+every breath was a pleasure to draw. We had felt nothing like it since
+we stood on the top of the highest peak in the Island of Capri, looking
+down on the blue Mediterranean. But this sea was equally blue, the sky
+equally clear, yet it was home--dear old England, so often misprized.
+Yet, I believe, when one does get really fine English weather, there is
+nothing like it in the whole world.
+
+The region we traversed was not picturesque--neither mountains, nor
+glens, nor rivers, nor woods; all was level and bare, for the road lay
+mostly inland, until we came out upon Kennack Sands.
+
+They might have been the very "yellow sands" where Shakespeare's elves
+were bidden to "take hands" and "foot it featly here and there." You
+might almost have searched for the sea-maids' footsteps along the
+smooth surface where the long Atlantic waves crept harmlessly in,
+making a glittering curve, and falling with a gentle "thud"--the only
+sound in the solitary bay, until all at once we caught voices and
+laughter, and from among some rock, emerged a party of girls.
+
+They had evidently come in a cart, which took up its station beside
+our carriage, laden with bundles which looked uncommonly like bathing
+gowns; and were now seeking a convenient dressing-room--one of
+those rock-parlours, roofed with serpentine and floored with silver
+sand--which are the sole bathing establishments here.
+
+All along the Cornish coast the bathing is delightful--when you can
+get it; but sometimes for miles and miles the cliffs rise in a huge
+impregnable wall, without a single break. Then perhaps there comes a
+sudden cleft in the rock, a green descent, possibly with a rivulet
+trickling through it, and leading to a sheltered cove or a sea-cave,
+accessible only at low water, but one of the most delicious little
+nooks that could be imagined. Kynance, we were told, with its "kitchen"
+and "drawing-room," was the most perfect specimen of the kind; but
+Kennack was sufficiently lovely. With all sorts of fun, shouting, and
+laughter, the girls disappeared to their evidently familiar haunts, to
+reappear as merry mermaids playing about in a crystalline sea.
+
+A most tantalising sight to my two, who vowed never again to attempt
+a day's excursion without taking bathing dresses, towels, and the
+inevitable fish-line, to be tied round the waist,--with a mother
+holding the other end. For we had been warned against these long and
+strong Atlantic waves, the recoil of which takes you off your feet even
+in calm weather. As bathing must generally be done at low water, to
+ensure a sandy floor and a comfortable cave, it is easy enough to be
+swept out of one's depth; and the cleverest swimmer, if tossed about
+among these innumerable rocks circled round by eddies of boiling white
+water, would have small chance of returning with whole bones, or of
+returning at all.
+
+Indeed, along this Cornish coast, life and death seem very near
+together. Every pleasure carries with it a certain amount of risk; the
+utmost caution is required both on land and sea, and I cannot advise
+either rash or nervous people to go travelling in Cornwall.
+
+Bathing being impracticable, we consoled ourselves with ascending the
+sandy hillock, which bounded one side of the bay, and sat looking from
+it towards the coast-line eastwards.
+
+[Illustration: POLTESCO.]
+
+What a strange peace there is in a solitary shore, an empty sea, for
+the one or two white dots of silent ships seemed rather to add to than
+diminish its loneliness--lonelier in sunshine, I think, than even in
+storm. The latter gives a sense of human life, of struggle and of
+pain; while the former is all repose, the bright but solemn repose of
+infinity or eternity.
+
+But these thoughts were for older heads; the only idea of the young
+heads--uncommonly steady they must have been!--was of scrambling
+into the most inaccessible places, and getting as near to the sea as
+possible without actually tumbling into it. After a while the land
+attracted them in turn, and they came back with their hands full of
+flowers, some known, some unknown; great bunches of honeysuckle,
+curious sand-plants, and cliff-plants; also water-plants, which fringed
+a little rivulet that ran into the bay, while, growing everywhere
+abundantly, was the lovely grey-green cringo, or sea-holly.
+
+All these treasures, to make the parlour pretty, required much
+ingenuity to carry home safely, the sun withered them so fast. But
+there was the pleasure of collecting.
+
+We could willingly have stayed here all day--how natural is that wish
+of poor young Shelley, that in every pretty place he saw he might
+remain "for ever"!--but the forenoon was passing, and we had much to
+see.
+
+"Poltesco, everybody goes to Poltesco," observed the patient Charles.
+
+So of course we went there too. At Poltesco are the principal
+serpentine works--the one commerce of the district. The monotonous hum
+of its machinery mingled oddly with the murmur of a trout-stream which
+ran through the pretty little valley, crossed by a wooden bridge, where
+a solitary angler stood fishing in imperturbable content.
+
+There were only about a dozen workmen visible; one of whom came
+forward and explained to us the mode of work, afterwards taking us
+to the show-room, which contained everything possible to be made of
+serpentine, from mantelpieces and tombstones, down to brooches and
+studs. Very delicate and beautiful was the workmanship; the forms of
+some of the things--vases and candlesticks especially--were quite
+Pompeian. In truth, throughout Cornwall, we often came upon shapes,
+Roman or Greek, proving how even yet relics of its early masters or
+colonisers linger in this western corner of England.
+
+In its inhabitants too. When, as we passed, more than one busy
+workman lifted up his head for a moment, we noticed faces almost
+classic in type, quite different from the bovine, agricultural
+Hodge of the midland counties. In manner different likewise.
+There was neither stupidity nor servility, but a sort of dignified
+independence. No pressing to buy, no looking out for gratuities,
+only a kindly politeness, which did not fail even when we departed,
+taking only a few little ornaments. We should have liked to carry off
+a cart-load--especially two enormous vases and a chimney-piece--but
+travellers have limits to luggage, and purse as well.
+
+Pretty Poltesco! we left it with regret, but we were in the hands
+of the ever-watchful Charles, anxious that we should see as much as
+possible.
+
+"The driving-road goes far inland, but there's a splendid cliff-walk
+from Poltesco to Cadgwith direct. The young ladies might do it with a
+guide--here he is, a man I know, quite reliable. They'll walk it easily
+in half an hour. But you, ma'am, I think you'd better come with me."
+
+No fighting against fate. So I put my "chickens" in safe charge, meekly
+re-entered the carriage, and drove, humbly and alone, across a flat
+dull country, diversified here and there by a few cottages, politely
+called a village--the two villages of Ruan Minor and Ruan Major. I
+afterwards found that they were not without antiquarian interest, that
+I might have gone to examine a curious old church, well, and oratory,
+supposed to have been inhabited by St. Rumon. But we had left the
+guide-book at home, with the so longed-for bathing gowns, and Charles
+was not of archæological mind, so I heard nothing and investigated
+nothing.
+
+Except, indeed, numerous huge hand-bills, posted on barn doors and
+gates, informing the inhabitants that an Exhibition of Fine Arts,
+admittance one shilling, was on view close by. Charles was most anxious
+I should stop and visit it, saying it was "very fine." But as within
+the last twelvemonth I had seen the Royal Academy, Grosvenor Gallery,
+and most of the galleries and museums in Italy, the Fine Art Exhibition
+of Ruan Minor was not overwhelmingly attractive. However, not to wound
+the good Cornishman, who was evidently proud of it, I explained that,
+on the whole, I preferred nature to art.
+
+And how grand nature was in this fishing-village of Cadgwith, to which
+after a long round, we came at last!
+
+[Illustration: CADGWITH COVE.]
+
+Nestled snugly in a bend of the coast which shelters it from north
+and east, leaving it open to southern sunshine, while another curve
+of land protects it from the dense fogs which are so common at the
+Lizard, Cadgwith is, summer and winter, one of the pleasantest nooks
+imaginable. The climate, Charles told me, is so mild, that invalids
+often settle down in the one inn--a mere village inn externally, but
+very comfortable. And, as I afterwards heard at Lizard Town, the parson
+and his wife--"didn't I know them?" and I felt myself rather looked
+down upon because I did not know them--are the kindest of people,
+who take pleasure in looking after the invalids, rich or poor. "Yes,"
+Charles considered Cadgwith was a nice place to winter in, "only just a
+trifle dull."
+
+Probably so, to judge by the interest which, even in this
+tourist-season, our carriage excited, as we wound down one side and
+up another of the ravine in which the village is built, with a small
+fishing-station at the bottom, rather painfully odoriferous. The
+fisher-wives came to their doors, the old fisher-men stood, hands in
+pockets, the roly-poly healthy fisher-children stopped playing, to
+turn round and stare. In these parts everybody stares at everybody,
+and generally everybody speaks to everybody--a civil "good-day" at any
+rate, sometimes more.
+
+"This is a heavy pull for you," said a sympathetic old woman, who had
+watched me leave the carriage and begin mounting the cliff towards the
+Devil's Frying-pan--the principal thing to be seen at Cadgwith. She
+followed me, and triumphantly passed me, though she had to carry a bag
+of potatoes on her back. I wondered if her feeling was pity or envy
+towards another old person who had to carry nothing but her own self.
+Which, alas! was enough!
+
+She and I sat down together on the hill-side and had a chat, while I
+waited for the two little black dots which I could see moving round the
+opposite headland. She gave me all kinds of information, in the simple
+way peculiar to country folk, whose innocent horizon comprises the
+whole world, which, may be, is less pleasant than the little world of
+Cadgwith. Then we parted for ever and aye.
+
+The Devil's Frying-pan is a wonderful sight. Imagine a natural
+amphitheatre two acres in extent, inclosed by a semi-circular slope
+about two hundred feet high, covered with grass and flowers and low
+bushes. Outside, the wide, open sea, which pours in to the shingly
+beach at the bottom through an arch of serpentine, the colouring of
+which, and of the other rocks surrounding it, is most exquisite,
+varying from red to green, with sometimes a tint of grey. Were Cadgwith
+a little nearer civilisation, what a show-place it would become!
+
+But happily civilisation leaves it alone. The tiny farm-house on the
+hill-side near the Frying-pan looked, within and without, much as it
+must have looked for the last hundred years; and the ragged, unkempt,
+tongue-tied little girl, from whom we succeeded in getting a drink
+of milk in a tumbler which she took five minutes to search for, had
+certainly never been to a Board School. She investigated the penny
+which we deposited as if it were a great natural curiosity rarely
+attainable, and she gazed after us as we climbed the stile leading to
+the Frying-pan as if wondering what on earth could tempt respectable
+people, who had nothing to do, into such a very uncomfortable place.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH.]
+
+Uncomfortable, certainly, as we sat with our feet stuck in the long
+grass to prevent slipping down the slope--a misadventure which would
+have been, to say the least, awkward. Those boiling waves, roaring each
+after each through the arch below; and those jagged rocks, round which
+innumerable sea-birds were flying--one could quite imagine that were
+any luckless vessel to find itself in or near the Frying-pan, it would
+never get out again.
+
+To meditative minds there is something very startling in the perpetual
+contrast between the summer tourist-life, so cheerful and careless,
+and the winter life of the people here, which must be so full of
+privations; for one half the year there is nothing to do, no market
+for serpentine, and almost no fishing possible: they have to live
+throughout the dark days upon the hay made while the sun shines.
+
+"No, no," said one of the Lizard folk, whom I asked if there was much
+drunkenness thereabout, for I had seen absolutely none; "no, us don't
+drink; us can't afford it. Winter's a bad time for we--sometimes for
+four months a man doesn't earn a halfpenny. He has to save in summer,
+or he'd starve the rest of the year."
+
+Which apparently is not altogether bad for him. I have seldom seen,
+in any part of England or Scotland, such an honest, independent,
+respectable race as the working people on this coast, and indeed
+throughout Cornwall.
+
+We left with regret the pretty village, resolving to come back again
+in a day or two; it was barely three miles from the Lizard, though the
+difference in climate was said to be so great. And then we drove back
+across the bleak down and through the keen "hungry" sea-air, which made
+dinner a matter of welcome importance. And without dwelling too much
+on the delights of the flesh--very mild delights after all--I will say
+that the vegetables grown in the garden, and the grapes in the simple
+green-house beside it, were a credit to Cornwall, especially so near
+the sea-coast.
+
+We had just time to dine, repose a little, and communicate our address
+to our affectionate friends at home--so as to link ourselves for a few
+brief days with the outside world--when appeared the punctual Charles.
+
+"Don't be afraid, ladies, he's had a good rest,"--this was the
+important animal about whose well-being we were naturally anxious.
+Charles patted his shoulder, and a little person much given to deep
+equine affections tenderly stroked his nose. He seemed sensible of the
+attention and of what was expected from him, and started off, as lively
+as if he had been idle for a week, across the Lizard Down and Pradenack
+Down to Mullion.
+
+"I hope Mary will be at home," said Charles, turning round as usual to
+converse; "she'll be sure to make you comfortable. Of course you've
+heard of Mary Mundy?"
+
+Fortunately we had. There was in one of our guide-books a most
+glowing description of the Old Inn, and also an extract from a poem,
+apostrophising the charms of Mary Mundy. When we said we knew the
+enthusiastic Scotch Professor who had written it, we felt that we rose
+a step in the estimation of Charles.
+
+"And Mary will be so pleased to see anybody who knows the
+gentleman"--in Cornwall the noted Greek Professor was merely "the
+gentleman." "She's got his poem in her visitors' book and his portrait
+in her album. I do hope Mary will be at home."
+
+But fate was against us. When we reached Mullion and drove up to the
+door of the Old Inn, there darted out to meet us, not Mary, but an
+individual concerning whom Fame has been unjustly silent.
+
+"It's only Mary's brother," said Charles, with an accent of deep
+disappointment.
+
+But as the honest man who had apparently gone through life as "Mary's
+brother" stood patting our horse and talking to our driver, with both
+of whom he seemed on terms of equal intimacy, his welcome to ourselves
+was such a mixture of cordiality and despair that we could scarcely
+keep from laughing.
+
+"Mary's gone to Helstone, ladies; her would have been delighted, but
+her's gone marketing to Helstone. I hope her'll be back soon, for I
+doesn't know what to do without she. The house is full, and there's a
+party of eleven come to tea, and actually wanting it sent down to them
+at the Cove. They won't get it though. And you shall get your tea,
+ladies, even if they have to go without."
+
+We expressed our gratitude, and left Charles to arrange all for us,
+which he did in the most practical way.
+
+"And you think Mary may be back at six?"
+
+"Her said her would, and I hope her will," answered the brother
+despondently. "Her's very seldom out; us can't get on at all without
+she."
+
+This, and several more long and voluble speeches given in broad
+Cornish, with the true Cornish confusion of pronouns, and with an air
+of piteous perplexity--nay, abject helplessness, the usual helplessness
+of man without woman--proved too much for our risible nerves. We
+maintained a decorous gravity till we had driven away, and then fell
+into shouts of laughter--the innocent laughter of happy-minded people
+over the smallest joke or the mildest species of fun.
+
+"Never mind, ladies, you'll get your tea all right. If Mary said she'd
+be back at six, back she'll be. And you'll find a capital tea waiting
+for you; there isn't a more comfortable inn in all Cornwall."
+
+Which, we afterwards found, was saying a great deal.
+
+Mullion Cove is a good mile from Mullion village, and as we jolted over
+the rough road I was remorseful over both carriage and horse.
+
+"Not at all, ma'am, he's used to it. Often and often he comes here with
+pic-nic parties, all the way from Falmouth. I'll put him in at the
+farm, and be down with you at the Cove directly. You'll find the rocks
+pretty bad walking, but there's a cave which you ought to see. We'll
+try it."
+
+There was no resisting the way the kindly young Cornishman thus
+identified himself with our interests, and gave himself all sorts
+of extra trouble on our account. And when after a steep and not too
+savoury descent--the cove being used as a fish cellar--we found
+ourselves on the beach, shut in by those grand rocks of serpentine,
+with Mullion Island lying ahead about a quarter of a mile off, we felt
+we had not come here for nothing.
+
+The great feature of Mullion Cove is its sea-caves, of which there are
+two, one on the beach, the other round the point, and only accessible
+at low water. Now, we saw the tide was rising fast.
+
+"They'll have to wade; I told them they would have to wade!" cried an
+anxious voice behind me; and "I was ware," as ancient chroniclers say,
+of the presence of another "old hen," the same whom we had noticed
+conducting her brood of chickens, or ducklings--they seemed more like
+the latter now--to bathe on Kennack Sands.
+
+"Yes, they have been away more than half an hour, all my children
+except this one"--a small boy who looked as if he wished he had gone
+too. "They would go, though I warned them they would have to wade. And
+there they are, just going into the cave. One, two, three, four, five,
+six," counting the black specks that were seen moving on, or rather in,
+the water. "Oh dear, they've _all_ gone in! I wish they were safe out
+again."
+
+[Illustration: MULLION COVE, CORNWALL.]
+
+Nevertheless, in the midst of her distress, the benevolent lady stopped
+to give me a helping hand into the near cave, a long, dark passage,
+with light at either end. My girls had already safely threaded it and
+come triumphantly out at the other side. But what with the darkness and
+the uncertain footing over what felt like beds of damp seaweed, with
+occasional stones, through which one had to grope every inch of one's
+way, my heart rather misgave me, until I was cheered by the apparition
+of the faithful Charles.
+
+"Don't go back, ma'am, you'll be so sorry afterwards. I'll strike a
+light and help you. Slow and steady, you'll come to no harm. And it's
+beautiful when you get out at the other end."
+
+So it was. The most exquisite little nook; where you could have
+imagined a mermaid came daily to comb her hair; one can easily believe
+in mermaids or anything else in Cornwall. What a charming dressing-room
+she would have, shut in on three sides by those great walls of
+serpentine, and in front the glittering sea, rolling in upon a floor of
+the loveliest silver sand.
+
+But the only mermaid there was an artist's wife, standing beside her
+husband's easel, at which he was painting away so earnestly that he
+scarcely noticed us. Very picturesque he looked, and she too, in her
+rough serge dress, with her pretty bare feet and ankles, the shoes and
+stockings lying in a corner as if they had not been worn for hours.
+Why should they be? they were quite unnecessary on those soft sands,
+and their owner stood and talked with me as composedly as if it were
+the height of the fashion to go barefoot. And far more than anything
+concerning herself, she seemed interested in my evident interest in the
+picture, which promised to be a remarkably good one, and which, if I
+see it on the R. A. walls next year will furnish my only clue to the
+identity of the couple, or theirs to mine.
+
+But the tide was fast advancing; they began to take down the easel, and
+I remembered that the narrow winding cave was our only way out from
+this rock-inclosed fairy paradise to the prosaic beach.
+
+"Look, they are wading ashore up to the knees! And we shall have to
+wade too if we don't make haste back."
+
+So cried the perplexed mother of the six too-adventurous ducklings.
+But mine, more considerate, answered me from the rocks where they were
+scrambling, and helped me back through the cave into safe quarters,
+where we stood watching the waders with mingled excitement and--envy?
+
+Alas! I can still recall the delicious sensation of paddling across the
+smooth sea-sand, and of walking up the bed of a Highland burn. But "Oh!
+the change twixt Now and Then," I sat calmly on a stone, dry-shod; as
+was best. Still, is it not a benign law of nature, that the things we
+are no longer able to do, we almost cease to wish to do? Perhaps even
+the last cessation of all things will come naturally at the end, as
+naturally as we turn round and go to sleep at night?
+
+But it was not night yet. I am proud to think how high and steep was
+the cliff we re-ascended, all three of us, and from which we stood
+and looked at sky and sea. Such a sea and such a sky: amber clear, so
+that one could trace the whole line of coast--Mount's Bay, with St.
+Michael's Mount dotted in the midst of it, and even the Land's End,
+beyond which the sun, round and red, was just touching the top of the
+waves. We should have liked to watch him drop below them--that splendid
+sea-sunset of which one never tires, but we had some distance to walk,
+and we began to rejoice in the prospect of Mary Mundy's tea.
+
+"I'll go on ahead and have the carriage ready," said the ever
+thoughtful Charles. "You can't miss your way, ladies. Just follow the
+hedges"--that tempting aerial promenade, to which we were now getting
+accustomed, becoming veritable Blondins in petticoats--"then cross the
+cornfield; and take to the hedges again. You'll be at the farm-yard
+directly."
+
+Not quite--for we lingered, tempted by the abundance of corn-flowers,
+of which we gathered, not handfuls but armfuls. When we reached
+it, what a picture of an English farm-yard it was! With a regular
+old-fashioned English milk-maid--such as Izaak Walton would have loved
+to describe--sitting amidst her shining pails, her cows standing round
+her, meekly waiting their turn. Sleek, calm creatures they were,
+Juno-eyed and soft-skinned--of that peculiar shade of grey which I
+have seen only in Cornwall. And, being rather a connoisseur in cows,
+I have often amused myself to notice how the kine of each country
+have their own predominant colour, which seems to harmonise with its
+special landscape. The curious yellow tint of Highland cattle, the red,
+white, or brown of those of the midland counties, and the delicate
+grey of Cornish cows, alike suit the scene around them, and belong to
+it as completely as the dainty little Swiss herds do to their Alpine
+pastures, or the large, mild, cream-coloured oxen to the Campagna at
+Rome.
+
+But we had to tear ourselves away from this Arcadia, for in the midst
+of the farm-yard appeared the carriage and Charles. So we jolted
+back--it seemed as if Cornish carriages and horses could go anywhere
+and over everything--to the Old Inn and Mary Mundy.
+
+She _had_ come home, and everything was right. As we soon found,
+everything and everybody was accustomed to be put to rights by Miss
+Mary Mundy.
+
+She stood at the door to greet us--a bright, brown-faced little
+woman with the reddest of cheeks and the blackest of eyes; I have no
+hesitation in painting her portrait here, as she is, so to speak,
+public property, known and respected far and wide.
+
+[Illustration: A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY.]
+
+"Delighted to see you, ladies; delighted to see any friends of the
+Professor's; and I hope you enjoyed the Cove, and that you're all
+hungry, and will find your tea to your liking. It's the best we can do;
+we're very homely folk here, but we try to make people comfortable,"
+and so on and so on, a regular stream of chatty conversation, given in
+the strongest Cornish, with the kindliest of Cornish hearts, as she
+ushered us into a neat little parlour at the back of the inn.
+
+There lay spread, not one of your dainty afternoon teas, with two or
+three wafery slices of bread and butter, but a regular substantial
+meal. Cheerful candles--of course in serpentine candlesticks--were
+already lit, and showed us the bright teapot full of that welcome drink
+to weary travellers, hot, strong and harmless; the gigantic home-baked
+loaf, which it seemed sacrilegious to have turned into toast; the rich,
+yellow butter--I am sure those lovely cows had something to do with
+it, and also with the cream, so thick that the spoon could almost have
+stood upright in it. Besides, there was a quantity of that delicious
+clotted cream, which here accompanies every meal and of which I had
+vainly tried to get the receipt, but was answered with polite scorn,
+"Oh, ma'am, it would be of no use to _you_: Cornish cream can only be
+made from Cornish cows!"
+
+Whether this remarkable fact in natural history be true or not, let me
+record the perfection of Mary Mundy's cream, which, together with her
+jam and her marmalade, was a refection worthy of the gods.
+
+She pressed us again and again to "have some more," and her charge for
+our magnificent meal was as small as her gratitude was great for the
+slight addition we made to it.
+
+"No, I'll not say no, ma'am, it'll come in handy; us has got a young
+niece to bring up--my brother and me--please'm. Yes, I'm glad you came,
+and I hope you'll come again, please'm. And if you see the Professor,
+you'll tell him he's not forgotten, please'm."
+
+This garniture of "please'm" at the end of every sentence reminded
+us of the Venetian "probbedirla," _per ubbedirla_, with which our
+gondolier Giovanna used to amuse us, often dragging it in in the oddest
+way. "Yes, the Signora will get a beautiful day, probbedirla," or "My
+wife has just lost her baby, probbedirla." Mary Mundy's "please'm"
+often came in with equal incongruity, and her voluble tongue ran on
+nineteen to the dozen; but her talk was so shrewd and her looks so
+pleasant--once, no doubt, actually pretty, and still comely enough for
+a middle-aged woman--that we departed, fully agreeing with her admiring
+Professor that
+
+  "The brightest thing on Cornish land
+  Is the face of Miss Mary Mundy."
+
+Recrossing Pradenack down in the dim light of a newly-risen moon,
+everything looked so solitary and ghostly that we started to see moving
+from behind a furz-bush, a mysterious figure, which crossed the road
+slowly, and stood waiting for us. Was it man or ghost, or--
+
+Only a donkey! A ridiculous grey donkey. It might have been Tregeagle
+himself--Tregeagle, the grim mad-demon of Cornish tradition, once a
+dishonest steward, who sold his soul to the devil, and is doomed to
+keep on emptying Dozmare Pool, near St. Neots (the same mere wherein
+Excalibur was thrown), with a limpet-shell; and to spend his nights in
+other secluded places balancing interminable accounts, which are always
+just sixpence wrong.
+
+Poor Tregeagle! I fear some of us, weak in arithmetic, had a secret
+sympathy for him! But we never met him--nor anything worse than that
+spectral donkey, looming large and placid against the level horizon.
+
+Soon, "the stars came out by twos and threes,"--promising a fine night
+and finer morning, during which, while we were comfortably asleep,
+our good horse and man would be driving across this lonely region to
+Falmouth, in time to take the good people to church on Sunday morning.
+
+"And we'll do it, too--don't you be anxious about us, ladies," insisted
+Charles. "I'll feed him well, and groom him well. I likes to take care
+of a good horse, and you'll see, he'll take no harm. I'll be back when
+you want me, at the week's end, or perhaps before then, with some party
+or other--we're always coming to the Lizard--and I'll just look in and
+see how you're getting on, and how you liked Kynance. But take care of
+the tide."
+
+We thanked our kindly charioteer, bade him and his horse good-bye,
+wished him a pleasant journey through the moonlight, which was every
+minute growing more beautiful, then went indoors to supper--no! supper
+would have been an insult to Mary Mundy's tea--to bed.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE FOURTH
+
+
+Sunday, September 4th--and we had started on September 1st; was it
+possible we had only been travelling four days?
+
+It felt like fourteen at least. We had seen so much, taken in so many
+new interests--nay, made several new friends. Already we began to plan
+another meeting with John Curgenven, who we found was a relation of
+our landlady, or of our bright-faced serving maiden, Esther--I forget
+which. But everybody seemed connected with everybody at the Lizard,
+and everybody took a friendly interest in everybody. The arrival of
+new lodgers in the "genteel" parlour which we had not appreciated
+was important information, and we were glad to hear that Charles had
+started about four in the morning quite cheery.
+
+And what a morning it was!--a typical Sabbath, a day of rest, a day
+to rejoice in. Strolling round the garden at eight o'clock, while the
+dew still lay thick on the grass, and glittered like diamonds on the
+autumnal spider-webs, even the flowers seemed to know it was Sunday,
+the mignonette bed to smell sweeter, the marigolds--yes! æsthetic
+fashion is right in its love for marigolds--burnt in a perfect blaze
+of golden colour and aromatic scent. The air was so mild that we could
+imagine summer was still with us: and the great wide circle of sea
+gleamed in the sunshine as if there never had been, never could be,
+such a thing as cloud or storm.
+
+Having ascertained that there was no service nearer than Grade, some
+miles off, until the afternoon, we "went to church" on the cliffs, in
+Pistol Meadow, beside the green mounds where the two hundred drowned
+sailors sleep in peace.
+
+[Illustration: STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT.]
+
+And such a peaceful place! Absolutely solitary: not a living creature,
+not even a sheep came near me the whole morning:--and in the silence
+I could hear almost every word said by my young folks, searching for
+sea-treasures among the rocks and little pools far below. Westwards
+towards Kynance, and eastwards towards Landewednack--the church we were
+to go to in the afternoon--the cliff path was smooth and green, the
+short grass full of those curious dainty flowers, some of which were
+new to our eager eyes. At other times the road was so precipitous that
+we did not wonder at those carefully white-washed stones every few
+yards, which are the sole guide to the coastguard men of dark nights.
+Even in daylight, if the wind were high, or the footing slippery with
+rain, the cliff-walk from the Lizard to Kynance would be no joke to
+uninitiated feet.
+
+Now, all was so still that the wind never once fluttered the letter I
+was writing, and so warm that we were glad to escape the white glare of
+the wall of the Lizard Lights and sit in a cool hollow, watching sky
+and ocean, with now and then a sea-bird floating lazily between, a dark
+speck on the perpetual blue.
+
+"If it will only keep like this all week!" And, as we sat, we planned
+out each day, so as to miss nothing, and lose nothing--either of time
+or strength: doing enough, but never too much--as is often the fatal
+mistake of tourists. And then, following the grand law of travelling,
+to have one's "meals reg'lar"--we went indoors and dined. Afterwards in
+honour of the day
+
+        "that comes between
+  The Saturday and Monday,"
+
+we dressed ourselves in all our best--very humble best it was!--to join
+the good people going to church at Landewednack.
+
+This, which in ancient Cornish means "the white-roofed church of St.
+Wednack"--hagiologists must decide who that individual was!--is the
+name of the parish to which the comparatively modern Lizard Town
+belongs. The church is in a very picturesque corner, close to the sea,
+though both it and the rectory are protected by a sudden dip in the
+ground, so that you see neither till you are close upon them. A fine
+Norman doorway, a curious hagioscope, and other points, interesting to
+archaeologists--also the neatest and prettiest of churchyards--make
+note-worthy this, the most southerly church in England. A fine old
+building, not spoiled though "restored." The modern open pews, and a
+modern memorial pulpit of serpentine, jarred less than might have been
+expected with the carefully-preserved remains of the past.
+
+In Landewednack church is said to have been preached the last sermon in
+Cornish. This was in 1678. Since, the ancient tongue has completely
+died out, and the people of King Arthur's country have become wholly
+English.
+
+Still, they are not the English of the midland and northern districts,
+but of a very different type and race. I have heard it said that a
+seaboard population, accustomed to wrestle with the dangers of the
+coast, to move about from place to place, see foreign countries, and
+carry on its business in the deep waters, is always more capable, more
+intelligent, as a whole, than an inland people, whether agricultural
+or manufacturing. It may be so: but certainly the aborigines of
+Lizard Town, who could easily be distinguished from the visitors--of
+whom there was yet a tolerable sprinkling--made a very interesting
+congregation; orderly, respectable, reverent; simple in dress and
+manner, yet many of them, both the men and women, exceedingly
+picturesque. That is, the old men and the old women: the younger ones
+aped modern fashion even here, in this out-of-the-way corner, and
+consequently did not look half so well as their seniors.
+
+I must name one more member of the congregation--a large black dog,
+who walked in and settled himself in the pew behind, where he behaved
+during half the service in an exemplary manner, worthy of the Highland
+shepherds' dogs, who always come to church with their masters, and
+conduct themselves with equal decorum.
+
+There is always a certain pathos in going in to worship in a strange
+church, with a strange congregation, of whom you are as ignorant as
+they of you. In the intervals of kneeling with them as "miserable
+sinners," one finds oneself speculating upon them, their possible
+faults and virtues, joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, watching the
+unknown faces, and trying to read thereon the records of a common
+humanity. A silent homily, better perhaps than most sermons.
+
+Not that there was aught to complain of in the sermon, and the singing
+was especially good. Many a London choir might have taken a lesson from
+this village church at the far end of Cornwall. When service was over,
+we lingered in the pretty and carefully tended churchyard, where the
+evening light fell softly upon many curious gravestones, of seafaring
+men, and a few of wrecked sailors--only a few, since it is but within
+a generation that bodies washed ashore from the deep were allowed to
+be buried in consecrated ground; most of them, like the two hundred in
+Pistol Meadow, being interred as near as convenient to where they were
+found, without any burial rites. Still, in all the churchyards along
+this coast are graves with a story. A little corner railed off has an
+old and sad one. There lie buried the victims of the plague, which in
+1645 devastated the village. No one since has ever ventured to disturb
+their resting-place.
+
+Very green and peaceful the churchyard looked: the beautiful day was
+dying, beautiful to the last. We stood and watched the congregation
+melt slowly away, disappearing down the lane, and then, attracted by
+the sound of music, we re-entered the church. There we sat and listened
+for another half-hour to the practising of an anthem ready for the
+harvest festival, which had been announced for the following Tuesday;
+exceedingly well done too, the rector's voice leading it all, with an
+energy and enthusiasm that at once accounted for the capital condition
+of the choir.
+
+"If this weather will only last!" was our earnest sigh as we walked
+home; and anxious not to lose a minute of it, we gave ourselves the
+briefest rest, and turned out again, I to watch the sunset from the
+cliffs, while the others descended once more to their beloved sea-pools.
+
+"Such anemones, such sea-weed! and scrambling is so delicious! Besides,
+sunsets are all alike," added the youthful, practical, and slightly
+unpoetical mind.
+
+No, they are not alike. Every one has a mysterious charm of its
+own--just like that in every new human face. I have seen hundreds of
+sunsets in my time, and those I shall see are narrowing down now, but
+I think to the end of my life I shall always feel a day incomplete of
+which I did not see the sunset.
+
+This one was splendid. The usual place where the sun dropped into the
+sea, just beyond the point of the Land's End, was all a golden mist.
+I hastened west, climbing one intervening cliff after the other,
+anxious not to miss the clear sight of him as he set his glowing
+feet, or rather his great round disc, on the sea. At last I found a
+"comfortable" stone, sheltered from the wind, which blew tolerably
+fresh, and utterly solitary (as I thought), the intense silence
+being such that one could almost hear the cropping of three placid
+sheep--evidently well accustomed to sunsets, and thinking them of
+little consequence.
+
+There I sat until the last red spark had gone out, quenched in the
+Atlantic waters, and from behind the vanished sun sprung a gleam of
+absolutely green light, "like a firework out of a rocket," the young
+people said; such as I had never seen before, though we saw it once
+afterwards. Nature's fireworks they were; and I could see even the two
+little black figures moving along the rocks below stand still to watch
+them. I watched too, with that sort of lonely delight--the one shadow
+upon it being that it is so lonely--with which all one's life one is
+accustomed to watch beautiful and vanishing things. Then seeing how
+fast the colours were fading and the sky darkening, I rose; but just
+took a step or two farther to look over the edge of my stone into the
+next dip of the cliff, and there I saw--
+
+[Illustration: HAULING IN THE BOATS--EVENING.]
+
+Actually, two human beings! Lovers, of course. Nothing else would have
+sat so long and so silently, for I had been within three yards of them
+all the time, and had never discovered them, nor they me. Poor young
+things! they did not discover me even yet. They sat, quite absorbed in
+one another, hand in hand, looking quietly seaward, their faces bathed
+in the rosy sunset--which to them was a sunrise, the sort of sun which
+never rises twice in a life-time.
+
+I left them to it. Evidently they did not see me, in fact I just
+peered over the rock's edge and drew back again; any slight sound they
+probably attributed to the harmless sheep. Well, it was but an equally
+harmless old woman, who did not laugh at them, as some might have done,
+but smiled and wished them well, as she left them to their sunset, and
+turned to face the darkening east, where the sun would rise to-morrow.
+
+The moon was rising there now, and it was a picture to behold. Indeed,
+all these Cornish days seemed so full of moonrises and sunsets--and
+sunrises too--that it was really inconvenient. Going to bed seemed
+almost a sin--as on this night, when, opening our parlour door, which
+looked right on to the garden, we saw the whole world lying in a flood
+of moonlight peace, the marigolds and carnations leaning cheek to
+cheek, as motionless as the two young lovers on the cliff. Who, alas!
+must long ago have had their dream broken, for five minutes afterwards
+I had met a most respectable fat couple from Lizard Town taking their
+Sunday evening stroll, in all their Sunday best, along those very
+cliffs. Most painful interruption! But perhaps, the good folks had once
+been lovers too.
+
+What a night it was! fit night to such a perfect day. How the stars
+shone, without a mist or a cloud; how the Lizard Lights gleamed, even
+in spite of the moonlight, and how clear showed the black outline of
+Kynance Cove, from which came through the silence a dull murmur of
+waves! It was, as we declared, a sin and a shame to go to bed at all
+though we had been out the whole day, and hoped to be out the whole of
+to-morrow. Still, human nature could not keep awake for ever. We passed
+from the poetical to the practical, and decided to lay us down and
+sleep.
+
+But, in the middle of the night I woke, rose, and looked out of the
+window.
+
+What a change! Sea and sky were one blackness, literally as "black as
+ink," and melting into one another so that both were undistinguishable.
+As for the moon and stars--heaven knows where they had gone to, for
+they seemed utterly blotted out. The only light visible was the ghostly
+gleam of those two great eyes, the Lizard Lights, stretching far out
+into the intense darkness. I never saw such darkness--unbroken even by
+the white crest of a wave. And the stillness was like the stillness of
+death, with a heavy weight in the air which made me involuntarily go
+to sleep again, though with an awed impression of "something going to
+happen."
+
+And sure enough in another hour something did happen. I started awake,
+feeling as if a volley of artillery had been poured in at my window.
+It was the wildest deluge of rain, beating against the panes, and with
+it came a wind that howled and shrieked round the house as if all the
+demons in Cornwall, Tregeagle himself included, were let loose at once.
+
+Now we understood what a Lizard storm could be. I have seen
+Mediterranean storms, sweeping across the Campagna like armed
+battalions of avenging angels, pouring out their vials of wrath--rain,
+hail, thunder, and lightning--unceasingly for two whole days. I have
+been in Highland storms, so furious that one had to sit down in the
+middle of the road with one's plaid over one's head, till the worst of
+their rage was spent. But I never saw or heard anything more awful than
+this Lizard storm, to which I lay and listened till the day began to
+dawn.
+
+Then the wind lulled a little, but the rain still fell in torrents,
+and the sky and sea were as black as ever. The weather had evidently
+broken for good--that is, for evil. Alas! the harvest, and the harvest
+festival! And alas--of minor importance, but still some, to us at
+least--alas for our holiday in Cornwall! Only four days, and--this!
+
+It was with a heavy heart that, feeling there was not the slightest use
+in getting up, I turned round and took another sleep.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE FIFTH
+
+
+"Hope for the best, and be prepared for the worst," had been the motto
+of our journey. So when we rose to one of the wettest mornings that
+ever came out of the sky, there was a certain satisfaction in being
+prepared for it.
+
+"We must have a fire, that is certain," was our first decision. This
+entailed the abolition of our beautiful decorations--our sea-holly
+and ferns; also some anxious looks from our handmaiden. Apparently no
+fire, had been lit in this rather despised room for many months--years
+perhaps--and the chimney rather resented being used. A few agonised
+down-puffs greatly interfered with the comfort of the breakfast table,
+and an insane attempt to open the windows made matters worse.
+
+Which was most preferable--to be stifled or deluged? We were just
+considering the question, when the chimney took a new and kinder
+thought, or the wind took a turn--it seemed to blow alternately from
+every quarter, and then from all quarters at once--the smoke went up
+straight, the room grew warm and bright, with the cosy peace of the
+first fire of the season. Existence became once more endurable, nay,
+pleasant.
+
+"We shall survive, spite of the rain!" And we began to laugh over our
+lost day which we had meant to begin by bathing in Housel Cove; truly,
+just to stand outside the door would give an admirable douche bath in
+three minutes. "But how nice it is to be inside, with a roof over our
+heads, and no necessity for travelling. Fancy the unfortunate tourists
+who have fixed on to-day for visiting the Lizard!" (Charles had told us
+that Monday was a favourite day for excursions.) "Fancy anybody being
+obliged to go out such weather as this!"
+
+And in our deep pity for our fellow-creatures we forgot to pity
+ourselves.
+
+Nor was there much pity needed; we had provided against emergencies,
+with a good store of needlework and knitting, anything that would
+pack in small compass, also a stock of unquestionably "light"
+literature--paper-covered, double-columned, sixpenny volumes, inclosing
+an amount of enjoyment which those only can understand who are true
+lovers of Walter Scott. We had enough of him to last for a week of wet
+days. And we had a one-volume Tennyson, all complete, and a "Morte
+d'Arthur"--Sir Thomas Malory's. On this literary provender we felt that
+as yet we should not starve.
+
+Also, some little fingers having a trifling turn for art, brought out
+triumphantly a colour-box, pencils, and pictures. And the wall-paper
+being one of the very ugliest that ever eye beheld, we sought and
+obtained permission to adorn it with these, our _chefs-d'[oe]uvre_,
+pasted at regular intervals. Where we hope they still remain, for the
+edification of succeeding lodgers.
+
+We read the "Idylls of the King" all through, finishing with "The
+Passing of Arthur," where the "bold Sir Bedivere" threw Excalibur into
+the mere--which is supposed to be Dozmare Pool. Here King Arthur's
+faithful lover was so melted--for the hundredth time--by the pathos
+of the story, and by many old associations, that the younger and
+more practical minds grew scornful, and declared that probably King
+Arthur had never existed at all--or if he had, was nothing but a rough
+barbarian, unlike even the hero of Sir Thomas Malory, and far more
+unlike the noble modern gentleman of Tennyson's verse. Maybe: and yet,
+seeing that
+
+  "'Tis better to have loved and lost
+  Than never to have loved at all,"
+
+may it not be better to have believed in an impossible ideal man, than
+to accept contentedly a low ideal, and worship blindly the worldly, the
+mean, or the base?
+
+This topic furnished matter for so much hot argument, that, besides
+doing a quantity of needlework, we succeeded in making our one wet day
+by no means the least amusing of our seventeen days in Cornwall.
+
+[Illustration: HAULING IN THE LINES.]
+
+Hour after hour we watched the rain--an even down-pour. In the midst
+of it we heard a rumour that Charles had been seen about the town, and
+soon after he appeared at the door, hat in hand, soaked but smiling,
+to inquire for and sympathise with his ladies. Yes, he _had_ brought a
+party to the Lizard that day!--unfortunate souls (or bodies), for there
+could not have been a dry thread left on them! We gathered closer round
+our cosy fire; ate our simple dinner with keen enjoyment, and agreed
+that after all we had much to be thankful for.
+
+In the afternoon the storm abated a little, and we thought we would
+seize the chance of doing some shopping, if there was a shop in Lizard
+Town. So we walked--I ought rather to say waded, for the road was
+literally swimming--meeting not one living creature, except a family of
+young ducks, who, I need scarcely say, were enjoying supreme felicity.
+
+"Yes, ladies, this is the sort of weather we have pretty well all
+winter. Very little frost or snow, but rain and storm, and plenty of
+it. Also fogs; I've heard there's nothing anywhere like the fogs at the
+Lizard."
+
+So said the woman at the post-office, which, except the serpentine
+shops, seemed to be the one emporium of commerce in the place. There we
+could get all we wanted, and a good deal that we were very thankful we
+did not want, of eatables, drinkables, and wearables. Also ornaments,
+china vases, &c., of a kind that would have driven frantic any person
+of æsthetic tastes. Among them an active young Cornishman of about a
+year old was meandering aimlessly, or with aims equally destructive
+to himself and the community. He all but succeeded in bringing down a
+row of plates upon his devoted head, and then tied himself up, one fat
+finger after another, in a ball of twine, upon which he began to howl
+violently.
+
+"He's a regular little trial," said the young mother proudly. "He's
+only sixteen months old, and yet he's up to all sorts of mischief. I
+don't know what in the world I shall do with he, presently. Naughty
+boy!" with a delighted scowl.
+
+"Not naughty, only active," suggested another maternal spirit, and
+pleaded that the young jackanapes should be found something to do that
+was not mischief, but yet would occupy his energies, and fill his mind.
+At which, the bright bold face looked up as if he had understood it
+all--an absolutely fearless face, brimming with fun, and shrewdness
+too. Who knows? The "regular little trial" may grow into a valuable
+member of society--fisherman, sailor, coastguardman--daring and doing
+heroic deeds; perhaps saving many a life on nights such as last night,
+which had taught us what Cornish coast-life was all winter through.
+
+The storm was now gradually abating; the wind had lulled entirely, the
+rain had ceased, and by sunset a broad yellow streak all along the west
+implied that it might possibly be a fine day to-morrow.
+
+But the lane was almost a river still, and the slippery altitudes of
+the "hedges" were anything but desirable. As the only possible place
+for a walk I ventured into a field where two or three cows cropped
+their supper of damp grass round one of those green hillocks seen in
+every Cornish pasture field--a manure heap planted with cabbages, which
+grow there with a luxuriance that turns ugliness into positive beauty.
+Very dreary everything was--the soaking grass, the leaden sky, the
+angry-looking sea, over which a rainy moon was just beginning to throw
+a faint glimmer; while shorewards one could just trace the outline of
+Lizard Point and the wheat-field behind it. Yesterday those fields had
+looked so sunshiny and fair, but to-night they were all dull and grey,
+with rows of black dots indicating the soppy, sodden harvest sheaves.
+
+Which reminded me that to-morrow was the harvest festival at
+Landewednack, when all the world and his wife was invited by shilling
+tickets to have tea in the rectory garden, and afterwards to assist at
+the evening thanksgiving service in the church.
+
+"Thanksgiving! What for?" some poor farmer might well exclaim,
+especially on such a day as this. Some harvest festivals must
+occasionally seem a bitter mockery. Indeed, I doubt if the next
+generation will not be wise in taking our "Prayers for Rain,"
+"Prayers for Fair Weather," clean out of the liturgy. Such conceited
+intermeddling with the government of the world sounds to some
+ridiculous, to others actually profane. "Snow and hail, mists and
+vapours, wind and storm, fulfilling His Word." And it must be
+fulfilled, no matter at what cost to individuals or to nations. The
+laws of the universe must be carried out, even though the mystery
+of sorrow, like the still greater mystery of evil, remains for ever
+unexplained. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
+
+And how right is His right! How marvellously beautiful He can make this
+world! until we can hardly imagine anything more beautiful in the world
+everlasting. Ay, even after such a day as to-day, when the world seems
+hardly worth living in, yet we live on, live to wake up unto such a
+to-morrow--
+
+But I must wait to speak of it in another page.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE SIXTH
+
+
+And a day absolutely divine! Not a cloud upon the sky, not a ripple
+upon the water, or it appeared so in the distance. Nearer, no doubt,
+there would have been that heavy ground-swell which is so long in
+subsiding, in fact is scarcely ever absent on this coast. The land,
+like the sea, was all one smile; the pasture fields shone in brilliant
+green, the cornfields gleaming yellow--at once a beauty and a
+thanksgiving.
+
+It was the very perfection of an autumn morning. We would not lose
+an hour of it, but directly after breakfast started leisurely to
+find Housel Cove and try our first experiment of bathing in the wide
+Atlantic.
+
+The Atlantic it certainly was. Not a rood of land lay between us and
+America. Yet the illimitable ocean "where the great ships go down,"
+rolled in to our feet in baby ripples, disporting itself harmlessly,
+and tempting my two little mermaids to swim out to the utmost limit
+that prudence allowed. And how delightful it was to run back barefoot
+across the soft sand to the beautiful dressing-room of serpentine
+rock, where one could sit and watch the glittering sea, untroubled by
+any company save the gulls and cormorants. What a contrast to other
+bathing places--genteel Eastbourne and Brighton, or vulgar Margate and
+Ramsgate, where, nevertheless, the good folks look equally happy. But
+our happiness! No words could describe it. Shall we stamp ourselves
+as persons of little mind, easily satisfied, if I confess that we
+spent the whole morning in Housel Cove without band or promenade,
+without even a Christy Minstrel or a Punch and Judy, our sole amusement
+being the vain attempt to catch a tiny fish, the Robinson Crusoe of
+a small pool in the rock above high-water mark, where by some ill
+chance he found himself. But he looked extremely contented with his
+sea hermitage, and evaded so cleverly all our efforts to get hold of
+him, that after a while we left him to his solitude--where possibly he
+resides still.
+
+[Illustration: THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY.]
+
+How delicious it is for hard-worked people to do nothing, absolutely
+nothing! Of course only for a little while--a few days, a few hours.
+The love of work and the necessity for it soon revive. But just for
+those few harmless hours to let the world and its duties and cares
+alike slip by, to be absolutely idle, to fold one's hands and look
+at the sea and the sky, thinking of nothing at all, except perhaps
+to count and watch for every ninth wave--said to be the biggest
+always--and wonder how big it will be, and whether it will reach that
+stone with the little colony of limpets and two red anemones beside
+them, or stop short at the rock where we sit placidly dangling our
+feet, waiting, Canute-like, for the supreme moment when the will of
+humanity sinks conquered by the immutable powers of nature. Then,
+greatest crisis of all, the sea will attack that magnificent castle and
+moat, which we grown-up babies have constructed with such pride. Well,
+have we not all built our sand-castles and seen them swept away? happy
+if by no unkinder force than the remorseless wave of Time, which will
+soon flow over us all.
+
+But how foolish is moralising--making my narrative halt like that horse
+whom we amused ourselves with half the afternoon. He was tied by the
+leg, poor beast, the fore leg fastened to the hind one, as seemed to be
+the ordinary Cornish fashion with all animals--horses, cows, and sheep.
+It certainly saves a deal of trouble, preventing them from climbing the
+"hedges" which form the sole boundary of property, but it makes the
+creatures go limping about in rather a melancholy fashion. However,
+as it is their normal condition, probably they communicate it to one
+another, and each generation accepts its lot.
+
+This horse did. He was a handsome animal, who came and peered at
+the sketch which one of us was doing, after the solemn fashion of
+quadrupedal connoisseurship, and kept us company all the afternoon. We
+sat in a row on the top of the "hedge," enjoying the golden afternoon,
+and scarcely believing it possible that yesterday had been yesterday.
+Of the wild storm and deluge of rain there was not a single trace;
+everything looked as lovely as if it had been, and was going to be,
+summer all the year.
+
+We were so contented, and were making such progress in our sketch and
+distant view of Kynance over the now dry and smiling cornfield, that we
+had nigh forgotten the duties of civilisation, until some one brought
+the news that all the household was apparently dressing itself in its
+very best, to attend the rectory tea. We determined to do the same,
+though small were our possibilities of toilette.
+
+"But what does it matter?" argued we. "Nobody knows us, and we know
+nobody."
+
+A position rather rare to those who "dwell among their own people,"
+who take a kindly interest in everybody, and believe with a pardonable
+credulity that everybody takes a kindly interest in them.
+
+But human nature is the same all the world over. And here we saw it in
+its pleasantest phase; rich and poor meeting together, not for charity,
+but courtesy--a courtesy that was given with a kindliness and accepted
+with a quiet independence which seemed characteristic of these Cornish
+folk.
+
+Among the little crowd, gentle and simple, we, of course, did not know
+a single soul. Nevertheless, delivering up our tickets to the gardener
+at the gate, we entered, and wandered at ease through the pretty
+garden, gorgeous with asters, marigolds, carnations, and all sorts of
+rich-coloured and rich-scented autumn flowers; where the hydrangeas
+grew in enormous bushes, and the fuchsias had stems as thick and solid
+as trees.
+
+In front of the open hall door was a gravel sweep where were ranged
+two long tea-tables filled with the humbler but respectable class of
+parishioners, chiefly elderly people, and some very old. The Lizard is
+a place noted for longevity, as is proved by the register books, where
+several deaths at over a hundred may be found recorded, and one--he was
+the rector of Landewednack in 1683--is said to have died at the age of
+120 years.
+
+The present rector is no such Methuselah. He moved actively to and fro
+among his people, and so did his wife, whom we should have recognised
+by her omnipresent kindliness, even if she had not come and welcomed
+us strangers--easily singled out as strangers, where all the rest were
+friends.
+
+Besides the poor and the aged, there was a goodly number of guests
+who were neither the one nor the other, playing energetically at
+lawn-tennis behind the house, on a "lawn" composed of sea-sand. All
+seemed determined to amuse themselves and everybody else, and all did
+their very best--including the band.
+
+Alas, that band! I would fain pass it over in silence (would it
+had returned the compliment!); but truth is truth, and may benefit
+rather than harm. The calm composure with which those half-dozen
+wind-instruments sat in a row, playing determinedly flat, bass coming
+in with a tremendous boom here and there, entirely at his own volition,
+without regard to time or tune, was the most awful thing I ever heard
+in music! Agony, pure and simple, was the only sensation it produced.
+When they struck up, we just ran away till the tune was ended--what
+tune, familiar or unfamiliar, it was impossible to say. Between us
+three, all blessed, or cursed, with musical ears, there existed such
+difference of opinion on this head, that decision became vain. And
+when at last, as the hour of service approached, little groups began
+strolling towards the church, the musicians began a final "God save the
+Queen," barely recognisable, a feeling of thankfulness was the only
+sensation left.
+
+[Illustration: THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER--A CORNISH STUDY.]
+
+Now, let me not be hard upon these village Orpheuses. They did their
+best, and for a working man to study music in any form is a good and
+desirable thing. But whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing
+well. The great bane of provincial life is that people have so few
+opportunities of finding out when they do _not_ do things well, and so
+little ambition to learn to do them better. If these few severe remarks
+should spur on that anonymous band to try and emulate the Philharmonic
+or the Crystal Palace orchestra, it will be all the better for the
+little community at the Lizard.
+
+The music in the church was beautiful. A crowded congregation--not a
+seat vacant--listened to the excellent chanting, hymns, and a harvest
+anthem, most accurately and correctly sung. The organist too--it was
+a pleasure to watch that young man's face and see with what interest
+and enthusiasm he entered into it all. Besides the rector, there were
+several other clergymen, one of whom, an old man, read the prayers
+with an intonation and expression which I have rarely heard equalled,
+and another preached what would have been called anywhere a thoroughly
+good sermon. All the statelier guests at the Rectory tea--probably
+county families (one stout lady had the dignity of a duchess at
+least)--"assisted" at this evening service, and behind them was a
+throng of humbler folk, among whom we recognised our sole friend here,
+John Curgenven. We had passed him at the church door, and he had lifted
+his hat with the air of a _preux chevalier_ of the olden time; "more
+like King Arthur than ever"--we observed to one another.
+
+He, and we, and the aristocratic groups, with a few more of the
+congregation, lingered for several minutes after service was over,
+admiring the beautiful flowers and fruit. I think I never saw any
+decorations so rich or so tasteful. And then, as the organ played us
+out with an exceedingly brilliant voluntary, the vision of light and
+colour melted away, and we came out upon the quiet churchyard, lying in
+the cold, still moonlight.
+
+But what a moonlight! Clear as day, the round silver orb sailing
+through a cloudless sky of that deep dark which we know is blue, only
+moonlight shows no colours. Oh, Lady Moon, Lady Moon, what a dangerous
+night for some of those groups to go walking home in! We saw them in
+twos and threes, various young people whom we had got to know by sight,
+and criticise, and take an interest in, wandering slowly on through
+Lizard Town, and then diverging into quieter paths.
+
+As we gladly did too. For there, in an open space near the two hotels
+which co-exist close together--I hope amicably, and divide the tourist
+custom of the place--in front of a row of open windows which showed the
+remains of a _table d'hôte_, and playing lively tunes to a group of
+delighted listeners, including some children, who had struck up a merry
+dance--stood that terrible wind band!
+
+It was too much! All our sympathy with our fellow-creatures, our
+pleasure in watching them enjoy themselves, our interest in studying
+human nature in the abstract, nay, even the picturesqueness of the
+charming moonlight scene, could not tempt us to stay. We paused a
+minute, then put our fingers in our ears and fled. Gradually those
+fearful sounds melted away into distance, and left us to the silence of
+moonshine, and the sight, now grown familiar, but never less beautiful,
+of the far-gleaming Lizard Lights.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE SEVENTH
+
+
+John Curgenven had said last night, with his air of tender patronising,
+half regal, half paternal, which we declared always reminded us of King
+Arthur--"Ladies, whenever you settle to go to Kynance, I'll take you."
+
+And sure enough there he stood, at eight in the morning, quite a
+picture, his cap in one hand, a couple of fishes dangling from the
+other--he had brought them as a present, and absolutely refused to be
+paid--smiling upon us at our breakfast, as benignly as did the sun. He
+came to say that he was at our service till 10 A.M.; when he
+had an engagement.
+
+Our countenances fell. We did not like venturing in strange and
+dangerous ground, or rather sea, without our protector. But this was
+our last chance, and such a lovely day.
+
+"You won't come to any harm, ladies," said the consoling John. "I'll
+take you by a short cut across the down, much better than the cliff.
+You can't possibly miss your way: it'll lead you straight to Kynance,
+and then you go down a steep path to the Cove. You'll have plenty of
+time before the tide comes in to see everything."
+
+"And to bathe?"
+
+"Oh yes, miss, there's the Drawing-room, the Dining-room, and the
+Kitchen--all capital caves close together; I wouldn't advise you to
+swim out far, though. And keep a sharp look out for the tide--it runs
+in pretty fast."
+
+"And the scrambling?"
+
+"Oh, you can easy get on Asparagus Island, miss; it's quite safe. Only
+don't try the Devil's Throat--or Hell's Mouth, as some folk call it."
+
+Neither name was inviting; but studying our guide-books, we thought we
+could manage even without our friend. So, long ere the dew was dried on
+the sunshiny down, we all started off together, Curgenven slackening
+his quick active steps--very light and most enviably active for a man
+of his years--to accommodate us, and conversing courteously with us all
+the way.
+
+[Illustration: KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL.]
+
+"Ower the muir amang the heather" have I tramped many a mile in
+bonnie Scotland, but this Cornish moor and Cornish heather were quite
+different. As different as the Cornishman with his bright, frank face,
+and his mixture of British honesty and Gallic courtesy, from the Scotch
+peasant--equally worthy, but sometimes just a trifle "dour."
+
+John had plenty to say for himself, and said it well, with a quiet
+independence that there was no mistaking; never forgetting meanwhile to
+stop and offer a helping hand over every bit of rough road, puddle, or
+bog. He gave us a vivid picture of winter life at the Lizard: when the
+little community has to hybernate, like the squirrels and field-mice,
+upon its summer savings.
+
+"Sometimes we don't earn a halfpenny for weeks and months, and then if
+we've got nothing to fall back upon it's a bad job, you see, ma'am."
+
+I asked him if much money went for drink; they seemed to me a
+remarkably sober set at the Lizard.
+
+"Yes, I think we are; we're obliged to be; we can't spend money at the
+public-house, for we've got none to spend. I'm no teetotaller myself,"
+added John boldly. "I don't dislike a glass of beer now and then, if I
+can afford it, and when I can't afford it I can do without it, and if I
+do take it I always know when to stop."
+
+Ay, that is the crucial test--the knowing when to stop. It is this
+which makes all the difference between a good man and a villain, a wise
+man and a fool. Self-control--a quality which, guided by conscience and
+common sense, is the best possession of any human being. And looking at
+the honest fisherman, one felt pretty sure he had his share of it.
+
+"Now I must leave you, ladies," said he, a great deal sooner than we
+wished, for we much liked talking to him. "My time's nearly up, and I
+mustn't keep my gentleman waiting; he goes out in my boat every day,
+and has been a good friend to me. The road's straight before you,
+ladies; and there's another party just ahead of you. Follow the track,
+and you'll soon be at Kynance. It's a lovely day for the Cove, and I
+hope you'll enjoy yourselves."
+
+John bared his grey head, with a salutation worthy of some old knight
+of the Round Table, and then strode back, in double-quick time, as
+active and upright as any young fellow of twenty-five, across the level
+down.
+
+Beautiful Kynance! When, afterwards, I stood one dull winter day
+in a London Art Gallery, opposite the _Cornish Lions_, how well I
+recalled this day! How truly Brett's picture gives the long roll of
+the wave upon the silver sands, the richly-tinted rocks and caves, the
+brightness and freshness of everything. And those merry girls beside
+me, who had the faculty of enjoying all they had, and all they did,
+without regretting what they had not or what they might not do--with
+heroic resignation they promised not to attempt to swim in the tempting
+smooth water beyond the long rollers. Though knocked down again and
+again, they always emerged from the waves with shouts of laughter. Mere
+dots they looked to my anxious eyes--a couple of corks tossed hither
+and thither on the foaming billows--and very thankful I was to get them
+safe back into the "drawing-room," the loveliest of lovely caves.
+
+There was no time to lose; by noon our parlour floor--what a fairy
+floor it was! of the softest, most delicious sand--would be all covered
+with waves. And before then there was a deal to be seen and done, the
+Bellows, the Gull Rock, Asparagus Island--even if we left out the
+dangerous points with the ugly names that Curgenven had warned us
+against.
+
+What is there in humanity, certainly in youthful humanity, that if
+it can attain its end in two ways, one quiet and decorous, the other
+difficult and dangerous, is certain to choose the latter?
+
+"We must manage to get you to the Bellows, it is such a curious sight,"
+said my girls as they returned from it. "Don't be frightened--come
+along!"
+
+By dint of pulling, pushing, and the help of stick and arm, I came:
+stood watching the spout of water which, in certain conditions of the
+tide, forces itself through a tiny fissure in the rock with a great
+roar, and joined in the childish delight of waiting, minute by minute,
+for the biggest spout, the loudest roar.
+
+But Asparagus Island (where was no asparagus at all) I totally
+declined. Not being a goat or a chamois, I contented myself with
+sitting where I could gain the best view of the almost invisible
+path by which my adventurous young "kids" disappeared. Happily they
+had both steady heads and cool nerves; they were neither rash nor
+unconscientious. I knew they would come back as soon as they could. So
+I waited patiently, contemplating a fellow-victim who seemed worse off
+than myself; a benign-looking clergyman, who kept walking up and down
+the soppy sands, and shouting at intervals to two young people, a man
+and a woman, who appeared to be crawling like flies along the face of
+the rock towards another rock, with a yawning cave and a wide fissure
+between.
+
+"Don't attempt it!" the clergyman cried at the top of his voice.
+"That's the Devil's Throat. She'll never manage it. Come down. Do make
+her come down."
+
+"Your young people seem rather venturesome," said I sympathetically.
+
+[Illustration: THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE.]
+
+"Not _my_ young people," was the dignified answer. "My girls are up
+there, on Asparagus Rock, which is easy enough climbing. They promised
+not to go farther, and they never disobey their mother and me. But
+those two! I declare he is taking her to the most dangerous part, that
+rock where you have to jump--a good jump it is, and if you miss your
+footing you are done for, you go right into the boiling waves below.
+Well, it's no business of mine; she is his own property; he is engaged
+to her, but"--
+
+I fear I made some very severe remarks on the folly of a young man who
+could thus risk life and limbs--not only his own, but those of his wife
+to be; and on the weakness of a girl who could allow herself to be
+tempted, even by a lover, into such selfish foolhardiness.
+
+"They must manage their own affairs," said the old gentleman
+sententiously, perhaps not being so much given to preaching (out of the
+pulpit) as I was. "My daughters are wiser. Here come two of them."
+
+And very sensible girls they looked, clad in a practical, convenient
+fashion, just fitted for scrambling. By them I sent a message to my own
+girls, explaining the best descent from Asparagus Island, and repeating
+the warning against attempting Hell's Mouth.
+
+"Yes, you are quite right," said my elderly friend, as we sat down
+together on the least uncomfortable stone we could find, and watched
+the juniors disappear over the rocks. "I like to see girls active and
+brave; I never hinder them in any reasonable enjoyment, even though
+there may be risk in it--one must run some risk--and a woman may
+have to save life as well as a man. But foolhardy bravado I not only
+dislike--I _despise_ it."
+
+In which sentiments I so entirely agreed that we fraternised there
+and then; began talking on all sorts of subjects--some of them the
+very serious and earnest subjects that one occasionally drops into by
+mere chance, with mere strangers. I recall that half hour on Kynance
+Sands as one of the pleasant memories of our tour, though to this day
+I have not the remotest idea who my companion was. Except that as soon
+as he spoke I recognised the reader whose voice had so struck me in
+last night's thanksgiving service; reminding me of Frederick Denison
+Maurice, whom this generation is almost beginning to forget, but whom
+we elders never can forget.
+
+The tide was creeping on now--nay, striding, wave after wave, through
+"parlour" and "drawing-room," making ingress and egress alike
+impossible. In fact, a newly arrived party of tourists, who had stood
+unwisely long contemplating the Bellows, were seen to gaze in despair
+from their rock which had suddenly become an island. No chance for them
+except to wade--and in a few minutes more they would probably have
+to swim ashore. What became of them we did not stay to see, for an
+anxious, prudent little voice, always thoughtful for "mother," insisted
+on our precipitate flight before the advancing tide. Kynance, lovely as
+it is, has its inconveniences.
+
+Departing, we met a whole string of tourist-looking people, whom we
+benevolently warned that they were too late, at which they did not
+seem in the least disappointed. Probably they were one of the numerous
+pic-nic parties who come here from Falmouth or Helstone, to spend a
+jovial day of eating and drinking, and enjoy the delights of the flesh
+rather than the spirit.
+
+At any rate the romance and solitude of the place were gone. The quaint
+old woman at the serpentine shop--a mild little wooden erection under
+the cliff--was being chaffed and bargained with by three youths with
+cigars, which defiled the whole air around, and made us take refuge up
+the hill. But even there a white umbrella had sprung up like a gigantic
+mushroom, and under it sat an energetic lady artist, who, entering at
+once into conversation, with a cheerful avidity that implied her not
+having talked for a week, informed us of all she was painting, and all
+she had meant to paint, where she lodged, and how much she paid for her
+lodging--evidently expecting the same confidences from us in return.
+
+But we were getting hungry, and between us and dinner was a long
+two-miles walk over the steep downs, that were glowing, nay, burning,
+under the September sun. So we turned homeward, glad of more than one
+rest by the way, and a long pause beside a pretty little stream; where
+we were able to offer the immemorial cup of cold water to several
+thirsty souls besides ourselves. Some of us by this time were getting
+to feel not so young as we had fancied ourselves in the early morning,
+and to wish regretfully for Charles and his carriage.
+
+However, we got home at last--to find that sad accompaniment of many a
+holiday--tidings of sickness and death. Nothing very near us--nothing
+that need hurry us home--but enough to sadden us, and make our evening
+walk, which we bravely carried out, a far less bright one than that of
+the forenoon.
+
+The girls had found a way, chiefly on the tops of "hedges," to the
+grand rock called Lizard Point. Thither we went, and watched the
+sunset--a very fine one; then came back through the village, and made
+various purchases of serpentine from John Curgenven's wife, who was
+a great deal younger than himself, but not near so handsome or so
+original.
+
+But a cloud had come over us; it did not, and must not stay--still,
+there it was for the time. When the last thing at night I went out into
+the glorious moonlight--bright as day--and thought of the soul who had
+just passed out of a long and troubled life into the clearness of life
+eternal, it seemed as if all was right still. Small cares and worries
+dwindled down or melted away--as the petty uglinesses around melted
+in the radiance of this glorious harvest moon, which seemed to wrap
+one round in a silent peace, like the "garment of praise," which David
+speaks about--in exchange for "the spirit of heaviness."
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE EIGHTH
+
+
+And seven days were all we could allow ourselves at the Lizard, if we
+meant to see the rest of Cornwall. We began to reckon with sore hearts
+that five days were already gone, and it seemed as if we had not seen
+half we ought to see, even of our near surroundings.
+
+"We will take no excursion to-day. We will just have our bath at Housel
+Cove and then we will wander about the shore, and examine the Lizard
+Lights. Only fancy, our going away to-morrow without having seen the
+inside of the Lizard Lights! Oh, I wish we were not leaving so soon. We
+shall never like any place as we like the Lizard."
+
+It was indeed very delightful. Directly after breakfast--and we are
+people who never vary from our eight o'clock breakfast, so that we
+always see the world in its early morning brightness and freshness--we
+went
+
+  "Brushing with hasty steps the dew away,"
+
+along the fields, which led down to Housel or Househole Cove. Before
+us, clear in the sunshine, rose the fine headland of Penolver, and
+the green slopes of the amphitheatre of Belidden, supposed to be the
+remains of a Druidical temple. That, and the chair of Belidden, a
+recess in the rock, whence there is a splendid view, with various
+archæological curiosities, true or traditionary, we ought to have
+examined, I know. But--we didn't do it. Some of us were content to
+rejoice in the general atmosphere of beauty and peace without minute
+investigation, and some of us were so eminently practical that "a good
+bathe" appeared more important than all the poetry and archæology in
+the world.
+
+So we wandered slowly on, rejoicing at having the place all to
+ourselves, when we came suddenly upon a tall black figure intently
+watching three other black figures, or rather dots, which were climbing
+slowly over Penolver.
+
+It was our clerical friend of Kynance; with whom, in the natural and
+right civility of holiday-makers, we exchanged a courteous good morning.
+
+[Illustration: THE LION ROCKS--A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE.]
+
+"Yes, those are my girls up on the cliff there. They have been bathing,
+and are now going to walk to Cadgwith."
+
+"Then nobody fell into the Devil's Throat at Kynance? They all came
+back to you with whole limbs?"
+
+"Yes," said he smiling, "and they went again for another long walk
+in the afternoon. At night, when it turned out to be such splendid
+moonlight, they actually insisted on going launce-fishing. Of course
+you know about launce-fishing?"
+
+I pleaded my utter ignorance of that noble sport.
+
+"Oh, it is _the_ thing at the Lizard. My boys--and girls too--consider
+it the best fun going. The launce is a sort of sand-eel peculiar to
+these coasts. It swims about all day, and at night burrows in the sand
+just above the waterline, where, when the moon shines on it, you can
+trace the silvery gleam of the creature. So you stand up to your ankles
+on wet sand, with a crooked iron spear which you dart in and hook him
+up, keeping your left hand free to seize him with."
+
+"Easy fishing," said I, with a certain pity for the sand-eel.
+
+"Not so easy as appears. You are apt either to chop him right in
+two, or miss him altogether, when off he wriggles in the sand and
+disappears. My young people say it requires a practised hand and a
+peculiar twist of the wrist, to have any success at all in launce
+fishing. It can only be done on moonlight nights--the full moon and
+a day or two after--and they are out half the night. They go about
+barefoot, which is much safer than soaked shoes and stockings. About
+midnight they light a fire on the sand, cook all the fish they have
+caught, and have a grand supper, as they had last night. They came home
+as merry as crickets about two o'clock this morning. Perhaps you might
+not have noticed what a wonderful moonlight night it was?"
+
+I had; but it would not have occurred to me to spend it in standing for
+hours up to the knees in salt water, catching unfortunate fish.
+
+However, tastes differ, and launce-fishing may be a prime delight to
+some people; so I faithfully chronicle it, and the proper mode of
+pursuing it, as one of the attractions at the Lizard. I am not aware
+that it is practised at any other part of the Cornish coast, nor can
+I say whether or not it was a pastime of King Arthur and his Knights.
+One cannot imagine Sir Tristram or Sir Launcelot occupied in spearing a
+small sand-eel.
+
+The bathing at Housel Cove was delightful as ever. And afterwards we
+saw that very rare and beautiful sight, a perfect solar rainbow. Not
+the familiar bow of Noah, but a great luminous circle round the sun,
+like the halo often seen round the moon, extending over half the sky;
+yellow at first, then gradually assuming faint prismatic tints. This
+colouring, though never so bright as the ordinary arched rainbow, was
+wonderfully tender and delicate. We stood a long time watching it,
+till at last it melted slowly out of the sky, leaving behind a sense of
+mystery, as of something we had never seen before and might never see
+again in all our lives.
+
+It was a lovely day, bright and warm as midsummer, tempting us to some
+distant excursion; but we had decided to investigate the Lizard Lights.
+We should have been content to take them for granted, in their purely
+poetical phase, as we had watched them night after night. But some of
+us were blessed with scientific relatives, who would have despised us
+utterly if we had spent a whole week at the Lizard and never gone to
+see the Lizard Lights. So we felt bound to do our duty, and admire, if
+we could not understand.
+
+Which we certainly did not. I chronicle with shame that the careful and
+courteous explanations of that most intelligent young man, who met us
+at the door of the huge white building, apparently quite glad to have
+an opportunity of conducting us through it, were entirely thrown away.
+We mounted ladders, we looked at Brobdingnagian lamps, we poked into
+mysterious machinery for lighting them and for sounding the fog-horn,
+we listened to all that was told us, and tried to look as if we took it
+in. Very much interested we could not but be at such wonderful results
+of man's invention, but as for comprehending! we came away with our
+minds as dark as when we went in.
+
+I have always found through life that, next to being clever, the safest
+thing is to know one's own ignorance and acknowledge it. Therefore let
+me leave all description of the astonishing mechanism of the Lizard
+Lights--I believe the first experiment of their kind, and not very
+long established--to abler pens and more intelligent brains. To see
+that young man, scarcely above the grade of a working man, handling
+his instruments and explaining them and their uses, seeming to take
+for granted that we could understand--which alas! we didn't, not
+an atom!--inspired me with a sense of humiliation and awe. Also of
+pride at the wonders this generation has accomplished, and is still
+accomplishing; employing the gradually comprehended forces of Nature
+against herself, as it were, and dominating her evil by ever-new
+discoveries and applications of the recondite powers of good.
+
+The enormous body of light produced nightly--equal, I think he said,
+to 30,000 candles--and the complicated machinery for keeping the
+fog-horn continually at work, when even that gigantic blaze became
+invisible--all this amount of skill, science, labour, and money,
+freely expended for the saving of life, gave one a strong impression of
+not only British power but British beneficence. Could King Arthur have
+come back again from his sea-engulfed Land of Lyonesse, and stood where
+we stood, beside the Lizard Lights, what would he have said to it all?
+
+[Illustration: HAULING IN THE BOATS.]
+
+Even though we did not understand, we were keenly interested in all we
+saw, and still more so in the stories of wrecks which this young man
+had witnessed even during the few years, or months--I forget which--of
+his stay at the Lizard. He, too, agreed, that the rocks there, called
+by the generic name of the Stags, were the most fatal of all on our
+coasts to ships outward and homeward bound. Probably because in the
+latter case, captain and crews get a trifle careless; and in the
+former--as I have heard in sad explanation of many emigrant ships being
+lost almost immediately after quitting port--they get drunk. Many of
+the sailors are said to come on board "half-seas over," and could the
+skilfullest of pilots save a ship with a drunken crew?
+
+Be that as it may, the fact remains, that throughout winter almost
+every week's chronicle at the Lizard is the same story--wild storms, or
+dense fogs, guns of distress heard, a hasty manning of the life-boat,
+dragged with difficulty down the steep cliff-road, a brief struggle
+with the awful sea, and then, even if a few lives are saved, with the
+ship herself all is over.
+
+"Only last Christmas I saw a vessel go to pieces in ten minutes on the
+rocks below there," said the man, after particularising several wrecks,
+which seemed to have imprinted themselves on his memory with all their
+incidents. "Yes, we have a bad time in winter, and the coastguard
+men lead a risky life. They are the picked men of the service, and
+tolerably well paid, but no money could ever pay them for what they go
+through--or the fishermen, who generally are volunteers, and get little
+or nothing."
+
+"It must be a hard life in these parts, especially in winter," we
+observed.
+
+"Well, perhaps it is, but it's our business, you see."
+
+Yes, but not all people do their business, as the mismanagements and
+mistakes of this world plainly show.
+
+Still, it is a good world, and we felt it so as we strolled along the
+sunshiny cliff, talking over all these stories, tragical or heroic,
+which had been told us in such a simple matter-of-fact way, as if they
+were every-day occurrences. And then, while the young folks went on
+"for a good scramble" over Penolver, I sat down for a quiet "think";
+that enforced rest, which, as years advance, becomes not painful, but
+actually pleasant; in which, if one fails to solve the problems of the
+universe, one is prone to con them over, wondering at them all.
+
+From the sunny sea and sunny sky, full of a silence so complete that I
+could hear every wave as it broke on the unseen rocks below, my mind
+wandered to that young fellow among his machinery, with his sickly
+eager face and his short cough--indicating that _his_ "business" in
+this world, over which he seemed so engrossed, might only too soon
+come to an end. Between these apparently eternal powers of Nature,
+so strong, so fierce, so irresistible, against which man fought so
+magnificently with all his perfection of scientific knowledge and
+accuracy of handiwork--and this poor frail human life, which in a
+moment might be blown out like a candle, suddenly quenched in darkness,
+"there is no skill or knowledge in the grave whither thou goest"--what
+a contrast it was!
+
+And yet--and yet?--We shall sleep with our fathers, and some of us feel
+sometimes so tired that we do not in the least mind going to sleep. But
+notwithstanding this, notwithstanding everything without that seems to
+imply our perishableness, we are conscious of something within which
+is absolutely imperishable. We feel it only stronger and clearer as
+life begins to melt away from us; as "the lights in the windows are
+darkened, and the daughters of music are brought low." To the young,
+death is often a terror, for it seems to put an end to the full, rich,
+passionate life beyond which they can see nothing; but to the old,
+conscious that this their tabernacle is being slowly dissolved, and yet
+its mysterious inhabitant, the wonderful, incomprehensible _me_, is
+exactly the same--thinks, loves, suffers, and enjoys, precisely as it
+did heaven knows how many years ago--to them, death appears in quite
+another shape. He is no longer Death the Enemy, but Death the Friend,
+who may--who can tell?--give back all that life has denied or taken
+away. He cannot harm us, and he may bless us, with the blessing of
+loving children, who believe that, whatever happens, nothing can take
+them out of their Father's arms.
+
+But I had not come to Cornwall to preach, except to myself now and
+then, as this day. My silent sermon was all done by the time the
+young folks came back, full of the beauties of their cliff walk, and
+their affectionate regrets that I "could never manage it," but must
+have felt so dull, sitting on a stone and watching the sheep and the
+sea-gulls. Not at all! I was obliged to confess that I never am "dull,"
+as people call it, and love solitude almost as much as society.
+
+[Illustration: ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS.]
+
+So, each contented in our own way, we went merrily home, to find
+waiting for us our cosy tea--the last!--and our faithful Charles, who,
+according to agreement, appeared overnight, to take charge of us till
+we got back to civilisation and railways.
+
+"Yes, ladies, here I am," said he with a beaming countenance. "And
+I've got you the same carriage and the same horse, as you wished, and
+I've come in time to give him a good night's rest. Now, when shall you
+start, and what do you want to do to-morrow?"
+
+Our idea had been to take for our next resting-place Marazion. This
+queer-named town had attracted us ever since the days when we learnt
+geography. Since, we had heard a good deal about it: how it had
+been inhabited by Jewish colonists, who bought tin from the early
+Ph[oe]nician workers of the Cornish mines, and been called by them
+Mara-Zion--bitter Zion--corrupted by the common people into Market-Jew.
+It was a quiet place, with St. Michael's Mount opposite; and attracted
+us much more than genteel Penzance. So did a letter we got from the
+landlord of its one hotel, promising to take us in, and make us
+thoroughly comfortable.
+
+Could we get there in one day? Charles declared we could, and even see
+a good deal on the road.
+
+"We'll go round by Mullion. Mary will be delighted to get another
+peep at you ladies, and while I rest the horse you can go in and look
+at the old church--it's very curious, they say. And then we'll go on
+to Gunwalloe,--there's another church there, close by the sea, built
+by somebody who was shipwrecked. But then it's so old and so small.
+However, we can stop and look at it if you like."
+
+His good common sense, and kindliness, when he might so easily have
+done his mere duty and taken us the shortest and ugliest route, showing
+us nothing, decided us to leave all in Charles's hands, and start at
+10 A.M. for Penzance, _viâ_ Helstone, where we all wished to
+stay an hour or two, and find out a "friend," the only one we had in
+Cornwall.
+
+So all was settled, with but a single regret, that several boating
+excursions we had planned with John Curgenven had all fallen through,
+and we should never behold some wonderful sea-caves between the Lizard
+and Cadgwith, which we had set our hearts upon visiting.
+
+Charles fingered his cap with a thoughtful air. "I don't see why you
+shouldn't, ladies. If I was to go direct and tell John Curgenven to
+have a boat ready at Church Cove, and we was to start at nine instead
+of ten, and drive there, the carriage might wait while you rowed to
+the caves and back; we should still reach Helstone by dinner-time, and
+Marazion before dark."
+
+"We'll do it!" was the unanimous resolve. And at this addition to his
+work Charles looked actually pleased!
+
+So--all was soon over, our easy packing done, our bill paid--a very
+small one--our goodnights said to the kindly handmaid, Esther, who
+hoped we would come back again some time, and promised to keep the
+artistic mural decorations of our little parlour in memory of us. My
+young folks went to bed, and then, a little before midnight, when all
+the house was quiet, I put a shawl over my head, unlatched the innocent
+door--no bolts or bars at the Lizard--and went out into the night.
+
+What a night it was!--mild as summer, clear as day: the full moon
+sailing aloft in an absolutely cloudless sky. Not a breath, not a
+sound--except the faint thud-thud of the in-coming waves, two miles
+off, at Kynance, the outline of which, and of the whole coast, was
+distinctly visible. A silent earth, lying under a silent heaven.
+Looking up, one felt almost like a disembodied soul, free to cleave
+through infinite space and gain--what?
+
+Is it human or divine, this ceaseless longing after something never
+attained, this craving after the eternal life, which, if fully believed
+in, fully understood, would take all the bitterness out of this life?
+And yet, that knowledge is not given.
+
+But so much is given, and all given is so infinitely good, except where
+we ourselves turn it into evil, that surely more, and better, will be
+given to us by and by.
+
+And so, to bed--to bed! Those only truly enjoy life who fear not death:
+who can say of the grave as if it were their bed: "I will lay me down
+in peace and take my rest, for it is Thou only, O God, who makest me to
+dwell in safety."
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE NINTH
+
+
+And our last at the Lizard, which a week ago had been to us a mere word
+or dot in a map; now we carried away from it a living human interest in
+everything and everybody.
+
+Esther bade us a cordial farewell: Mrs. Curgenven, standing at the
+door of her serpentine shop, repeated the good wishes, and informed
+us that John and his boat had already started for Church Cove. As we
+drove through the bright little Lizard Town, and past the Church of
+Landewednack, wondering if we should ever see either again, we felt
+quite sad.
+
+But sentimental considerations soon vanished in practical alarms.
+Leaving the carriage and Charles at the nearest point to the Cove, we
+went down the steep descent, and saw John rocking in his boat, and
+beckoning to us with a bland and smiling countenance. But between us
+and him lay a sort of causeway, of the very roughest rocks, slippery
+with sea-weed, and beat upon by waves--such waves! Yet clearly, if we
+meant to get into the boat at all, we must seize our opportunity and
+jump in between the flux and reflux of that advancing tide.
+
+I am not a coward: I love boats, and was well used to them in my youth,
+but now--my heart misgave me. There were but two alternatives--to
+stop the pleasure of the whole party, and leave Cornwall with these
+wonderful sea-caves unseen, or to let my children go alone. Neither was
+possible; so I hailed a sturdy youth at work hard by, and asked him if
+he would take charge of an old lady across the rocks. He grinned from
+ear to ear, but came forward, and did his duty manfully and kindly. My
+young folks, light as feathers, bounded after; and with the help of
+John Curgenven, chivalrous and careful as ever, we soon found ourselves
+safely in the boat.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING.]
+
+Safe, but not quite happy. "Here we go up, up, up, and here we go down,
+down, down," was the principle of our voyage, the most serious one we
+ever took in an open boat with a single pair of oars. Never did I see
+such waves,--at least, never did I float upon them, in a boat that went
+tossing like a bit of cork out into the open sea.
+
+John seemed not to mind them in the least. His strong arms swept the
+boat along, and he still found breath to talk to us, pointing out the
+great gloomy cliffs we were passing under, and telling us stories of
+wrecks, the favourite theme--and no wonder.
+
+This sunshiny morning that iron-bound coast looked awful enough; what
+must it have looked like, on the winter night when the emigrant ship
+_Brest_ went down!
+
+"Yes, it was about ten o'clock at night," said John. "I was fast asleep
+in bed, but they knocked me up; I got on my clothes and was off in
+five minutes. They are always glad enough to get us fishermen, the
+coastguard are. Mine was the first boat-load we brought ashore; we
+would only take women and children that time. They were all in their
+night-gowns, and they couldn't speak a word of English, but we made
+them understand somehow. One woman threw her three children down to me,
+and stayed behind on the wreck with two more."
+
+"Were the women frightened?"
+
+"Oh, no, they were very quiet, dazed like. Some of them seemed to be
+saying their prayers. But they made no fuss at all, not even the little
+ones. They lay down in the bottom of the boat, and we rowed ashore
+as fast as we could, to Cadgwith. Then we rowed back and fetched two
+boatloads more. We saved a lot of lives that wreck, but only their
+lives; they had scarcely a rag of clothes on, and some of the babies
+were as naked as when they were born."
+
+"And who took them in?"
+
+"Everybody: we always do it," answered John, as if surprised at
+the question. "The fishermen's cottages were full, and so was the
+parsonage. We gave them clothes, and kept them till they could be sent
+away. Yes, it was an awful night; I got something to remember it by,
+here."
+
+He held out his hand, from which we noticed half of one finger was
+missing.
+
+"It got squeezed off with a rope somehow. I didn't heed it much at
+the time," said John carelessly. "But look, we're at the first of the
+caves. I'll row in close, ladies, and let you see it."
+
+So we had to turn our minds from the vision of the wreck of the
+_Brest_, which John's simple words made so terribly vivid, to examine
+Raven's Ugo, and Dolor Ugo; _ugo_ is Cornish for cave. Over the
+entrance of the first a pair of ravens have built from time immemorial.
+It is just accessible, the opening being above the sea-line, and hung
+with quantities of sea-ferns. Here in smuggling days, many kegs of
+spirits used to be secreted: and many a wild drama no doubt has been
+acted there--daring encounters between smugglers and coastguard men,
+not bloodless on either side.
+
+Dolor Ugo is now inaccessible and unusable. Its only floor is of
+heaving water, a deep olive green, and so clear that we could see the
+fishes swimming about pursuing a shoal of launce. Its high-vaulted roof
+and sides were tinted all colours--rose-pink, rich dark brown, and
+purple. The entrance was wide enough to admit a boat, but it gradually
+narrowed into impenetrable darkness. How far inland it goes no one can
+tell, as it could only be investigated by swimming, a rather dangerous
+experiment. Boats venture as far as the daylight goes; and it is a
+favourite trick of the boatman suddenly to fire off a pistol, which
+reverberates like thunder through the mysterious gloom of the cave.
+
+A solemn place; an awful place, some of us thought, as we rowed in, and
+out again, into the sunshiny open sea. Which we had now got used to;
+and it was delicious to go dancing like a feather up and down, trusting
+to John Curgenven's stout arm and fearless, honest face. We felt sad to
+think this would be our last sight of him and of the magnificent Lizard
+coast. But the minutes were lessening, and we had some way still to
+row. Also to land, which meant a leap between the waves upon slippery
+sea-weedy rocks. In silent dread I watched my children accomplish this
+feat, and then--
+
+Well, it is over, and I sit here writing these details. But I would
+not do it again, not even for the pleasure of revisiting Dolor Ugo and
+having a row with John Curgenven.
+
+Honest fellow! he looked relieved when he saw "the old lady" safe on
+_terra firma_, and we left him waving adieux, as he "rocked in his
+boat in the bay." May his stout arms and kindly heart long remain to
+him! May his summer tourists be many and his winter shipwrecks few!
+I am sure he will always do his duty, and see that other people do
+theirs, or, like the proverbial Cornishmen, he "will know the reason
+why."
+
+Charles was ready; waiting patiently in front of a blacksmith's shop.
+But, alas! fate had overtaken us in the shape of an innocent leak in
+John Curgenven's boat; nothing, doubtless, to him, who was in the habit
+of baling it out with his boots, and then calmly putting them on again,
+but a little inconvenient to us. To drive thirty miles with one's
+garments soaked up to the knees was not desirable.
+
+There was a cottage close by, whence came the gleam of a delicious fire
+and the odour of ironing clothes. We went in: the mistress, evidently
+a laundress, advanced and offered to dry us--which she did, chattering
+all the while in the confidential manner of country folks.
+
+A hard working, decent body she was, and as for her house, it was a
+perfect picture of cleanliness and tidiness. Its two rooms, kitchen and
+bedroom, were absolutely speckless. When we noticed this, and said we
+found the same in many Cornish cottages; she almost seemed offended at
+the praise.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing, ma'am. We hereabouts all likes to have our places
+tidy. Mine's not over tidy to-day because of the washing. I hadn't time
+to clean up. But if you was to come of a Sunday. Look there!" Her eye
+caught something in a dark corner, at which she flew, apron in hand. "I
+declare, I'm quite ashamed. I didn't think we had one in the house."
+
+"One what?"
+
+"One spider web!"
+
+Dried, warmed, and refreshed, but having found the greatest difficulty
+in inducing the good woman to receive any tangible thanks for her
+kindness, we proceeded on our journey; going over the same ground which
+we had traversed already, and finding Pradenack Down as bleak and
+beautiful as ever. Our first halt was at the door of Mary Mundy, who,
+with her unappreciated brother, ran out to meet us, and looked much
+disappointed when she found we had not come to stay.
+
+"But you will come some time, ladies, and I'll make you so comfortable.
+And you'll give my duty to the professor"--it was vain to explain that
+four hundred miles lay between our home and his. "I hope he's quite
+well. He was a very nice gentleman, please'm. I shall be delighted to
+see him again, please'm," &c., &c.
+
+We left the three--Mary, her brother, and Charles--chattering together
+in a dialect which I do not attempt to reproduce, and sometimes could
+hardly understand. Us, the natives indulged with their best English,
+but among themselves they talked the broadest Cornish.
+
+It was a very old church, and a preternaturally old beadle showed it in
+a passive manner, not recognising in the least its points of interest
+and beauty, except some rows of open benches with ancient oak backs,
+wonderfully carved.
+
+"Our vicar dug them up from under the flooring and turned them into
+pews. There was a gentleman here the other day who said there was
+nothing like them in all England."
+
+Most curious, in truth, they were, and suited well the fine old
+building--a specimen of how carefully and lavishly our forefathers
+built "for God." We, who build for ourselves, are rather surprised
+to find in out-of-the-way nooks like this, churches that in size and
+adornment must have cost years upon years of loving labour as well as
+money.
+
+It was pleasant to know that the present incumbent, a man of
+archæological tastes, appreciated his blessings, and took the utmost
+care of his beautiful old church. Success to him! even though he cannot
+boast the power of his predecessor, the Reverend Thomas Flavel, who
+died in 1682, and whose monument in the chancel really expresses the
+sentiments--in epitaph--of the period:
+
+  "Earth, take thine earth; my sin, let Satan have it;
+  The world my goods; my soul my God who gave it.
+  For from these four, Earth, Satan, World, and God,
+  My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul, I had."
+
+But it does not mention that the reverend gentleman was the best
+_ghost-layer_ in all England, and that when he died his ghost also
+required to be laid, by a brother clergyman, in a spot on the down
+still pointed out by the people of Mullion, who, being noted for
+extreme longevity, have passed down this tradition from generation
+to generation, with an earnest credulity that we of more enlightened
+counties can hardly understand.
+
+From Mullion we went on to Gunwalloe. Its church, "small and old," as
+Charles had depreciatingly said, had been so painfully "restored,"
+and looked so bran-new and uninteresting that we contented ourselves
+with a distant look. It was close to the sea--probably built on the
+very spot where its pious founder had been cast ashore. The one curious
+point about it was the detached belfry, some yards distant from the
+church itself. It sat alone in a little cove, down which a sluggish
+river crawled quietly seaward. A sweet quiet place, but haunted, as
+usual, by tales of cruel shipwrecks--of sailors huddled for hours on
+a bit of rock just above the waves, till a boat could put out and
+save the few survivors; of sea treasures continually washed ashore
+from lost ships--Indian corn, coffee, timber, dollars--many are still
+found in the sand after a storm. And one treasure more, of which the
+recollection is still kept at Gunwalloe, "a little dead baby in its cap
+and night-gown, with a necklace of coral beads."
+
+After this our road turned inland. Our good horse, with the dogged
+persistency of Cornish horses and Cornish men, plodded on mile after
+mile. Sometimes for an hour or more we did not meet a living soul;
+then we came upon a stray labourer, or passed through a village where
+healthy-looking children, big-eyed, brown-faced, and dirty-handed,
+picturesque if not pretty, stared at us from cottage doors, or from the
+gates of cottage gardens full of flowers and apples.
+
+Those apples! They were a picture. Hungry and thirsty, we could not
+resist them. After passing several trees, hung thickly with delicious
+fruit, we attacked the owner of one of them, a comely young woman, with
+a baby in her arms and another at her gown.
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am, you may have as many apples as you like, if your young
+ladies will go and get them."
+
+And while they did it, she stood talking by the carriage door, pouring
+out to me her whole domestic history with a simple frankness worthy of
+the golden age.
+
+"No, really I couldn't," putting back my payment--little enough-- for
+the splendid basket of apples which the girls brought back in triumph.
+"This is such a good apple year; the pigs would get them if the young
+ladies didn't. You're kindly welcome to them--well then, if you are
+determined, say sixpence."
+
+On which magnificent "sixpenn'orth," we lived for days! Indeed I think
+we brought some of it home as a specimen of Cornish fruit and Cornish
+liberality.
+
+[Illustration: THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE.]
+
+Helstone was reached at last, and we were not sorry for rest and food
+in the old-fashioned inn, whence we could look out of window, and
+contemplate the humours of the little town, which doubtless considered
+itself a very great one. It was market day, and the narrow street was
+thronged with beasts and men--the latter as sober as the former,
+which spoke well for Cornwall. Sober and civil too was every one we
+addressed in asking our way to the house of our unknown friend, whose
+only address we had was Helstone. But he seemed well known in the town,
+though neither a rich man, nor a great man, nor--No, I cannot say he
+was not a clever man, for in his own line, mechanical engineering, he
+must have been exceedingly clever. And he was what people call "a great
+character;" would have made such an admirable study for a novelist,
+manipulated into an unrecognisable ideal--the only way in which it is
+fair to put people in books. When I saw him I almost regretted that I
+write novels no more.
+
+We passed through the little garden--all ablaze with autumn colour,
+every inch utilised for either flowers, vegetables, or fruit--went into
+the parlour, sent our cards and waited the result.
+
+In two minutes our friend appeared, and gave us such a welcome! But to
+explain it I must trench a little upon the sanctities of private life,
+and tell the story of this honest Cornishman. It will not harm him.
+
+When still young he went to Brazil, and was employed by an English
+gold-mining company there, for some years. Afterwards he joined
+an engineering firm, and superintended dredging, the erection of
+saw-mills, &c., finally building a lighthouse, of which latter work he
+had the sole charge, and was exceedingly proud. His conscientiousness,
+probity, and entire reliableness made him most valuable to the
+firm; whom he served faithfully for many years. When they, as well
+as himself, returned to England, he still kept up a correspondence
+with them, preserving towards every member of the family the most
+enthusiastic regard and devotion.
+
+He rushed into the parlour, a tall, gaunt, middle-aged man, with a
+shrewd, kindly face, which beamed all over with delight, as he began
+shaking hands indiscriminately, saying how kind it was of us to come,
+and how welcome we were.
+
+It was explained which of us he had specially to welcome, the others
+being only humble appendages, friends of the family, this well-beloved
+family, whose likenesses for two generations we saw everywhere about
+the room.
+
+"Yes, miss, there they all are, your dear grandfather" (alas, only a
+likeness now!), "your father, and your uncle. They were all so good to
+me, and I would do anything for them, or for any one of their name. If
+I got a message that they wanted me for anything, I'd be off to London,
+or to Brazil, or anywhere, in half-an-hour."
+
+And he really looked as if he would.
+
+"But what will you take?" added the good man when the rapture and
+excitement of the moment had a little subsided, and his various
+questions as to the well-being of "the family" had been asked and
+answered. "You have dined, you say, but you'll have a cup of tea. My
+wife (that's the little maid I used to talk to your father about, miss;
+I always told him I wouldn't stay in Brazil, I must go back to England
+and marry my little maid), my wife makes the best cup of tea in all
+Cornwall. Here she is!"
+
+And there entered, in afternoon gown and cap, probably just put on, a
+middle-aged, but still comely matron, who insisted that, even at this
+early hour--3 P.M.--to get a cup of tea for us was "no trouble
+at all."
+
+"Indeed, she wouldn't think anything a trouble, no more than I should,
+miss, if it was for your family. They never forget me, nor I them."
+
+It was here suggested that they were not a "forgetting" family. Nor
+was he a man likely to be soon forgotten. While the cup of tea, which
+proved to be a most sumptuous meal, was preparing, he took us all over
+his house, which was full of foreign curiosities, and experimental
+inventions. One, I remember, being a musical instrument, a sort of
+organ, which he had begun making when a mere boy, and taken with him
+all the way to Brazil and back. It had now found refuge in the little
+room he called his "workshop," which was filled with odds and ends that
+would have been delightful to a mechanical mind. He expounded them with
+enthusiasm, and we tried not to betray an ignorance, which in some of
+us would have been a sort of hereditary degradation.
+
+"Ah! they were clever--your father and your uncle!--and how proud we
+all were when we finished our lighthouse, and got the Emperor to light
+it up for the first time. Look here, ladies, what do you think this is?"
+
+He took out a small parcel, and solemnly unwrapped from it fold after
+fold of paper, till he came to the heart of it--a small wax candle!
+
+"This was the candle the Emperor used to light our lighthouse. I've
+kept it for nearly thirty years, and I'll keep it as long as I live.
+Every year on the anniversary of the day I light it, drink his
+Majesty's health, and the health of all your family, miss, and then I
+put it out again. So"--carefully re-wrapping the relic in its numerous
+envelopes--"so I hope it will last my time."
+
+Here the mistress came behind her good man, and they exchanged a
+smile--the affectionate smile of two who had never been more than two,
+Darby and Joan, but all sufficient to each other. She announced that
+tea was ready. And such a tea! How we got through it I hardly know,
+but travelling is hungry work, and the viands were delicious. The
+beneficence of our kind hosts, however, was not nearly done.
+
+"Come, ladies, I'll show you my garden, and--(give me a basket and the
+grape-scissors,)" added he in a conjugal aside. Which resulted in our
+carrying away with us the biggest bunches in the whole vinery, as well
+as a quantity of rosy apples, stuffed into every available pocket and
+bag.
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," was the answer to vain remonstrances. "D'ye
+think I wouldn't give the best of everything I had to your family? and
+so would my missis too. How your father used to laugh at me about my
+little maid! But he understood it for all that. Oh yes, I'm glad I came
+home. And now your father and your uncle are home too, and perhaps some
+day they'll come to see me down here--wouldn't it be a proud day for
+me! You'll tell them so?"
+
+It was touching, and rare as touching, this passionate personal
+fidelity. It threw us back, at least such of us as were sentimentally
+inclined, upon that something in Cornish nature which found its
+exposition in Arthur and his faithful knights, down to "bold Sir
+Bedevere," and apparently, is still not lost in Cornwall.
+
+With a sense of real regret, feeling that it would be long ere we
+might meet his like--such shrewd simplicity, earnest enthusiasm, and
+exceeding faithfulness--we bade good-bye to the honest man; leaving him
+and his wife standing at their garden-gate, an elderly Adam and Eve,
+desiring nothing outside their own little paradise. Which of us could
+say more, or as much?
+
+Gratefully we "talked them over," as we drove on through the pretty
+country round Helstone--inland country; for we had no time to go and
+see the Loe Pool, a small lake, divided from the sea by a bar of sand.
+This is supposed to be the work of the Cornwall man-demon, Tregeagle;
+and periodically cut through, with solemn ceremonial, by the Mayor of
+Helstone, when the "meeting of the waters," fresh and salt, is said to
+be an extremely curious sight. But we did not see it, nor yet Nonsloe
+House, close by, which is held by the tenure of having to provide a
+boat and nets whenever the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cornwall
+wishes to fish in the Loe Pool. A circumstance which has never happened
+yet, certainly!
+
+Other curiosities _en route_ we also missed, the stones of
+Tremenkeverne, half a ton each, used as missiles in a notable fight
+between two saints, St. Just of the Land's End, and St. Keverne of the
+Lizard, and still lying in a field to prove the verity of the legend.
+Also the rock of Goldsithney, where, when the "fair land of Lyonesse"
+was engulfed by the sea, an ancestor of the Trevelyans saved himself by
+swimming his horse, and landing; and various other remarkable places,
+with legends attached, needing much credulity, or imagination, to
+believe in.
+
+But, fearing to be benighted ere reaching Marazion, we passed them all,
+and saw nothing more interesting than the ruins of disused tin mines,
+which Charles showed us, mournfully explaining how the mining business
+had of late years drifted away from Cornwall, and how hundreds of the
+once thriving community had been compelled to emigrate or starve. As we
+neared Marazion, these melancholy wrecks with their little hillocks of
+mining debris rose up against the evening sky, the image of desolation.
+And then St. Michael's Mount, the picture in little of Mont St. Michel,
+in Normandy, appeared in the middle of Mount's Bay. Lastly, after
+a gorgeous sunset, in a golden twilight and silvery moonlight, we
+entered Marazion;-and found it, despite its picturesque name, the most
+commonplace little town imaginable!
+
+We should have regretted our rash decision, and gone on to Penzance,
+but for the hearty welcome given us at a most comfortable and home-like
+inn, which determined us to keep to our first intention, and stay.
+
+So, after our habit of making the best of things, we walked down to the
+ugly beach, and investigated the dirty-looking bay--in the lowest of
+all low tides, with a soppy, sea-weedy causeway running across to St.
+Michael's Mount. By advice of Charles, we made acquaintance with an old
+boatman he knew, a Norwegian who had drifted hither--shipwrecked, I
+believe--settled down and married an English woman, but whose English
+was still of the feeblest kind. However, he had an honest face; so we
+engaged him to take us out bathing early to-morrow.
+
+"And to-night, ladies?" suggested the faithful Charles. "Wouldn't you
+like to row round the Mount?--When you've had your tea, I'll come back
+for you, and help you down to the shore--it's rather rough, but nothing
+like what you have done, ma'am," added he encouragingly. "And it will
+be bright moonlight, and the Mount will look so fine."
+
+So, the spirit of adventure conquering our weariness, we went. When
+I think how it looked next morning--the small, shallow bay, with its
+toy-castle in the centre, I am glad our first vision of it was under
+the glamour of moonlight, with the battlemented rock throwing dark
+shadows across the shimmering sea. In the mysterious beauty of that
+night row round the Mount, we could imagine anything; its earliest
+inhabitant, the giant Cormoran, killed by that "valiant Cornishman,"
+the illustrious Jack; the lovely St. Keyne, a king's daughter, who came
+thither on pilgrimage; and, passing down from legend to history, Henry
+de la Pomeroy, who, being taken prisoner, caused himself to be bled to
+death in the Castle; Sir John Arundel, slain on the sands, and buried
+in the Chapel; Perkin Warbeck's unfortunate wife, who took refuge at
+St. Michael's shrine, but was dragged thence. And so on, and so on,
+through the centuries, to the family of St. Aubyn, who bought it in
+1660, and have inhabited it ever since. "Very nice people," we heard
+they were; who have received here the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and
+other royal personages. What a contrast to the legendary Cormoran!
+
+Yet, looking up as we rowed under the gloomy rock, we could fancy his
+giant ghost sitting there, on the spot where he killed his wife, for
+bringing in her apron greenstone, instead of granite, to build the
+chapel with. Which being really built of greenstone the story must be
+true! What a pleasure it is to be able to believe anything!
+
+Some of us could have stayed out half the night, floating along in the
+mild soft air and dreamy moonlight, which made even the commonplace
+little town look like a fairy scene, and exalted St. Michael's Mount
+into a grand fortress, fit for its centuries of legendary lore--but
+others preferred going to bed.
+
+So we landed, and retired. Not however without taking a long look out
+of the window upon the bay, which now, at high tide, was one sheet of
+rippling moon-lit water, with the grim old Mount, full of glimmering
+lights like eyes, sitting silent in the midst of the silent sea.
+
+[Illustration: CORNISH FISHERMAN.]
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE TENTH
+
+
+I cannot advise Marazion as a bathing place. What a down-come from the
+picturesque vision of last night, to a small ugly fishy-smelling beach,
+which seemed to form a part of the town and its business, and was
+overlooked from everywhere! Yet on it two or three family groups were
+evidently preparing for a dip, or rather a wade of about a quarter of a
+mile in exceedingly dirty sea water.
+
+"This will never do," we said to our old Norwegian. "You must row us to
+some quiet cove along the shore, and away from the town."
+
+He nodded his head, solemn and mute as the dumb boatman of dead Elaine,
+rowed us out seaward for about half-a-mile, and then proceeded to
+fasten the boat to a big stone, and walk ashore. The water still did
+not come much above his knees--he seemed quite indifferent to it. But
+we?
+
+Well, we could but do at Rome as the Romans do. Toilette in an open
+boat was evidently the custom of the country. And the sun was warm, the
+sea safe and shallow. Indeed, so rapidly did it subside, that by the
+time the bath was done, we were aground, and had to call at the top of
+our voices to our old man, who sat, with his back to us, dim in the
+distance, on another big stone, calmly smoking the pipe of peace.
+
+"We'll not try this again," was the unanimous resolve, as, after
+politely declining a suggestion that "the ladies should walk ashore--"
+did he think we were amphibious?--we got ourselves floated off at last,
+and rowed to the nearest landing point, the entrance to St. Michael's
+Mount.
+
+Probably nowhere in England is found the like of this place. Such
+a curious mingling of a mediæval fortress and modern residence; of
+antiquarian treasures and everyday business; for at the foot of the
+rock is a fishing village of about thirty cottages, which carries
+on a thriving trade; and here also is a sort of station for the tiny
+underground-railway, which worked by a continuous chain, fulfils the
+very necessary purpose (failing Giant Cormoran, and wife) of carrying
+up coals, provisions, luggage, and all other domestic necessaries to
+the hill top.
+
+Thither we climbed by a good many weary steps, and thought, delightful
+as it may be to dwell on the top of a rock in the midst of the sea,
+like eagles in an eyrie, there are certain advantages in living on a
+level country road, or even in a town street. How in the world do the
+St. Aubyns manage when they go out to dinner? Two years afterwards,
+when I read in the paper that one of the daughters of the house,
+leaning over the battlements, had lost her balance and fallen down,
+mercifully unhurt, to the rocky slope below--the very spot where we
+to-day sat so quietly gazing out on the lovely sea view--I felt with
+a shudder that on the whole, it would be a trying thing to bring up a
+young family on St. Michael's Mount.
+
+Still, generation after generation of honourable St. Aubyns have
+brought up their families there, and oh! what a beautiful spot it is!
+How fresh, and yet mild blew the soft sea-wind outside of it, and
+inside, what endless treasures there were for the archæological mind!
+The chapel alone was worth a morning's study, even though shown--odd
+anachronism--by a footman in livery, who pointed out with great gusto
+the entrance to a vault discovered during the last repairs, where was
+found the skeleton of a large man--his bones only--no clue whatever as
+to who he was or when imprisoned there. The "Jeames" of modern days
+told us this tale with a noble indifference. Nothing of the kind was
+likely to happen to him.
+
+Further still we were fortunate enough to penetrate, and saw the Chevy
+Chase Hall, with its cornice of hunting scenes, the drawing-room, the
+school-room--only fancy learning lessons there, amidst the veritable
+evidence of the history one was studying! And perhaps the prettiest bit
+of it all was our young guide, herself a St. Aubyn, with her simple
+grace and sweet courtesy, worthy of one of the fair ladies worshipped
+by King Arthur's knights.
+
+[Illustration: THE SEINE BOAT--A PERILOUS MOMENT.]
+
+We did not like encroaching on her kindness, though we could have
+stayed all day, admiring the curious things she showed us. So we
+descended the rock, and crossed the causeway, now dry, but very rough
+walking--certainly St. Michael's Mount has its difficulties as a modern
+dwelling-house--and went back to our inn. For, having given our
+horse a forenoon's rest, we planned a visit to that spot immortalised
+by nursery rhyme--
+
+  "As I was going to St. Ives
+  I met a man with seven wives.
+  Each wife had seven sacks;
+  Each sack had seven cats;
+  Each cat had seven kits;
+  Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,--
+  How many were there going to St. Ives?"
+
+--One; and after we had been there, we felt sure he never went again!
+
+There were two roads, we learnt, to that immortal town; one very good,
+but dull; the other bad--and beautiful. We chose the latter, and never
+repented.
+
+Nor, in passing through Penzance, did we repent not having taken up our
+quarters there. It was pretty, but so terribly "genteel," so extremely
+civilised. Glancing up at the grand hotel, we thought with pleasure of
+our old-fashioned inn at Marazion, where the benign waiter took quite
+a fatherly interest in our proceedings, even to giving us for dinner
+our very own blackberries, gathered yesterday on the road, and politely
+hindering another guest from helping himself to half a dishful, as
+"they belonged to the young ladies." Truly, there are better things in
+life than fashionable hotels.
+
+But the neighbourhood of Penzance is lovely. Shrubs and flowers such
+as one sees on the shores of the Mediterranean grew and flourished in
+cottage-gardens, and the forest trees we drove under, whole avenues
+of them, were very fine; gentlemen's seats appeared here and there,
+surrounded with the richest vegetation, and commanding lovely views. As
+the road gradually mounted upwards, we saw, clear as in a panorama, the
+whole coast from the Lizard Point to the Land's End,--which we should
+behold to-morrow.
+
+For, hearing that every week-day about a hundred tourists in carriages,
+carts, and omnibuses, usually flocked thither, we decided that the
+desire of our lives, the goal of our pilgrimage, should be visited
+by us on a Sunday. We thought that to drive us thither in solitary
+Sabbatic peace would be fully as good for Charles's mind and morals as
+to hang all day idle about Marazion; and he seemed to think so himself.
+Therefore, in prospect of to-morrow, he dealt very tenderly with his
+horse to-day, and turned us out to walk up the heaviest hills, of which
+there were several, between Penzance and Castle-an-Dinas.
+
+"There it is," he said at last, stopping in the midst of a wide moor
+and pointing to a small building, sharp against the sky. "The carriage
+can't get further, but you can go on, ladies, and I'll stop and gather
+some blackberries for you."
+
+For brambles, gorse bushes, and clumps of fading heather, with one or
+two small stunted trees, were now the only curiosities of this, King
+Arthur's famed hunting castle, and hunting ground, which spread before
+us for miles and miles. Passing a small farm-house, we made our way to
+the building Charles pointed out, standing on the highest ridge of the
+promontory, whose furthest point is the Land's End. Standing there, we
+could see--or could have seen but that the afternoon had turned grey
+and slightly misty--the ocean on both sides. Inland, the view seemed
+endless. Roughtor and Brown Willy, two Dartmoor hills, are said to be
+visible sometimes. Nearer, little white dots of houses show the mining
+districts of Redruth and Camborne.
+
+But here, all was desolate solitude. A single wayfarer, looking like a
+working man in his Sunday best going to visit friends, but evidently
+tired, as if he had walked for miles, just glanced at us, and passed
+on. We stood, all alone, on the very spot where many a time must have
+stood King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Sir Launcelot, and the other
+knights--or the real human beings, whether barbarian or not, who formed
+the originals of those mythical personages.
+
+All had vanished now. Nothing was left but a common-place little tower,
+built up of the fragments of the old castle, and a wide, pathless
+moor, over which the wind sighed, and the mist crept. No memorial
+whatever of King Arthur, except the tradition--which time and change
+have been powerless to annihilate--that such a man once existed. The
+long vitality which the legend keeps proves that he must have been
+a remarkable man in his day. Romance itself cannot exist without a
+foundation in reality.
+
+So I preached to my incredulous juniors, who threw overboard King
+Arthur and took to blackberry-gathering; and to conversation with a
+most comely Cornishwoman, milking the prettiest of Cornish cows in the
+lonely farm-yard, which was the only sign of humanity for miles and
+miles. We admired herself and her cattle; we drank her milk, offering
+for it the usual payment. But the picturesque milkmaid shook her head
+and demanded just double what even the dearest of London milk-sellers
+would have asked for the quantity. Which sum we paid in silence,
+and I only record the fact here in order to state that spite of our
+foreboding railway friend at Falmouth, this was the only instance in
+which we were ever "taken in," or in the smallest degree imposed upon,
+in Cornwall.
+
+Another hour, slowly driving down the gradual slope of the country,
+through a mining district much more cheerful than that beyond Marazion.
+The mines were all apparently in full work, and the mining villages
+were pretty, tidy, and cosy-looking, even picturesque. Approaching St.
+Ives the houses had quite a foreign look, but when we descended to
+the town, its dark, narrow streets, pervaded by a "most ancient and
+fish-like smell," were anything but attractive.
+
+As was our hotel, where, as a matter of duty, we ordered tea, but
+doubted if we should enjoy it, and went out again to see what little
+there seemed to be seen, puzzling our way through the gloomy and not
+too fragrant streets, till at last in despair we stopped a bland,
+elderly, Methodist-minister-looking gentleman, and asked him the way to
+the sea.
+
+He eyed us over. "You're strangers here, ma'am?"
+
+I owned the humbling fact, as the inhabitant of St. Ives must doubtless
+consider it.
+
+"And is it the pilchard fishery you want to see? It is just beginning.
+A few pilchards have been seen already. There are the boats, the
+fishermen are all getting ready. It's a fine sight to see them start.
+Would you like to come and look at them?"
+
+He had turned back and was walking with us down the street, pointing
+out everything that occurred to him as noticeable, in the kindest and
+civilest way. When we apologised for troubling him, and would have
+parted company, our friend made no attempt to go.
+
+"Oh, I've nothing at all to do, except"--he took out the biggest and
+most respectable of watches--"except to attend a prayer-meeting at
+half-past six. I should have time to show you the town; we think it is
+a very nice little town. I ought to know it; I've lived in it, boy and
+man for thirty-seven years. But now I have left my business to my sons,
+and I just go about and amuse myself, looking into the shop now and
+then just for curiosity. You must have seen my old shop, ladies, if you
+came down that street."
+
+[Illustration: ST. IVES.]
+
+Which he named, and also gave us his own name, which we had seen over
+the shop door, but I shall not record either. Not that I think the
+honest man is ever likely to read such "light" literature as this book,
+or to recall the three wanderers to whom he was so civil and kind, and
+upon whom he poured out an amount of local and personal facts, which
+we listened to--as a student of human nature is prone to do--with an
+amused interest in which the comic verged on the pathetic. How large
+to each man seems his own little world, and what child-like faith he
+has in its importance to other people! I shall always recall our friend
+at St. Ives, with his prayer-meetings, his chapel-goings--I concluded
+he was a Methodist, a sect very numerous in Cornwall--his delight in
+his successful shop and well-brought-up sons, who managed it so well,
+leaving him to enjoy his _otium cum dignitate_--no doubt a municipal
+dignity, for he showed us the Town Hall with great gusto. Evidently to
+his honest, simple soul, St. Ives was the heart of the world.
+
+By and by again he pulled out the turnip-like watch. "Just ten minutes
+to get to my prayer-meeting, and I never like to be late, I have been a
+punctual man all my life, ma'am," added he, half apologetically, till
+I suggested that this was probably the cause of his peace and success.
+Upon which he smiled, lifted his hat with a benign adieu, hoped we had
+liked St. Ives--we had liked his company at any rate--and with a final
+pointing across the street, "There's my shop, ladies, if you would care
+to look at it," trotted away to his prayer-meeting.
+
+I believe the neighbourhood of St. Ives, especially Tregenna, its
+ancient mansion transformed into an hotel, is exceedingly pretty, but
+night was falling fast, and we saw nothing. Speedily we despatched a
+most untempting meal, and hurried Charles's departure, lest we should
+be benighted, as we nearly were, during the long miles of straight and
+unlovely road--the good road--between here and Penzance. We had done
+our duty, we had seen the place, but as, in leaving it behind us, we
+laughingly repeated the nursery rhyme, we came to the conclusion that
+the man who was "_going_ to St. Ives" was the least fortunate of all
+those notable individuals.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE ELEVENTH
+
+
+The last thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a
+starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on St.
+Michael's Mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. It would be hard,
+if after journeying thus far and looking forward to it so many years,
+the day on which we went to the Land's End should turn out a wet day!
+Still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. Some
+of us, I think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so
+till the hand is dust.
+
+It was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out
+on the dawn, grey and misty, but still not wet. To be just on the point
+of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare
+enough to have a certain pathos in it. We slept again, and trusted
+for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering
+sun-gleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky. We wondered for the last
+time, as we had wondered for half a century, "what the Land's End would
+be like," and then started, rather thoughtful than merry, to find out
+the truth of the case.
+
+Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead
+of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote us in driving through
+Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along
+to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage
+to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew
+by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted
+with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised
+faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."
+
+But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. I shall
+never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely
+roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about
+Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the
+high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island.
+The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was
+now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer
+leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three
+children trotting to school or church, with their books under their
+arms. Unquestionably Cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county;
+religious-minded too, whether Methodist, Quaker, or other nonconformist
+sects, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative Church
+of England.
+
+We passed St. Buryan's--a curious old church founded on the place where
+an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. A
+few stray cottages comprised the whole village. There was nothing
+special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and
+sunshine and solitude, till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the
+celebrated Logan or rocking-stone.
+
+From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in
+England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial,
+who can decide?
+
+  "Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving,
+  But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."
+
+Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant
+Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's
+crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point
+on which it rests. Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at
+great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked
+properly since.
+
+By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who
+stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the
+Lizard, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards.
+Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a
+labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.
+
+"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of
+them in answer to a question.
+
+And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been
+much readier than his tongue. I, at least, should never have got even
+so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself--a somewhat
+anxious-minded old hen--and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that
+enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the Logan.
+
+"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the
+lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must
+honestly confess _I_ could not see it stir a single inch.
+
+However, it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones
+around it were equally huge and most picturesquely thrown together.
+Also--delightful to my young folks!--they furnished the most
+adventurous scramble that heart could desire. I alone felt a certain
+relief when we were all again on smooth ground, with no legs or arms
+broken.
+
+The cliff-walk between the Logan and the Land's End is said to be one
+of the finest in England for coast scenery. Treryn or Treen Dinas,
+Pardeneck Point, and Tol Pedn Penwith had been named as places we ought
+to see, but this was impracticable. We had to content ourselves with a
+dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and
+ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of
+a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came
+forward to the carriage, and Charles jumped down from his box.
+
+"You can get out now, ladies. This is the Land's End."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+I forbear to translate the world of meaning implied in that brief
+exclamation.
+
+"Let us go in and get something. Perhaps we shall admire the place more
+when we have ceased to be hungry."
+
+The words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of
+an hour at the Land's End in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too
+daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour
+of the--let me give it its right name--First and Last Inn, of Great
+Britain.
+
+"We never provide for Sunday," said the waitress, responding to a
+sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here.
+"It's very seldom any tourists come on a Sunday."
+
+At which we felt altogether humbled; but in a few minutes more our
+contrition passed into sovereign content.
+
+We went out of doors, upon the narrow green plateau in front of the
+house, and then we recognised where we were--standing at the extreme
+end of a peninsula, with a long line of rocks running out still further
+into the sea. That "great and wide sea, wherein are moving things
+innumerable," the mysterious sea "kept in the hollow of His hand," who
+is Infinity, and looking at which, in the intense solitude and silence,
+one seems dimly to guess at what Infinity may be. Any one who wishes to
+go to church for once in the Great Temple which His hands have builded,
+should spend a Sunday at the Land's End.
+
+At first, our thought had been, What in the world shall we do here for
+two mortal hours! Now, we wished we had had two whole days. A sunset, a
+sunrise, a star-lit night, what would they not have been in this grand
+lonely place--almost as lonely as a ship at sea? It would be next best
+to finding ourselves in the middle of the Atlantic.
+
+But this bliss could not be; so we proceeded to make the best of what
+we had. The bright day was darkening, and a soft greyness began to
+creep over land and sea. No, not soft, that is the very last adjective
+applicable to the Land's End. Even on that calm day there was a fresh
+wind--there must be always wind--and the air felt sharper and more salt
+than any sea-air I ever knew. Stimulating too, so that one's nerves
+were strung to the highest pitch of excitement. We felt able to do
+anything, without fear and without fatigue. So that when a guide came
+forward--a regular man-of-war's-man he looked--we at once resolved to
+adventure along the line of rocks, seaward, "out as far as anybody was
+accustomed to go."
+
+"Ay, ay; I'll take you, ladies. That is--the young ladies might go--but
+you--" eying me over with his keen sailor's glance, full of honesty and
+good humour, "you're pretty well on in years, ma'am."
+
+Laughing, I told him how far on, but that I was able to do a good deal
+yet. He laughed too.
+
+"Oh, I've taken ladies much older than you. One the other day was
+nearly seventy. So we'll do our best, ma'am. Come along."
+
+He offered a rugged, brown hand, as firm and steady as a mast, to hold
+by, and nothing could exceed the care and kindliness with which he
+guided every step of every one of us, along that perilous path, that
+is, perilous except for cautious feet and steady heads.
+
+"Take care, young ladies. If you make one false step, you are done
+for," said our guide, composedly as he pointed to the boiling whirl of
+waters below.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK.]
+
+Still, though a narrow and giddy path, there was a path, and the
+exploit, though a little risky, was not fool-hardy. We should have
+been bitterly sorry not to have done it--not to have stood for one
+grand ten minutes, where in all our lives we may never stand again, at
+the farthest point where footing is possible, gazing out upon that
+magnificent circle of sea which sweeps over the submerged "land of
+Lyonesse," far, far away, into the wide Atlantic.
+
+There were just two people standing with us, clergymen evidently, and
+one, the guide told us, was "the parson at St. Sennen." We spoke to
+him, as people do speak, instinctively, when mutually watching such a
+scene, and by and by we mentioned the name of the long-dead curate of
+St. Sennen's.
+
+The "parson" caught instantly at the name.
+
+"Mr. ----? Oh, yes, my father knew him quite well. He used constantly
+to walk across from Sennen to our house, and take us children long
+rambles across the cliffs, with a volume of Southey or Wordsworth under
+his arm. He was a fine young fellow in those days, I have heard, and an
+excellent clergyman. And he afterwards married a very nice girl from
+the north somewhere."
+
+"Yes;" we smiled. The "nice girl" was now a sweet silver-haired little
+lady of nearly eighty; the "fine young fellow" had long since departed;
+and the boy was this grave middle-aged gentleman, who remembered both
+as a tradition of his youth. What a sermon it all preached, beside this
+eternal rock, this ever-moving, never-changing sea!
+
+But time was passing--how fast it does pass, minutes, ay, and years! We
+bade adieu to our known unknown friend, and turned our feet backwards,
+cautiously as ever, stopping at intervals to listen to the gossip of
+our guide.
+
+"Yes, ladies, that's the spot--you may see the hoof-mark--where General
+Armstrong's horse fell over; he just slipped off in time, but the poor
+beast was drowned. And here, over that rock, happened the most curious
+thing. I wouldn't have believed it myself, only I knew a man that saw
+it with his own eyes. Once a bullock fell off into the pool below
+there--just look, ladies." (We did look, into a perfect Maëlstrom of
+boiling waves.) "Everybody thought he was drowned, till he was seen
+swimming about unhurt. They fished him up, and exhibited him as a
+curiosity."
+
+And again, pointing to a rock far out in the sea.
+
+"That's the Brisons. Thirty years ago a ship went to pieces there, and
+the captain and his wife managed to climb on to that rock. They held
+on there for two days and a night, before a boat could get at them.
+At last they were taken off one at a time, with rockets and a rope;
+the wife first. But the rope slipped and she fell into the water. She
+was pulled out in a minute or so, and rowed ashore, but they durst
+not tell her husband she was drowned. I was standing on the beach at
+Whitesand Bay when the boat came in. I was only a lad, but I remember
+it well, and her too lifted out all dripping and quite dead. She was
+such a fine woman."
+
+"And the captain?"
+
+"They went back for him, and got him off safe, telling him nothing. But
+when he found she was dead he went crazy-like--kept for ever saying,
+'She saved my life, she saved my life,' till he was taken away by his
+friends. Look out, ma'am, mind your footing; just here a lady slipped
+and broke her leg a week ago. I had to carry her all the way to the
+hotel. I shouldn't like to carry you."
+
+We all smiled at the comical candour of the honest sailor, who
+proceeded to give us bits of his autobiography. He was Cornish born,
+but had seen a deal of the world as an A.B. on board her Majesty's ship
+_Agamemnon_.
+
+"Of course you have heard of the _Agamemnon_, ma'am. I was in her off
+Balaklava. You remember the Crimean war?"
+
+Yes, I did. His eyes brightened as we discussed names and places once
+so familiar, belonging to that time, which now seems so far back as to
+be almost historical.
+
+"Then you know what a winter we had, and what a summer afterwards. I
+came home invalided, and didn't attempt the service afterwards; but I
+never thought I should come home at all. Yes, it's a fine place the
+Land's End, though the air is so strong that it kills some folks right
+off. Once an invalid gentleman came, and he was dead in a fortnight.
+But I'm not dead yet, and I stop here mostly all the year round."
+
+He sniffed the salt air and smiled all over his weather-beaten
+face--keen, bronzed, blue-eyed, like one of the old Vikings. He was a
+fine specimen of a true British tar. When, having seen all we could, we
+gave him his small honorarium, he accepted it gratefully, and insisted
+on our taking in return a memento of the place in the shape of a stone
+weighing about two pounds, glittering with ore, and doubtless valuable,
+but ponderous. Oh, the trouble it gave me to carry it home, and pack
+and unpack it among my small luggage! But I did bring it home, and
+I keep it still in remembrance of the Land's End, and of the honest
+sailor of H.M.S. _Agamemnon_.
+
+So all was over. We could dream of an unknown Land's End no more. It
+became now a real place, of which the reality, though different from
+the imagination, was at least no disappointment. How few people in
+attaining a life-long desire can say as much!
+
+Our only regret, an endurable one now, was that we had not carried out
+our original plan of staying some days there--tourist-haunted, troubled
+days they might have been, but the evenings and mornings would have
+been glorious. With somewhat heavy hearts we summoned Charles and the
+carriage, for already a misty drift of rain began sweeping over the sea.
+
+"Still, we must see Whitesand Bay," said one of us, recalling a story
+a friend had once told how, staying at Land's End, she crossed the bay
+alone in a blinding storm, took refuge at the coastguard station, where
+she was hospitably received, and piloted back with most chivalric care
+by a coastguard, who did not tell her till their journey's end that he
+had left at home a wife, and a baby just an hour old.
+
+No such romantic adventure befell us. We only caught a glimmer of the
+bay through drizzling rain, which by the time we reached Sennen village
+had become a regular downpour. Evidently, we could do no more that day,
+which was fast melting into night.
+
+"We'll go home," was the sad resolve, glad nevertheless that we had a
+comfortable "home" to go to.
+
+So closing the carriage and protecting ourselves as well as we could
+from the driving rain, we went forward, passing the Quakers' burial
+ground, where is said to be one of the finest views in Cornwall; the
+Nine Maidens, a circle of Druidical stones, and many other interesting
+things, without once looking at or thinking of them.
+
+Half a mile from Marazion the rain ceased, and a light like that of the
+rising moon began to break through the clouds. What a night it might
+be, or might have been, could we have stayed at the Land's End!
+
+That ghostly "might have been!" It is in great things as in small, the
+worry, the torment, the paralysing burden of life. Away with it! We
+have done our best to be happy, and we have been happy. We have seen
+the Land's End.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE TWELFTH
+
+
+Monday morning. Black Monday we were half inclined to call it, knowing
+that by the week's end our travels must be over and done, and that if
+we wished still to see all we had planned, we must inevitably next
+morning return to civilisation and railways, a determination which
+involved taking this night "a long, a last farewell" of our comfortable
+carriage and our faithful Charles.
+
+"But it needn't be until night," said he, evidently loth to part from
+his ladies. "If I get back to Falmouth by daylight to-morrow morning,
+master will be quite satisfied. I can take you wherever you like
+to-day."
+
+"And the horse?"
+
+"Oh, he shall get a good feed and a rest till the middle of the night,
+then he'll do well enough. We shall have the old moon after one o'clock
+to get home by. Between Penzance and Falmouth it's a good road, though
+rather lonely."
+
+I should think it was, in the "wee hours" by the dim light of a waning
+moon. But Charles seemed to care nothing about it, so we said no more,
+but decided to take the drive--our last drive.
+
+Our minds were perplexed between Botallack Mine, the Gurnard's Head,
+Lamorna Cove, and several other places, which we were told we must on
+no account miss seeing, the first especially. Some of us, blessed with
+scientific relatives, almost dreaded returning home without having seen
+a single Cornish mine; others, lovers of scenery, longed for more of
+that magnificent coast. But finally, a meek little voice carried the
+day.
+
+[Illustration: SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS.]
+
+"I was so disappointed--more than I liked to say--when it rained,
+and I couldn't get my shells for our bazaar. How shall I ever get them
+now? If it wouldn't trouble anybody very much, mightn't we go again to
+Whitesand Bay?"
+
+A plan not wholly without charm. It was a heavenly day; to spend it
+in delicious idleness on that wide sweep of sunshiny sand would be a
+rest for the next day's fatigue. Besides, consolatory thought! there
+would be no temptation to put on miners' clothes, and go dangling in
+a basket down to the heart of the earth, as the Princess of Wales was
+reported to have done. The pursuit of knowledge may be delightful, but
+some of us owned to a secret preference for _terra firma_ and the upper
+air. We resolved to face opprobrium, and declare boldly we had "no
+time" (needless to add no inclination) to go and see Botallack Mine.
+The Gurnard's Head cost us a pang to miss; but then we should catch a
+second view of the Land's End. Yes, we would go to Whitesand Bay.
+
+It was a far shorter journey in sunshine than in rain, even though we
+made various divergencies for blackberries and other pleasures. Never
+had the sky looked bluer or the sea brighter, and much we wished that
+we could have wandered on in dreamy peace, day after day, or even gone
+through England, gipsy-fashion, in a house upon wheels, which always
+seemed to me the very ideal of travelling.
+
+We reached Sennen only too soon. Pretty little Sennen, with its ancient
+church and its new school house, where the civil schoolmaster gave me
+some ink to write a post-card for those to whom even the post-mark
+"Sennen" would have a touching interest, and where the boys and girls,
+released for dinner, were running about. Board school pupils, no doubt,
+weighted with an amount of learning which would have been appalling
+to their grandfathers and grandmothers, the simple parishioners of
+the "fine young fellow" half a century ago. As we passed through the
+village with its pretty cottages and "Lodgings to Let," we could not
+help thinking what a delightful holiday resort this would be for
+a large small family, who could be turned out as we were when the
+carriage could no farther go, on the wide sweep of green common,
+gradually melting into silvery sand, so fine and soft that it was
+almost a pleasure to tumble down the slopes, and get up again, shaking
+yourself like a dog, without any sense of dirt or discomfort. What a
+paradise for children, who might burrow like rabbits and wriggle about
+like sand-eels, and never come to any harm!
+
+Without thought of any danger, we began selecting our bathing-place,
+shallow enough, with long strips of wet shimmering sand to be crossed
+before reaching even the tiniest waves; when one of us, the cautious
+one, appealed to an old woman, the only human being in sight.
+
+"Bathe?" she said. "Folks ne'er bathe here. 'Tain't safe."
+
+"Why not? Quicksands?"
+
+She nodded her head. Whether she understood us or not, or whether we
+quite understood her, I am not sure, and should be sorry to libel such
+a splendid bathing ground--apparently. But maternal wisdom interposed,
+and the girls yielded. When, half an hour afterwards, we saw a solitary
+figure moving on a distant ledge of rock, and a black dot, doubtless
+a human head, swimming or bobbing about in the sea beneath--maternal
+wisdom was reproached as arrant cowardice. But the sand was delicious,
+the sea-wind so fresh, and the sea so bright, that disappointment could
+not last. We made an encampment of our various impedimenta, stretched
+ourselves out, and began the search for shells, in which every
+arm's-length involved a mine of wealth and beauty.
+
+Never except at one place, on the estuary of the Mersey, have I
+seen a beach made up of shells so lovely in colour and shape; very
+minute; some being no bigger than a grain of rice or a pin's head. The
+collecting of them was a fascination. We forgot all the historical
+interests that ought to have moved us, saw neither Athelstan, King
+Stephen, King John, nor Perkin Warbeck, each of whom is said to have
+landed here--what were they to a tiny shell, like that moralised over
+by Tennyson in "Maud"--"small, but a work divine"? I think infinite
+greatness sometimes touches one less than infinite littleness--the
+exceeding tenderness of Nature, or the Spirit which is behind Nature,
+who can fashion with equal perfectness a starry hemisphere and a
+glow-worm; an ocean and a little pink shell. The only imperfection in
+creation seems--oh, strange mystery!--to be man. Why?
+
+But away with moralising, or dreaming, though this was just a day for
+dreaming, clear, bright, warm, with not a sound except the murmur
+of the low waves, running in an enormous length--curling over and
+breaking on the soft sands. Everything was so heavenly calm, it seemed
+impossible to believe in that terrible scene when the captain and his
+wife were seen clinging to the Brisons rock, just ahead.
+
+Doubtless our friend of the _Agamemnon_ was telling this and all
+his other stories to an admiring circle of tourists, for we saw the
+Land's End covered with a moving swarm like black flies. How thankful
+we felt that we had "done" it on a Sunday! Still, we were pleased
+to have another gaze at it, with its line of picturesque rocks, the
+Armed Knight and the Irish Lady--though, I confess, I never could make
+out which was the knight and which was the lady. Can it be that some
+fragment of the legend of Tristram and Iseult originated these names?
+
+After several sweet lazy hours, we went through a "fish-cellar," a
+little group of cottages, and climbed a headland, to take our veritable
+farewell of the Land's End, and then decided to go home. We had rolled
+or thrown our provision basket, rugs, &c., down the sandy slope, but it
+was another thing to carry them up again. I went in quest of a small
+boy, and there presented himself a big man, coastguard, as the only
+unemployed hand in the place, who apologised with such a magnificent
+air for not having "cleaned" himself, that I almost blushed to ask
+him to do such a menial service as to carry a bundle of wraps. But
+he accepted it, conversing amiably as we went, and giving me a most
+graphic picture of life at Sennen during the winter. When he left me,
+making a short cut to our encampment--a black dot on the sands, with
+two moving black dots near it--a fisher wife joined me, and of her own
+accord began a conversation.
+
+She and I fraternised at once, chiefly on the subject of children, a
+group of whom were descending the road from Sennen School. She told me
+how many of them were hers, and what prizes they had gained, and what
+hard work it was. She could neither read nor write, she said, but she
+liked her children to be good scholars, and they learnt a deal up at
+Sennen.
+
+Apparently they did, and something else besides learning, for when I
+had parted from my loquacious friend, I came up to the group just in
+time to prevent a stand-up fight between two small mites, the _casus
+belli_ of which I could no more arrive at, than a great many wiser
+people can discover the origin of national wars. So I thought the
+strong hand of "intervention"--civilised intervention--was best, and
+put an end to it, administering first a good scolding, and then a coin.
+The division of this coin among the little party compelled an extempore
+sum in arithmetic, which I required them to do (for the excellent
+reason that I couldn't do it myself!)--and they did it! Therefore I
+conclude that the heads of the Sennen school-children are as solid as
+their fists, and equally good for use.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE.]
+
+Simple little community! which as the fisher wife told me, only goes to
+Penzance about once a year, and is, as yet, innocent of tourists, for
+the swarm at the Land's End seldom goes near Whitesand Bay. Existence
+here must be very much that of an oyster,--but perhaps oysters are
+happy.
+
+By the time we reached Penzance the lovely day was dying into an
+equally lovely evening. St. Michael's Mount shone in the setting sun.
+It was high water, the bay was all alive with boats, and there was
+quite a little crowd of people gathered at the mild little station of
+Marazion. What could be happening?
+
+A princess was expected, that young half-English, half-foreign
+princess, in whose romantic story the British public has taken such an
+interest, sympathising with the motherly kindness of our good Queen,
+with the wedding at Windsor, and the sad little infant funeral there,
+a year after. The Princess Frederica of Hanover, and the Baron Von
+Pawel-Rammingen, her father's secretary, who, like a stout mediæval
+knight, had loved, wooed, and married her, were coming to St. Michael's
+Mount on a visit to the St. Aubyns.
+
+Marazion had evidently roused itself, and risen to the occasion. Half
+the town must have turned out to the beach, and the other half secured
+every available boat, in which it followed, at respectful distance,
+the two boats, one full of luggage, the other of human beings, which
+were supposed to be the royal party. People speculated with earnest
+curiosity, which was the princess, and which her husband, and what the
+St. Aubyns would do with them; whether they would be taken to see the
+Land's End, and whether they would go there as ordinary tourists, or in
+a grand visit of state. How hard it is that royal folk can never see
+anything except in state, or in a certain adventitious garb, beautiful,
+no doubt, but satisfactorily hiding the real thing. How they must long
+sometimes for a walk, after the fashion of Haroun Alraschid, up and
+down Regent Street and Oxford Street! or an incognito foreign tour, or
+even a solitary country walk, without a "lady-in-waiting."
+
+We had no opera-glass to add to the many levelled at those two boats,
+so we went in--hoping host and guests would spend a pleasant evening in
+the lovely old rooms we knew. We spent ours in rest, and in arranging
+for to-morrow's flight. Also in consulting with our kindly landlady
+as to a possible house at Marazion for some friends whom the winter
+might drive southwards, like the swallows, to a climate which, in this
+one little bay shut out from east and north, is--they told us--during
+all the cruel months which to many of us means only enduring life, not
+living--as mild and equable almost as the Mediterranean shores. And
+finally, we settled all with our faithful Charles, who looked quite
+mournful at parting with his ladies.
+
+"Yes, it is rather a long drive, and pretty lonely," said he. "But I'll
+wait till the moons up, and that'll help us. We'll get into Falmouth
+by daylight. I've got to do the same thing often enough through the
+summer, so I don't mind it."
+
+Thus said the good fellow, putting a cheery face on it, then with a
+hasty "Good-bye, ladies," he rushed away. But we had taken his address,
+not meaning to lose sight of him. (Nor have we done so up to this date
+of writing; and the fidelity has been equal on both sides.)
+
+Then, in the midst of a peal of bells which was kept up unweariedly
+till 10 P.M.--evidently Marazion is not blessed with the sight
+of a princess every day--we closed our eyes upon all outward things,
+and went away to the Land of Nod.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE THIRTEENTH
+
+
+Into King Arthurs land--Tintagel his birth-place, and Camelford,
+where he fought his last battle--the legendary region of which one
+may believe as much or as little as one pleases--we were going
+to-day. With the good common sense which we flattered ourselves had
+accompanied every step of our unsentimental journey, we had arranged
+all before-hand, ordered a carriage to meet the mail train, and hoped
+to find at Tintagel--not King Uther Pendragon, King Arthur or King
+Mark, but a highly respectable landlord, who promised us a welcome at
+an inn--which we only trusted would be as warm and as kindly as that we
+left behind us at Marazion.
+
+The line of railway which goes to the far west of England is one of the
+prettiest in the kingdom on a fine day, which we were again blessed
+with. It had been a wet summer, we heard, throughout Cornwall, but
+in all our journey, save that one wild storm at the Lizard, sunshine
+scarcely ever failed us. Now--whether catching glimpses of St. Ives
+Bay or sweeping through the mining district of Redruth, and the wooded
+country near Truro, Grampound, and St. Austell, till we again saw the
+glittering sea on the other side of Cornwall--all was brightness. Then
+darting inland once more, our iron horse carried us past Lostwithiel,
+the little town which once boasted Joseph Addison, M.P., as its
+representative; gave us a fleeting vision of Ristormel, one of the
+ancient castles of Cornwall, and on through a leafy land, beginning to
+change from rich green to the still richer yellows and reds of autumn,
+till we stopped at Bodmin Road.
+
+[Illustration: TINTAGEL.]
+
+No difficulty in finding our carriage, for it was the only one there;
+a huge vehicle, of ancient build, the horses to match, capable of
+accommodating a whole family and its luggage. We missed our compact
+little machine, and our brisk, kindly Charles, but soon settled
+ourselves in dignified, roomy state, for the twenty miles, or rather
+more, which lay between us and the coast. Our way ran along lonely
+quiet country roads and woods almost as green as when Queen Guinevere
+rode through them "a maying," before the dark days of her sin and King
+Arthur's death.
+
+Here it occurs to me, as it did this day to a practical youthful mind,
+"What in the world do people know about King Arthur?"
+
+Well, most people have read Tennyson, and a few are acquainted with
+the "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. But, perhaps I had better
+briefly give the story, or as much of it as is necessary for the
+edification of outsiders.
+
+Uther Pendragon, King of Britain, falling in love with Ygrayne, wife of
+the duke of Cornwall, besieged them in their twin castles of Tintagel
+and Terrabil, slew the husband, and the same day married the wife. Unto
+whom a boy was born, and by advice of the enchanter Merlin, carried
+away, from the sea-shore beneath Tintagel, and confided to a good
+knight, Sir Ector, to be brought up as his own son, and christened
+Arthur. On the death of the king, Merlin produced the youth, who was
+recognized by his mother Ygrayne, and proclaimed king in the stead
+of Uther Pendragon. He instituted the Order of Knights of the Round
+Table, who were to go everywhere, punishing vice and rescuing oppressed
+virtue, for the love of God and of some noble lady. He married
+Guinevere, daughter of King Leodegrance, who forsook him for the love
+of Sir Launcelot, his bravest knight and dearest friend. One by one,
+his best knights fell away into sin, and his nephew Mordred raised a
+rebellion, fought with him, and conquered him at Camelford. Seeing his
+end was near, Arthur bade his last faithful knight, Sir Bedevere, carry
+him to the shore of a mere (supposed to be Dozmare Pool) and throw in
+there his sword Excalibur; when appeared a boat with three queens,
+who lifted him in, mourning over him. With them he sailed away across
+the mere, to be healed of his grievous wound. Some say that he was
+afterwards buried in a chapel near, others declare that he lives still
+in fairy land, and will reappear in latter days, to reinstate the Order
+of Knights of the Round Table, and rule his beloved England, which will
+then be perfect as he once tried to make it, but in vain.
+
+Camelford of to-day is certainly not the Camelot of King Arthur--but
+a very respectable, commonplace little town, much like other country
+towns; the same genteel linendrapers' and un-genteel ironmongers'
+shops; the same old-established commercial inn, and a few ugly, but
+solid-looking private houses, with their faces to the street and
+their backs nestled in gardens and fields. Some of the inhabitants of
+these said houses were to be seen taking a quiet afternoon stroll.
+Doubtless they are eminently respectable and worthy folk, leading a
+mild provincial life like the people in Miss Martineau's _Deerbrook_,
+or Miss Austen's _Pride and Prejudice_--of which latter quality they
+have probably a good share.
+
+We let our horses rest, but we ourselves felt not the slightest wish to
+rest at Camelford, so walked leisurely on till we came to the little
+river Camel, and to Slaughter Bridge, said to be the point where King
+Arthur's army was routed and where he received his death-wound. A
+slab of stone, some little distance up the stream, is still called
+"King Arthur's Tomb." But as his coffin is preserved, as well as his
+Round Table, at Winchester; where, according to mediæval tradition,
+the bodies of both Arthur and Guinevere were found, and the head
+of Guinevere had yellow hair; also that near the little village of
+Davidstow, is a long barrow, having in the centre a mound, which is
+called "King Arthur's grave"--inquiring minds have plenty of "facts" to
+choose from. Possibly at last they had better resort to fiction, and
+believe in Arthur's disappearance, as Tennyson makes him say,
+
+  "To the island-valley of Avillion ...
+  Where I may heal me of my grievous wound."
+
+Dozmare Pool we found so far out of our route that we had to make a
+virtue of necessity, and imagine it all; the melancholy moorland lake,
+with the bleak hill above it, and stray glimpses of the sea beyond.
+A ghostly spot, and full of many ghostly stories besides the legend
+of Arthur. Here Tregeagle, the great demon of Cornwall, once had his
+dwelling, until, selling his soul to the devil, his home was sunk to
+the bottom of the mere, and himself is heard of stormy nights, wailing
+round it with other ghost-demons, in which the Cornish mind still
+lingeringly believes. Visionary packs of hounds; a shadowy coach and
+horses, which drives round and round the pool, and then drives into it;
+flitting lights, kindled by no human hand, in places where no human
+foot could go--all these tales are still told by the country folk, and
+we might have heard them all. Might also have seen, in fancy, the flash
+of the "brand Excalibur"; heard the wailing song of the three queens;
+and pictured the dying Arthur lying on the lap of his sister Morgane la
+Faye. But, I forgot, this is an un-sentimental journey.
+
+The Delabole quarries are as un-sentimental a place as one could
+desire. It was very curious to come suddenly upon this world of slate,
+piled up in enormous masses on either side the road, and beyond them
+hills of debris, centuries old--for the mines have been worked ever
+since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Houses, walls, gates, fences,
+everything that can possibly be made of slate, is made. No green or
+other colour tempers the all-pervading shade of bluish-grey, for
+vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the quarries is abolished,
+the result of which would be rather dreary, save for the cheerful
+atmosphere of wholesome labour, the noise of waggons, horses,
+steam-engines--such a contrast to the silence of the deserted tin-mines.
+
+But, these Delabole quarries passed, silence and solitude come back
+again. Even the yearly-increasing influx of tourists fails to make
+the little village of Trevena anything but a village, where the
+said tourists lounge about in the one street, if it can be called a
+street, between the two inns and the often-painted, picturesque old
+post-office. Everything looked so simple, so home-like, that we were
+amused to find we had to get ready for a _table d'hôte_ dinner, in
+the only available eating room where the one indefatigable waitress,
+a comely Cornish girl, who seemed Argus and Briareus rolled into one,
+served us--a party small enough to make conversation general, and
+pleasant and intelligent enough to make it very agreeable, which does
+not always happen at an English hotel.
+
+Then we sallied out to find the lane which leads to Tintagel Castle,
+or Castles--for one sits in the sea, the other on the opposite heights
+in the mainland, with power of communicating by the narrow causeway
+which now at least exists between the rock and the shore. This seems to
+confirm the legend, how the luckless husband of Ygrayne shut up himself
+and his wife in two castles, he being slain in the one, and she married
+to the victorious King Uther Pendragon, in the other.
+
+Both looked so steep and dangerous in the fast-coming twilight that we
+thought it best to attempt neither, so contented ourselves with a walk
+on the cliffs and the smooth green field which led thither. Leaning
+against a gate, we stood and watched one of the grandest out of the
+many grand sunsets which had blessed us in Cornwall. The black rock of
+Tintagel filled the foreground; beyond, the eye saw nothing but sea,
+the sea which covers vanished Lyonesse, until it met the sky, a clear
+amber with long bars like waves, so that you could hardly tell where
+sea ended and sky began. Then into it there swam slowly a long low
+cloud, shaped like a boat, with a raised prow, and two or three figures
+sitting at the stern.
+
+"King Arthur and the three queens," we declared, and really a very
+moderate imagination could have fancied it this. "But what is that long
+black thing at the bow?"
+
+"Oh," observed drily the most practical of the three, "it's King
+Arthur's luggage."
+
+Sentiment could survive no more. We fell into fits of laughter, and
+went home to tea and bed.
+
+
+
+
+DAYS FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH--
+
+
+And all Arthurian days, so I will condense them into one chapter, and
+not spin out the hours that were flying so fast. Yet we hardly wished
+to stop them; for pleasant as travelling is, the best delight of all
+is--the coming home.
+
+Walking, to one more of those exquisite autumn days, warm as summer,
+yet with a tender brightness that hot summer never has, like the love
+between two old people, out of whom all passion has died--we remembered
+that we were at Tintagel, the home of Ygrayne and Arthur, of King Mark
+and Tristram and Iseult. I had to tell that story to my girls in the
+briefest form, how King Mark sent his nephew, Sir Tristram, to fetch
+home Iseult of Ireland for his queen, and on the voyage Bragswaine,
+her handmaiden, gave each a love-potion, which caused the usual fatal
+result; how at last Tristram fled from Tintagel into Brittany, where
+he married another Iseult "of the white hands," and lived peacefully,
+till, stricken by death, his fancy went back to his old love, whom he
+implored to come to him. She came, and found him dead. A tale--of which
+the only redeeming point is the innocence, simplicity, and dignity of
+the second Iseult, the unloved Breton wife, to whom none of our modern
+poets who have sung or travestied the wild, passionate, miserable, ugly
+story, have ever done full justice.
+
+These sinful lovers, the much-wronged but brutal King Mark, the
+scarcely less brutal Uther Pendragon, and hapless Ygrayne--what a
+curious condition of morals and manners the Arthurian legends unfold!
+A time when might was right; when every one seized what he wanted just
+because he wanted it, and kept it, if he could, till a stronger hand
+wrenched it from him. That in such a state of society there should
+ever have arisen the dimmest dream of a man like Arthur--not perhaps
+Tennyson's Arthur, the "blameless king," but even Sir Thomas Malory's,
+founded on mere tradition--is a remarkable thing. Clear through all
+the mists of ages shines that ideal of knighthood, enjoining courage,
+honour, faith, chastity, the worship of God and the service of men.
+Also, in the very highest degree, inculcating that chivalrous love of
+woman--not women--which barbaric nations never knew. As we looked at
+that hoar ruin sitting solitary in the sunny sea, and thought of the
+days when it was a complete fortress, inclosing a mass of human beings,
+all with human joys, sorrows, passions, crimes--things that must have
+existed in essence, however legend has exaggerated or altered them--we
+could not but feel that the mere possibility of a King Arthur shining
+down the dim vista of long-past centuries, is something to prove that
+goodness, like light, has an existence as indestructible as Him from
+whom it comes.
+
+We looked at Tintagel with its risky rock-path. "It will be a hot
+climb, and our bathing days are numbered. Let us go in the opposite
+direction to Bossinney Cove."
+
+Practicality when weighed against Poetry is poor--Poetry always kicks
+the beam. We went to Bossinney.
+
+Yet what a pretty cove it was! and how pleasant! While waiting for
+the tide to cover the little strip of sand, we re-mounted the winding
+path, and settled ourselves like seabirds on the furthermost point of
+rock, whence, just by extending a hand, we could have dropped anything,
+ourselves even, into a sheer abyss of boiling waves, dizzy to look down
+into, and yet delicious.
+
+So was the bath, though a little gloomy, for the sun could barely reach
+the shut-in cove; and we were interfered with considerably by--not
+tourists--but a line of donkeys! They were seen solemnly descending the
+narrow cliff-path one by one--eleven in all--each with an empty sack
+over his shoulder. Lastly came a very old man, who, without taking the
+least notice of us, disposed himself to fill these sacks with sand.
+One after the other the eleven meek animals came forward and submitted
+each to his load, which proceeding occupied a good hour and a half.
+I hardly know which was the most patient, the old man or his donkeys.
+
+[Illustration: CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY.]
+
+We began some of us to talk to his beasts, and others to himself. "Yes,
+it was hard work," he said, "but he managed to come down to the cove
+three times a day. And the asses were good asses. They all had their
+names; Lucy, Cherry, Sammy, Tom, Jack, Ned;" each animal pricked up its
+long ears and turned round its quiet eyes when called. Some were young
+and some old, but all were very sure-footed, which was necessary here.
+"The weight some of 'em would carry was wonderful."
+
+The old man seemed proud of the creatures, and kind to them too in a
+sort of way. He had been a fisherman, he said, but now was too old for
+that; so got his living by collecting sand.
+
+"It makes capital garden-paths, this sand. I'd be glad to bring you
+some, ladies," said he, evidently with an eye to business. When we
+explained that this was impracticable, unless he would come all the way
+to London, he merely said, "Oh," and accepted the disappointment. Then
+bidding us a civil "Good day," he disappeared with his laden train.
+
+Poor old fellow! Nothing of the past knightly days, nothing of the
+busy existing modern present affected him, or ever would do so. He
+might have been own brother, or cousin, to Wordsworth's "Leech-gatherer
+on the lonely moor." Whenever we think of Bossinney Cove, we shall
+certainly think of that mild old man and his eleven donkeys.
+
+The day was hot, and it had been a steep climb; we decided to drive in
+the afternoon, "for a rest," to Boscastle.
+
+Artists and tourists haunt this picturesque nook. A village built at
+the end of a deep narrow creek, which runs far inland, and is a safe
+shelter for vessels of considerable size. On either side is a high
+footpath, leading to two headlands, from both of which the views of
+sea and coast are very fine. And there are relics of antiquity and
+legends thereto belonging--a green mound, all that remains of Bottrieux
+Castle; and Ferrabury Church, with its silent tower. A peal of bells
+had been brought, and the ship which carried them had nearly reached
+the cove, when the pilot, bidding the captain "thank God for his safe
+voyage," was answered that he "thanked only himself and a fair wind."
+Immediately a storm arose; and the ship went down with every soul on
+board--except the pilot. So the church tower is mute--but on winter
+nights the lost bells are still heard, sounding mournfully from the
+depths of the sea.
+
+As we sat, watching with a vague fascination the spouting, minute by
+minute, of a "blow-hole," almost as fine as the Kynance post-office--we
+moralised on the story of the bells, and on the strange notions people
+have, even in these days, of Divine punishments; imputing to the
+Almighty Father all their own narrow jealousies and petty revenges,
+dragging down God into the likeness of men, such an one as themselves,
+instead of striving to lift man into the image of God.
+
+Meantime the young folks rambled and scrambled--watched with anxious
+and even envious eyes--for it takes one years to get entirely
+reconciled to the quiescence of the down-hill journey. And then we
+drove slowly back--just in time for another grand sunset, with Tintagel
+black in the foreground, until it and all else melted into darkness,
+and there was nothing left but to
+
+  "Watch the twilight stars come out
+    Above the lonely sea."
+
+Next morning we must climb Tintagel, for it would be our last day.
+
+And what a heavenly day it was! How softly the waves crept in upon the
+beach--just as they might have done when they laid at Merlin's feet
+"the little naked child," disowned of man but dear to Heaven, who was
+to grow up into the "stainless king."
+
+He and his knights--the "shadowy people of the realm of dream,"--were
+all about us, as, guided by a rheumatic old woman, who climbed feebly
+up the stair, where generations of ghostly feet must have ascended and
+descended, we reached a bastion and gateway, quite pre-historic. Other
+ruins apparently belong to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. But to
+this there is no clue. It may have been the very landing-place of King
+Uther or King Mark, or other Cornish heroes, who held this wonderful
+natural-artificial fortress in the dim days of old romance.
+
+"Here are King Arthur's cups and saucers," said the old woman, pausing
+in the midst of a long lament over her own ailments, to point out some
+holes in the slate rock. "And up there you'll find the chapel. It's an
+easy climb--if you mind the path--just where it passes the spring."
+
+[Illustration: BOSCASTLE.]
+
+That spring, trickling down from the very top of the rock, and making
+a verdant space all round it--what a treasure it must have been to the
+unknown inhabitants who, centuries ago, entrenched themselves here--for
+offence or defence--against the main-land. Peacefully it flowed on
+still, with the little ferns growing, and the sheep nibbling beside
+it. We idle tourists alone occupied that solitary height where those
+long-past warlike races--one succeeding the other--lived and loved,
+fought and died.
+
+The chapel--where the high altar and a little burial-ground beside it
+can still be traced--is clearly much later than Arthur's time. However,
+there are so few data to go upon, and the action of sea-storms destroys
+so much every year, that even to the learned archæologist, Tintagel is
+a great mystery, out of which the imaginative mind may evolve almost
+anything it likes.
+
+We sat a long time on the top of the rock--realising only the one
+obvious fact that our eyes were gazing on precisely the same scene,
+seawards and coastwards, that all these long-dead eyes were accustomed
+to behold. Beaten by winds and waves till the grey of its slate
+formation is nearly black; worn into holes by the constant action of
+the tide which widens yearly the space between it and the main-land,
+and gnaws the rock below into dangerous hollows that in time become
+sea-caves, Tintagel still remains--and one marvels that so much of it
+does still remain--a landmark of the cloudy time between legend and
+actual history.
+
+Whether the ruin on the opposite height was once a portion of
+Tintagel Castle, before the sea divided it, making a promontory into
+an island--or whether it was the Castle Terrabil, in which Gorlois,
+Ygrayne's husband, was slain--no one now can say. That both the twin
+fortresses were habitable till Elizabeth's time, there is evidence to
+prove. But since then they have been left to decay, to the silent sheep
+and the screeching ravens, including doubtless that ghostly chough, in
+whose shape the soul of King Arthur is believed still to revisit the
+familiar scene.
+
+We did not see that notable bird--though we watched with interest two
+tame and pretty specimens of its almost extinct species walking about
+in a flower-garden in the village, and superstitiously cherished there.
+We were told that to this day no Cornishman likes to shoot a chough
+or a raven. So they live and breed in peace among the twin ruins, and
+scream contentedly to the noisy stream which dances down the rocky
+hollow from Trevena, and leaps into the sea at Porth Hern--the "iron
+gate," over against Tintagel. Otherwise, all is solitude and silence.
+
+We thought we had seen everything, and come to an end, but at the hotel
+we found a party who had just returned from visiting some sea-caves
+beyond Tintagel, which they declared were "the finest things they had
+found in Cornwall."
+
+It was a lovely calm day, and it was our last day. A few hours of it
+alone remained. Should we use them? We might never be here again.
+And, I think, the looser grows one's grasp of life, the greater is
+one's longing to make the most of it, to see all we can see of this
+wonderful, beautiful world. So, after a hasty meal, we found ourselves
+once more down at Porth Hern, seeking a boat and man--alas! not John
+Curgenven--under whose guidance we might brave the stormy deep.
+
+It was indeed stormy! No sooner had we rounded the rock, than the baby
+waves of the tiny bay grew into hills and valleys, among which our boat
+went dancing up and down like a sea-gull!
+
+"Ay, there's some sea on, there always is here, but we'll be through it
+presently," indifferently said the elder of the two boatmen; and plied
+his oars, as, I think, only these Cornish boatmen can do, talking all
+the while. He pointed out a slate quarry, only accessible from the sea,
+unless the workmen liked to be let down by ropes, which sometimes had
+to be done. We saw them moving about like black emmets among the clefts
+of the rocks, and heard plainly above the sound of the sea the click
+of their hammers. Strange, lonely, perilous work it must be, even in
+summer. In winter--
+
+"Oh, they're used to it; we're all used to it," said our man, who was
+intelligent enough, though nothing equal to John Curgenven. "Many a
+time I've got sea-fowls' eggs on those rocks there," pointing to a
+cliff which did not seem to hold footing for a fly. "We all do it. The
+gentry buy them, and we're glad of the money. Dangerous?--yes, rather;
+but one must earn one's bread, and it's not so bad when you take to it
+young."
+
+Nevertheless, I think I shall never look at a collection of sea-birds'
+eggs without a slight shudder, remembering those awful cliffs.
+
+"Here you are, ladies, and the sea's down a bit, as I said. Hold on,
+mate, the boat will go right into the cave."
+
+And before we knew what was happening, we found ourselves floated out
+of daylight into darkness--very dark it seemed at first--and rocking
+on a mass of heaving waters, shut in between two high walls, so narrow
+that it seemed as if every heave would dash us in pieces against them;
+while beyond was a dense blackness, from which one heard the beat of
+the everlasting waves against a sort of tunnel, a stormy sea-grave from
+which no one could ever hope to come out alive.
+
+"I don't like this at all," said a small voice.
+
+"Hadn't we better get out again?" practically suggested another.
+
+But no sooner was this done than the third of the party longed to
+return; and begged for "only five minutes" in that wonderful place,
+compared to which Dolor Ugo, and the other Lizard caves, became as
+nothing. They were beautiful, but this was terrible. Yet with its
+terror was mingled an awful delight. "Give me but five, nay, two
+minutes more!"
+
+"Very well, just as you choose," was the response of meek despair.
+So of course, Poetry yielded. The boatmen were told to row on into
+daylight and sunshine--at least as much sunshine as the gigantic
+overhanging cliffs permitted. And never, never, never in this world
+shall I again behold that wonderful, mysterious sea-cave.
+
+But like all things incomplete, resigned, or lost, it has fixed itself
+on my memory with an almost painful vividness. However, I promised not
+to regret--not to say another word about it; and I will not. I did see
+it, for just a glimpse; and that will serve.
+
+Two more pictures remain, the last gorgeous sunset, which I watched in
+quiet solitude, sitting on a tombstone by Tintagel church--a building
+dating from Saxon times, perched on the very edge of a lofty cliff,
+and with a sea-view that reaches from Trevose Head on one side to Bude
+Haven on the other. Also, our last long dreamy drive; in the mild
+September sunshine, across the twenty-one miles of sparsely inhabited
+country which lie between Tintagel and Launceston. In the midst of
+it, on the top of a high flat of moorland, our driver turned round
+and pointed with his whip to a long low mound, faintly visible about
+half-a-mile off. "There, ladies, that's King Arthur's grave."
+
+The third, at least, that we had either seen or heard of. These varied
+records of the hero's last resting-place remind one of the three heads,
+said to be still extant, of Oliver Cromwell, one when he was a little
+boy, one as a young man, and the third as an old man.
+
+But after all my last and vividest recollection of King Arthur's
+country is that wild sail--so wild that I wished I had taken it
+alone--in the solitary boat, up and down the tossing waves in face of
+Tintagel rock; the dark, iron-bound coast with its awful caves, the
+bright sunshiny land, and ever-threatening sea. Just the region, in
+short, which was likely to create a race like that which Arthurian
+legend describes, full of passionate love and deadly hate, capable of
+barbaric virtues, and equally barbaric crimes. An age in which the mere
+idea of such a hero as that ideal knight
+
+  "Who reverenced his conscience as his God:
+  Whose glory was redressing human wrong:
+  Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it:
+  Who loved one only, and who clave to her--"
+
+rises over the blackness of darkness like a morning star.
+
+If Arthur could "come again"--perhaps in the person of one of the
+descendants of a prince who was not unlike him, who lived and died
+among us in this very nineteenth century--
+
+  "Wearing the white flower of a blameless life--"
+
+if this could be--what a blessing for Arthur's beloved England!
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA.]
+
+
+
+
+L'ENVOI
+
+
+Written more than a year after. The "old hen" and her chickens have
+long been safe at home. A dense December fog creeps in everywhere,
+choking and blinding, as I finish the history of those fifteen innocent
+days, calm as autumn, and bright as spring, when we three took our
+Unsentimental Journey together through Cornwall. Many a clever critic,
+like Sir Charles Coldstream when he looked into the crater of Vesuvius,
+may see "nothing in it"--a few kindly readers looking a little further,
+may see a little more: probably the writer only sees the whole.
+
+But such as it is, let it stay--simple memorial of what Americans would
+call "a good time," the sunshine of which may cast its brightness far
+forward, even into that quiet time "when travelling days are done."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+  LONDON:
+  R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
+  BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Unsentimental Journey through
+Cornwall, by Dinah Maria Craik
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Unsentimental Journey through Cornwall, by 
+Dinah Maria Craik
+
+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: An Unsentimental Journey through Cornwall
+
+Author: Dinah Maria Craik
+
+Illustrator: C. Napier Hemy
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2014 [EBook #44557]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>AN<br /><br /> UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY<br /><br />
+
+THROUGH<br /><br />
+
+ CORNWALL</h1>
+
+
+<p><a name="ST_MICHAELS_MOUNT" id="ST_MICHAELS_MOUNT"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 422px;">
+<img src="images/004.jpg" width="422" height="600" alt="ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT." />
+<div class="caption">ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="ph3"><span class="smcap">BY</span></p>
+
+<p class="ph2"><span class="smcap">The Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman"</span><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="ph3">WITH ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+
+<p class="ph3">BY</p>
+
+<p class="ph2">C. NAPIER HEMY</p>
+
+<p class="center">London</p>
+
+<p class="center">MACMILLAN AND CO.</p>
+
+<p class="center">1884</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON:</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor</span>,</p>
+
+<p class="center">BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.</p>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the First</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Second</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Third</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Fourth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Fifth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Sixth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_53">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Seventh</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Eighth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Ninth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Tenth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Eleventh</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Twelfth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Day the Thirteenth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Days Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</a></h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT</td><td align="right"><a href="#ST_MICHAELS_MOUNT"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING</td><td align="right"><a href="#FALMOUTH">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY</td><td align="right"><a href="#MAWES">5</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH</td><td align="right"><a href="#VIEW">7</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD</td><td align="right"><a href="#FISHERMANS">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT</td><td align="right"><a href="#CORNISH">15</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT</td><td align="right"><a href="#LIZARD">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CORNISH FISH</td><td align="right"><a href="#FISH">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">POLTESCO</td><td align="right"><a href="#POLTESCO">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CADGWITH COVE</td><td align="right"><a href="#CADGWITH">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH</td><td align="right"><a href="#DEVIL">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">MULLION COVE, CORNWALL</td><td align="right"><a href="#MULLION">38</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY</td><td align="right"><a href="#CRABBER">41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT</td><td align="right"><a href="#STEAM">46</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">HAULING IN THE BOATS&mdash;EVENING</td><td align="right"><a href="#HAULING">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">HAULING IN THE LINES</td><td align="right"><a href="#LINES">55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY</td><td align="right"><a href="#LIGHTS">60</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER&mdash;A CORNISH STUDY</td><td align="right"><a href="#DAUGHTER">63</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL</td><td align="right"><a href="#KYNANCE">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE</td><td align="right"><a href="#STEEPLE">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE LION ROCKS&mdash;A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE</td><td align="right"><a href="#LION">76</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">HAULING IN THE BOATS</td><td align="right"><a href="#BOATS">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS</td><td align="right"><a href="#ENYS">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING</td><td align="right"><a href="#CURGENVEN">87</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE</td><td align="right"><a href="#ARMED">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CORNISH FISHERMAN</td><td align="right"><a href="#CORNISH_FISHERMAN">100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE SEINE BOAT&mdash;A PERILOUS MOMENT</td><td align="right"><a href="#SEINE">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ST. IVES</td><td align="right"><a href="#IVES">108</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK</td><td align="right"><a href="#LAND">114</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">SENNEN COVE, WAITING FOR THE BOATS</td><td align="right"><a href="#SENNEN">119</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE</td><td align="right"><a href="#ROAD">124</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">TINTAGEL</td><td align="right"><a href="#TINTAGEL">128</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY</td><td align="right"><a href="#CRESWICK">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">BOSCASTLE</td><td align="right"><a href="#BOSCASTLE">139</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA</td><td align="right"><a href="#OLD">145</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ph2">AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY<br /><br />
+
+THROUGH CORNWALL</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+<p><a name="FALMOUTH" id="FALMOUTH"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/013.jpg" width="600" height="401" alt="FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING." />
+<div class="caption">FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_FIRST" id="DAY_THE_FIRST">DAY THE FIRST</a></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I believe</span> in holidays. Not in a frantic rushing about from place to
+place, glancing at everything and observing nothing; flying from town
+to town, from hotel to hotel, eager to "do" and to see a country, in
+order that when they get home they may say they have done it, and seen
+it. Only to say;&mdash;as for any real vision of eye, heart, and brain, they
+might as well go through the world blindfold. It is not the things
+we see, but the mind we see them with, which makes the real interest
+of travelling. "Eyes and No Eyes,"&mdash;an old-fashioned story about two
+little children taking a walk; one seeing everything, and enjoying
+everything, and the other seeing nothing, and thinking the expedition
+the dullest imaginable. This simple tale, which the present generation
+has probably never read, contains the essence of all rational
+travelling.</p>
+
+<p>So when, as the "old hen," (which I am sometimes called, from my habit><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+of going about with a brood of "chickens," my own or other people's) I
+planned a brief tour with two of them, one just entered upon her teens,
+the other in her twenties, I premised that it must be a tour after my
+own heart.</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place, my children, you must obey orders implicitly. I
+shall collect opinions, and do my best to please everybody; but in
+travelling one only must decide, the others coincide. It will save them
+a world of trouble, and their 'conductor' also; who, if competent to be
+trusted at all, should be trusted absolutely. Secondly, take as little
+luggage as possible. No sensible people travel with their point-lace
+and diamonds. Two 'changes of raiment,' good, useful dresses, prudent
+boots, shawls, and waterproofs&mdash;these I shall insist upon, and nothing
+more. Nothing for show, as I shall take you to no place where you can
+show off. We will avoid all huge hotels, all fashionable towns; we
+will study life in its simplicity, and make ourselves happy in our own
+humble, feminine way. Not 'roughing it' in any needless or reckless
+fashion&mdash;the 'old hen' is too old for that; yet doing everything with
+reasonable economy. Above all, rushing into no foolhardy exploits, and
+taking every precaution to keep well and strong, so as to enjoy the
+journey from beginning to end, and hinder no one else from enjoying
+it. There are four things which travellers ought never to lose: their
+luggage, their temper, their health, and their spirits. I will make
+you as happy as I possibly can, but you must also make me happy by
+following my rules: especially the one golden rule, Obey orders."</p>
+
+<p>So preached the "old hen," with a vague fear that her chickens might
+turn out to be ducklings, which would be a little awkward in the
+region whither she proposed to take them. For if there is one place
+more risky than another for adventurous young people with a talent
+for "perpetuating themselves down prejudices," as Mrs. Malaprop would
+say, it is that grandest, wildest, most dangerous coast, the coast of
+Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>I had always wished to investigate Cornwall. This desire had existed
+ever since, at five years old, I made acquaintance with Jack the
+Giantkiller, and afterwards, at fifteen or so, fell in love with my
+life's one hero, King Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>Between these two illustrious Cornishmen,&mdash;equally mythical, practical
+folk would say&mdash;there exists more similarity than at first appears.
+The aim of both was to uphold right and to redress wrong. Patience,
+self-denial; tenderness to the weak and helpless, dauntless courage
+against the wicked and the strong: these, the essential elements of
+true manliness, characterise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> both the humble Jack and the kingly
+Arthur. And the qualities seem to have descended to more modern times.
+The well-known ballad:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"And shall they scorn Tre, Pol, and Pen?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And shall Trelawny die?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There's twenty thousand Cornishmen</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Will know the reason why,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>has a ring of the same tone, indicating the love of justice, the spirit
+of fidelity and bravery, as well as of that common sense which is at
+the root of all useful valour.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to see if the same spirit lingered yet, as I had heard it did
+among Cornish folk, which, it was said, were a race by themselves,
+honest, simple, shrewd, and kind. Also, I wished to see the Cornish
+land, and especially the Land's End, which I had many a time beheld in
+fancy, for it was a favourite landscape-dream of my rather imaginative
+childhood, recurring again and again, till I could almost have painted
+it from memory. And as year after year every chance of seeing it in its
+reality seemed to melt away, the desire grew into an actual craving.</p>
+
+<p>After waiting patiently for nearly half a century, I said to myself, "I
+will conquer Fate; I <i>will</i> go and see the Land's End."</p>
+
+<p>And it was there that, after making a circuit round the coast, I
+proposed finally to take my "chickens."</p>
+
+<p>We concocted a plan, definite yet movable, as all travelling plans
+should be, clear in its dates, its outline, and intentions, but
+subject to modifications, according to the exigency of the times
+and circumstances. And with that prudent persistency, without which
+all travelling is a mere muddle, all discomfort, disappointment,
+and distaste&mdash;for on whatever terms you may be with your travelling
+companions when you start, you are quite sure either to love them or
+hate them when you get home&mdash;we succeeded in carrying it out.</p>
+
+<p>The 1st of September, 1881, and one of the loveliest of September
+days, was the day we started from Exeter, where we had agreed to meet
+and stay the night. There, the previous afternoon, we had whiled away
+an hour in the dim cathedral, and watched, not without anxiety, the
+flood of evening sunshine which poured through the great west window,
+lighting the tombs, old and new, from the Crusader, cross-legged and
+broken-nosed, to the white marble bas-relief which tells the story of a
+not less noble Knight of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> the Cross, Bishop Patteson. Then we wandered
+round the quaint old town, in such a lovely twilight, such a starry
+night! But&mdash;will it be a fine day to-morrow? We could but live in hope:
+and hope did not deceive us.</p>
+
+<p>To start on a journey in sunshine feels like beginning life well.
+Clouds may come&mdash;are sure to come: I think no one past earliest youth
+goes forth into a strange region without a feeling akin to Saint Paul's
+"not knowing what things may befall me there." But it is always best
+for each to keep to himself all the shadows, and give his companions
+the brightness, especially if they be young companions.</p>
+
+<p>And very bright were the eyes that watched the swift-moving landscape
+on either side of the railway: the estuary of Exe; Dawlish, with its
+various colouring of rock and cliff, and its pretty little sea-side
+houses, where family groups stood photographing themselves on our
+vision, as the train rushed unceremoniously between the beach and their
+parlour windows; then Plymouth and Saltash, where the magnificent
+bridge reminded us of the one over the Tay, which we had once crossed,
+not long before that Sunday night when, sitting in a quiet sick-room
+in Edinburgh, we heard the howl outside of the fearful blast which
+destroyed such a wonderful work of engineering art, and whirled so many
+human beings into eternity.</p>
+
+<p>But this Saltash bridge, spanning placidly a smiling country,
+how pretty and safe it looked! There was a general turning to
+carriage-windows, and then a courteous drawing back, that we,
+the strangers, should see it, which broke the ice with our
+fellow-travellers. To whom we soon began to talk, as is our
+conscientious custom when we see no tangible objection thereto, and
+gained, now, as many a time before, much pleasant as well as useful
+information. Every one evinced an eager politeness to show us the
+country, and an innocent anxiety that we should admire it; which we
+could honestly do.</p>
+
+<p>I shall long remember, as a dream of sunshiny beauty and peace, this
+journey between Plymouth and Falmouth, passing Liskeard, Lostwithiel,
+St. Austell, &amp;c. The green-wooded valleys, the rounded hills, on one of
+which we were shown the remains of the old castle of Ristormel, noted
+among the three castles of Cornwall; all this, familiar to so many,
+was to us absolutely new, and we enjoyed it and the kindly interest
+that was taken in pointing it out to us, as happy-minded simple folk do
+always enjoy the sight of a new country.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="MAWES" id="MAWES"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px;">
+<img src="images/017.jpg" width="525" height="600" alt="ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY." />
+<div class="caption">ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Our pleasure seemed to amuse an old gentleman who sat in the corner.
+He at last addressed us, with an unctuous west-country accent which
+suited well his comfortable stoutness. He might have fed all his life
+upon Dorset butter and Devonshire cream, to one of which counties
+he certainly belonged. Not, I think, to the one we were now passing
+through, and admiring so heartily.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So you're going to travel in Cornwall. Well, take care, they're sharp
+folk, the Cornish folk. They'll take you in if they can." (Then, he
+must be a Devon man. It is so easy to sit in judgment upon next-door
+neighbours.) "I don't mean to say they'll actually cheat you, but
+they'll take you in, and they'll be careful that you don't take them
+in&mdash;no, not to the extent of a brass farthing."</p>
+
+<p>We explained, smiling, that we had not the slightest intention of
+taking anybody in, that we liked justice, and blamed no man, Cornishman
+or otherwise, for trying to do the best he could for himself, so that
+it was not to the injury of other people.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, perhaps you're right. But they are sharp, for all that,
+especially in the towns."</p>
+
+<p>We replied that we meant to escape towns, whenever possible, and encamp
+in some quiet places, quite out of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Our friend opened his eyes, evidently thinking this a most singular
+taste.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you really want a quiet place, I can tell you of one, almost
+as quiet as your grave. I ought to know, for I lived there sixteen
+years." (At any rate, it seemed to have agreed with him.) "Gerrans is
+its name&mdash;a fishing village. You get there from Falmouth by boat. The
+fare is "&mdash;(I regret to say my memory is not so accurate as his in the
+matter of pennies), "and mind you don't pay one farthing more. Then you
+have to drive across country; the distance is&mdash;and the fare per mile&mdash;"
+(Alas! again I have totally forgotten.) "They'll be sure to ask you
+double the money, but never you mind! refuse to pay it, and they'll
+give in. You must always hold your own against extortion in Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>I thanked him, with a slightly troubled mind. But I have always noticed
+that in travelling "with such measure as ye mete it shall be meted
+to you again," and that those who come to a country expecting to be
+cheated generally are cheated. Having still a lingering belief in human
+nature, and especially in Cornish nature, I determined to set down the
+old gentleman's well-meant advice for what it was worth, no more, and
+cease to perplex myself about it. For which resolve I have since been
+exceedingly thankful.</p>
+
+<p>He gave us, however, much supplementary advice which was rather useful,
+and parted from us in the friendliest fashion, with that air of bland
+complaisance natural to those who assume the character of adviser in
+general.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mind you go to Gerrans. They'll not take you in more than they do
+everywhere else, and you'll find it a healthy place, and a quiet
+place&mdash;as quiet, I say, as your grave. It will make you feel exactly as
+if you were dead and buried."</p>
+
+<p>That not being the prominent object of our tour in Cornwall, we thanked
+him again, but as soon as he left the carriage determined among
+ourselves to take no further steps about visiting Gerrans.</p>
+
+<p><a name="VIEW" id="VIEW"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/019.jpg" width="600" height="395" alt="VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH." />
+<div class="caption">VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>However, in spite of the urgency of another fellow-traveller&mdash;it is
+always good to hear everybody's advice, and follow your own&mdash;we carried
+our love of quietness so far that we eschewed the magnificent new
+Falmouth Hotel, with its <i>table d'hôte</i>, lawn tennis ground, sea baths
+and promenade, for the old-fashioned Green Bank, which though it had no
+green banks, boasted, we had been told, a pleasant little sea view and
+bay view, and was a resting-place full of comfort and homely peace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Which we found true, and would have liked to stay longer in its
+pleasant shelter, which almost conquered our horror of hotels; but we
+had now fairly weighed anchor and must sail on.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to go at once to the Lizard," said the friend who met us,
+and did everything for us at Falmouth&mdash;and the remembrance of whom, and
+of all that happened in our brief stay, will make the very name of the
+place sound sweet in our ears for ever. "The Lizard is the real point
+for sightseers, almost better than the Land's End. Let us see if we can
+hear of lodgings."</p>
+
+<p>She made inquiries, and within half an hour we did hear of some most
+satisfactory ones. "The very thing! We will telegraph at once&mdash;answer
+paid," said this good genius of practicality, as sitting in her
+carriage she herself wrote the telegram and despatched it. Telegrams to
+the Lizard! We were not then at the Ultima Thule of civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>"Still," she said, "you had better provide yourself with some food,
+such as groceries and hams. You can't always get what you want at the
+Lizard."</p>
+
+<p>So, having the very dimmest idea what the Lizard was&mdash;whether a town,
+a village, or a bare rock&mdash;when we had secured the desired lodgings
+("quite ideal lodgings," remarked our guardian angel), I proceeded to
+lay in a store of provisions, doing it as carefully as if fitting out
+a ship for the North Pole&mdash;and afterwards found out it was a work of
+supererogation entirely.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing to secure was an "ideal" carriage, horse, and man, which
+our good genius also succeeded in providing. And now, our minds being
+at rest, we were able to write home a fixed address for a week, and
+assure our expectant and anxious friends that all was going well with
+us.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a twilight wander round the quaint old town&mdash;so like a
+foreign town&mdash;and other keen enjoyments, which, as belonging to the
+sanctity of private life I here perforce omit, we laid us down to
+sleep, and slept in peace, having really achieved much; considering it
+was only the first day of our journey.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_SECOND" id="DAY_THE_SECOND">DAY THE SECOND</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Is</span> there anything more delightful than to start on a smiling morning
+in a comfortable carriage, with all one's <i>impedimenta</i> (happily not
+much!) safely stowed away under one's eyes, with a good horse, over
+which one's feelings of humanity need not be always agonising, and a
+man to drive, whom one can trust to have as much sense as the brute,
+especially in the matter of "refreshment." Our letters that morning had
+brought us a comico-tragic story of a family we knew, who, migrating
+with a lot of children and luggage, and requiring to catch a train
+thirteen miles off, had engaged a driver who "refreshed himself" so
+successfully at every public-house on the way, that he took five hours
+to accomplish the journey, and finally had to be left at the road-side,
+and the luggage transferred to another vehicle, which of course lost
+the train. We congratulated ourselves that no such disaster was likely
+to happen to us.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I've been a teetotaller all my life," said our driver, a
+bright-looking, intelligent young fellow, whom, as he became rather a
+prominent adjunct to our life and decidedly to our comfort, I shall
+individualise by calling him Charles. "I had good need to avoid
+drinking. My father drank through a small property. No fear of me,
+ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>So at once between him and us, or him and "we," according to the
+Cornish habit of transposing pronouns, was established a feeling of
+fraternity, which, during the six days that we had to do with him,
+deepened into real regard. Never failing when wanted, never presuming
+when not wanted, straightforward, independent, yet full of that
+respectful kindliness which servants can always show and masters
+should always appreciate, giving us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> a chivalrous care, which, being
+"unprotected females," was to us extremely valuable, I here record that
+much of the pleasure of our tour was owing to this honest Cornishman,
+who served us, his horse, and his master&mdash;he was one of the employés of
+a livery-stable keeper&mdash;with equal fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, numerous as were the parties he had driven&mdash;("I go to the
+Lizard about three times a week," he said)&mdash;Charles could seldom have
+driven a merrier trio than that which leisurely mounted the upland road
+from Falmouth, leading to the village of Constantine.</p>
+
+<p>"Just turn and look behind you, ladies" (we had begged to be shown
+everything and told everything); "isn't that a pretty view?"</p>
+
+<p>It certainly was. From the high ground we could see Falmouth with its
+sheltered bay and glittering sea beyond. Landward were the villages of
+Mabe and Constantine, with their great quarries of granite, and in the
+distance lay wide sweeps of undulating land, barren and treeless, but
+still beautiful&mdash;not with the rich pastoral beauty of our own Kent, yet
+having a charm of its own. And the air, so fresh and pure, yet soft and
+balmy, it felt to tender lungs like the difference between milk and
+cream. To breathe became a pleasure instead of a pain. I could quite
+understand how the semi-tropical plants that we had seen in a lovely
+garden below, grew and flourished, how the hydrangeas became huge
+bushes, and the eucalyptus an actual forest tree.</p>
+
+<p>But this was in the sheltered valley, and we had gained the hill-top,
+emerging out of one of those deep-cut lanes peculiar to Devon and
+Cornwall, and so pretty in themselves, a perfect garden of wild flowers
+and ferns, except that they completely shut out the view. This did not
+much afflict the practical minds of my two juniors. Half an hour before
+they had set up a shout&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Stop the carriage! <i>Do</i> stop the carriage! Just look there! Did you
+ever see such big blackberries? and what a quantity! Let us get out;
+we'll gather them for to-morrow's pudding."</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly a dinner earned is the sweetest of all dinners. I remember
+once thinking that our cowslip tea (I should not like to drink it
+now) was better than our grandmother's best Bohea or something out
+of her lovely old tea-caddy. So the carriage, lightened of all but
+myself, crawled leisurely up and waited on the hill-top for the busy
+blackberry-gatherers.</p>
+
+<p>While our horse stood cropping an extempore meal, I and his driver<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+began to talk about him and other cognate topics, including the
+permanent one of the great advantage to both body and soul in being
+freed all one's life long from the necessity of getting "something to
+drink" stronger than water.</p>
+
+<p><a name="FISHERMANS" id="FISHERMANS"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 472px;">
+<img src="images/023.jpg" width="472" height="600" alt="A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD." />
+<div class="caption">A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "I find I can do as much upon tea or coffee as other
+men upon beer. I'm just as strong and as active, and can stand weather
+quite as well. It's a pretty hard life, winter and summer, driving all
+day,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> coming in soaked, sometimes in the middle of the night, having to
+turn in for an hour or two, and then turn out again. And you must look
+after your horse, of course, before you think of yourself. Still, I
+stand it well, and that without a drop of beer from years end to years
+end."</p>
+
+<p>I congratulated and sympathised; in return for which Charles entered
+heart and soul into the blackberry question, pointed out where the
+biggest blackberries hung, and looked indeed&mdash;he was still such a young
+fellow!&mdash;as if he would have liked to go blackberry-hunting himself.</p>
+
+<p>I put, smiling, the careless question, "Have you any little folks of
+your own? Are you married?"</p>
+
+<p>How cautious one should be over an idle word! All of a sudden the
+cheerful face clouded, the mouth began to quiver, with difficulty I
+saw he kept back the tears. It was a version in every-day life of
+Longfellow's most pathetic little poem, "The Two Locks of Hair."</p>
+
+<p>"My wife broke her heart after the baby, I think. It died. She went off
+in consumption. It's fifteen months now"&mdash;(he had evidently counted
+them)&mdash;"fifteen months since I have been alone. I didn't like to give
+up my home and my bits of things; still, when a man has to come in wet
+and tired to an empty house&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He turned suddenly away and busied himself over his horse, for just
+that minute the two girls came running back, laughing heartily, and
+showing their baskets full of "the very biggest blackberries you ever
+saw!" I took them back into the carriage; the driver mounted his box,
+and drove on for some miles in total silence. As, when I had whispered
+that little episode to my two companions, so did we.</p>
+
+<p>There are two ways of going from Falmouth to the Lizard&mdash;the regular
+route through the town of Helstone, and another, a trifle longer,
+through the woods of Trelowarren, the seat of the old Cornish family of
+Vyvyan.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take you that road, ma'am, it's much the prettiest," said Charles
+evidently exerting himself to recover his cheerful looks and be the
+civil driver and guide, showing off all the curiosities and beauties
+of the neighbourhood. And very pretty Trelowarren was, though nothing
+remarkable to us who came from the garden of England. Still, the trees
+were big&mdash;for Cornwall, and in the ferny glade grew abundantly the
+<i>Osmunda regalis</i>, a root of which we greatly coveted, and Charles
+offered to get. He seemed to take a pride in showing us everything,
+except what he probably did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> not know of, and which, when I heard of
+too late, was to me a real regret.</p>
+
+<p>At Trelowarren, not far from the house, are a series of subterranean
+chambers and galleries, in all ninety feet long and about the height
+of a man. The entrance is very low. Still it is possible to get into
+them and traverse them from end to end, the walls being made of blocks
+of unhewn stone, leaning inward towards the roof, which is formed of
+horizontal blocks. How, when, and for what purpose this mysterious
+underground dwelling was made, is utterly lost in the mists of time.
+I should exceedingly have liked to examine it, and to think we passed
+close by and never knew of it will always be a certain regret, of which
+I relieve my mind by telling it for the guidance of other archæological
+travellers.</p>
+
+<p>One of the charms of Cornwall is that it gives one the sense of being
+such an old country, as if things had gone exactly as they do now, not
+merely since the days of King Arthur, but for ever so long before then.
+The Romans, the Ph&oelig;nicians, nay, the heroes of pre-historic ages,
+such as Jack the Giantkiller and the giant Cormoran, seemed to be not
+impossible myths, as we gradually quitted civilisation in the shape of
+a village or two, and a few isolated farm-houses, and came out upon the
+wild district known as Goonhilly Down.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly not from its hills, for it is as flat as the back of your
+hand, and as bare. But the word, which is old Cornish&mdash;that now extinct
+tongue, which only survives in the names of places and people&mdash;means a
+<i>hunting ground</i>; and there is every reason to believe that this wide
+treeless waste was once an enormous forest, full of wild beasts. There
+St. Rumon, an Irish bishop, long before there were any Saxon bishops
+or saints, is said to have settled, far away from the world, and made
+a cell and oratory, the memory of which, and of himself, is still kept
+up by the name of the two villages, Ruan Major and Ruan Minor, on the
+outskirts of this Goonhilly Down.</p>
+
+<p>In later times the down was noted for a breed of small, strong ponies,
+called "Goonhillies." Charles had heard of them, but I do not suppose
+he had ever heard of St. Rumon, or of the primeval forest. At present,
+the fauna of Goonhilly is represented by no animal more dangerous
+than a rabbit or a field-mouse, and its vegetation includes nothing
+bigger than the <i>erica vagans</i>&mdash;the lovely Cornish heath, lilac,
+flesh-coloured and white which will grow nowhere else, except in a
+certain district of Portugal.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There it is!" we cried, at the pleasant first sight of a new flower:
+for though not scientific botanists, we have what I may call a speaking
+acquaintance with almost every wild flower that grows. To see one that
+we had never seen before was quite an excitement. Instantly we were out
+of the carriage, and gathering it by handfuls.</p>
+
+<p>Botanists know this heath well&mdash;it has the peculiarity of the anthers
+being outside instead of inside the bell&mdash;but we only noticed the
+beauty of it, the masses in which it grew, and how it would grow only
+within a particular line&mdash;the sharp geological line of magnesian earth,
+which forms the serpentine district. Already we saw, forcing itself
+up through the turf, blocks of this curious stone, and noticed how
+cottage-walls were built, and fences made of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's the serpentine," said Charles, now in his depth once more;
+we could not have expected him to know about St. Rumon, &amp;c. "You'll see
+plenty of it when you get to the Lizard. All the coast for miles and
+miles is serpentine. Such curious rocks, reddish and greenish; they
+look so pretty when the water washes against them, and when polished,
+and made into ornaments, candlesticks, brooches and the like. But I'll
+show you the shops as we pass. We shall be at Lizard Town directly."</p>
+
+<p>So it was a town, and it had shops. We should not have thought so,
+judging by the slender line of white dots which now was appearing on
+the horizon&mdash;Cornish folk seemed to have a perfect mania for painting
+their houses a glistening white. Yes, that was the Lizard; we were
+nearing our journey's end. At which we were a little sorry, even though
+already an hour or two behind-hand&mdash;that is, behind the hour we had
+ordered dinner. But "time was made for slaves"&mdash;and railway travellers,
+and we were beyond railways.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, what does dinner matter?" (It did not seriously, as we had
+taken the precaution, which I recommend to all travellers, of never
+starting on any expedition without a good piece of bread, a bunch of
+raisins, and a flask of cold tea or coffee.) "What's the odds so long
+as you're happy? Let us linger and make the drive as long as we can.
+The horse will not object, nor Charles either."</p>
+
+<p>Evidently not; our faithful steed cropped contentedly an extempore
+meal, and Charles, who would have scrambled anywhere or dug up anything
+"to please the young ladies," took out his pocket-knife, and devoted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+himself to the collection of all the different coloured heaths; roots
+which we determined to send home in the hope, alas! I fear vain, that
+they would grow in our garden, afar from their native magnesia.</p>
+
+<p><a name="CORNISH" id="CORNISH"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/027.jpg" width="600" height="475" alt="THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT." />
+<div class="caption">THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>So for another peaceful hour we stayed; wandering about upon Goonhilly
+Down. How little it takes to make one happy, when one wants to be
+happy, and knows enough of the inevitable sorrows of life to be glad to
+be happy&mdash;as long as fate allows. Each has his burthen to bear, seen or
+unseen by the world outside, and some of us that day had not a light
+one; yet was it a bright day, a white day, a day to be thankful for.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did it end when, arriving at the "ideal" lodgings, and being
+received with a placidity which we felt we had not quite deserved, and
+fed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> in a manner which reflected much credit not only on the cook's
+skill, but her temper&mdash;we sallied out to see the place.</p>
+
+<p>Not a picturesque place exactly. A high plain, with the sparkling sea
+beyond it; the principal object near being the Lizard Lights, a huge
+low building, with a tower at either side, not unlike the Sydenham
+Crystal palace, only dazzling white, as every building apparently was
+at the Lizard.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go out and adventure," cried the young folks; and off
+they started down the garden, over a stile&mdash;made of serpentine
+of course&mdash;and across what seemed a field, till they disappeared
+mysteriously where the line of sea cut the line of cliffs, and were
+heard of no more for two hours.</p>
+
+<p>Then they returned, all delight and excitement. They had found such
+a lovely little cove, full of tiny pools, a perfect treasure-house
+of sea-weeds and sea-anemones; and the rocks, so picturesque, and
+"so grand to scramble over." (I must confess that to these, my
+practically-minded "chickens," the picturesque or the romantic always
+ranked second to the fun of a scramble.) The descent to this marine
+paradise also seemed difficult enough to charm anybody.</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>you</i> wouldn't do it. Quite impossible! You would break all your
+legs and arms, and sprain both your ankles."</p>
+
+<p>Alas, for a hen&mdash;and an old hen&mdash;with ducklings! But mine, though
+daring, were not rash, and had none of that silly fool-hardiness
+which for the childish vanity of doing, or of saying one has done, a
+dangerous thing, risks health, comfort, life, and delights selfishly
+in making other people utterly miserable. So, being feeble on my feet,
+though steady in my head, I agreed to sit like a cormorant on the
+nearest cliff, and look down placidly upon the young adventurers in
+their next delightful scramble.</p>
+
+<p>It could not be to-night, however, for the tide was coming in fast; the
+fairy cove would soon be all under water.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we get a boat? It will soon be sunset and moon-rise; we can
+watch both from the sea."</p>
+
+<p>That sea! Its broad circle had no other bound than the shores of
+America, and its blueness, or the strange, changing tint often called
+blue, almost equalled the blue of the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am, it's a fine evening for a row," said the faithful Charles.
+"And it isn't often you can get a row here; the sea is so rough, and
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> landing so difficult. But there's a man I know; he has a good
+boat, he knows the coast well, and he'll not go out unless it's really
+safe."</p>
+
+<p>This seemed ultra-prudent, with such a smiling sky and sea; but we
+soon found it was not unnecessary at the Lizard. Indeed all along the
+Cornish coast the great Atlantic waves come in with such a roll or a
+heavy ground-swell, windless, but the precursor of a storm that is
+slowly arriving from across the ocean, that boating here at best is no
+child's play.</p>
+
+<p>We had been fair-weather sailors, over shut-in lochs or smooth rivers;
+all of us could handle an oar, or had handled it in old days, but
+this was a different style of thing. Descending the steep zigzag path
+to the next cove&mdash;the only one where there was anything like a fair
+landing&mdash;we found we still had to walk through a long bed of sea-weed,
+and manage somehow to get into the boat between the recoil and advance
+of a wave. Not one of the tiny waves of quiet bays, but an Atlantic
+roller, which, even if comparatively small and tame, comes in with a
+force that will take you off your feet at any time.</p>
+
+<p>However, we managed it, and found ourselves floating among an
+archipelago of rocks, where the solemn cormorants sat in rows, and
+affectionate families of gulls kept swimming about in a large flotilla
+of white dots on the dark water. Very dark the sea was: heaving and
+sinking in great hills and valleys, which made rowing difficult. Also,
+for several yards round every rock extended a perfect whirlpool of
+foaming waves, which, if any boat chanced to be caught therein, would
+have dashed it to pieces in no time. But our boatmen seemed used to the
+danger, and took us as near it as possible, without actually running
+into it.</p>
+
+<p>They were both far from commonplace-looking men, especially the elder,
+our stroke-oar. Being rather given to ethnological tastes, we had
+already noticed the characteristic Cornish face, not unlike the Norman
+type, and decidedly superior to that of the inland counties of England.
+But this was a face by itself, which would have attracted any artist or
+student of human nature; weather-beaten, sharp-lined, wrinkled as it
+was&mdash;the man must have been fully sixty&mdash;there was in it a sweetness,
+an absolute beauty, which struck us at once. The smile, placid and
+paternal, came often, though words were few; and the keen, kindly eyes
+were blue as a child's, or as Tennyson describes King Arthur's.</p>
+
+<p>"I can imagine," whispered one of us who had imaginative tendencies,
+"that King Arthur might have looked thus, had he lived to grow old."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe King Arthur ever lived at all," was the knock-me-down
+utilitarian answer, to which the other had grown accustomed and
+indifferent. Nevertheless, there was such a refinement about the man,
+spite of his rough fisherman's dress, and he had been so kind to the
+young folks, so considerate to "the old lady," as Cornish candour
+already called me, that, intending to employ him again, we asked his
+name.</p>
+
+<p>"John Curgenven."</p>
+
+<p>"John what?" We made several hopeless plunges at it, and finally asked
+him to spell it.</p>
+
+<p>"Cur-gen-ven," said he; adding, with a slight air of pride, "one of the
+oldest families in Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>(I have no hesitation in stating this, because, when we afterwards
+became great friends, I told John Curgenven I should probably "put
+him in a book"&mdash;if he had no objection. To which he answered with his
+usual composure, "No, he did not think it would harm him." He evidently
+considered "writing a book" was a very inferior sort of trade.)</p>
+
+<p>But looking at him, one could not help speculating as to how far the
+legend of King Arthur had been really true, and whether the type of
+man which Tennyson has preserved&mdash;or created&mdash;in this his "own ideal
+knight," did once exist, and still exists, in a modified modern form,
+throughout Cornwall. A fancy upon which we then only argued; now I, at
+least, am inclined to believe it.</p>
+
+<p>"There is Lord Brougham's head, his wig and his turn-up nose, you can
+see all distinctly. At least, you could if there was light enough."</p>
+
+<p>But there was not light, for the sun was setting, and the moon only
+just rising. Black looked the heaving sea, except where rings of white
+foam encircled each group of rocks, blacker still. And blackest of all
+looked the iron-bound coast, sharp against the amber western sky.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's Kynance Cove, and the Gull Rock and Asparagus Island.
+Shall we row there? It's only about two miles."</p>
+
+<p>Two miles there, and two back, through this angry sea, and then to land
+in the dim light about 9 p.m.! Courage failed us. We did not own this;
+we merely remarked that we would rather see Kynance by daylight, but I
+think each of us felt a sensation of relief when the boat's head was
+turned homewards.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet how beautiful it all was! Many a night afterwards we watched
+the same scene, but never lovelier than that night, the curved line
+of coast traceable distinctly up to Mount's Bay, and then the long
+peninsula which they told us was the Land's End, stretching out into
+the horizon, where sea and sky met in a mist of golden light, through
+which the sun was slowly dropping right from the sky into the sea.
+Beyond was a vague cloud-land, which might be the fair land of Lyonesse
+itself, said still to lie there submerged, with all its cities and
+towers and forests; or the "island-valley of Avillion," whither Arthur
+sailed with the three queens to be healed of his "grievous wound," and
+whence he is to come again some day. Popular superstition still expects
+him, and declares that he haunts this coast even now in the shape of a
+Cornish chough.</p>
+
+<p>Modern ghosts, too, exist, decidedly more alarming.</p>
+
+<p>"Look up there, ladies, that green slope is Pistol Meadow. Nobody likes
+to walk there after dark. Other things walk as well."</p>
+
+<p>"What things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two hundred and more of foreign sailors, whose ship went to pieces in
+the little cove below. They're buried under the green mounds you see.
+Out of a crew of seven hundred only two men were washed ashore alive,
+and they were in irons, which the captain had put on them because
+they said he was going too near in shore. It was called Pistol Meadow
+because most of 'em were found with pistols in their hands, which may
+have been true or may not, since it happened more than a hundred years
+ago. However, there are the green mounds, you see, and Lizard folk
+don't much like passing the place after dark."</p>
+
+<p>"But you?"</p>
+
+<p>John Curgenven smiled. "Oh, us and the coast-guards! Us goes anywhere,
+at all hours, and never meets nothing. D'ye see those white marks all
+along the coast every few yards? They're rocks, kept white-washed, to
+guide the men of dark nights between here and Kynance. It's a ticklish
+path, when all's as black as pitch, with a stiff wind blowing."</p>
+
+<p>I should think it was! One almost shuddered at the idea, and then
+felt proud of the steady heads and cool courage of these coast-guard
+men&mdash;always the pick of the service, true Englishmen, fearless
+and faithful&mdash;the business of whose whole lives is to save other
+lives&mdash;that is, now that smuggling has abated, and those dreadful
+stories once current all along the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> coast of Cornwall have become
+mostly legends of the past. No tales of wreckers, or of fights between
+smugglers and revenue officers, reached our ears, but the stories of
+shipwrecks were endless. Every winter, and many times through the
+winter, some ghastly tragedy had happened. Every half-mile along this
+picturesque shore was recorded the place where some good ship went to
+pieces, often with the brief addendum, "all hands lost."</p>
+
+<p>"The sun's just setting. Look out for the Lizard Lights," called out
+Charles, who sat in the bow of the boat in faithful attendance upon his
+"ladies,"&mdash;another Knight of the Round Table in humble life&mdash;we met
+many such in Cornwall. "Look! There they are."</p>
+
+<p>And sure enough, the instant the sun's last spark was quenched in
+the sea, into which he dropped like a red round ball, out burst two
+substitute suns, and very fair substitutes too, making the poor little
+moon in the east of no importance whatever. The gleam of them extended
+far out upon the darkening ocean, and we could easily believe that
+their light was "equal to 20,000 candles," and that they were seen out
+at sea to a distance of twenty, some said even thirty, miles.</p>
+
+<p>"Except in a fog; and the fogs at the Lizard are very bad. Then you
+can see nothing, not even the Lights, but they keep sounding the
+fog-horn every minute or so. It works by the same machinery as works
+the Lights&mdash;a big steam-engine; you can hear it bum-bumming now, if you
+listen."</p>
+
+<p>So we could, a mysterious noise like that of a gigantic bumble-bee,
+coming across the water from that curious building, long and white,
+with its two towers and those great eyes in each of them, at either end.</p>
+
+<p>"They're wonderful bright;" said John Curgenven; "many's the time I've
+sat and read my newspaper by them a quarter of a mile off. They're seen
+through the blackest night, the blacker the brighter, seen through
+everything&mdash;except fog. Now, ladies, d'ye think you can jump ashore?"</p>
+
+<p>Some of us did, airily enough, though it required to choose your
+moment pretty cleverly so as to escape the incoming wave. And some of
+us&mdash;well, we accepted the inevitable, and were only too thankful to
+scramble anyhow, wet or dry, on terra firma.</p>
+
+<p>And then we had to ascend the zigzag path, slippery with loose stones,
+and uncertainly seen in the dim half-twilight, half-moonlight. At
+last we came out safe by the life-boat house, which we had noticed in
+passing, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> the slit in its door for "Contributions," and a notice
+below that the key was kept at such and such a house&mdash;I forget the
+man's name&mdash;"and at the Rectory."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="LIZARD" id="LIZARD"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 409px;">
+<img src="images/033.jpg" width="409" height="600" alt="THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT." />
+<div class="caption">THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>"Yes," said Curgenven, "in many places along this coast, when there's a
+wreck, and we're called out, the parson's generally at the head of us.
+Volunteers? Of course we're all volunteers, except the coast-guard, who
+are paid. But they're often glad enough of us and of our boats too. The
+life-boat isn't enough. They keep her here, the only place they can,
+but it's tough work running her down to the beach on a black winter's
+night, with a ship going to pieces before your eyes, as ships do here
+in no time. I've seen it myself&mdash;watched her strike, and in ten minutes
+there was not a bit of her left."</p>
+
+<p>We could well imagine it. Even on this calm evening the waves kept
+dashing themselves against every rock with a roar and a swell and a
+circle of boiling foam. What must it be on a stormy winter night, or
+through the deathly quiet of a white mist, with nothing visible or
+audible except the roar of the waters and the shriek of the fog-horn!</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's full time we were in-doors," suggested a practical and
+prudent little voice; "we can come again and see it in the daylight.
+Here's the road."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way you came, Miss," said Charles, "but I can take you a
+much shorter one on the top of the hedges"&mdash;or edges, we never quite
+knew which they were, though on the whole the letter <i>h</i> is tolerably
+well treated in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>These "hedges" were startling to any one not Cornish-born. In the
+Lizard district the divisions of land are made not by fences, but by
+walls, built in a peculiar fashion, half stones, half earth, varying
+from six to ten feet high, and about two feet broad. On the top of this
+narrow giddy path, fringed on either side by deceitful grass, you are
+expected to walk!&mdash;in fact, are obliged to walk, for there is often no
+other road. There was none here.</p>
+
+<p>I looked round in despair. Once upon a time I could have walked upon
+walls as well as anybody, but now&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>"I'll help you, ma'am; and I'm sure you can manage it," said Charles
+consolingly. "It's only three-quarters of a mile."</p>
+
+<p>Three-quarters of a mile along a two-foot path on the top of a wall,
+and in this deceitful light, when one false step would entail a certain
+fall. And at my age one doesn't fall exactly like a feather or an
+india-rubber ball.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ma'am, if you go slow and steady, with me before and Curgenven behind,
+you'll <i>not</i> fall."</p>
+
+<p>Nor did I. I record it with gratitude to those two honest men&mdash;true
+<i>gentlemen</i>, such as I have found at times in all ranks&mdash;who never
+once grumbled or relaxed in their care of their tardy and troublesome
+charge; one instance more of that kindly courtesy which it does any
+man good to offer, and which any woman, "lady" though she be, may feel
+proud to receive.</p>
+
+<p>When we reached "home," as we had already begun to call it, a smiling
+face and a comfortable tea justified the word. And when we retired,
+a good deal fatigued, but quite happy, we looked out upon the night,
+where the fiery stream of the Lizard Lights was contending with the
+brightest of harvest moons. It was a hopeful ending of our second day.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="FISH" id="FISH"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/036.jpg" width="600" height="459" alt="" />
+<div class="caption">CORNISH FISH.</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_THIRD" id="DAY_THE_THIRD">DAY THE THIRD</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">"And</span> a beautiful day it is, ladies, though it won't do for Kynance."</p>
+
+<p>Only 8 a.m., yet there stood the faithful Charles, hat in hand, having
+heard that his ladies were at breakfast, and being evidently anxious
+that they should not lose an hour of him and his carriage, which were
+both due at Falmouth to-night. For this day was Saturday, and we were
+sending him home for Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>"As I found out last night, the tide won't suit for Kynance till
+Wednesday or Thursday, and you'll be too tired to walk much to-day.
+I've been thinking it all over. Suppose I were to drive you to Kennack
+Sands, back by the serpentine works to Cadgwith, and home to dinner?
+Then after dinner I'll give the horse a rest for two hours, and take
+you to Mullion; we can order tea at Mary Mundy's, and go on to the cove
+as far as I can get with the carriage. I'll leave it at the farm and be
+in time to help you over the rocks to see the caves, run ahead and meet
+you again with the carriage, and drive you back to Mary Mundy's. You
+can have tea and be home in the moonlight before nine o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"And you?" we asked, a good deal bewildered by this carefully-outlined
+plan and all the strange names of places and people, yet not a little
+touched by the kindly way in which we were "taken in and done for" by
+our faithful squire of dames.</p>
+
+<p>"Me, ma'am? Oh, after an hour or two's rest the horse can start
+again&mdash;say at midnight, and be home by daylight. Or we could go to bed
+and be up early at four, and still get to Falmouth by eight, in time
+for the church work. Don't you trouble about us, we'll manage. He" (the
+other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and four-footed half of the "we") "is a capital animal, and he'd
+get much harder work than this if he was at home."</p>
+
+<p>So we decided to put ourselves entirely in the hands of Charles,
+who seemed to have our interest so much at heart, and yet evinced a
+tenderness over his horse that is not too common among hired drivers.
+We promised to be ready in half an hour, so as to waste nothing of this
+lovely day, in which we had determined to enjoy ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Who could help it? It was delightful to wake up early and refreshed,
+and come down to this sunshiny, cheerful breakfast-table, where, though
+nothing was grand, all was thoroughly comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you're very kind, ladies, to be so pleased with everything,"
+apologised our bright-looking handmaiden; "and since you really wish
+to keep this room"&mdash;a very homely parlour which we had chosen in
+preference to a larger one, because it looked on the sea&mdash;"I only wish
+things was better for you; still, if you can make shift&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Well, if travellers cannot "make shift" with perfectly clean tidy
+rooms, well-cooked plain food, and more than civil, actually kindly,
+attendance, they ought to be ashamed of themselves! So we declared we
+would settle down in the evidently despised little parlour.</p>
+
+<p>It was not an æsthetic apartment, certainly. The wall-paper and carpet
+would have driven Morris and Co. nearly frantic; the furniture&mdash;mere
+chairs and a table&mdash;belonged "to the year one"&mdash;but (better than many
+modern chairs and tables) you could sit down upon the first and dine
+upon the second, in safety. There was no sofa, so we gladly accepted
+an offered easy-chair, and felt that all really useful things were now
+ours.</p>
+
+<p>But the ornamental? There was a paper arrangement in the grate, and
+certain vases on the chimney-piece which literally made our hair stand
+on end! After a private consultation as to how far we might venture,
+without wounding the feelings of our landlady, we mildly suggested that
+"perhaps we could do without these ornaments." All we wanted in their
+stead were a few jars, salt-jars or jam-pots, in which to arrange our
+wild flowers, of which yesterday the girls had gathered a quantity.</p>
+
+<p>The exchange was accepted, though with some surprise. But when, half
+an hour afterwards, the parlour appeared quite transformed, decorated
+in every available corner with brilliant autumn flowers&mdash;principally
+yellow&mdash;intermixed with the lovely Cornish heath; when, on some excuse
+or other, the hideous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> "ornament for your fire-stoves" was abolished,
+and the grate filled with a mass of green fern and grey sea-holly&mdash;I
+know no combination more exquisite both as to colour and form&mdash;then we
+felt that we could survive, at least for a week, even if shut up within
+this humble room, innocent of the smallest attraction as regarded art,
+music, or literature.</p>
+
+<p>But without doors? There Nature beat Art decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>What a world it was! Literally swimming in sunshine, from the sparkling
+sea in the distance, to the beds of marigolds close by&mdash;huge marigolds,
+double and single, mingled with carnations that filled the air with
+rich autumnal scent, all the more delicious because we feel it is
+autumnal, and therefore cannot last. It was a very simple garden,
+merely a square grass-plot with a walk and a border round it, and its
+only flowers were these marigolds, carnations, with quantities of
+mignonette, and bounded all round with a hedge of tamarisk; yet I think
+we shall always remember it as if it were the Garden of Armida&mdash;without
+a Tancred to spoil it!</p>
+
+<p>For&mdash;under the rose&mdash;one of the pleasures of our tour was that it was
+so exclusively feminine. We could feed as we liked, dress as we liked,
+talk to whom we liked, without any restriction, from the universal
+masculine sense of dignity and decorum in travelling. We felt ourselves
+unconventional, incognito, able to do exactly as we chose, provided we
+did nothing wrong.</p>
+
+<p>So off we drove through Lizard Town into the "wide, wide world;" and
+I repeat, what a world it was! Full filled with sunlight, and with an
+atmosphere so fresh and bracing, yet so dry and mild and balmy, that
+every breath was a pleasure to draw. We had felt nothing like it since
+we stood on the top of the highest peak in the Island of Capri, looking
+down on the blue Mediterranean. But this sea was equally blue, the sky
+equally clear, yet it was home&mdash;dear old England, so often misprized.
+Yet, I believe, when one does get really fine English weather, there is
+nothing like it in the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>The region we traversed was not picturesque&mdash;neither mountains, nor
+glens, nor rivers, nor woods; all was level and bare, for the road lay
+mostly inland, until we came out upon Kennack Sands.</p>
+
+<p>They might have been the very "yellow sands" where Shakespeare's elves
+were bidden to "take hands" and "foot it featly here and there."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> You
+might almost have searched for the sea-maids' footsteps along the
+smooth surface where the long Atlantic waves crept harmlessly in,
+making a glittering curve, and falling with a gentle "thud"&mdash;the only
+sound in the solitary bay, until all at once we caught voices and
+laughter, and from among some rock, emerged a party of girls.</p>
+
+<p>They had evidently come in a cart, which took up its station beside
+our carriage, laden with bundles which looked uncommonly like bathing
+gowns; and were now seeking a convenient dressing-room&mdash;one of
+those rock-parlours, roofed with serpentine and floored with silver
+sand&mdash;which are the sole bathing establishments here.</p>
+
+<p>All along the Cornish coast the bathing is delightful&mdash;when you can
+get it; but sometimes for miles and miles the cliffs rise in a huge
+impregnable wall, without a single break. Then perhaps there comes a
+sudden cleft in the rock, a green descent, possibly with a rivulet
+trickling through it, and leading to a sheltered cove or a sea-cave,
+accessible only at low water, but one of the most delicious little
+nooks that could be imagined. Kynance, we were told, with its "kitchen"
+and "drawing-room," was the most perfect specimen of the kind; but
+Kennack was sufficiently lovely. With all sorts of fun, shouting, and
+laughter, the girls disappeared to their evidently familiar haunts, to
+reappear as merry mermaids playing about in a crystalline sea.</p>
+
+<p>A most tantalising sight to my two, who vowed never again to attempt
+a day's excursion without taking bathing dresses, towels, and the
+inevitable fish-line, to be tied round the waist,&mdash;with a mother
+holding the other end. For we had been warned against these long and
+strong Atlantic waves, the recoil of which takes you off your feet even
+in calm weather. As bathing must generally be done at low water, to
+ensure a sandy floor and a comfortable cave, it is easy enough to be
+swept out of one's depth; and the cleverest swimmer, if tossed about
+among these innumerable rocks circled round by eddies of boiling white
+water, would have small chance of returning with whole bones, or of
+returning at all.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, along this Cornish coast, life and death seem very near
+together. Every pleasure carries with it a certain amount of risk; the
+utmost caution is required both on land and sea, and I cannot advise
+either rash or nervous people to go travelling in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>Bathing being impracticable, we consoled ourselves with ascending the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+sandy hillock, which bounded one side of the bay, and sat looking from
+it towards the coast-line eastwards.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="POLTESCO" id="POLTESCO"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/041.jpg" width="600" height="600" alt="POLTESCO." />
+<div class="caption">POLTESCO.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>What a strange peace there is in a solitary shore, an empty sea, for
+the one or two white dots of silent ships seemed rather to add to than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+diminish its loneliness&mdash;lonelier in sunshine, I think, than even in
+storm. The latter gives a sense of human life, of struggle and of
+pain; while the former is all repose, the bright but solemn repose of
+infinity or eternity.</p>
+
+<p>But these thoughts were for older heads; the only idea of the young
+heads&mdash;uncommonly steady they must have been!&mdash;was of scrambling
+into the most inaccessible places, and getting as near to the sea as
+possible without actually tumbling into it. After a while the land
+attracted them in turn, and they came back with their hands full of
+flowers, some known, some unknown; great bunches of honeysuckle,
+curious sand-plants, and cliff-plants; also water-plants, which fringed
+a little rivulet that ran into the bay, while, growing everywhere
+abundantly, was the lovely grey-green cringo, or sea-holly.</p>
+
+<p>All these treasures, to make the parlour pretty, required much
+ingenuity to carry home safely, the sun withered them so fast. But
+there was the pleasure of collecting.</p>
+
+<p>We could willingly have stayed here all day&mdash;how natural is that wish
+of poor young Shelley, that in every pretty place he saw he might
+remain "for ever"!&mdash;but the forenoon was passing, and we had much to
+see.</p>
+
+<p>"Poltesco, everybody goes to Poltesco," observed the patient Charles.</p>
+
+<p>So of course we went there too. At Poltesco are the principal
+serpentine works&mdash;the one commerce of the district. The monotonous hum
+of its machinery mingled oddly with the murmur of a trout-stream which
+ran through the pretty little valley, crossed by a wooden bridge, where
+a solitary angler stood fishing in imperturbable content.</p>
+
+<p>There were only about a dozen workmen visible; one of whom came
+forward and explained to us the mode of work, afterwards taking us
+to the show-room, which contained everything possible to be made of
+serpentine, from mantelpieces and tombstones, down to brooches and
+studs. Very delicate and beautiful was the workmanship; the forms of
+some of the things&mdash;vases and candlesticks especially&mdash;were quite
+Pompeian. In truth, throughout Cornwall, we often came upon shapes,
+Roman or Greek, proving how even yet relics of its early masters or
+colonisers linger in this western corner of England.</p>
+
+<p>In its inhabitants too. When, as we passed, more than one busy
+workman lifted up his head for a moment, we noticed faces almost
+classic in type, quite different from the bovine, agricultural
+Hodge of the midland counties.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> In manner different likewise.
+There was neither stupidity nor servility, but a sort of dignified
+independence. No pressing to buy, no looking out for gratuities,
+only a kindly politeness, which did not fail even when we departed,
+taking only a few little ornaments. We should have liked to carry off
+a cart-load&mdash;especially two enormous vases and a chimney-piece&mdash;but
+travellers have limits to luggage, and purse as well.</p>
+
+<p>Pretty Poltesco! we left it with regret, but we were in the hands
+of the ever-watchful Charles, anxious that we should see as much as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>"The driving-road goes far inland, but there's a splendid cliff-walk
+from Poltesco to Cadgwith direct. The young ladies might do it with a
+guide&mdash;here he is, a man I know, quite reliable. They'll walk it easily
+in half an hour. But you, ma'am, I think you'd better come with me."</p>
+
+<p>No fighting against fate. So I put my "chickens" in safe charge, meekly
+re-entered the carriage, and drove, humbly and alone, across a flat
+dull country, diversified here and there by a few cottages, politely
+called a village&mdash;the two villages of Ruan Minor and Ruan Major. I
+afterwards found that they were not without antiquarian interest, that
+I might have gone to examine a curious old church, well, and oratory,
+supposed to have been inhabited by St. Rumon. But we had left the
+guide-book at home, with the so longed-for bathing gowns, and Charles
+was not of archæological mind, so I heard nothing and investigated
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Except, indeed, numerous huge hand-bills, posted on barn doors and
+gates, informing the inhabitants that an Exhibition of Fine Arts,
+admittance one shilling, was on view close by. Charles was most anxious
+I should stop and visit it, saying it was "very fine." But as within
+the last twelvemonth I had seen the Royal Academy, Grosvenor Gallery,
+and most of the galleries and museums in Italy, the Fine Art Exhibition
+of Ruan Minor was not overwhelmingly attractive. However, not to wound
+the good Cornishman, who was evidently proud of it, I explained that,
+on the whole, I preferred nature to art.</p>
+
+<p>And how grand nature was in this fishing-village of Cadgwith, to which
+after a long round, we came at last!</p>
+
+<p><a name="CADGWITH" id="CADGWITH"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 516px;">
+<img src="images/044.jpg" width="516" height="600" alt="CADGWITH COVE." />
+<div class="caption">CADGWITH COVE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nestled snugly in a bend of the coast which shelters it from north
+and east, leaving it open to southern sunshine, while another curve
+of land protects it from the dense fogs which are so common at the
+Lizard, Cadgwith is, summer and winter, one of the pleasantest nooks
+imaginable. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> climate, Charles told me, is so mild, that invalids
+often settle down in the one inn&mdash;a mere village inn externally, but
+very comfortable. And, as I afterwards heard at Lizard Town, the parson
+and his wife&mdash;"didn't I know them?" and I felt myself rather looked
+down upon because I did not know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> them&mdash;are the kindest of people,
+who take pleasure in looking after the invalids, rich or poor. "Yes,"
+Charles considered Cadgwith was a nice place to winter in, "only just a
+trifle dull."</p>
+
+<p>Probably so, to judge by the interest which, even in this
+tourist-season, our carriage excited, as we wound down one side and
+up another of the ravine in which the village is built, with a small
+fishing-station at the bottom, rather painfully odoriferous. The
+fisher-wives came to their doors, the old fisher-men stood, hands in
+pockets, the roly-poly healthy fisher-children stopped playing, to
+turn round and stare. In these parts everybody stares at everybody,
+and generally everybody speaks to everybody&mdash;a civil "good-day" at any
+rate, sometimes more.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a heavy pull for you," said a sympathetic old woman, who had
+watched me leave the carriage and begin mounting the cliff towards the
+Devil's Frying-pan&mdash;the principal thing to be seen at Cadgwith. She
+followed me, and triumphantly passed me, though she had to carry a bag
+of potatoes on her back. I wondered if her feeling was pity or envy
+towards another old person who had to carry nothing but her own self.
+Which, alas! was enough!</p>
+
+<p>She and I sat down together on the hill-side and had a chat, while I
+waited for the two little black dots which I could see moving round the
+opposite headland. She gave me all kinds of information, in the simple
+way peculiar to country folk, whose innocent horizon comprises the
+whole world, which, may be, is less pleasant than the little world of
+Cadgwith. Then we parted for ever and aye.</p>
+
+<p>The Devil's Frying-pan is a wonderful sight. Imagine a natural
+amphitheatre two acres in extent, inclosed by a semi-circular slope
+about two hundred feet high, covered with grass and flowers and low
+bushes. Outside, the wide, open sea, which pours in to the shingly
+beach at the bottom through an arch of serpentine, the colouring of
+which, and of the other rocks surrounding it, is most exquisite,
+varying from red to green, with sometimes a tint of grey. Were Cadgwith
+a little nearer civilisation, what a show-place it would become!</p>
+
+<p>But happily civilisation leaves it alone. The tiny farm-house on the
+hill-side near the Frying-pan looked, within and without, much as it
+must have looked for the last hundred years; and the ragged, unkempt,
+tongue-tied little girl, from whom we succeeded in getting a drink
+of milk in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> tumbler which she took five minutes to search for, had
+certainly never been to a Board School. She investigated the penny
+which we deposited as if it were a great natural curiosity rarely
+attainable, and she gazed after us as we climbed the stile leading to
+the Frying-pan as if wondering what on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> earth could tempt respectable
+people, who had nothing to do, into such a very uncomfortable place.</p>
+
+<p><a name="DEVIL" id="DEVIL"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 476px;">
+<img src="images/046.jpg" width="476" height="600" alt="THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH." />
+<div class="caption">THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Uncomfortable, certainly, as we sat with our feet stuck in the long
+grass to prevent slipping down the slope&mdash;a misadventure which would
+have been, to say the least, awkward. Those boiling waves, roaring each
+after each through the arch below; and those jagged rocks, round which
+innumerable sea-birds were flying&mdash;one could quite imagine that were
+any luckless vessel to find itself in or near the Frying-pan, it would
+never get out again.</p>
+
+<p>To meditative minds there is something very startling in the perpetual
+contrast between the summer tourist-life, so cheerful and careless,
+and the winter life of the people here, which must be so full of
+privations; for one half the year there is nothing to do, no market
+for serpentine, and almost no fishing possible: they have to live
+throughout the dark days upon the hay made while the sun shines.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," said one of the Lizard folk, whom I asked if there was much
+drunkenness thereabout, for I had seen absolutely none; "no, us don't
+drink; us can't afford it. Winter's a bad time for we&mdash;sometimes for
+four months a man doesn't earn a halfpenny. He has to save in summer,
+or he'd starve the rest of the year."</p>
+
+<p>Which apparently is not altogether bad for him. I have seldom seen,
+in any part of England or Scotland, such an honest, independent,
+respectable race as the working people on this coast, and indeed
+throughout Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>We left with regret the pretty village, resolving to come back again
+in a day or two; it was barely three miles from the Lizard, though the
+difference in climate was said to be so great. And then we drove back
+across the bleak down and through the keen "hungry" sea-air, which made
+dinner a matter of welcome importance. And without dwelling too much
+on the delights of the flesh&mdash;very mild delights after all&mdash;I will say
+that the vegetables grown in the garden, and the grapes in the simple
+green-house beside it, were a credit to Cornwall, especially so near
+the sea-coast.</p>
+
+<p>We had just time to dine, repose a little, and communicate our address
+to our affectionate friends at home&mdash;so as to link ourselves for a few
+brief days with the outside world&mdash;when appeared the punctual Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid, ladies, he's had a good rest,"&mdash;this was the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+important animal about whose well-being we were naturally anxious.
+Charles patted his shoulder, and a little person much given to deep
+equine affections tenderly stroked his nose. He seemed sensible of the
+attention and of what was expected from him, and started off, as lively
+as if he had been idle for a week, across the Lizard Down and Pradenack
+Down to Mullion.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope Mary will be at home," said Charles, turning round as usual to
+converse; "she'll be sure to make you comfortable. Of course you've
+heard of Mary Mundy?"</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately we had. There was in one of our guide-books a most
+glowing description of the Old Inn, and also an extract from a poem,
+apostrophising the charms of Mary Mundy. When we said we knew the
+enthusiastic Scotch Professor who had written it, we felt that we rose
+a step in the estimation of Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"And Mary will be so pleased to see anybody who knows the
+gentleman"&mdash;in Cornwall the noted Greek Professor was merely "the
+gentleman." "She's got his poem in her visitors' book and his portrait
+in her album. I do hope Mary will be at home."</p>
+
+<p>But fate was against us. When we reached Mullion and drove up to the
+door of the Old Inn, there darted out to meet us, not Mary, but an
+individual concerning whom Fame has been unjustly silent.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only Mary's brother," said Charles, with an accent of deep
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>But as the honest man who had apparently gone through life as "Mary's
+brother" stood patting our horse and talking to our driver, with both
+of whom he seemed on terms of equal intimacy, his welcome to ourselves
+was such a mixture of cordiality and despair that we could scarcely
+keep from laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary's gone to Helstone, ladies; her would have been delighted, but
+her's gone marketing to Helstone. I hope her'll be back soon, for I
+doesn't know what to do without she. The house is full, and there's a
+party of eleven come to tea, and actually wanting it sent down to them
+at the Cove. They won't get it though. And you shall get your tea,
+ladies, even if they have to go without."</p>
+
+<p>We expressed our gratitude, and left Charles to arrange all for us,
+which he did in the most practical way.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And you think Mary may be back at six?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her said her would, and I hope her will," answered the brother
+despondently. "Her's very seldom out; us can't get on at all without
+she."</p>
+
+<p>This, and several more long and voluble speeches given in broad
+Cornish, with the true Cornish confusion of pronouns, and with an air
+of piteous perplexity&mdash;nay, abject helplessness, the usual helplessness
+of man without woman&mdash;proved too much for our risible nerves. We
+maintained a decorous gravity till we had driven away, and then fell
+into shouts of laughter&mdash;the innocent laughter of happy-minded people
+over the smallest joke or the mildest species of fun.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, ladies, you'll get your tea all right. If Mary said she'd
+be back at six, back she'll be. And you'll find a capital tea waiting
+for you; there isn't a more comfortable inn in all Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>Which, we afterwards found, was saying a great deal.</p>
+
+<p>Mullion Cove is a good mile from Mullion village, and as we jolted over
+the rough road I was remorseful over both carriage and horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, ma'am, he's used to it. Often and often he comes here with
+pic-nic parties, all the way from Falmouth. I'll put him in at the
+farm, and be down with you at the Cove directly. You'll find the rocks
+pretty bad walking, but there's a cave which you ought to see. We'll
+try it."</p>
+
+<p>There was no resisting the way the kindly young Cornishman thus
+identified himself with our interests, and gave himself all sorts
+of extra trouble on our account. And when after a steep and not too
+savoury descent&mdash;the cove being used as a fish cellar&mdash;we found
+ourselves on the beach, shut in by those grand rocks of serpentine,
+with Mullion Island lying ahead about a quarter of a mile off, we felt
+we had not come here for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The great feature of Mullion Cove is its sea-caves, of which there are
+two, one on the beach, the other round the point, and only accessible
+at low water. Now, we saw the tide was rising fast.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll have to wade; I told them they would have to wade!" cried an
+anxious voice behind me; and "I was ware," as ancient chroniclers say,
+of the presence of another "old hen," the same whom we had noticed
+conducting her brood of chickens, or ducklings&mdash;they seemed more like
+the latter now&mdash;to bathe on Kennack Sands.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they have been away more than half an hour, all my children
+except this one"&mdash;a small boy who looked as if he wished he had gone
+too. "They would go, though I warned them they would have to wade. And
+there they are, just going into the cave. One, two, three, four, five,
+six," counting the black specks that were seen moving on, or rather in,
+the water. "Oh dear, they've <i>all</i> gone in! I wish they were safe out
+again."</p>
+
+<p><a name="MULLION" id="MULLION"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/050.jpg" width="600" height="424" alt="MULLION COVE, CORNWALL." />
+<div class="caption">MULLION COVE, CORNWALL.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, in the midst of her distress, the benevolent lady stopped
+to give me a helping hand into the near cave, a long, dark passage,
+with light at either end. My girls had already safely threaded it and
+come triumphantly out at the other side. But what with the darkness and
+the uncertain footing over what felt like beds of damp seaweed, with
+occasional stones, through which one had to grope every inch of one's
+way, my heart rather misgave me, until I was cheered by the apparition
+of the faithful Charles.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't go back, ma'am, you'll be so sorry afterwards. I'll strike a
+light and help you. Slow and steady, you'll come to no harm. And it's
+beautiful when you get out at the other end."</p>
+
+<p>So it was. The most exquisite little nook; where you could have
+imagined a mermaid came daily to comb her hair; one can easily believe
+in mermaids or anything else in Cornwall. What a charming dressing-room
+she would have, shut in on three sides by those great walls of
+serpentine, and in front the glittering sea, rolling in upon a floor of
+the loveliest silver sand.</p>
+
+<p>But the only mermaid there was an artist's wife, standing beside her
+husband's easel, at which he was painting away so earnestly that he
+scarcely noticed us. Very picturesque he looked, and she too, in her
+rough serge dress, with her pretty bare feet and ankles, the shoes and
+stockings lying in a corner as if they had not been worn for hours.
+Why should they be? they were quite unnecessary on those soft sands,
+and their owner stood and talked with me as composedly as if it were
+the height of the fashion to go barefoot. And far more than anything
+concerning herself, she seemed interested in my evident interest in the
+picture, which promised to be a remarkably good one, and which, if I
+see it on the R. A. walls next year will furnish my only clue to the
+identity of the couple, or theirs to mine.</p>
+
+<p>But the tide was fast advancing; they began to take down the easel, and
+I remembered that the narrow winding cave was our only way out from
+this rock-inclosed fairy paradise to the prosaic beach.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, they are wading ashore up to the knees! And we shall have to
+wade too if we don't make haste back."</p>
+
+<p>So cried the perplexed mother of the six too-adventurous ducklings.
+But mine, more considerate, answered me from the rocks where they were
+scrambling, and helped me back through the cave into safe quarters,
+where we stood watching the waders with mingled excitement and&mdash;envy?</p>
+
+<p>Alas! I can still recall the delicious sensation of paddling across the
+smooth sea-sand, and of walking up the bed of a Highland burn. But "Oh!
+the change twixt Now and Then," I sat calmly on a stone, dry-shod; as
+was best. Still, is it not a benign law of nature, that the things we
+are no longer able to do, we almost cease to wish to do? Perhaps even
+the last cessation of all things will come naturally at the end, as
+naturally as we turn round and go to sleep at night?</p>
+
+<p>But it was not night yet. I am proud to think how high and steep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> was
+the cliff we re-ascended, all three of us, and from which we stood
+and looked at sky and sea. Such a sea and such a sky: amber clear, so
+that one could trace the whole line of coast&mdash;Mount's Bay, with St.
+Michael's Mount dotted in the midst of it, and even the Land's End,
+beyond which the sun, round and red, was just touching the top of the
+waves. We should have liked to watch him drop below them&mdash;that splendid
+sea-sunset of which one never tires, but we had some distance to walk,
+and we began to rejoice in the prospect of Mary Mundy's tea.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go on ahead and have the carriage ready," said the ever
+thoughtful Charles. "You can't miss your way, ladies. Just follow the
+hedges"&mdash;that tempting aerial promenade, to which we were now getting
+accustomed, becoming veritable Blondins in petticoats&mdash;"then cross the
+cornfield; and take to the hedges again. You'll be at the farm-yard
+directly."</p>
+
+<p>Not quite&mdash;for we lingered, tempted by the abundance of corn-flowers,
+of which we gathered, not handfuls but armfuls. When we reached
+it, what a picture of an English farm-yard it was! With a regular
+old-fashioned English milk-maid&mdash;such as Izaak Walton would have loved
+to describe&mdash;sitting amidst her shining pails, her cows standing round
+her, meekly waiting their turn. Sleek, calm creatures they were,
+Juno-eyed and soft-skinned&mdash;of that peculiar shade of grey which I
+have seen only in Cornwall. And, being rather a connoisseur in cows,
+I have often amused myself to notice how the kine of each country
+have their own predominant colour, which seems to harmonise with its
+special landscape. The curious yellow tint of Highland cattle, the red,
+white, or brown of those of the midland counties, and the delicate
+grey of Cornish cows, alike suit the scene around them, and belong to
+it as completely as the dainty little Swiss herds do to their Alpine
+pastures, or the large, mild, cream-coloured oxen to the Campagna at
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>But we had to tear ourselves away from this Arcadia, for in the midst
+of the farm-yard appeared the carriage and Charles. So we jolted
+back&mdash;it seemed as if Cornish carriages and horses could go anywhere
+and over everything&mdash;to the Old Inn and Mary Mundy.</p>
+
+<p>She <i>had</i> come home, and everything was right. As we soon found,
+everything and everybody was accustomed to be put to rights by Miss
+Mary Mundy.</p>
+
+<p>She stood at the door to greet us&mdash;a bright, brown-faced little
+woman with the reddest of cheeks and the blackest of eyes; I have no
+hesitation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> in painting her portrait here, as she is, so to speak,
+public property, known and respected far and wide.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="CRABBER" id="CRABBER"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/053.jpg" width="600" height="403" alt="A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY." />
+<div class="caption">A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>"Delighted to see you, ladies; delighted to see any friends of the
+Professor's; and I hope you enjoyed the Cove, and that you're all
+hungry, and will find your tea to your liking. It's the best we can do;
+we're very homely folk here, but we try to make people comfortable,"
+and so on and so on, a regular stream of chatty conversation, given in
+the strongest Cornish, with the kindliest of Cornish hearts, as she
+ushered us into a neat little parlour at the back of the inn.</p>
+
+<p>There lay spread, not one of your dainty afternoon teas, with two or
+three wafery slices of bread and butter, but a regular substantial
+meal. Cheerful candles&mdash;of course in serpentine candlesticks&mdash;were
+already lit, and showed us the bright teapot full of that welcome drink
+to weary travellers, hot, strong and harmless; the gigantic home-baked
+loaf, which it seemed sacrilegious to have turned into toast; the rich,
+yellow butter&mdash;I am sure those lovely cows had something to do with
+it, and also with the cream, so thick that the spoon could almost have
+stood upright in it. Besides, there was a quantity of that delicious
+clotted cream, which here accompanies every meal and of which I had
+vainly tried to get the receipt, but was answered with polite scorn,
+"Oh, ma'am, it would be of no use to <i>you</i>: Cornish cream can only be
+made from Cornish cows!"</p>
+
+<p>Whether this remarkable fact in natural history be true or not, let me
+record the perfection of Mary Mundy's cream, which, together with her
+jam and her marmalade, was a refection worthy of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>She pressed us again and again to "have some more," and her charge for
+our magnificent meal was as small as her gratitude was great for the
+slight addition we made to it.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll not say no, ma'am, it'll come in handy; us has got a young
+niece to bring up&mdash;my brother and me&mdash;please'm. Yes, I'm glad you came,
+and I hope you'll come again, please'm. And if you see the Professor,
+you'll tell him he's not forgotten, please'm."</p>
+
+<p>This garniture of "please'm" at the end of every sentence reminded
+us of the Venetian "probbedirla," <i>per ubbedirla</i>, with which our
+gondolier Giovanna used to amuse us, often dragging it in in the oddest
+way. "Yes, the Signora will get a beautiful day, probbedirla," or "My
+wife has just lost her baby, probbedirla." Mary Mundy's "please'm"
+often came in with equal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> incongruity, and her voluble tongue ran on
+nineteen to the dozen; but her talk was so shrewd and her looks so
+pleasant&mdash;once, no doubt, actually pretty, and still comely enough for
+a middle-aged woman&mdash;that we departed, fully agreeing with her admiring
+Professor that</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"The brightest thing on Cornish land</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is the face of Miss Mary Mundy."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Recrossing Pradenack down in the dim light of a newly-risen moon,
+everything looked so solitary and ghostly that we started to see moving
+from behind a furz-bush, a mysterious figure, which crossed the road
+slowly, and stood waiting for us. Was it man or ghost, or&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Only a donkey! A ridiculous grey donkey. It might have been Tregeagle
+himself&mdash;Tregeagle, the grim mad-demon of Cornish tradition, once a
+dishonest steward, who sold his soul to the devil, and is doomed to
+keep on emptying Dozmare Pool, near St. Neots (the same mere wherein
+Excalibur was thrown), with a limpet-shell; and to spend his nights in
+other secluded places balancing interminable accounts, which are always
+just sixpence wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Tregeagle! I fear some of us, weak in arithmetic, had a secret
+sympathy for him! But we never met him&mdash;nor anything worse than that
+spectral donkey, looming large and placid against the level horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Soon, "the stars came out by twos and threes,"&mdash;promising a fine night
+and finer morning, during which, while we were comfortably asleep,
+our good horse and man would be driving across this lonely region to
+Falmouth, in time to take the good people to church on Sunday morning.</p>
+
+<p>"And we'll do it, too&mdash;don't you be anxious about us, ladies," insisted
+Charles. "I'll feed him well, and groom him well. I likes to take care
+of a good horse, and you'll see, he'll take no harm. I'll be back when
+you want me, at the week's end, or perhaps before then, with some party
+or other&mdash;we're always coming to the Lizard&mdash;and I'll just look in and
+see how you're getting on, and how you liked Kynance. But take care of
+the tide."</p>
+
+<p>We thanked our kindly charioteer, bade him and his horse good-bye,
+wished him a pleasant journey through the moonlight, which was every
+minute growing more beautiful, then went indoors to supper&mdash;no! supper
+would have been an insult to Mary Mundy's tea&mdash;to bed.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_FOURTH" id="DAY_THE_FOURTH">DAY THE FOURTH</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sunday</span>, September 4th&mdash;and we had started on September 1st; was it
+possible we had only been travelling four days?</p>
+
+<p>It felt like fourteen at least. We had seen so much, taken in so many
+new interests&mdash;nay, made several new friends. Already we began to plan
+another meeting with John Curgenven, who we found was a relation of
+our landlady, or of our bright-faced serving maiden, Esther&mdash;I forget
+which. But everybody seemed connected with everybody at the Lizard,
+and everybody took a friendly interest in everybody. The arrival of
+new lodgers in the "genteel" parlour which we had not appreciated
+was important information, and we were glad to hear that Charles had
+started about four in the morning quite cheery.</p>
+
+<p>And what a morning it was!&mdash;a typical Sabbath, a day of rest, a day
+to rejoice in. Strolling round the garden at eight o'clock, while the
+dew still lay thick on the grass, and glittered like diamonds on the
+autumnal spider-webs, even the flowers seemed to know it was Sunday,
+the mignonette bed to smell sweeter, the marigolds&mdash;yes! æsthetic
+fashion is right in its love for marigolds&mdash;burnt in a perfect blaze
+of golden colour and aromatic scent. The air was so mild that we could
+imagine summer was still with us: and the great wide circle of sea
+gleamed in the sunshine as if there never had been, never could be,
+such a thing as cloud or storm.</p>
+
+<p>Having ascertained that there was no service nearer than Grade, some
+miles off, until the afternoon, we "went to church" on the cliffs, in
+Pistol Meadow, beside the green mounds where the two hundred drowned
+sailors sleep in peace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="STEAM" id="STEAM"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 385px;">
+<img src="images/058.jpg" width="385" height="600" alt="STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT." />
+<div class="caption">STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And such a peaceful place! Absolutely solitary: not a living creature,
+not even a sheep came near me the whole morning:&mdash;and in the silence
+I could hear almost every word said by my young folks, searching for
+sea-treasures among the rocks and little pools far below. Westwards
+towards Kynance, and eastwards towards Landewednack&mdash;the church we were
+to go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> to in the afternoon&mdash;the cliff path was smooth and green, the
+short grass full of those curious dainty flowers, some of which were
+new to our eager eyes. At other times the road was so precipitous that
+we did not wonder at those carefully white-washed stones every few
+yards, which are the sole guide to the coastguard men of dark nights.
+Even in daylight, if the wind were high, or the footing slippery with
+rain, the cliff-walk from the Lizard to Kynance would be no joke to
+uninitiated feet.</p>
+
+<p>Now, all was so still that the wind never once fluttered the letter I
+was writing, and so warm that we were glad to escape the white glare of
+the wall of the Lizard Lights and sit in a cool hollow, watching sky
+and ocean, with now and then a sea-bird floating lazily between, a dark
+speck on the perpetual blue.</p>
+
+<p>"If it will only keep like this all week!" And, as we sat, we planned
+out each day, so as to miss nothing, and lose nothing&mdash;either of time
+or strength: doing enough, but never too much&mdash;as is often the fatal
+mistake of tourists. And then, following the grand law of travelling,
+to have one's "meals reg'lar"&mdash;we went indoors and dined. Afterwards in
+honour of the day</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">"that comes between</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Saturday and Monday,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>we dressed ourselves in all our best&mdash;very humble best it was!&mdash;to join
+the good people going to church at Landewednack.</p>
+
+<p>This, which in ancient Cornish means "the white-roofed church of St.
+Wednack"&mdash;hagiologists must decide who that individual was!&mdash;is the
+name of the parish to which the comparatively modern Lizard Town
+belongs. The church is in a very picturesque corner, close to the sea,
+though both it and the rectory are protected by a sudden dip in the
+ground, so that you see neither till you are close upon them. A fine
+Norman doorway, a curious hagioscope, and other points, interesting to
+archaeologists&mdash;also the neatest and prettiest of churchyards&mdash;make
+note-worthy this, the most southerly church in England. A fine old
+building, not spoiled though "restored." The modern open pews, and a
+modern memorial pulpit of serpentine, jarred less than might have been
+expected with the carefully-preserved remains of the past.</p>
+
+<p>In Landewednack church is said to have been preached the last sermon in
+Cornish. This was in 1678. Since, the ancient tongue has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> completely
+died out, and the people of King Arthur's country have become wholly
+English.</p>
+
+<p>Still, they are not the English of the midland and northern districts,
+but of a very different type and race. I have heard it said that a
+seaboard population, accustomed to wrestle with the dangers of the
+coast, to move about from place to place, see foreign countries, and
+carry on its business in the deep waters, is always more capable, more
+intelligent, as a whole, than an inland people, whether agricultural
+or manufacturing. It may be so: but certainly the aborigines of
+Lizard Town, who could easily be distinguished from the visitors&mdash;of
+whom there was yet a tolerable sprinkling&mdash;made a very interesting
+congregation; orderly, respectable, reverent; simple in dress and
+manner, yet many of them, both the men and women, exceedingly
+picturesque. That is, the old men and the old women: the younger ones
+aped modern fashion even here, in this out-of-the-way corner, and
+consequently did not look half so well as their seniors.</p>
+
+<p>I must name one more member of the congregation&mdash;a large black dog,
+who walked in and settled himself in the pew behind, where he behaved
+during half the service in an exemplary manner, worthy of the Highland
+shepherds' dogs, who always come to church with their masters, and
+conduct themselves with equal decorum.</p>
+
+<p>There is always a certain pathos in going in to worship in a strange
+church, with a strange congregation, of whom you are as ignorant as
+they of you. In the intervals of kneeling with them as "miserable
+sinners," one finds oneself speculating upon them, their possible
+faults and virtues, joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, watching the
+unknown faces, and trying to read thereon the records of a common
+humanity. A silent homily, better perhaps than most sermons.</p>
+
+<p>Not that there was aught to complain of in the sermon, and the singing
+was especially good. Many a London choir might have taken a lesson from
+this village church at the far end of Cornwall. When service was over,
+we lingered in the pretty and carefully tended churchyard, where the
+evening light fell softly upon many curious gravestones, of seafaring
+men, and a few of wrecked sailors&mdash;only a few, since it is but within
+a generation that bodies washed ashore from the deep were allowed to
+be buried in consecrated ground; most of them, like the two hundred in
+Pistol Meadow, being interred as near as convenient to where they were
+found,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> without any burial rites. Still, in all the churchyards along
+this coast are graves with a story. A little corner railed off has an
+old and sad one. There lie buried the victims of the plague, which in
+1645 devastated the village. No one since has ever ventured to disturb
+their resting-place.</p>
+
+<p>Very green and peaceful the churchyard looked: the beautiful day was
+dying, beautiful to the last. We stood and watched the congregation
+melt slowly away, disappearing down the lane, and then, attracted by
+the sound of music, we re-entered the church. There we sat and listened
+for another half-hour to the practising of an anthem ready for the
+harvest festival, which had been announced for the following Tuesday;
+exceedingly well done too, the rector's voice leading it all, with an
+energy and enthusiasm that at once accounted for the capital condition
+of the choir.</p>
+
+<p>"If this weather will only last!" was our earnest sigh as we walked
+home; and anxious not to lose a minute of it, we gave ourselves the
+briefest rest, and turned out again, I to watch the sunset from the
+cliffs, while the others descended once more to their beloved sea-pools.</p>
+
+<p>"Such anemones, such sea-weed! and scrambling is so delicious! Besides,
+sunsets are all alike," added the youthful, practical, and slightly
+unpoetical mind.</p>
+
+<p>No, they are not alike. Every one has a mysterious charm of its
+own&mdash;just like that in every new human face. I have seen hundreds of
+sunsets in my time, and those I shall see are narrowing down now, but
+I think to the end of my life I shall always feel a day incomplete of
+which I did not see the sunset.</p>
+
+<p>This one was splendid. The usual place where the sun dropped into the
+sea, just beyond the point of the Land's End, was all a golden mist.
+I hastened west, climbing one intervening cliff after the other,
+anxious not to miss the clear sight of him as he set his glowing
+feet, or rather his great round disc, on the sea. At last I found a
+"comfortable" stone, sheltered from the wind, which blew tolerably
+fresh, and utterly solitary (as I thought), the intense silence
+being such that one could almost hear the cropping of three placid
+sheep&mdash;evidently well accustomed to sunsets, and thinking them of
+little consequence.</p>
+
+<p>There I sat until the last red spark had gone out, quenched in the
+Atlantic waters, and from behind the vanished sun sprung a gleam of
+absolutely green light, "like a firework out of a rocket," the young
+people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> said; such as I had never seen before, though we saw it once
+afterwards. Nature's fireworks they were; and I could see even the two
+little black figures moving along the rocks below stand still to watch
+them. I watched too, with that sort of lonely delight&mdash;the one shadow
+upon it being that it is so lonely&mdash;with which all one's life one is
+accustomed to watch beautiful and vanishing things. Then seeing how
+fast the colours were fading and the sky darkening, I rose; but just
+took a step or two farther to look over the edge of my stone into the
+next dip of the cliff, and there I saw&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><a name="HAULING" id="HAULING"></a></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/062.jpg" width="600" height="435" alt="HAULING IN THE BOATS&mdash;EVENING." />
+<div class="caption">HAULING IN THE BOATS&mdash;EVENING.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Actually, two human beings! Lovers, of course. Nothing else would have
+sat so long and so silently, for I had been within three yards of them
+all the time, and had never discovered them, nor they me. Poor young
+things! they did not discover me even yet. They sat, quite absorbed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> in
+one another, hand in hand, looking quietly seaward, their faces bathed
+in the rosy sunset&mdash;which to them was a sunrise, the sort of sun which
+never rises twice in a life-time.</p>
+
+<p>I left them to it. Evidently they did not see me, in fact I just
+peered over the rock's edge and drew back again; any slight sound they
+probably attributed to the harmless sheep. Well, it was but an equally
+harmless old woman, who did not laugh at them, as some might have done,
+but smiled and wished them well, as she left them to their sunset, and
+turned to face the darkening east, where the sun would rise to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>The moon was rising there now, and it was a picture to behold. Indeed,
+all these Cornish days seemed so full of moonrises and sunsets&mdash;and
+sunrises too&mdash;that it was really inconvenient. Going to bed seemed
+almost a sin&mdash;as on this night, when, opening our parlour door, which
+looked right on to the garden, we saw the whole world lying in a flood
+of moonlight peace, the marigolds and carnations leaning cheek to
+cheek, as motionless as the two young lovers on the cliff. Who, alas!
+must long ago have had their dream broken, for five minutes afterwards
+I had met a most respectable fat couple from Lizard Town taking their
+Sunday evening stroll, in all their Sunday best, along those very
+cliffs. Most painful interruption! But perhaps, the good folks had once
+been lovers too.</p>
+
+<p>What a night it was! fit night to such a perfect day. How the stars
+shone, without a mist or a cloud; how the Lizard Lights gleamed, even
+in spite of the moonlight, and how clear showed the black outline of
+Kynance Cove, from which came through the silence a dull murmur of
+waves! It was, as we declared, a sin and a shame to go to bed at all
+though we had been out the whole day, and hoped to be out the whole of
+to-morrow. Still, human nature could not keep awake for ever. We passed
+from the poetical to the practical, and decided to lay us down and
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>But, in the middle of the night I woke, rose, and looked out of the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>What a change! Sea and sky were one blackness, literally as "black as
+ink," and melting into one another so that both were undistinguishable.
+As for the moon and stars&mdash;heaven knows where they had gone to, for
+they seemed utterly blotted out. The only light visible was the ghostly
+gleam of those two great eyes, the Lizard Lights, stretching far out
+into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> the intense darkness. I never saw such darkness&mdash;unbroken even by
+the white crest of a wave. And the stillness was like the stillness of
+death, with a heavy weight in the air which made me involuntarily go
+to sleep again, though with an awed impression of "something going to
+happen."</p>
+
+<p>And sure enough in another hour something did happen. I started awake,
+feeling as if a volley of artillery had been poured in at my window.
+It was the wildest deluge of rain, beating against the panes, and with
+it came a wind that howled and shrieked round the house as if all the
+demons in Cornwall, Tregeagle himself included, were let loose at once.</p>
+
+<p>Now we understood what a Lizard storm could be. I have seen
+Mediterranean storms, sweeping across the Campagna like armed
+battalions of avenging angels, pouring out their vials of wrath&mdash;rain,
+hail, thunder, and lightning&mdash;unceasingly for two whole days. I have
+been in Highland storms, so furious that one had to sit down in the
+middle of the road with one's plaid over one's head, till the worst of
+their rage was spent. But I never saw or heard anything more awful than
+this Lizard storm, to which I lay and listened till the day began to
+dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Then the wind lulled a little, but the rain still fell in torrents,
+and the sky and sea were as black as ever. The weather had evidently
+broken for good&mdash;that is, for evil. Alas! the harvest, and the harvest
+festival! And alas&mdash;of minor importance, but still some, to us at
+least&mdash;alas for our holiday in Cornwall! Only four days, and&mdash;this!</p>
+
+<p>It was with a heavy heart that, feeling there was not the slightest use
+in getting up, I turned round and took another sleep.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_FIFTH" id="DAY_THE_FIFTH">DAY THE FIFTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">"Hope</span> for the best, and be prepared for the worst," had been the motto
+of our journey. So when we rose to one of the wettest mornings that
+ever came out of the sky, there was a certain satisfaction in being
+prepared for it.</p>
+
+<p>"We must have a fire, that is certain," was our first decision. This
+entailed the abolition of our beautiful decorations&mdash;our sea-holly
+and ferns; also some anxious looks from our handmaiden. Apparently no
+fire, had been lit in this rather despised room for many months&mdash;years
+perhaps&mdash;and the chimney rather resented being used. A few agonised
+down-puffs greatly interfered with the comfort of the breakfast table,
+and an insane attempt to open the windows made matters worse.</p>
+
+<p>Which was most preferable&mdash;to be stifled or deluged? We were just
+considering the question, when the chimney took a new and kinder
+thought, or the wind took a turn&mdash;it seemed to blow alternately from
+every quarter, and then from all quarters at once&mdash;the smoke went up
+straight, the room grew warm and bright, with the cosy peace of the
+first fire of the season. Existence became once more endurable, nay,
+pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall survive, spite of the rain!" And we began to laugh over our
+lost day which we had meant to begin by bathing in Housel Cove; truly,
+just to stand outside the door would give an admirable douche bath in
+three minutes. "But how nice it is to be inside, with a roof over our
+heads, and no necessity for travelling. Fancy the unfortunate tourists
+who have fixed on to-day for visiting the Lizard!" (Charles had told us
+that Monday was a favourite day for excursions.) "Fancy anybody being
+obliged to go out such weather as this!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And in our deep pity for our fellow-creatures we forgot to pity
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was there much pity needed; we had provided against emergencies,
+with a good store of needlework and knitting, anything that would
+pack in small compass, also a stock of unquestionably "light"
+literature&mdash;paper-covered, double-columned, sixpenny volumes, inclosing
+an amount of enjoyment which those only can understand who are true
+lovers of Walter Scott. We had enough of him to last for a week of wet
+days. And we had a one-volume Tennyson, all complete, and a "Morte
+d'Arthur"&mdash;Sir Thomas Malory's. On this literary provender we felt that
+as yet we should not starve.</p>
+
+<p>Also, some little fingers having a trifling turn for art, brought out
+triumphantly a colour-box, pencils, and pictures. And the wall-paper
+being one of the very ugliest that ever eye beheld, we sought and
+obtained permission to adorn it with these, our <i>chefs-d'&oelig;uvre</i>,
+pasted at regular intervals. Where we hope they still remain, for the
+edification of succeeding lodgers.</p>
+
+<p>We read the "Idylls of the King" all through, finishing with "The
+Passing of Arthur," where the "bold Sir Bedivere" threw Excalibur into
+the mere&mdash;which is supposed to be Dozmare Pool. Here King Arthur's
+faithful lover was so melted&mdash;for the hundredth time&mdash;by the pathos
+of the story, and by many old associations, that the younger and
+more practical minds grew scornful, and declared that probably King
+Arthur had never existed at all&mdash;or if he had, was nothing but a rough
+barbarian, unlike even the hero of Sir Thomas Malory, and far more
+unlike the noble modern gentleman of Tennyson's verse. Maybe: and yet,
+seeing that</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"'Tis better to have loved and lost</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Than never to have loved at all,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>may it not be better to have believed in an impossible ideal man, than
+to accept contentedly a low ideal, and worship blindly the worldly, the
+mean, or the base?</p>
+
+<p>This topic furnished matter for so much hot argument, that, besides
+doing a quantity of needlework, we succeeded in making our one wet day
+by no means the least amusing of our seventeen days in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="LINES" id="LINES"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 444px;">
+<img src="images/067.jpg" width="444" height="600" alt="HAULING IN THE LINES." />
+<div class="caption">HAULING IN THE LINES.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hour after hour we watched the rain&mdash;an even down-pour. In the midst
+of it we heard a rumour that Charles had been seen about the town, and
+soon after he appeared at the door, hat in hand, soaked but smiling,
+to inquire for and sympathise with his ladies. Yes, he <i>had</i> brought a
+party to the Lizard that day!&mdash;unfortunate souls (or bodies), for there
+could not have been a dry thread left on them! We gathered closer round
+our cosy fire; ate our simple dinner with keen enjoyment, and agreed
+that after all we had much to be thankful for.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>In the afternoon the storm abated a little, and we thought we would
+seize the chance of doing some shopping, if there was a shop in Lizard
+Town. So we walked&mdash;I ought rather to say waded, for the road was
+literally swimming&mdash;meeting not one living creature, except a family of
+young ducks, who, I need scarcely say, were enjoying supreme felicity.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ladies, this is the sort of weather we have pretty well all
+winter. Very little frost or snow, but rain and storm, and plenty of
+it. Also fogs; I've heard there's nothing anywhere like the fogs at the
+Lizard."</p>
+
+<p>So said the woman at the post-office, which, except the serpentine
+shops, seemed to be the one emporium of commerce in the place. There we
+could get all we wanted, and a good deal that we were very thankful we
+did not want, of eatables, drinkables, and wearables. Also ornaments,
+china vases, &amp;c., of a kind that would have driven frantic any person
+of æsthetic tastes. Among them an active young Cornishman of about a
+year old was meandering aimlessly, or with aims equally destructive
+to himself and the community. He all but succeeded in bringing down a
+row of plates upon his devoted head, and then tied himself up, one fat
+finger after another, in a ball of twine, upon which he began to howl
+violently.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a regular little trial," said the young mother proudly. "He's
+only sixteen months old, and yet he's up to all sorts of mischief. I
+don't know what in the world I shall do with he, presently. Naughty
+boy!" with a delighted scowl.</p>
+
+<p>"Not naughty, only active," suggested another maternal spirit, and
+pleaded that the young jackanapes should be found something to do that
+was not mischief, but yet would occupy his energies, and fill his mind.
+At which, the bright bold face looked up as if he had understood it
+all&mdash;an absolutely fearless face, brimming with fun, and shrewdness
+too. Who knows? The "regular little trial" may grow into a valuable
+member of society&mdash;fisherman, sailor, coastguardman&mdash;daring and doing
+heroic deeds;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> perhaps saving many a life on nights such as last night,
+which had taught us what Cornish coast-life was all winter through.</p>
+
+<p>The storm was now gradually abating; the wind had lulled entirely, the
+rain had ceased, and by sunset a broad yellow streak all along the west
+implied that it might possibly be a fine day to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>But the lane was almost a river still, and the slippery altitudes of
+the "hedges" were anything but desirable. As the only possible place
+for a walk I ventured into a field where two or three cows cropped
+their supper of damp grass round one of those green hillocks seen in
+every Cornish pasture field&mdash;a manure heap planted with cabbages, which
+grow there with a luxuriance that turns ugliness into positive beauty.
+Very dreary everything was&mdash;the soaking grass, the leaden sky, the
+angry-looking sea, over which a rainy moon was just beginning to throw
+a faint glimmer; while shorewards one could just trace the outline of
+Lizard Point and the wheat-field behind it. Yesterday those fields had
+looked so sunshiny and fair, but to-night they were all dull and grey,
+with rows of black dots indicating the soppy, sodden harvest sheaves.</p>
+
+<p>Which reminded me that to-morrow was the harvest festival at
+Landewednack, when all the world and his wife was invited by shilling
+tickets to have tea in the rectory garden, and afterwards to assist at
+the evening thanksgiving service in the church.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanksgiving! What for?" some poor farmer might well exclaim,
+especially on such a day as this. Some harvest festivals must
+occasionally seem a bitter mockery. Indeed, I doubt if the next
+generation will not be wise in taking our "Prayers for Rain,"
+"Prayers for Fair Weather," clean out of the liturgy. Such conceited
+intermeddling with the government of the world sounds to some
+ridiculous, to others actually profane. "Snow and hail, mists and
+vapours, wind and storm, fulfilling His Word." And it must be
+fulfilled, no matter at what cost to individuals or to nations. The
+laws of the universe must be carried out, even though the mystery
+of sorrow, like the still greater mystery of evil, remains for ever
+unexplained. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"</p>
+
+<p>And how right is His right! How marvellously beautiful He can make this
+world! until we can hardly imagine anything more beautiful in the world
+everlasting. Ay, even after such a day as to-day, when the world seems
+hardly worth living in, yet we live on, live to wake up unto such a
+to-morrow&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But I must wait to speak of it in another page.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_SIXTH" id="DAY_THE_SIXTH">DAY THE SIXTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">And</span> a day absolutely divine! Not a cloud upon the sky, not a ripple
+upon the water, or it appeared so in the distance. Nearer, no doubt,
+there would have been that heavy ground-swell which is so long in
+subsiding, in fact is scarcely ever absent on this coast. The land,
+like the sea, was all one smile; the pasture fields shone in brilliant
+green, the cornfields gleaming yellow&mdash;at once a beauty and a
+thanksgiving.</p>
+
+<p>It was the very perfection of an autumn morning. We would not lose
+an hour of it, but directly after breakfast started leisurely to
+find Housel Cove and try our first experiment of bathing in the wide
+Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>The Atlantic it certainly was. Not a rood of land lay between us and
+America. Yet the illimitable ocean "where the great ships go down,"
+rolled in to our feet in baby ripples, disporting itself harmlessly,
+and tempting my two little mermaids to swim out to the utmost limit
+that prudence allowed. And how delightful it was to run back barefoot
+across the soft sand to the beautiful dressing-room of serpentine
+rock, where one could sit and watch the glittering sea, untroubled by
+any company save the gulls and cormorants. What a contrast to other
+bathing places&mdash;genteel Eastbourne and Brighton, or vulgar Margate and
+Ramsgate, where, nevertheless, the good folks look equally happy. But
+our happiness! No words could describe it. Shall we stamp ourselves
+as persons of little mind, easily satisfied, if I confess that we
+spent the whole morning in Housel Cove without band or promenade,
+without even a Christy Minstrel or a Punch and Judy, our sole amusement
+being the vain attempt to catch a tiny fish, the Robinson Crusoe of
+a small pool in the rock above high-water mark, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> by some ill
+chance he found himself. But he looked extremely contented with his
+sea hermitage, and evaded so cleverly all our efforts to get hold of
+him, that after a while we left him to his solitude&mdash;where possibly he
+resides still.</p>
+
+<p><a name="LIGHTS" id="LIGHTS"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/072.jpg" width="600" height="413" alt="THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY." />
+<div class="caption">THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>How delicious it is for hard-worked people to do nothing, absolutely
+nothing! Of course only for a little while&mdash;a few days, a few hours.
+The love of work and the necessity for it soon revive. But just for
+those few harmless hours to let the world and its duties and cares
+alike slip by, to be absolutely idle, to fold one's hands and look
+at the sea and the sky, thinking of nothing at all, except perhaps
+to count and watch for every ninth wave&mdash;said to be the biggest
+always&mdash;and wonder how big it will be, and whether it will reach that
+stone with the little colony of limpets and two red anemones beside
+them, or stop short at the rock where we sit placidly dangling our
+feet, waiting, Canute-like, for the supreme moment when the will of
+humanity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> sinks conquered by the immutable powers of nature. Then,
+greatest crisis of all, the sea will attack that magnificent castle and
+moat, which we grown-up babies have constructed with such pride. Well,
+have we not all built our sand-castles and seen them swept away? happy
+if by no unkinder force than the remorseless wave of Time, which will
+soon flow over us all.</p>
+
+<p>But how foolish is moralising&mdash;making my narrative halt like that horse
+whom we amused ourselves with half the afternoon. He was tied by the
+leg, poor beast, the fore leg fastened to the hind one, as seemed to be
+the ordinary Cornish fashion with all animals&mdash;horses, cows, and sheep.
+It certainly saves a deal of trouble, preventing them from climbing the
+"hedges" which form the sole boundary of property, but it makes the
+creatures go limping about in rather a melancholy fashion. However,
+as it is their normal condition, probably they communicate it to one
+another, and each generation accepts its lot.</p>
+
+<p>This horse did. He was a handsome animal, who came and peered at
+the sketch which one of us was doing, after the solemn fashion of
+quadrupedal connoisseurship, and kept us company all the afternoon. We
+sat in a row on the top of the "hedge," enjoying the golden afternoon,
+and scarcely believing it possible that yesterday had been yesterday.
+Of the wild storm and deluge of rain there was not a single trace;
+everything looked as lovely as if it had been, and was going to be,
+summer all the year.</p>
+
+<p>We were so contented, and were making such progress in our sketch and
+distant view of Kynance over the now dry and smiling cornfield, that we
+had nigh forgotten the duties of civilisation, until some one brought
+the news that all the household was apparently dressing itself in its
+very best, to attend the rectory tea. We determined to do the same,
+though small were our possibilities of toilette.</p>
+
+<p>"But what does it matter?" argued we. "Nobody knows us, and we know
+nobody."</p>
+
+<p>A position rather rare to those who "dwell among their own people,"
+who take a kindly interest in everybody, and believe with a pardonable
+credulity that everybody takes a kindly interest in them.</p>
+
+<p>But human nature is the same all the world over. And here we saw it in
+its pleasantest phase; rich and poor meeting together, not for charity,
+but courtesy&mdash;a courtesy that was given with a kindliness and accepted
+with a quiet independence which seemed characteristic of these Cornish
+folk.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Among the little crowd, gentle and simple, we, of course, did not know
+a single soul. Nevertheless, delivering up our tickets to the gardener
+at the gate, we entered, and wandered at ease through the pretty
+garden, gorgeous with asters, marigolds, carnations, and all sorts of
+rich-coloured and rich-scented autumn flowers; where the hydrangeas
+grew in enormous bushes, and the fuchsias had stems as thick and solid
+as trees.</p>
+
+<p>In front of the open hall door was a gravel sweep where were ranged
+two long tea-tables filled with the humbler but respectable class of
+parishioners, chiefly elderly people, and some very old. The Lizard is
+a place noted for longevity, as is proved by the register books, where
+several deaths at over a hundred may be found recorded, and one&mdash;he was
+the rector of Landewednack in 1683&mdash;is said to have died at the age of
+120 years.</p>
+
+<p>The present rector is no such Methuselah. He moved actively to and fro
+among his people, and so did his wife, whom we should have recognised
+by her omnipresent kindliness, even if she had not come and welcomed
+us strangers&mdash;easily singled out as strangers, where all the rest were
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the poor and the aged, there was a goodly number of guests
+who were neither the one nor the other, playing energetically at
+lawn-tennis behind the house, on a "lawn" composed of sea-sand. All
+seemed determined to amuse themselves and everybody else, and all did
+their very best&mdash;including the band.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, that band! I would fain pass it over in silence (would it
+had returned the compliment!); but truth is truth, and may benefit
+rather than harm. The calm composure with which those half-dozen
+wind-instruments sat in a row, playing determinedly flat, bass coming
+in with a tremendous boom here and there, entirely at his own volition,
+without regard to time or tune, was the most awful thing I ever heard
+in music! Agony, pure and simple, was the only sensation it produced.
+When they struck up, we just ran away till the tune was ended&mdash;what
+tune, familiar or unfamiliar, it was impossible to say. Between us
+three, all blessed, or cursed, with musical ears, there existed such
+difference of opinion on this head, that decision became vain. And
+when at last, as the hour of service approached, little groups began
+strolling towards the church, the musicians began a final "God save the
+Queen," barely recognisable, a feeling of thankfulness was the only
+sensation left.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><a name="DAUGHTER" id="DAUGHTER"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 459px;">
+<img src="images/075.jpg" width="459" height="600" alt="THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER&mdash;A CORNISH STUDY." />
+<div class="caption">THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER&mdash;A CORNISH STUDY.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+
+<p>Now, let me not be hard upon these village Orpheuses. They did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> their
+best, and for a working man to study music in any form is a good and
+desirable thing. But whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing
+well. The great bane of provincial life is that people have so few
+opportunities of finding out when they do <i>not</i> do things well, and so
+little ambition to learn to do them better. If these few severe remarks
+should spur on that anonymous band to try and emulate the Philharmonic
+or the Crystal Palace orchestra, it will be all the better for the
+little community at the Lizard.</p>
+
+<p>The music in the church was beautiful. A crowded congregation&mdash;not a
+seat vacant&mdash;listened to the excellent chanting, hymns, and a harvest
+anthem, most accurately and correctly sung. The organist too&mdash;it was
+a pleasure to watch that young man's face and see with what interest
+and enthusiasm he entered into it all. Besides the rector, there were
+several other clergymen, one of whom, an old man, read the prayers
+with an intonation and expression which I have rarely heard equalled,
+and another preached what would have been called anywhere a thoroughly
+good sermon. All the statelier guests at the Rectory tea&mdash;probably
+county families (one stout lady had the dignity of a duchess at
+least)&mdash;"assisted" at this evening service, and behind them was a
+throng of humbler folk, among whom we recognised our sole friend here,
+John Curgenven. We had passed him at the church door, and he had lifted
+his hat with the air of a <i>preux chevalier</i> of the olden time; "more
+like King Arthur than ever"&mdash;we observed to one another.</p>
+
+<p>He, and we, and the aristocratic groups, with a few more of the
+congregation, lingered for several minutes after service was over,
+admiring the beautiful flowers and fruit. I think I never saw any
+decorations so rich or so tasteful. And then, as the organ played us
+out with an exceedingly brilliant voluntary, the vision of light and
+colour melted away, and we came out upon the quiet churchyard, lying in
+the cold, still moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>But what a moonlight! Clear as day, the round silver orb sailing
+through a cloudless sky of that deep dark which we know is blue, only
+moonlight shows no colours. Oh, Lady Moon, Lady Moon, what a dangerous
+night for some of those groups to go walking home in! We saw them in
+twos and threes, various young people whom we had got to know by sight,
+and criticise, and take an interest in, wandering slowly on through
+Lizard Town, and then diverging into quieter paths.</p>
+
+<p>As we gladly did too. For there, in an open space near the two hotels<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+which co-exist close together&mdash;I hope amicably, and divide the tourist
+custom of the place&mdash;in front of a row of open windows which showed the
+remains of a <i>table d'hôte</i>, and playing lively tunes to a group of
+delighted listeners, including some children, who had struck up a merry
+dance&mdash;stood that terrible wind band!</p>
+
+<p>It was too much! All our sympathy with our fellow-creatures, our
+pleasure in watching them enjoy themselves, our interest in studying
+human nature in the abstract, nay, even the picturesqueness of the
+charming moonlight scene, could not tempt us to stay. We paused a
+minute, then put our fingers in our ears and fled. Gradually those
+fearful sounds melted away into distance, and left us to the silence of
+moonshine, and the sight, now grown familiar, but never less beautiful,
+of the far-gleaming Lizard Lights.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_SEVENTH" id="DAY_THE_SEVENTH">DAY THE SEVENTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">John</span> Curgenven had said last night, with his air of tender patronising,
+half regal, half paternal, which we declared always reminded us of King
+Arthur&mdash;"Ladies, whenever you settle to go to Kynance, I'll take you."</p>
+
+<p>And sure enough there he stood, at eight in the morning, quite a
+picture, his cap in one hand, a couple of fishes dangling from the
+other&mdash;he had brought them as a present, and absolutely refused to be
+paid&mdash;smiling upon us at our breakfast, as benignly as did the sun. He
+came to say that he was at our service till 10 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>; when he
+had an engagement.</p>
+
+<p>Our countenances fell. We did not like venturing in strange and
+dangerous ground, or rather sea, without our protector. But this was
+our last chance, and such a lovely day.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't come to any harm, ladies," said the consoling John. "I'll
+take you by a short cut across the down, much better than the cliff.
+You can't possibly miss your way: it'll lead you straight to Kynance,
+and then you go down a steep path to the Cove. You'll have plenty of
+time before the tide comes in to see everything."</p>
+
+<p>"And to bathe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, miss, there's the Drawing-room, the Dining-room, and the
+Kitchen&mdash;all capital caves close together; I wouldn't advise you to
+swim out far, though. And keep a sharp look out for the tide&mdash;it runs
+in pretty fast."</p>
+
+<p>"And the scrambling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you can easy get on Asparagus Island, miss; it's quite safe. Only
+don't try the Devil's Throat&mdash;or Hell's Mouth, as some folk call it."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Neither name was inviting; but studying our guide-books, we thought we
+could manage even without our friend. So, long ere the dew was dried on
+the sunshiny down, we all started off together, Curgenven slackening
+his quick active steps&mdash;very light and most enviably active for a man
+of his years&mdash;to accommodate us, and conversing courteously with us all
+the way.</p>
+
+<p><a name="KYNANCE" id="KYNANCE"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/080.jpg" width="600" height="380" alt="KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL." />
+<div class="caption">KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Ower the muir amang the heather" have I tramped many a mile in
+bonnie Scotland, but this Cornish moor and Cornish heather were quite
+different. As different as the Cornishman with his bright, frank face,
+and his mixture of British honesty and Gallic courtesy, from the Scotch
+peasant&mdash;equally worthy, but sometimes just a trifle "dour."</p>
+
+<p>John had plenty to say for himself, and said it well, with a quiet
+independence that there was no mistaking; never forgetting meanwhile to
+stop and offer a helping hand over every bit of rough road, puddle, or
+bog. He gave us a vivid picture of winter life at the Lizard: when the
+little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> community has to hybernate, like the squirrels and field-mice,
+upon its summer savings.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes we don't earn a halfpenny for weeks and months, and then if
+we've got nothing to fall back upon it's a bad job, you see, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>I asked him if much money went for drink; they seemed to me a
+remarkably sober set at the Lizard.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think we are; we're obliged to be; we can't spend money at the
+public-house, for we've got none to spend. I'm no teetotaller myself,"
+added John boldly. "I don't dislike a glass of beer now and then, if I
+can afford it, and when I can't afford it I can do without it, and if I
+do take it I always know when to stop."</p>
+
+<p>Ay, that is the crucial test&mdash;the knowing when to stop. It is this
+which makes all the difference between a good man and a villain, a wise
+man and a fool. Self-control&mdash;a quality which, guided by conscience and
+common sense, is the best possession of any human being. And looking at
+the honest fisherman, one felt pretty sure he had his share of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I must leave you, ladies," said he, a great deal sooner than we
+wished, for we much liked talking to him. "My time's nearly up, and I
+mustn't keep my gentleman waiting; he goes out in my boat every day,
+and has been a good friend to me. The road's straight before you,
+ladies; and there's another party just ahead of you. Follow the track,
+and you'll soon be at Kynance. It's a lovely day for the Cove, and I
+hope you'll enjoy yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>John bared his grey head, with a salutation worthy of some old knight
+of the Round Table, and then strode back, in double-quick time, as
+active and upright as any young fellow of twenty-five, across the level
+down.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful Kynance! When, afterwards, I stood one dull winter day
+in a London Art Gallery, opposite the <i>Cornish Lions</i>, how well I
+recalled this day! How truly Brett's picture gives the long roll of
+the wave upon the silver sands, the richly-tinted rocks and caves, the
+brightness and freshness of everything. And those merry girls beside
+me, who had the faculty of enjoying all they had, and all they did,
+without regretting what they had not or what they might not do&mdash;with
+heroic resignation they promised not to attempt to swim in the tempting
+smooth water beyond the long rollers. Though knocked down again and
+again, they always emerged from the waves with shouts of laughter. Mere
+dots they looked to my anxious eyes&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> couple of corks tossed hither
+and thither on the foaming billows&mdash;and very thankful I was to get them
+safe back into the "drawing-room," the loveliest of lovely caves.</p>
+
+<p>There was no time to lose; by noon our parlour floor&mdash;what a fairy
+floor it was! of the softest, most delicious sand&mdash;would be all covered
+with waves. And before then there was a deal to be seen and done, the
+Bellows, the Gull Rock, Asparagus Island&mdash;even if we left out the
+dangerous points with the ugly names that Curgenven had warned us
+against.</p>
+
+<p>What is there in humanity, certainly in youthful humanity, that if
+it can attain its end in two ways, one quiet and decorous, the other
+difficult and dangerous, is certain to choose the latter?</p>
+
+<p>"We must manage to get you to the Bellows, it is such a curious sight,"
+said my girls as they returned from it. "Don't be frightened&mdash;come
+along!"</p>
+
+<p>By dint of pulling, pushing, and the help of stick and arm, I came:
+stood watching the spout of water which, in certain conditions of the
+tide, forces itself through a tiny fissure in the rock with a great
+roar, and joined in the childish delight of waiting, minute by minute,
+for the biggest spout, the loudest roar.</p>
+
+<p>But Asparagus Island (where was no asparagus at all) I totally
+declined. Not being a goat or a chamois, I contented myself with
+sitting where I could gain the best view of the almost invisible
+path by which my adventurous young "kids" disappeared. Happily they
+had both steady heads and cool nerves; they were neither rash nor
+unconscientious. I knew they would come back as soon as they could. So
+I waited patiently, contemplating a fellow-victim who seemed worse off
+than myself; a benign-looking clergyman, who kept walking up and down
+the soppy sands, and shouting at intervals to two young people, a man
+and a woman, who appeared to be crawling like flies along the face of
+the rock towards another rock, with a yawning cave and a wide fissure
+between.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't attempt it!" the clergyman cried at the top of his voice.
+"That's the Devil's Throat. She'll never manage it. Come down. Do make
+her come down."</p>
+
+<p>"Your young people seem rather venturesome," said I sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p><a name="STEEPLE" id="STEEPLE"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 390px;">
+<img src="images/083.jpg" width="390" height="600" alt="THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE." />
+<div class="caption">THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Not <i>my</i> young people," was the dignified answer. "My girls are up
+there, on Asparagus Rock, which is easy enough climbing. They promised<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+not to go farther, and they never disobey their mother and me. But
+those two! I declare he is taking her to the most dangerous part, that
+rock where you have to jump&mdash;a good jump it is, and if you miss your
+footing you are done for, you go right into the boiling waves below.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+Well, it's no business of mine; she is his own property; he is engaged
+to her, but"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I fear I made some very severe remarks on the folly of a young man who
+could thus risk life and limbs&mdash;not only his own, but those of his wife
+to be; and on the weakness of a girl who could allow herself to be
+tempted, even by a lover, into such selfish foolhardiness.</p>
+
+<p>"They must manage their own affairs," said the old gentleman
+sententiously, perhaps not being so much given to preaching (out of the
+pulpit) as I was. "My daughters are wiser. Here come two of them."</p>
+
+<p>And very sensible girls they looked, clad in a practical, convenient
+fashion, just fitted for scrambling. By them I sent a message to my own
+girls, explaining the best descent from Asparagus Island, and repeating
+the warning against attempting Hell's Mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are quite right," said my elderly friend, as we sat down
+together on the least uncomfortable stone we could find, and watched
+the juniors disappear over the rocks. "I like to see girls active and
+brave; I never hinder them in any reasonable enjoyment, even though
+there may be risk in it&mdash;one must run some risk&mdash;and a woman may
+have to save life as well as a man. But foolhardy bravado I not only
+dislike&mdash;I <i>despise</i> it."</p>
+
+<p>In which sentiments I so entirely agreed that we fraternised there
+and then; began talking on all sorts of subjects&mdash;some of them the
+very serious and earnest subjects that one occasionally drops into by
+mere chance, with mere strangers. I recall that half hour on Kynance
+Sands as one of the pleasant memories of our tour, though to this day
+I have not the remotest idea who my companion was. Except that as soon
+as he spoke I recognised the reader whose voice had so struck me in
+last night's thanksgiving service; reminding me of Frederick Denison
+Maurice, whom this generation is almost beginning to forget, but whom
+we elders never can forget.</p>
+
+<p>The tide was creeping on now&mdash;nay, striding, wave after wave, through
+"parlour" and "drawing-room," making ingress and egress alike
+impossible. In fact, a newly arrived party of tourists, who had stood
+unwisely long contemplating the Bellows, were seen to gaze in despair
+from their rock which had suddenly become an island. No chance for them
+except to wade&mdash;and in a few minutes more they would probably have
+to swim<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> ashore. What became of them we did not stay to see, for an
+anxious, prudent little voice, always thoughtful for "mother," insisted
+on our precipitate flight before the advancing tide. Kynance, lovely as
+it is, has its inconveniences.</p>
+
+<p>Departing, we met a whole string of tourist-looking people, whom we
+benevolently warned that they were too late, at which they did not
+seem in the least disappointed. Probably they were one of the numerous
+pic-nic parties who come here from Falmouth or Helstone, to spend a
+jovial day of eating and drinking, and enjoy the delights of the flesh
+rather than the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate the romance and solitude of the place were gone. The quaint
+old woman at the serpentine shop&mdash;a mild little wooden erection under
+the cliff&mdash;was being chaffed and bargained with by three youths with
+cigars, which defiled the whole air around, and made us take refuge up
+the hill. But even there a white umbrella had sprung up like a gigantic
+mushroom, and under it sat an energetic lady artist, who, entering at
+once into conversation, with a cheerful avidity that implied her not
+having talked for a week, informed us of all she was painting, and all
+she had meant to paint, where she lodged, and how much she paid for her
+lodging&mdash;evidently expecting the same confidences from us in return.</p>
+
+<p>But we were getting hungry, and between us and dinner was a long
+two-miles walk over the steep downs, that were glowing, nay, burning,
+under the September sun. So we turned homeward, glad of more than one
+rest by the way, and a long pause beside a pretty little stream; where
+we were able to offer the immemorial cup of cold water to several
+thirsty souls besides ourselves. Some of us by this time were getting
+to feel not so young as we had fancied ourselves in the early morning,
+and to wish regretfully for Charles and his carriage.</p>
+
+<p>However, we got home at last&mdash;to find that sad accompaniment of many a
+holiday&mdash;tidings of sickness and death. Nothing very near us&mdash;nothing
+that need hurry us home&mdash;but enough to sadden us, and make our evening
+walk, which we bravely carried out, a far less bright one than that of
+the forenoon.</p>
+
+<p>The girls had found a way, chiefly on the tops of "hedges," to the
+grand rock called Lizard Point. Thither we went, and watched the
+sunset&mdash;a very fine one; then came back through the village, and made
+various<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> purchases of serpentine from John Curgenven's wife, who was
+a great deal younger than himself, but not near so handsome or so
+original.</p>
+
+<p>But a cloud had come over us; it did not, and must not stay&mdash;still,
+there it was for the time. When the last thing at night I went out into
+the glorious moonlight&mdash;bright as day&mdash;and thought of the soul who had
+just passed out of a long and troubled life into the clearness of life
+eternal, it seemed as if all was right still. Small cares and worries
+dwindled down or melted away&mdash;as the petty uglinesses around melted
+in the radiance of this glorious harvest moon, which seemed to wrap
+one round in a silent peace, like the "garment of praise," which David
+speaks about&mdash;in exchange for "the spirit of heaviness."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_EIGHTH" id="DAY_THE_EIGHTH">DAY THE EIGHTH</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">And</span> seven days were all we could allow ourselves at the Lizard, if we
+meant to see the rest of Cornwall. We began to reckon with sore hearts
+that five days were already gone, and it seemed as if we had not seen
+half we ought to see, even of our near surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>"We will take no excursion to-day. We will just have our bath at Housel
+Cove and then we will wander about the shore, and examine the Lizard
+Lights. Only fancy, our going away to-morrow without having seen the
+inside of the Lizard Lights! Oh, I wish we were not leaving so soon. We
+shall never like any place as we like the Lizard."</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed very delightful. Directly after breakfast&mdash;and we are
+people who never vary from our eight o'clock breakfast, so that we
+always see the world in its early morning brightness and freshness&mdash;we
+went</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Brushing with hasty steps the dew away,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>along the fields, which led down to Housel or Househole Cove. Before
+us, clear in the sunshine, rose the fine headland of Penolver, and
+the green slopes of the amphitheatre of Belidden, supposed to be the
+remains of a Druidical temple. That, and the chair of Belidden, a
+recess in the rock, whence there is a splendid view, with various
+archæological curiosities, true or traditionary, we ought to have
+examined, I know. But&mdash;we didn't do it. Some of us were content to
+rejoice in the general atmosphere of beauty and peace without minute
+investigation, and some of us were so eminently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> practical that "a good
+bathe" appeared more important than all the poetry and archæology in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>So we wandered slowly on, rejoicing at having the place all to
+ourselves, when we came suddenly upon a tall black figure intently
+watching three other black figures, or rather dots, which were climbing
+slowly over Penolver.</p>
+
+<p>It was our clerical friend of Kynance; with whom, in the natural and
+right civility of holiday-makers, we exchanged a courteous good morning.</p>
+
+<p><a name="LION" id="LION"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/088.jpg" width="600" height="430" alt="THE LION ROCKS" />
+<div class="caption">THE LION ROCKS&mdash;A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Yes, those are my girls up on the cliff there. They have been bathing,
+and are now going to walk to Cadgwith."</p>
+
+<p>"Then nobody fell into the Devil's Throat at Kynance? They all came
+back to you with whole limbs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he smiling, "and they went again for another long walk
+in the afternoon. At night, when it turned out to be such splendid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+moonlight, they actually insisted on going launce-fishing. Of course
+you know about launce-fishing?"</p>
+
+<p>I pleaded my utter ignorance of that noble sport.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it is <i>the</i> thing at the Lizard. My boys&mdash;and girls too&mdash;consider
+it the best fun going. The launce is a sort of sand-eel peculiar to
+these coasts. It swims about all day, and at night burrows in the sand
+just above the waterline, where, when the moon shines on it, you can
+trace the silvery gleam of the creature. So you stand up to your ankles
+on wet sand, with a crooked iron spear which you dart in and hook him
+up, keeping your left hand free to seize him with."</p>
+
+<p>"Easy fishing," said I, with a certain pity for the sand-eel.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so easy as appears. You are apt either to chop him right in
+two, or miss him altogether, when off he wriggles in the sand and
+disappears. My young people say it requires a practised hand and a
+peculiar twist of the wrist, to have any success at all in launce
+fishing. It can only be done on moonlight nights&mdash;the full moon and
+a day or two after&mdash;and they are out half the night. They go about
+barefoot, which is much safer than soaked shoes and stockings. About
+midnight they light a fire on the sand, cook all the fish they have
+caught, and have a grand supper, as they had last night. They came home
+as merry as crickets about two o'clock this morning. Perhaps you might
+not have noticed what a wonderful moonlight night it was?"</p>
+
+<p>I had; but it would not have occurred to me to spend it in standing for
+hours up to the knees in salt water, catching unfortunate fish.</p>
+
+<p>However, tastes differ, and launce-fishing may be a prime delight to
+some people; so I faithfully chronicle it, and the proper mode of
+pursuing it, as one of the attractions at the Lizard. I am not aware
+that it is practised at any other part of the Cornish coast, nor can
+I say whether or not it was a pastime of King Arthur and his Knights.
+One cannot imagine Sir Tristram or Sir Launcelot occupied in spearing a
+small sand-eel.</p>
+
+<p>The bathing at Housel Cove was delightful as ever. And afterwards we
+saw that very rare and beautiful sight, a perfect solar rainbow. Not
+the familiar bow of Noah, but a great luminous circle round the sun,
+like the halo often seen round the moon, extending over half the sky;
+yellow at first, then gradually assuming faint prismatic tints. This
+colouring, though never so bright as the ordinary arched rainbow, was
+wonderfully tender and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> delicate. We stood a long time watching it,
+till at last it melted slowly out of the sky, leaving behind a sense of
+mystery, as of something we had never seen before and might never see
+again in all our lives.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely day, bright and warm as midsummer, tempting us to some
+distant excursion; but we had decided to investigate the Lizard Lights.
+We should have been content to take them for granted, in their purely
+poetical phase, as we had watched them night after night. But some of
+us were blessed with scientific relatives, who would have despised us
+utterly if we had spent a whole week at the Lizard and never gone to
+see the Lizard Lights. So we felt bound to do our duty, and admire, if
+we could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>Which we certainly did not. I chronicle with shame that the careful and
+courteous explanations of that most intelligent young man, who met us
+at the door of the huge white building, apparently quite glad to have
+an opportunity of conducting us through it, were entirely thrown away.
+We mounted ladders, we looked at Brobdingnagian lamps, we poked into
+mysterious machinery for lighting them and for sounding the fog-horn,
+we listened to all that was told us, and tried to look as if we took it
+in. Very much interested we could not but be at such wonderful results
+of man's invention, but as for comprehending! we came away with our
+minds as dark as when we went in.</p>
+
+<p>I have always found through life that, next to being clever, the safest
+thing is to know one's own ignorance and acknowledge it. Therefore let
+me leave all description of the astonishing mechanism of the Lizard
+Lights&mdash;I believe the first experiment of their kind, and not very
+long established&mdash;to abler pens and more intelligent brains. To see
+that young man, scarcely above the grade of a working man, handling
+his instruments and explaining them and their uses, seeming to take
+for granted that we could understand&mdash;which alas! we didn't, not
+an atom!&mdash;inspired me with a sense of humiliation and awe. Also of
+pride at the wonders this generation has accomplished, and is still
+accomplishing; employing the gradually comprehended forces of Nature
+against herself, as it were, and dominating her evil by ever-new
+discoveries and applications of the recondite powers of good.</p>
+
+<p>The enormous body of light produced nightly&mdash;equal, I think he said,
+to 30,000 candles&mdash;and the complicated machinery for keeping the
+fog-horn continually at work, when even that gigantic blaze became
+invisible&mdash;all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> this amount of skill, science, labour, and money,
+freely expended for the saving of life, gave one a strong impression of
+not only British power but British beneficence. Could King Arthur have
+come back again from his sea-engulfed Land of Lyonesse, and stood where
+we stood, beside the Lizard Lights, what would he have said to it all?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="BOATS" id="BOATS"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/091.jpg" width="600" height="473" alt="HAULING IN THE BOATS." />
+<div class="caption">HAULING IN THE BOATS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Even though we did not understand, we were keenly interested in all we
+saw, and still more so in the stories of wrecks which this young man
+had witnessed even during the few years, or months&mdash;I forget which&mdash;of
+his stay at the Lizard. He, too, agreed, that the rocks there, called
+by the generic name of the Stags, were the most fatal of all on our
+coasts to ships outward and homeward bound. Probably because in the
+latter case, captain and crews get a trifle careless; and in the
+former&mdash;as I have heard in sad explanation of many emigrant ships being
+lost almost immediately after quitting port&mdash;they get drunk. Many of
+the sailors are said to come on board "half-seas over," and could the
+skilfullest of pilots save a ship with a drunken crew?</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, the fact remains, that throughout winter almost
+every week's chronicle at the Lizard is the same story&mdash;wild storms, or
+dense fogs, guns of distress heard, a hasty manning of the life-boat,
+dragged with difficulty down the steep cliff-road, a brief struggle
+with the awful sea, and then, even if a few lives are saved, with the
+ship herself all is over.</p>
+
+<p>"Only last Christmas I saw a vessel go to pieces in ten minutes on the
+rocks below there," said the man, after particularising several wrecks,
+which seemed to have imprinted themselves on his memory with all their
+incidents. "Yes, we have a bad time in winter, and the coastguard
+men lead a risky life. They are the picked men of the service, and
+tolerably well paid, but no money could ever pay them for what they go
+through&mdash;or the fishermen, who generally are volunteers, and get little
+or nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be a hard life in these parts, especially in winter," we
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps it is, but it's our business, you see."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, but not all people do their business, as the mismanagements and
+mistakes of this world plainly show.</p>
+
+<p>Still, it is a good world, and we felt it so as we strolled along the
+sunshiny cliff, talking over all these stories, tragical or heroic,
+which had been told us in such a simple matter-of-fact way, as if they
+were every-day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> occurrences. And then, while the young folks went on
+"for a good scramble" over Penolver, I sat down for a quiet "think";
+that enforced rest, which, as years advance, becomes not painful, but
+actually pleasant; in which, if one fails to solve the problems of the
+universe, one is prone to con them over, wondering at them all.</p>
+
+<p>From the sunny sea and sunny sky, full of a silence so complete that I
+could hear every wave as it broke on the unseen rocks below, my mind
+wandered to that young fellow among his machinery, with his sickly
+eager face and his short cough&mdash;indicating that <i>his</i> "business" in
+this world, over which he seemed so engrossed, might only too soon
+come to an end. Between these apparently eternal powers of Nature,
+so strong, so fierce, so irresistible, against which man fought so
+magnificently with all his perfection of scientific knowledge and
+accuracy of handiwork&mdash;and this poor frail human life, which in a
+moment might be blown out like a candle, suddenly quenched in darkness,
+"there is no skill or knowledge in the grave whither thou goest"&mdash;what
+a contrast it was!</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;and yet?&mdash;We shall sleep with our fathers, and some of us feel
+sometimes so tired that we do not in the least mind going to sleep. But
+notwithstanding this, notwithstanding everything without that seems to
+imply our perishableness, we are conscious of something within which
+is absolutely imperishable. We feel it only stronger and clearer as
+life begins to melt away from us; as "the lights in the windows are
+darkened, and the daughters of music are brought low." To the young,
+death is often a terror, for it seems to put an end to the full, rich,
+passionate life beyond which they can see nothing; but to the old,
+conscious that this their tabernacle is being slowly dissolved, and yet
+its mysterious inhabitant, the wonderful, incomprehensible <i>me</i>, is
+exactly the same&mdash;thinks, loves, suffers, and enjoys, precisely as it
+did heaven knows how many years ago&mdash;to them, death appears in quite
+another shape. He is no longer Death the Enemy, but Death the Friend,
+who may&mdash;who can tell?&mdash;give back all that life has denied or taken
+away. He cannot harm us, and he may bless us, with the blessing of
+loving children, who believe that, whatever happens, nothing can take
+them out of their Father's arms.</p>
+
+<p>But I had not come to Cornwall to preach, except to myself now and
+then, as this day. My silent sermon was all done by the time the
+young folks came back, full of the beauties of their cliff walk, and
+their affectionate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> regrets that I "could never manage it," but must
+have felt so dull, sitting on a stone and watching the sheep and the
+sea-gulls. Not at all! I was obliged to confess that I never am "dull,"
+as people call it, and love solitude almost as much as society.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ENYS" id="ENYS"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 485px;">
+<img src="images/095.jpg" width="485" height="600" alt="ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS." />
+<div class="caption">ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So, each contented in our own way, we went merrily home, to find
+waiting for us our cosy tea&mdash;the last!&mdash;and our faithful Charles, who,
+according to agreement, appeared overnight, to take charge of us till
+we got back to civilisation and railways.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ladies, here I am," said he with a beaming countenance. "And
+I've got you the same carriage and the same horse, as you wished, and
+I've come in time to give him a good night's rest. Now, when shall you
+start, and what do you want to do to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>Our idea had been to take for our next resting-place Marazion. This
+queer-named town had attracted us ever since the days when we learnt
+geography. Since, we had heard a good deal about it: how it had
+been inhabited by Jewish colonists, who bought tin from the early
+Ph&oelig;nician workers of the Cornish mines, and been called by them
+Mara-Zion&mdash;bitter Zion&mdash;corrupted by the common people into Market-Jew.
+It was a quiet place, with St. Michael's Mount opposite; and attracted
+us much more than genteel Penzance. So did a letter we got from the
+landlord of its one hotel, promising to take us in, and make us
+thoroughly comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Could we get there in one day? Charles declared we could, and even see
+a good deal on the road.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go round by Mullion. Mary will be delighted to get another
+peep at you ladies, and while I rest the horse you can go in and look
+at the old church&mdash;it's very curious, they say. And then we'll go on
+to Gunwalloe,&mdash;there's another church there, close by the sea, built
+by somebody who was shipwrecked. But then it's so old and so small.
+However, we can stop and look at it if you like."</p>
+
+<p>His good common sense, and kindliness, when he might so easily have
+done his mere duty and taken us the shortest and ugliest route, showing
+us nothing, decided us to leave all in Charles's hands, and start at
+10 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> for Penzance, <i>viâ</i> Helstone, where we all wished to
+stay an hour or two, and find out a "friend," the only one we had in
+Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>So all was settled, with but a single regret, that several boating
+excursions we had planned with John Curgenven had all fallen through,
+and we should never behold some wonderful sea-caves between the Lizard
+and Cadgwith, which we had set our hearts upon visiting.</p>
+
+<p>Charles fingered his cap with a thoughtful air. "I don't see why you
+shouldn't, ladies. If I was to go direct and tell John Curgenven to
+have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> a boat ready at Church Cove, and we was to start at nine instead
+of ten, and drive there, the carriage might wait while you rowed to
+the caves and back; we should still reach Helstone by dinner-time, and
+Marazion before dark."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll do it!" was the unanimous resolve. And at this addition to his
+work Charles looked actually pleased!</p>
+
+<p>So&mdash;all was soon over, our easy packing done, our bill paid&mdash;a very
+small one&mdash;our goodnights said to the kindly handmaid, Esther, who
+hoped we would come back again some time, and promised to keep the
+artistic mural decorations of our little parlour in memory of us. My
+young folks went to bed, and then, a little before midnight, when all
+the house was quiet, I put a shawl over my head, unlatched the innocent
+door&mdash;no bolts or bars at the Lizard&mdash;and went out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>What a night it was!&mdash;mild as summer, clear as day: the full moon
+sailing aloft in an absolutely cloudless sky. Not a breath, not a
+sound&mdash;except the faint thud-thud of the in-coming waves, two miles
+off, at Kynance, the outline of which, and of the whole coast, was
+distinctly visible. A silent earth, lying under a silent heaven.
+Looking up, one felt almost like a disembodied soul, free to cleave
+through infinite space and gain&mdash;what?</p>
+
+<p>Is it human or divine, this ceaseless longing after something never
+attained, this craving after the eternal life, which, if fully believed
+in, fully understood, would take all the bitterness out of this life?
+And yet, that knowledge is not given.</p>
+
+<p>But so much is given, and all given is so infinitely good, except where
+we ourselves turn it into evil, that surely more, and better, will be
+given to us by and by.</p>
+
+<p>And so, to bed&mdash;to bed! Those only truly enjoy life who fear not death:
+who can say of the grave as if it were their bed: "I will lay me down
+in peace and take my rest, for it is Thou only, O God, who makest me to
+dwell in safety."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_NINTH" id="DAY_THE_NINTH">DAY THE NINTH</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">And</span> our last at the Lizard, which a week ago had been to us a mere word
+or dot in a map; now we carried away from it a living human interest in
+everything and everybody.</p>
+
+<p>Esther bade us a cordial farewell: Mrs. Curgenven, standing at the
+door of her serpentine shop, repeated the good wishes, and informed
+us that John and his boat had already started for Church Cove. As we
+drove through the bright little Lizard Town, and past the Church of
+Landewednack, wondering if we should ever see either again, we felt
+quite sad.</p>
+
+<p>But sentimental considerations soon vanished in practical alarms.
+Leaving the carriage and Charles at the nearest point to the Cove, we
+went down the steep descent, and saw John rocking in his boat, and
+beckoning to us with a bland and smiling countenance. But between us
+and him lay a sort of causeway, of the very roughest rocks, slippery
+with sea-weed, and beat upon by waves&mdash;such waves! Yet clearly, if we
+meant to get into the boat at all, we must seize our opportunity and
+jump in between the flux and reflux of that advancing tide.</p>
+
+<p>I am not a coward: I love boats, and was well used to them in my youth,
+but now&mdash;my heart misgave me. There were but two alternatives&mdash;to
+stop the pleasure of the whole party, and leave Cornwall with these
+wonderful sea-caves unseen, or to let my children go alone. Neither was
+possible; so I hailed a sturdy youth at work hard by, and asked him if
+he would take charge of an old lady across the rocks. He grinned from
+ear to ear, but came forward, and did his duty manfully and kindly. My
+young folks, light as feathers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> bounded after; and with the help of
+John Curgenven, chivalrous and careful as ever, we soon found ourselves
+safely in the boat.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><a name="CURGENVEN" id="CURGENVEN"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 420px;">
+<img src="images/099.jpg" width="420" height="600" alt="JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING." />
+<div class="caption">JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Safe, but not quite happy. "Here we go up, up, up, and here we go down,
+down, down," was the principle of our voyage, the most serious one we
+ever took in an open boat with a single pair of oars. Never did I see
+such waves,&mdash;at least, never did I float upon them, in a boat that went
+tossing like a bit of cork out into the open sea.</p>
+
+<p>John seemed not to mind them in the least. His strong arms swept the
+boat along, and he still found breath to talk to us, pointing out the
+great gloomy cliffs we were passing under, and telling us stories of
+wrecks, the favourite theme&mdash;and no wonder.</p>
+
+<p>This sunshiny morning that iron-bound coast looked awful enough; what
+must it have looked like, on the winter night when the emigrant ship
+<i>Brest</i> went down!</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was about ten o'clock at night," said John. "I was fast asleep
+in bed, but they knocked me up; I got on my clothes and was off in
+five minutes. They are always glad enough to get us fishermen, the
+coastguard are. Mine was the first boat-load we brought ashore; we
+would only take women and children that time. They were all in their
+night-gowns, and they couldn't speak a word of English, but we made
+them understand somehow. One woman threw her three children down to me,
+and stayed behind on the wreck with two more."</p>
+
+<p>"Were the women frightened?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, they were very quiet, dazed like. Some of them seemed to be
+saying their prayers. But they made no fuss at all, not even the little
+ones. They lay down in the bottom of the boat, and we rowed ashore
+as fast as we could, to Cadgwith. Then we rowed back and fetched two
+boatloads more. We saved a lot of lives that wreck, but only their
+lives; they had scarcely a rag of clothes on, and some of the babies
+were as naked as when they were born."</p>
+
+<p>"And who took them in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody: we always do it," answered John, as if surprised at
+the question. "The fishermen's cottages were full, and so was the
+parsonage. We gave them clothes, and kept them till they could be sent
+away. Yes, it was an awful night; I got something to remember it by,
+here."</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand, from which we noticed half of one finger was
+missing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It got squeezed off with a rope somehow. I didn't heed it much at
+the time," said John carelessly. "But look, we're at the first of the
+caves. I'll row in close, ladies, and let you see it."</p>
+
+<p>So we had to turn our minds from the vision of the wreck of the
+<i>Brest</i>, which John's simple words made so terribly vivid, to examine
+Raven's Ugo, and Dolor Ugo; <i>ugo</i> is Cornish for cave. Over the
+entrance of the first a pair of ravens have built from time immemorial.
+It is just accessible, the opening being above the sea-line, and hung
+with quantities of sea-ferns. Here in smuggling days, many kegs of
+spirits used to be secreted: and many a wild drama no doubt has been
+acted there&mdash;daring encounters between smugglers and coastguard men,
+not bloodless on either side.</p>
+
+<p>Dolor Ugo is now inaccessible and unusable. Its only floor is of
+heaving water, a deep olive green, and so clear that we could see the
+fishes swimming about pursuing a shoal of launce. Its high-vaulted roof
+and sides were tinted all colours&mdash;rose-pink, rich dark brown, and
+purple. The entrance was wide enough to admit a boat, but it gradually
+narrowed into impenetrable darkness. How far inland it goes no one can
+tell, as it could only be investigated by swimming, a rather dangerous
+experiment. Boats venture as far as the daylight goes; and it is a
+favourite trick of the boatman suddenly to fire off a pistol, which
+reverberates like thunder through the mysterious gloom of the cave.</p>
+
+<p>A solemn place; an awful place, some of us thought, as we rowed in, and
+out again, into the sunshiny open sea. Which we had now got used to;
+and it was delicious to go dancing like a feather up and down, trusting
+to John Curgenven's stout arm and fearless, honest face. We felt sad to
+think this would be our last sight of him and of the magnificent Lizard
+coast. But the minutes were lessening, and we had some way still to
+row. Also to land, which meant a leap between the waves upon slippery
+sea-weedy rocks. In silent dread I watched my children accomplish this
+feat, and then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Well, it is over, and I sit here writing these details. But I would
+not do it again, not even for the pleasure of revisiting Dolor Ugo and
+having a row with John Curgenven.</p>
+
+<p>Honest fellow! he looked relieved when he saw "the old lady" safe on
+<i>terra firma</i>, and we left him waving adieux, as he "rocked in his
+boat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> in the bay." May his stout arms and kindly heart long remain to
+him! May his summer tourists be many and his winter shipwrecks few!
+I am sure he will always do his duty, and see that other people do
+theirs, or, like the proverbial Cornishmen, he "will know the reason
+why."</p>
+
+<p>Charles was ready; waiting patiently in front of a blacksmith's shop.
+But, alas! fate had overtaken us in the shape of an innocent leak in
+John Curgenven's boat; nothing, doubtless, to him, who was in the habit
+of baling it out with his boots, and then calmly putting them on again,
+but a little inconvenient to us. To drive thirty miles with one's
+garments soaked up to the knees was not desirable.</p>
+
+<p>There was a cottage close by, whence came the gleam of a delicious fire
+and the odour of ironing clothes. We went in: the mistress, evidently
+a laundress, advanced and offered to dry us&mdash;which she did, chattering
+all the while in the confidential manner of country folks.</p>
+
+<p>A hard working, decent body she was, and as for her house, it was a
+perfect picture of cleanliness and tidiness. Its two rooms, kitchen and
+bedroom, were absolutely speckless. When we noticed this, and said we
+found the same in many Cornish cottages; she almost seemed offended at
+the praise.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's nothing, ma'am. We hereabouts all likes to have our places
+tidy. Mine's not over tidy to-day because of the washing. I hadn't time
+to clean up. But if you was to come of a Sunday. Look there!" Her eye
+caught something in a dark corner, at which she flew, apron in hand. "I
+declare, I'm quite ashamed. I didn't think we had one in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"One what?"</p>
+
+<p>"One spider web!"</p>
+
+<p>Dried, warmed, and refreshed, but having found the greatest difficulty
+in inducing the good woman to receive any tangible thanks for her
+kindness, we proceeded on our journey; going over the same ground which
+we had traversed already, and finding Pradenack Down as bleak and
+beautiful as ever. Our first halt was at the door of Mary Mundy, who,
+with her unappreciated brother, ran out to meet us, and looked much
+disappointed when she found we had not come to stay.</p>
+
+<p>"But you will come some time, ladies, and I'll make you so comfortable.
+And you'll give my duty to the professor"&mdash;it was vain to explain that
+four hundred miles lay between our home and his. "I hope he's quite
+well.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> He was a very nice gentleman, please'm. I shall be delighted to
+see him again, please'm," &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>We left the three&mdash;Mary, her brother, and Charles&mdash;chattering together
+in a dialect which I do not attempt to reproduce, and sometimes could
+hardly understand. Us, the natives indulged with their best English,
+but among themselves they talked the broadest Cornish.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very old church, and a preternaturally old beadle showed it in
+a passive manner, not recognising in the least its points of interest
+and beauty, except some rows of open benches with ancient oak backs,
+wonderfully carved.</p>
+
+<p>"Our vicar dug them up from under the flooring and turned them into
+pews. There was a gentleman here the other day who said there was
+nothing like them in all England."</p>
+
+<p>Most curious, in truth, they were, and suited well the fine old
+building&mdash;a specimen of how carefully and lavishly our forefathers
+built "for God." We, who build for ourselves, are rather surprised
+to find in out-of-the-way nooks like this, churches that in size and
+adornment must have cost years upon years of loving labour as well as
+money.</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant to know that the present incumbent, a man of
+archæological tastes, appreciated his blessings, and took the utmost
+care of his beautiful old church. Success to him! even though he cannot
+boast the power of his predecessor, the Reverend Thomas Flavel, who
+died in 1682, and whose monument in the chancel really expresses the
+sentiments&mdash;in epitaph&mdash;of the period:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Earth, take thine earth; my sin, let Satan have it;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The world my goods; my soul my God who gave it.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For from these four, Earth, Satan, World, and God,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul, I had."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>But it does not mention that the reverend gentleman was the best
+<i>ghost-layer</i> in all England, and that when he died his ghost also
+required to be laid, by a brother clergyman, in a spot on the down
+still pointed out by the people of Mullion, who, being noted for
+extreme longevity, have passed down this tradition from generation
+to generation, with an earnest credulity that we of more enlightened
+counties can hardly understand.</p>
+
+<p>From Mullion we went on to Gunwalloe. Its church, "small and old," as
+Charles had depreciatingly said, had been so painfully "restored,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+and looked so bran-new and uninteresting that we contented ourselves
+with a distant look. It was close to the sea&mdash;probably built on the
+very spot where its pious founder had been cast ashore. The one curious
+point about it was the detached belfry, some yards distant from the
+church itself. It sat alone in a little cove, down which a sluggish
+river crawled quietly seaward. A sweet quiet place, but haunted, as
+usual, by tales of cruel shipwrecks&mdash;of sailors huddled for hours on
+a bit of rock just above the waves, till a boat could put out and
+save the few survivors; of sea treasures continually washed ashore
+from lost ships&mdash;Indian corn, coffee, timber, dollars&mdash;many are still
+found in the sand after a storm. And one treasure more, of which the
+recollection is still kept at Gunwalloe, "a little dead baby in its cap
+and night-gown, with a necklace of coral beads."</p>
+
+<p>After this our road turned inland. Our good horse, with the dogged
+persistency of Cornish horses and Cornish men, plodded on mile after
+mile. Sometimes for an hour or more we did not meet a living soul;
+then we came upon a stray labourer, or passed through a village where
+healthy-looking children, big-eyed, brown-faced, and dirty-handed,
+picturesque if not pretty, stared at us from cottage doors, or from the
+gates of cottage gardens full of flowers and apples.</p>
+
+<p>Those apples! They were a picture. Hungry and thirsty, we could not
+resist them. After passing several trees, hung thickly with delicious
+fruit, we attacked the owner of one of them, a comely young woman, with
+a baby in her arms and another at her gown.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, ma'am, you may have as many apples as you like, if your young
+ladies will go and get them."</p>
+
+<p>And while they did it, she stood talking by the carriage door, pouring
+out to me her whole domestic history with a simple frankness worthy of
+the golden age.</p>
+
+<p>"No, really I couldn't," putting back my payment&mdash;little enough&mdash; for
+the splendid basket of apples which the girls brought back in triumph.
+"This is such a good apple year; the pigs would get them if the young
+ladies didn't. You're kindly welcome to them&mdash;well then, if you are
+determined, say sixpence."</p>
+
+<p>On which magnificent "sixpenn'orth," we lived for days! Indeed I think
+we brought some of it home as a specimen of Cornish fruit and Cornish
+liberality.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="ARMED" id="ARMED"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 430px;">
+<img src="images/106.jpg" width="430" height="600" alt="THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE." />
+<div class="caption">THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Helstone was reached at last, and we were not sorry for rest and food
+in the old-fashioned inn, whence we could look out of window, and
+contemplate the humours of the little town, which doubtless considered
+itself a very great one. It was market day, and the narrow street was
+thronged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> with beasts and men&mdash;the latter as sober as the former,
+which spoke well for Cornwall. Sober and civil too was every one we
+addressed in asking our way to the house of our unknown friend, whose
+only address we had was Helstone. But he seemed well known in the town,
+though neither a rich man, nor a great man, nor&mdash;No, I cannot say he
+was not a clever man, for in his own line, mechanical engineering, he
+must have been exceedingly clever. And he was what people call "a great
+character;" would have made such an admirable study for a novelist,
+manipulated into an unrecognisable ideal&mdash;the only way in which it is
+fair to put people in books. When I saw him I almost regretted that I
+write novels no more.</p>
+
+<p>We passed through the little garden&mdash;all ablaze with autumn colour,
+every inch utilised for either flowers, vegetables, or fruit&mdash;went into
+the parlour, sent our cards and waited the result.</p>
+
+<p>In two minutes our friend appeared, and gave us such a welcome! But to
+explain it I must trench a little upon the sanctities of private life,
+and tell the story of this honest Cornishman. It will not harm him.</p>
+
+<p>When still young he went to Brazil, and was employed by an English
+gold-mining company there, for some years. Afterwards he joined
+an engineering firm, and superintended dredging, the erection of
+saw-mills, &amp;c., finally building a lighthouse, of which latter work he
+had the sole charge, and was exceedingly proud. His conscientiousness,
+probity, and entire reliableness made him most valuable to the
+firm; whom he served faithfully for many years. When they, as well
+as himself, returned to England, he still kept up a correspondence
+with them, preserving towards every member of the family the most
+enthusiastic regard and devotion.</p>
+
+<p>He rushed into the parlour, a tall, gaunt, middle-aged man, with a
+shrewd, kindly face, which beamed all over with delight, as he began
+shaking hands indiscriminately, saying how kind it was of us to come,
+and how welcome we were.</p>
+
+<p>It was explained which of us he had specially to welcome, the others
+being only humble appendages, friends of the family, this well-beloved
+family, whose likenesses for two generations we saw everywhere about
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss, there they all are, your dear grandfather" (alas, only a
+likeness now!), "your father, and your uncle. They were all so good to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+me, and I would do anything for them, or for any one of their name. If
+I got a message that they wanted me for anything, I'd be off to London,
+or to Brazil, or anywhere, in half-an-hour."</p>
+
+<p>And he really looked as if he would.</p>
+
+<p>"But what will you take?" added the good man when the rapture and
+excitement of the moment had a little subsided, and his various
+questions as to the well-being of "the family" had been asked and
+answered. "You have dined, you say, but you'll have a cup of tea. My
+wife (that's the little maid I used to talk to your father about, miss;
+I always told him I wouldn't stay in Brazil, I must go back to England
+and marry my little maid), my wife makes the best cup of tea in all
+Cornwall. Here she is!"</p>
+
+<p>And there entered, in afternoon gown and cap, probably just put on, a
+middle-aged, but still comely matron, who insisted that, even at this
+early hour&mdash;3 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>&mdash;to get a cup of tea for us was "no trouble
+at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, she wouldn't think anything a trouble, no more than I should,
+miss, if it was for your family. They never forget me, nor I them."</p>
+
+<p>It was here suggested that they were not a "forgetting" family. Nor
+was he a man likely to be soon forgotten. While the cup of tea, which
+proved to be a most sumptuous meal, was preparing, he took us all over
+his house, which was full of foreign curiosities, and experimental
+inventions. One, I remember, being a musical instrument, a sort of
+organ, which he had begun making when a mere boy, and taken with him
+all the way to Brazil and back. It had now found refuge in the little
+room he called his "workshop," which was filled with odds and ends that
+would have been delightful to a mechanical mind. He expounded them with
+enthusiasm, and we tried not to betray an ignorance, which in some of
+us would have been a sort of hereditary degradation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! they were clever&mdash;your father and your uncle!&mdash;and how proud we
+all were when we finished our lighthouse, and got the Emperor to light
+it up for the first time. Look here, ladies, what do you think this is?"</p>
+
+<p>He took out a small parcel, and solemnly unwrapped from it fold after
+fold of paper, till he came to the heart of it&mdash;a small wax candle!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"This was the candle the Emperor used to light our lighthouse. I've
+kept it for nearly thirty years, and I'll keep it as long as I live.
+Every year on the anniversary of the day I light it, drink his
+Majesty's health, and the health of all your family, miss, and then I
+put it out again. So"&mdash;carefully re-wrapping the relic in its numerous
+envelopes&mdash;"so I hope it will last my time."</p>
+
+<p>Here the mistress came behind her good man, and they exchanged a
+smile&mdash;the affectionate smile of two who had never been more than two,
+Darby and Joan, but all sufficient to each other. She announced that
+tea was ready. And such a tea! How we got through it I hardly know,
+but travelling is hungry work, and the viands were delicious. The
+beneficence of our kind hosts, however, was not nearly done.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, ladies, I'll show you my garden, and&mdash;(give me a basket and the
+grape-scissors,)" added he in a conjugal aside. Which resulted in our
+carrying away with us the biggest bunches in the whole vinery, as well
+as a quantity of rosy apples, stuffed into every available pocket and
+bag.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, nonsense," was the answer to vain remonstrances. "D'ye
+think I wouldn't give the best of everything I had to your family? and
+so would my missis too. How your father used to laugh at me about my
+little maid! But he understood it for all that. Oh yes, I'm glad I came
+home. And now your father and your uncle are home too, and perhaps some
+day they'll come to see me down here&mdash;wouldn't it be a proud day for
+me! You'll tell them so?"</p>
+
+<p>It was touching, and rare as touching, this passionate personal
+fidelity. It threw us back, at least such of us as were sentimentally
+inclined, upon that something in Cornish nature which found its
+exposition in Arthur and his faithful knights, down to "bold Sir
+Bedevere," and apparently, is still not lost in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>With a sense of real regret, feeling that it would be long ere we
+might meet his like&mdash;such shrewd simplicity, earnest enthusiasm, and
+exceeding faithfulness&mdash;we bade good-bye to the honest man; leaving him
+and his wife standing at their garden-gate, an elderly Adam and Eve,
+desiring nothing outside their own little paradise. Which of us could
+say more, or as much?</p>
+
+<p>Gratefully we "talked them over," as we drove on through the pretty
+country round Helstone&mdash;inland country; for we had no time to go and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+see the Loe Pool, a small lake, divided from the sea by a bar of sand.
+This is supposed to be the work of the Cornwall man-demon, Tregeagle;
+and periodically cut through, with solemn ceremonial, by the Mayor of
+Helstone, when the "meeting of the waters," fresh and salt, is said to
+be an extremely curious sight. But we did not see it, nor yet Nonsloe
+House, close by, which is held by the tenure of having to provide a
+boat and nets whenever the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cornwall
+wishes to fish in the Loe Pool. A circumstance which has never happened
+yet, certainly!</p>
+
+<p>Other curiosities <i>en route</i> we also missed, the stones of
+Tremenkeverne, half a ton each, used as missiles in a notable fight
+between two saints, St. Just of the Land's End, and St. Keverne of the
+Lizard, and still lying in a field to prove the verity of the legend.
+Also the rock of Goldsithney, where, when the "fair land of Lyonesse"
+was engulfed by the sea, an ancestor of the Trevelyans saved himself by
+swimming his horse, and landing; and various other remarkable places,
+with legends attached, needing much credulity, or imagination, to
+believe in.</p>
+
+<p>But, fearing to be benighted ere reaching Marazion, we passed them all,
+and saw nothing more interesting than the ruins of disused tin mines,
+which Charles showed us, mournfully explaining how the mining business
+had of late years drifted away from Cornwall, and how hundreds of the
+once thriving community had been compelled to emigrate or starve. As we
+neared Marazion, these melancholy wrecks with their little hillocks of
+mining debris rose up against the evening sky, the image of desolation.
+And then St. Michael's Mount, the picture in little of Mont St. Michel,
+in Normandy, appeared in the middle of Mount's Bay. Lastly, after
+a gorgeous sunset, in a golden twilight and silvery moonlight, we
+entered Marazion;-and found it, despite its picturesque name, the most
+commonplace little town imaginable!</p>
+
+<p>We should have regretted our rash decision, and gone on to Penzance,
+but for the hearty welcome given us at a most comfortable and home-like
+inn, which determined us to keep to our first intention, and stay.</p>
+
+<p>So, after our habit of making the best of things, we walked down to the
+ugly beach, and investigated the dirty-looking bay&mdash;in the lowest of
+all low tides, with a soppy, sea-weedy causeway running across to St.
+Michael's Mount. By advice of Charles, we made acquaintance with an old
+boatman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> he knew, a Norwegian who had drifted hither&mdash;shipwrecked, I
+believe&mdash;settled down and married an English woman, but whose English
+was still of the feeblest kind. However, he had an honest face; so we
+engaged him to take us out bathing early to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"And to-night, ladies?" suggested the faithful Charles. "Wouldn't you
+like to row round the Mount?&mdash;When you've had your tea, I'll come back
+for you, and help you down to the shore&mdash;it's rather rough, but nothing
+like what you have done, ma'am," added he encouragingly. "And it will
+be bright moonlight, and the Mount will look so fine."</p>
+
+<p>So, the spirit of adventure conquering our weariness, we went. When
+I think how it looked next morning&mdash;the small, shallow bay, with its
+toy-castle in the centre, I am glad our first vision of it was under
+the glamour of moonlight, with the battlemented rock throwing dark
+shadows across the shimmering sea. In the mysterious beauty of that
+night row round the Mount, we could imagine anything; its earliest
+inhabitant, the giant Cormoran, killed by that "valiant Cornishman,"
+the illustrious Jack; the lovely St. Keyne, a king's daughter, who came
+thither on pilgrimage; and, passing down from legend to history, Henry
+de la Pomeroy, who, being taken prisoner, caused himself to be bled to
+death in the Castle; Sir John Arundel, slain on the sands, and buried
+in the Chapel; Perkin Warbeck's unfortunate wife, who took refuge at
+St. Michael's shrine, but was dragged thence. And so on, and so on,
+through the centuries, to the family of St. Aubyn, who bought it in
+1660, and have inhabited it ever since. "Very nice people," we heard
+they were; who have received here the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and
+other royal personages. What a contrast to the legendary Cormoran!</p>
+
+<p>Yet, looking up as we rowed under the gloomy rock, we could fancy his
+giant ghost sitting there, on the spot where he killed his wife, for
+bringing in her apron greenstone, instead of granite, to build the
+chapel with. Which being really built of greenstone the story must be
+true! What a pleasure it is to be able to believe anything!</p>
+
+<p>Some of us could have stayed out half the night, floating along in the
+mild soft air and dreamy moonlight, which made even the commonplace
+little town look like a fairy scene, and exalted St. Michael's Mount
+into a grand fortress, fit for its centuries of legendary lore&mdash;but
+others preferred going to bed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So we landed, and retired. Not however without taking a long look out
+of the window upon the bay, which now, at high tide, was one sheet of
+rippling moon-lit water, with the grim old Mount, full of glimmering
+lights like eyes, sitting silent in the midst of the silent sea.</p>
+
+<p><a name="CORNISH_FISHERMAN" id="CORNISH_FISHERMAN"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 448px;">
+<img src="images/112.jpg" width="448" height="600" alt="CORNISH FISHERMAN." />
+<div class="caption">CORNISH FISHERMAN.</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_TENTH" id="DAY_THE_TENTH">DAY THE TENTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I cannot</span> advise Marazion as a bathing place. What a down-come from the
+picturesque vision of last night, to a small ugly fishy-smelling beach,
+which seemed to form a part of the town and its business, and was
+overlooked from everywhere! Yet on it two or three family groups were
+evidently preparing for a dip, or rather a wade of about a quarter of a
+mile in exceedingly dirty sea water.</p>
+
+<p>"This will never do," we said to our old Norwegian. "You must row us to
+some quiet cove along the shore, and away from the town."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded his head, solemn and mute as the dumb boatman of dead Elaine,
+rowed us out seaward for about half-a-mile, and then proceeded to
+fasten the boat to a big stone, and walk ashore. The water still did
+not come much above his knees&mdash;he seemed quite indifferent to it. But
+we?</p>
+
+<p>Well, we could but do at Rome as the Romans do. Toilette in an open
+boat was evidently the custom of the country. And the sun was warm, the
+sea safe and shallow. Indeed, so rapidly did it subside, that by the
+time the bath was done, we were aground, and had to call at the top of
+our voices to our old man, who sat, with his back to us, dim in the
+distance, on another big stone, calmly smoking the pipe of peace.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll not try this again," was the unanimous resolve, as, after
+politely declining a suggestion that "the ladies should walk ashore&mdash;"
+did he think we were amphibious?&mdash;we got ourselves floated off at last,
+and rowed to the nearest landing point, the entrance to St. Michael's
+Mount.</p>
+
+<p>Probably nowhere in England is found the like of this place. Such
+a curious mingling of a mediæval fortress and modern residence; of
+antiquarian treasures and everyday business; for at the foot of the
+rock is a fishing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> village of about thirty cottages, which carries
+on a thriving trade; and here also is a sort of station for the tiny
+underground-railway, which worked by a continuous chain, fulfils the
+very necessary purpose (failing Giant Cormoran, and wife) of carrying
+up coals, provisions, luggage, and all other domestic necessaries to
+the hill top.</p>
+
+<p>Thither we climbed by a good many weary steps, and thought, delightful
+as it may be to dwell on the top of a rock in the midst of the sea,
+like eagles in an eyrie, there are certain advantages in living on a
+level country road, or even in a town street. How in the world do the
+St. Aubyns manage when they go out to dinner? Two years afterwards,
+when I read in the paper that one of the daughters of the house,
+leaning over the battlements, had lost her balance and fallen down,
+mercifully unhurt, to the rocky slope below&mdash;the very spot where we
+to-day sat so quietly gazing out on the lovely sea view&mdash;I felt with
+a shudder that on the whole, it would be a trying thing to bring up a
+young family on St. Michael's Mount.</p>
+
+<p>Still, generation after generation of honourable St. Aubyns have
+brought up their families there, and oh! what a beautiful spot it is!
+How fresh, and yet mild blew the soft sea-wind outside of it, and
+inside, what endless treasures there were for the archæological mind!
+The chapel alone was worth a morning's study, even though shown&mdash;odd
+anachronism&mdash;by a footman in livery, who pointed out with great gusto
+the entrance to a vault discovered during the last repairs, where was
+found the skeleton of a large man&mdash;his bones only&mdash;no clue whatever as
+to who he was or when imprisoned there. The "Jeames" of modern days
+told us this tale with a noble indifference. Nothing of the kind was
+likely to happen to him.</p>
+
+<p>Further still we were fortunate enough to penetrate, and saw the Chevy
+Chase Hall, with its cornice of hunting scenes, the drawing-room, the
+school-room&mdash;only fancy learning lessons there, amidst the veritable
+evidence of the history one was studying! And perhaps the prettiest bit
+of it all was our young guide, herself a St. Aubyn, with her simple
+grace and sweet courtesy, worthy of one of the fair ladies worshipped
+by King Arthur's knights.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="SEINE" id="SEINE"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 800px;">
+<img src="images/115.jpg" width="800" height="545" alt="THE SEINE BOAT&mdash;A PERILOUS MOMENT." />
+<div class="caption">THE SEINE BOAT&mdash;A PERILOUS MOMENT.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>We did not like encroaching on her kindness, though we could have
+stayed all day, admiring the curious things she showed us. So we
+descended the rock, and crossed the causeway, now dry, but very rough
+walking&mdash;certainly St. Michael's Mount has its difficulties as a modern
+dwelling-house&mdash;and went back to our inn. For, having given our
+horse a forenoon's rest, we planned a visit to that spot immortalised
+by nursery rhyme&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"As I was going to St. Ives</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I met a man with seven wives.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Each wife had seven sacks;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Each sack had seven cats;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Each cat had seven kits;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How many were there going to St. Ives?"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&mdash;One; and after we had been there, we felt sure he never went again!</p>
+
+<p>There were two roads, we learnt, to that immortal town; one very good,
+but dull; the other bad&mdash;and beautiful. We chose the latter, and never
+repented.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, in passing through Penzance, did we repent not having taken up our
+quarters there. It was pretty, but so terribly "genteel," so extremely
+civilised. Glancing up at the grand hotel, we thought with pleasure of
+our old-fashioned inn at Marazion, where the benign waiter took quite
+a fatherly interest in our proceedings, even to giving us for dinner
+our very own blackberries, gathered yesterday on the road, and politely
+hindering another guest from helping himself to half a dishful, as
+"they belonged to the young ladies." Truly, there are better things in
+life than fashionable hotels.</p>
+
+<p>But the neighbourhood of Penzance is lovely. Shrubs and flowers such
+as one sees on the shores of the Mediterranean grew and flourished in
+cottage-gardens, and the forest trees we drove under, whole avenues
+of them, were very fine; gentlemen's seats appeared here and there,
+surrounded with the richest vegetation, and commanding lovely views. As
+the road gradually mounted upwards, we saw, clear as in a panorama, the
+whole coast from the Lizard Point to the Land's End,&mdash;which we should
+behold to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>For, hearing that every week-day about a hundred tourists in carriages,
+carts, and omnibuses, usually flocked thither, we decided that the
+desire of our lives, the goal of our pilgrimage, should be visited
+by us on a Sunday. We thought that to drive us thither in solitary
+Sabbatic peace would be fully as good for Charles's mind and morals as
+to hang all day idle about Marazion; and he seemed to think so himself.
+Therefore, in prospect of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> to-morrow, he dealt very tenderly with his
+horse to-day, and turned us out to walk up the heaviest hills, of which
+there were several, between Penzance and Castle-an-Dinas.</p>
+
+<p>"There it is," he said at last, stopping in the midst of a wide moor
+and pointing to a small building, sharp against the sky. "The carriage
+can't get further, but you can go on, ladies, and I'll stop and gather
+some blackberries for you."</p>
+
+<p>For brambles, gorse bushes, and clumps of fading heather, with one or
+two small stunted trees, were now the only curiosities of this, King
+Arthur's famed hunting castle, and hunting ground, which spread before
+us for miles and miles. Passing a small farm-house, we made our way to
+the building Charles pointed out, standing on the highest ridge of the
+promontory, whose furthest point is the Land's End. Standing there, we
+could see&mdash;or could have seen but that the afternoon had turned grey
+and slightly misty&mdash;the ocean on both sides. Inland, the view seemed
+endless. Roughtor and Brown Willy, two Dartmoor hills, are said to be
+visible sometimes. Nearer, little white dots of houses show the mining
+districts of Redruth and Camborne.</p>
+
+<p>But here, all was desolate solitude. A single wayfarer, looking like a
+working man in his Sunday best going to visit friends, but evidently
+tired, as if he had walked for miles, just glanced at us, and passed
+on. We stood, all alone, on the very spot where many a time must have
+stood King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Sir Launcelot, and the other
+knights&mdash;or the real human beings, whether barbarian or not, who formed
+the originals of those mythical personages.</p>
+
+<p>All had vanished now. Nothing was left but a common-place little tower,
+built up of the fragments of the old castle, and a wide, pathless
+moor, over which the wind sighed, and the mist crept. No memorial
+whatever of King Arthur, except the tradition&mdash;which time and change
+have been powerless to annihilate&mdash;that such a man once existed. The
+long vitality which the legend keeps proves that he must have been
+a remarkable man in his day. Romance itself cannot exist without a
+foundation in reality.</p>
+
+<p>So I preached to my incredulous juniors, who threw overboard King
+Arthur and took to blackberry-gathering; and to conversation with a
+most comely Cornishwoman, milking the prettiest of Cornish cows in the
+lonely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> farm-yard, which was the only sign of humanity for miles and
+miles. We admired herself and her cattle; we drank her milk, offering
+for it the usual payment. But the picturesque milkmaid shook her head
+and demanded just double what even the dearest of London milk-sellers
+would have asked for the quantity. Which sum we paid in silence,
+and I only record the fact here in order to state that spite of our
+foreboding railway friend at Falmouth, this was the only instance in
+which we were ever "taken in," or in the smallest degree imposed upon,
+in Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>Another hour, slowly driving down the gradual slope of the country,
+through a mining district much more cheerful than that beyond Marazion.
+The mines were all apparently in full work, and the mining villages
+were pretty, tidy, and cosy-looking, even picturesque. Approaching St.
+Ives the houses had quite a foreign look, but when we descended to
+the town, its dark, narrow streets, pervaded by a "most ancient and
+fish-like smell," were anything but attractive.</p>
+
+<p>As was our hotel, where, as a matter of duty, we ordered tea, but
+doubted if we should enjoy it, and went out again to see what little
+there seemed to be seen, puzzling our way through the gloomy and not
+too fragrant streets, till at last in despair we stopped a bland,
+elderly, Methodist-minister-looking gentleman, and asked him the way to
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>He eyed us over. "You're strangers here, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>I owned the humbling fact, as the inhabitant of St. Ives must doubtless
+consider it.</p>
+
+<p>"And is it the pilchard fishery you want to see? It is just beginning.
+A few pilchards have been seen already. There are the boats, the
+fishermen are all getting ready. It's a fine sight to see them start.
+Would you like to come and look at them?"</p>
+
+<p>He had turned back and was walking with us down the street, pointing
+out everything that occurred to him as noticeable, in the kindest and
+civilest way. When we apologised for troubling him, and would have
+parted company, our friend made no attempt to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've nothing at all to do, except"&mdash;he took out the biggest and
+most respectable of watches&mdash;"except to attend a prayer-meeting at
+half-past six. I should have time to show you the town; we think it is
+a very nice little town. I ought to know it; I've lived in it, boy and
+man for thirty-seven years. But now I have left my business to my sons,
+and I just go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> about and amuse myself, looking into the shop now and
+then just for curiosity. You must have seen my old shop, ladies, if you
+came down that street."</p>
+
+<p><a name="IVES" id="IVES"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 800px;">
+<img src="images/120.jpg" width="800" height="419" alt="ST. IVES." />
+<div class="caption">ST. IVES.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Which he named, and also gave us his own name, which we had seen over
+the shop door, but I shall not record either. Not that I think the
+honest man is ever likely to read such "light" literature as this book,
+or to recall the three wanderers to whom he was so civil and kind, and
+upon whom he poured out an amount of local and personal facts, which
+we listened to&mdash;as a student of human nature is prone to do&mdash;with an
+amused interest in which the comic verged on the pathetic. How large
+to each man seems his own little world, and what child-like faith he
+has in its importance to other people! I shall always recall our friend
+at St. Ives, with his prayer-meetings, his chapel-goings&mdash;I concluded
+he was a Methodist, a sect very numerous in Cornwall&mdash;his delight in
+his successful shop and well-brought-up sons, who managed it so well,
+leaving him to enjoy his <i>otium cum dignitate</i>&mdash;no doubt a municipal
+dignity, for he showed us the Town Hall with great gusto. Evidently to
+his honest, simple soul, St. Ives was the heart of the world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By and by again he pulled out the turnip-like watch. "Just ten minutes
+to get to my prayer-meeting, and I never like to be late, I have been a
+punctual man all my life, ma'am," added he, half apologetically, till
+I suggested that this was probably the cause of his peace and success.
+Upon which he smiled, lifted his hat with a benign adieu, hoped we had
+liked St. Ives&mdash;we had liked his company at any rate&mdash;and with a final
+pointing across the street, "There's my shop, ladies, if you would care
+to look at it," trotted away to his prayer-meeting.</p>
+
+<p>I believe the neighbourhood of St. Ives, especially Tregenna, its
+ancient mansion transformed into an hotel, is exceedingly pretty, but
+night was falling fast, and we saw nothing. Speedily we despatched a
+most untempting meal, and hurried Charles's departure, lest we should
+be benighted, as we nearly were, during the long miles of straight and
+unlovely road&mdash;the good road&mdash;between here and Penzance. We had done
+our duty, we had seen the place, but as, in leaving it behind us, we
+laughingly repeated the nursery rhyme, we came to the conclusion that
+the man who was "<i>going</i> to St. Ives" was the least fortunate of all
+those notable individuals.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_ELEVENTH" id="DAY_THE_ELEVENTH">DAY THE ELEVENTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> last thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a
+starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on St.
+Michael's Mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. It would be hard,
+if after journeying thus far and looking forward to it so many years,
+the day on which we went to the Land's End should turn out a wet day!
+Still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. Some
+of us, I think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so
+till the hand is dust.</p>
+
+<p>It was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out
+on the dawn, grey and misty, but still not wet. To be just on the point
+of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare
+enough to have a certain pathos in it. We slept again, and trusted
+for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering
+sun-gleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky. We wondered for the last
+time, as we had wondered for half a century, "what the Land's End would
+be like," and then started, rather thoughtful than merry, to find out
+the truth of the case.</p>
+
+<p>Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead
+of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote us in driving through
+Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along
+to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage
+to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew
+by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted
+with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised
+faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."</p>
+
+<p>But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> shall
+never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely
+roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about
+Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the
+high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island.
+The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was
+now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer
+leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three
+children trotting to school or church, with their books under their
+arms. Unquestionably Cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county;
+religious-minded too, whether Methodist, Quaker, or other nonconformist
+sects, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative Church
+of England.</p>
+
+<p>We passed St. Buryan's&mdash;a curious old church founded on the place where
+an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. A
+few stray cottages comprised the whole village. There was nothing
+special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and
+sunshine and solitude, till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the
+celebrated Logan or rocking-stone.</p>
+
+<p>From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in
+England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial,
+who can decide?</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant
+Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's
+crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point
+on which it rests. Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at
+great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked
+properly since.</p>
+
+<p>By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who
+stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the
+Lizard, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards.
+Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a
+labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of
+them in answer to a question.</p>
+
+<p>And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+much readier than his tongue. I, at least, should never have got even
+so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself&mdash;a somewhat
+anxious-minded old hen&mdash;and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that
+enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the Logan.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the
+lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must
+honestly confess <i>I</i> could not see it stir a single inch.</p>
+
+<p>However, it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones
+around it were equally huge and most picturesquely thrown together.
+Also&mdash;delightful to my young folks!&mdash;they furnished the most
+adventurous scramble that heart could desire. I alone felt a certain
+relief when we were all again on smooth ground, with no legs or arms
+broken.</p>
+
+<p>The cliff-walk between the Logan and the Land's End is said to be one
+of the finest in England for coast scenery. Treryn or Treen Dinas,
+Pardeneck Point, and Tol Pedn Penwith had been named as places we ought
+to see, but this was impracticable. We had to content ourselves with a
+dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and
+ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of
+a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came
+forward to the carriage, and Charles jumped down from his box.</p>
+
+<p>"You can get out now, ladies. This is the Land's End."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>I forbear to translate the world of meaning implied in that brief
+exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go in and get something. Perhaps we shall admire the place more
+when we have ceased to be hungry."</p>
+
+<p>The words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of
+an hour at the Land's End in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too
+daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour
+of the&mdash;let me give it its right name&mdash;First and Last Inn, of Great
+Britain.</p>
+
+<p>"We never provide for Sunday," said the waitress, responding to a
+sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here.
+"It's very seldom any tourists come on a Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>At which we felt altogether humbled; but in a few minutes more our
+contrition passed into sovereign content.</p>
+
+<p>We went out of doors, upon the narrow green plateau in front of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+house, and then we recognised where we were&mdash;standing at the extreme
+end of a peninsula, with a long line of rocks running out still further
+into the sea. That "great and wide sea, wherein are moving things
+innumerable," the mysterious sea "kept in the hollow of His hand," who
+is Infinity, and looking at which, in the intense solitude and silence,
+one seems dimly to guess at what Infinity may be. Any one who wishes to
+go to church for once in the Great Temple which His hands have builded,
+should spend a Sunday at the Land's End.</p>
+
+<p>At first, our thought had been, What in the world shall we do here for
+two mortal hours! Now, we wished we had had two whole days. A sunset, a
+sunrise, a star-lit night, what would they not have been in this grand
+lonely place&mdash;almost as lonely as a ship at sea? It would be next best
+to finding ourselves in the middle of the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>But this bliss could not be; so we proceeded to make the best of what
+we had. The bright day was darkening, and a soft greyness began to
+creep over land and sea. No, not soft, that is the very last adjective
+applicable to the Land's End. Even on that calm day there was a fresh
+wind&mdash;there must be always wind&mdash;and the air felt sharper and more salt
+than any sea-air I ever knew. Stimulating too, so that one's nerves
+were strung to the highest pitch of excitement. We felt able to do
+anything, without fear and without fatigue. So that when a guide came
+forward&mdash;a regular man-of-war's-man he looked&mdash;we at once resolved to
+adventure along the line of rocks, seaward, "out as far as anybody was
+accustomed to go."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay; I'll take you, ladies. That is&mdash;the young ladies might go&mdash;but
+you&mdash;" eying me over with his keen sailor's glance, full of honesty and
+good humour, "you're pretty well on in years, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>Laughing, I told him how far on, but that I was able to do a good deal
+yet. He laughed too.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've taken ladies much older than you. One the other day was
+nearly seventy. So we'll do our best, ma'am. Come along."</p>
+
+<p>He offered a rugged, brown hand, as firm and steady as a mast, to hold
+by, and nothing could exceed the care and kindliness with which he
+guided every step of every one of us, along that perilous path, that
+is, perilous except for cautious feet and steady heads.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, young ladies. If you make one false step, you are done
+for," said our guide, composedly as he pointed to the boiling whirl of
+waters below.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="LAND" id="LAND"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 622px;">
+<img src="images/126.jpg" width="622" height="800" alt="THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK." />
+<div class="caption">THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Still, though a narrow and giddy path, there was a path, and the
+exploit, though a little risky, was not fool-hardy. We should have
+been bitterly sorry not to have done it&mdash;not to have stood for one
+grand ten minutes, where in all our lives we may never stand again, at
+the farthest point where footing is possible, gazing out upon that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+magnificent circle of sea which sweeps over the submerged "land of
+Lyonesse," far, far away, into the wide Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>There were just two people standing with us, clergymen evidently, and
+one, the guide told us, was "the parson at St. Sennen." We spoke to
+him, as people do speak, instinctively, when mutually watching such a
+scene, and by and by we mentioned the name of the long-dead curate of
+St. Sennen's.</p>
+
+<p>The "parson" caught instantly at the name.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. &mdash;&mdash;? Oh, yes, my father knew him quite well. He used constantly
+to walk across from Sennen to our house, and take us children long
+rambles across the cliffs, with a volume of Southey or Wordsworth under
+his arm. He was a fine young fellow in those days, I have heard, and an
+excellent clergyman. And he afterwards married a very nice girl from
+the north somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;" we smiled. The "nice girl" was now a sweet silver-haired little
+lady of nearly eighty; the "fine young fellow" had long since departed;
+and the boy was this grave middle-aged gentleman, who remembered both
+as a tradition of his youth. What a sermon it all preached, beside this
+eternal rock, this ever-moving, never-changing sea!</p>
+
+<p>But time was passing&mdash;how fast it does pass, minutes, ay, and years! We
+bade adieu to our known unknown friend, and turned our feet backwards,
+cautiously as ever, stopping at intervals to listen to the gossip of
+our guide.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ladies, that's the spot&mdash;you may see the hoof-mark&mdash;where General
+Armstrong's horse fell over; he just slipped off in time, but the poor
+beast was drowned. And here, over that rock, happened the most curious
+thing. I wouldn't have believed it myself, only I knew a man that saw
+it with his own eyes. Once a bullock fell off into the pool below
+there&mdash;just look, ladies." (We did look, into a perfect Maëlstrom of
+boiling waves.) "Everybody thought he was drowned, till he was seen
+swimming about unhurt. They fished him up, and exhibited him as a
+curiosity."</p>
+
+<p>And again, pointing to a rock far out in the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the Brisons. Thirty years ago a ship went to pieces there, and
+the captain and his wife managed to climb on to that rock. They held
+on there for two days and a night, before a boat could get at them.
+At last they were taken off one at a time, with rockets and a rope;
+the wife first. But the rope slipped and she fell into the water. She
+was pulled out in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> a minute or so, and rowed ashore, but they durst
+not tell her husband she was drowned. I was standing on the beach at
+Whitesand Bay when the boat came in. I was only a lad, but I remember
+it well, and her too lifted out all dripping and quite dead. She was
+such a fine woman."</p>
+
+<p>"And the captain?"</p>
+
+<p>"They went back for him, and got him off safe, telling him nothing. But
+when he found she was dead he went crazy-like&mdash;kept for ever saying,
+'She saved my life, she saved my life,' till he was taken away by his
+friends. Look out, ma'am, mind your footing; just here a lady slipped
+and broke her leg a week ago. I had to carry her all the way to the
+hotel. I shouldn't like to carry you."</p>
+
+<p>We all smiled at the comical candour of the honest sailor, who
+proceeded to give us bits of his autobiography. He was Cornish born,
+but had seen a deal of the world as an A.B. on board her Majesty's ship
+<i>Agamemnon</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you have heard of the <i>Agamemnon</i>, ma'am. I was in her off
+Balaklava. You remember the Crimean war?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I did. His eyes brightened as we discussed names and places once
+so familiar, belonging to that time, which now seems so far back as to
+be almost historical.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you know what a winter we had, and what a summer afterwards. I
+came home invalided, and didn't attempt the service afterwards; but I
+never thought I should come home at all. Yes, it's a fine place the
+Land's End, though the air is so strong that it kills some folks right
+off. Once an invalid gentleman came, and he was dead in a fortnight.
+But I'm not dead yet, and I stop here mostly all the year round."</p>
+
+<p>He sniffed the salt air and smiled all over his weather-beaten
+face&mdash;keen, bronzed, blue-eyed, like one of the old Vikings. He was a
+fine specimen of a true British tar. When, having seen all we could, we
+gave him his small honorarium, he accepted it gratefully, and insisted
+on our taking in return a memento of the place in the shape of a stone
+weighing about two pounds, glittering with ore, and doubtless valuable,
+but ponderous. Oh, the trouble it gave me to carry it home, and pack
+and unpack it among my small luggage! But I did bring it home, and
+I keep it still in remembrance of the Land's End, and of the honest
+sailor of H.M.S. <i>Agamemnon</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So all was over. We could dream of an unknown Land's End no more. It
+became now a real place, of which the reality, though different from
+the imagination, was at least no disappointment. How few people in
+attaining a life-long desire can say as much!</p>
+
+<p>Our only regret, an endurable one now, was that we had not carried out
+our original plan of staying some days there&mdash;tourist-haunted, troubled
+days they might have been, but the evenings and mornings would have
+been glorious. With somewhat heavy hearts we summoned Charles and the
+carriage, for already a misty drift of rain began sweeping over the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, we must see Whitesand Bay," said one of us, recalling a story
+a friend had once told how, staying at Land's End, she crossed the bay
+alone in a blinding storm, took refuge at the coastguard station, where
+she was hospitably received, and piloted back with most chivalric care
+by a coastguard, who did not tell her till their journey's end that he
+had left at home a wife, and a baby just an hour old.</p>
+
+<p>No such romantic adventure befell us. We only caught a glimmer of the
+bay through drizzling rain, which by the time we reached Sennen village
+had become a regular downpour. Evidently, we could do no more that day,
+which was fast melting into night.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go home," was the sad resolve, glad nevertheless that we had a
+comfortable "home" to go to.</p>
+
+<p>So closing the carriage and protecting ourselves as well as we could
+from the driving rain, we went forward, passing the Quakers' burial
+ground, where is said to be one of the finest views in Cornwall; the
+Nine Maidens, a circle of Druidical stones, and many other interesting
+things, without once looking at or thinking of them.</p>
+
+<p>Half a mile from Marazion the rain ceased, and a light like that of the
+rising moon began to break through the clouds. What a night it might
+be, or might have been, could we have stayed at the Land's End!</p>
+
+<p>That ghostly "might have been!" It is in great things as in small, the
+worry, the torment, the paralysing burden of life. Away with it! We
+have done our best to be happy, and we have been happy. We have seen
+the Land's End.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_TWELFTH" id="DAY_THE_TWELFTH">DAY THE TWELFTH</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Monday</span> morning. Black Monday we were half inclined to call it, knowing
+that by the week's end our travels must be over and done, and that if
+we wished still to see all we had planned, we must inevitably next
+morning return to civilisation and railways, a determination which
+involved taking this night "a long, a last farewell" of our comfortable
+carriage and our faithful Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"But it needn't be until night," said he, evidently loth to part from
+his ladies. "If I get back to Falmouth by daylight to-morrow morning,
+master will be quite satisfied. I can take you wherever you like
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"And the horse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he shall get a good feed and a rest till the middle of the night,
+then he'll do well enough. We shall have the old moon after one o'clock
+to get home by. Between Penzance and Falmouth it's a good road, though
+rather lonely."</p>
+
+<p>I should think it was, in the "wee hours" by the dim light of a waning
+moon. But Charles seemed to care nothing about it, so we said no more,
+but decided to take the drive&mdash;our last drive.</p>
+
+<p>Our minds were perplexed between Botallack Mine, the Gurnard's Head,
+Lamorna Cove, and several other places, which we were told we must on
+no account miss seeing, the first especially. Some of us, blessed with
+scientific relatives, almost dreaded returning home without having seen
+a single Cornish mine; others, lovers of scenery, longed for more of
+that magnificent coast. But finally, a meek little voice carried the
+day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p><a name="SENNEN" id="SENNEN"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 1195px;">
+<img src="images/131.jpg" width="800" height="600" alt="SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS." />
+<div class="caption">SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I was so disappointed&mdash;more than I liked to say&mdash;when it rained,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+and I couldn't get my shells for our bazaar. How shall I ever get them
+now? If it wouldn't trouble anybody very much, mightn't we go again to
+Whitesand Bay?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A plan not wholly without charm. It was a heavenly day; to spend it
+in delicious idleness on that wide sweep of sunshiny sand would be a
+rest for the next day's fatigue. Besides, consolatory thought! there
+would be no temptation to put on miners' clothes, and go dangling in
+a basket down to the heart of the earth, as the Princess of Wales was
+reported to have done. The pursuit of knowledge may be delightful, but
+some of us owned to a secret preference for <i>terra firma</i> and the upper
+air. We resolved to face opprobrium, and declare boldly we had "no
+time" (needless to add no inclination) to go and see Botallack Mine.
+The Gurnard's Head cost us a pang to miss; but then we should catch a
+second view of the Land's End. Yes, we would go to Whitesand Bay.</p>
+
+<p>It was a far shorter journey in sunshine than in rain, even though we
+made various divergencies for blackberries and other pleasures. Never
+had the sky looked bluer or the sea brighter, and much we wished that
+we could have wandered on in dreamy peace, day after day, or even gone
+through England, gipsy-fashion, in a house upon wheels, which always
+seemed to me the very ideal of travelling.</p>
+
+<p>We reached Sennen only too soon. Pretty little Sennen, with its ancient
+church and its new school house, where the civil schoolmaster gave me
+some ink to write a post-card for those to whom even the post-mark
+"Sennen" would have a touching interest, and where the boys and girls,
+released for dinner, were running about. Board school pupils, no doubt,
+weighted with an amount of learning which would have been appalling
+to their grandfathers and grandmothers, the simple parishioners of
+the "fine young fellow" half a century ago. As we passed through the
+village with its pretty cottages and "Lodgings to Let," we could not
+help thinking what a delightful holiday resort this would be for
+a large small family, who could be turned out as we were when the
+carriage could no farther go, on the wide sweep of green common,
+gradually melting into silvery sand, so fine and soft that it was
+almost a pleasure to tumble down the slopes, and get up again, shaking
+yourself like a dog, without any sense of dirt or discomfort. What a
+paradise for children, who might burrow like rabbits and wriggle about
+like sand-eels, and never come to any harm!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Without thought of any danger, we began selecting our bathing-place,
+shallow enough, with long strips of wet shimmering sand to be crossed
+before reaching even the tiniest waves; when one of us, the cautious
+one, appealed to an old woman, the only human being in sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Bathe?" she said. "Folks ne'er bathe here. 'Tain't safe."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Quicksands?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head. Whether she understood us or not, or whether we
+quite understood her, I am not sure, and should be sorry to libel such
+a splendid bathing ground&mdash;apparently. But maternal wisdom interposed,
+and the girls yielded. When, half an hour afterwards, we saw a solitary
+figure moving on a distant ledge of rock, and a black dot, doubtless
+a human head, swimming or bobbing about in the sea beneath&mdash;maternal
+wisdom was reproached as arrant cowardice. But the sand was delicious,
+the sea-wind so fresh, and the sea so bright, that disappointment could
+not last. We made an encampment of our various impedimenta, stretched
+ourselves out, and began the search for shells, in which every
+arm's-length involved a mine of wealth and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Never except at one place, on the estuary of the Mersey, have I
+seen a beach made up of shells so lovely in colour and shape; very
+minute; some being no bigger than a grain of rice or a pin's head. The
+collecting of them was a fascination. We forgot all the historical
+interests that ought to have moved us, saw neither Athelstan, King
+Stephen, King John, nor Perkin Warbeck, each of whom is said to have
+landed here&mdash;what were they to a tiny shell, like that moralised over
+by Tennyson in "Maud"&mdash;"small, but a work divine"? I think infinite
+greatness sometimes touches one less than infinite littleness&mdash;the
+exceeding tenderness of Nature, or the Spirit which is behind Nature,
+who can fashion with equal perfectness a starry hemisphere and a
+glow-worm; an ocean and a little pink shell. The only imperfection in
+creation seems&mdash;oh, strange mystery!&mdash;to be man. Why?</p>
+
+<p>But away with moralising, or dreaming, though this was just a day for
+dreaming, clear, bright, warm, with not a sound except the murmur
+of the low waves, running in an enormous length&mdash;curling over and
+breaking on the soft sands. Everything was so heavenly calm, it seemed
+impossible to believe in that terrible scene when the captain and his
+wife were seen clinging to the Brisons rock, just ahead.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Doubtless our friend of the <i>Agamemnon</i> was telling this and all
+his other stories to an admiring circle of tourists, for we saw the
+Land's End covered with a moving swarm like black flies. How thankful
+we felt that we had "done" it on a Sunday! Still, we were pleased
+to have another gaze at it, with its line of picturesque rocks, the
+Armed Knight and the Irish Lady&mdash;though, I confess, I never could make
+out which was the knight and which was the lady. Can it be that some
+fragment of the legend of Tristram and Iseult originated these names?</p>
+
+<p>After several sweet lazy hours, we went through a "fish-cellar," a
+little group of cottages, and climbed a headland, to take our veritable
+farewell of the Land's End, and then decided to go home. We had rolled
+or thrown our provision basket, rugs, &amp;c., down the sandy slope, but it
+was another thing to carry them up again. I went in quest of a small
+boy, and there presented himself a big man, coastguard, as the only
+unemployed hand in the place, who apologised with such a magnificent
+air for not having "cleaned" himself, that I almost blushed to ask
+him to do such a menial service as to carry a bundle of wraps. But
+he accepted it, conversing amiably as we went, and giving me a most
+graphic picture of life at Sennen during the winter. When he left me,
+making a short cut to our encampment&mdash;a black dot on the sands, with
+two moving black dots near it&mdash;a fisher wife joined me, and of her own
+accord began a conversation.</p>
+
+<p>She and I fraternised at once, chiefly on the subject of children, a
+group of whom were descending the road from Sennen School. She told me
+how many of them were hers, and what prizes they had gained, and what
+hard work it was. She could neither read nor write, she said, but she
+liked her children to be good scholars, and they learnt a deal up at
+Sennen.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently they did, and something else besides learning, for when I
+had parted from my loquacious friend, I came up to the group just in
+time to prevent a stand-up fight between two small mites, the <i>casus
+belli</i> of which I could no more arrive at, than a great many wiser
+people can discover the origin of national wars. So I thought the
+strong hand of "intervention"&mdash;civilised intervention&mdash;was best, and
+put an end to it, administering first a good scolding, and then a coin.
+The division of this coin among the little party compelled an extempore
+sum in arithmetic, which I required them to do (for the excellent
+reason that I couldn't do it myself!)&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> they did it! Therefore I
+conclude that the heads of the Sennen school-children are as solid as
+their fists, and equally good for use.</p>
+
+<p><a name="ROAD" id="ROAD"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 636px;">
+<img src="images/136.jpg" width="636" height="800" alt="ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE." />
+<div class="caption">ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Simple little community! which as the fisher wife told me, only goes to
+Penzance about once a year, and is, as yet, innocent of tourists, for
+the swarm at the Land's End seldom goes near Whitesand Bay. Existence
+here must be very much that of an oyster,&mdash;but perhaps oysters are
+happy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By the time we reached Penzance the lovely day was dying into an
+equally lovely evening. St. Michael's Mount shone in the setting sun.
+It was high water, the bay was all alive with boats, and there was
+quite a little crowd of people gathered at the mild little station of
+Marazion. What could be happening?</p>
+
+<p>A princess was expected, that young half-English, half-foreign
+princess, in whose romantic story the British public has taken such an
+interest, sympathising with the motherly kindness of our good Queen,
+with the wedding at Windsor, and the sad little infant funeral there,
+a year after. The Princess Frederica of Hanover, and the Baron Von
+Pawel-Rammingen, her father's secretary, who, like a stout mediæval
+knight, had loved, wooed, and married her, were coming to St. Michael's
+Mount on a visit to the St. Aubyns.</p>
+
+<p>Marazion had evidently roused itself, and risen to the occasion. Half
+the town must have turned out to the beach, and the other half secured
+every available boat, in which it followed, at respectful distance,
+the two boats, one full of luggage, the other of human beings, which
+were supposed to be the royal party. People speculated with earnest
+curiosity, which was the princess, and which her husband, and what the
+St. Aubyns would do with them; whether they would be taken to see the
+Land's End, and whether they would go there as ordinary tourists, or in
+a grand visit of state. How hard it is that royal folk can never see
+anything except in state, or in a certain adventitious garb, beautiful,
+no doubt, but satisfactorily hiding the real thing. How they must long
+sometimes for a walk, after the fashion of Haroun Alraschid, up and
+down Regent Street and Oxford Street! or an incognito foreign tour, or
+even a solitary country walk, without a "lady-in-waiting."</p>
+
+<p>We had no opera-glass to add to the many levelled at those two boats,
+so we went in&mdash;hoping host and guests would spend a pleasant evening in
+the lovely old rooms we knew. We spent ours in rest, and in arranging
+for to-morrow's flight. Also in consulting with our kindly landlady
+as to a possible house at Marazion for some friends whom the winter
+might drive southwards, like the swallows, to a climate which, in this
+one little bay shut out from east and north, is&mdash;they told us&mdash;during
+all the cruel months which to many of us means only enduring life, not
+living&mdash;as mild and equable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> almost as the Mediterranean shores. And
+finally, we settled all with our faithful Charles, who looked quite
+mournful at parting with his ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is rather a long drive, and pretty lonely," said he. "But I'll
+wait till the moons up, and that'll help us. We'll get into Falmouth
+by daylight. I've got to do the same thing often enough through the
+summer, so I don't mind it."</p>
+
+<p>Thus said the good fellow, putting a cheery face on it, then with a
+hasty "Good-bye, ladies," he rushed away. But we had taken his address,
+not meaning to lose sight of him. (Nor have we done so up to this date
+of writing; and the fidelity has been equal on both sides.)</p>
+
+<p>Then, in the midst of a peal of bells which was kept up unweariedly
+till 10 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>&mdash;evidently Marazion is not blessed with the sight
+of a princess every day&mdash;we closed our eyes upon all outward things,
+and went away to the Land of Nod.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAY_THE_THIRTEENTH" id="DAY_THE_THIRTEENTH">DAY THE THIRTEENTH</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Into</span> King Arthurs land&mdash;Tintagel his birth-place, and Camelford,
+where he fought his last battle&mdash;the legendary region of which one
+may believe as much or as little as one pleases&mdash;we were going
+to-day. With the good common sense which we flattered ourselves had
+accompanied every step of our unsentimental journey, we had arranged
+all before-hand, ordered a carriage to meet the mail train, and hoped
+to find at Tintagel&mdash;not King Uther Pendragon, King Arthur or King
+Mark, but a highly respectable landlord, who promised us a welcome at
+an inn&mdash;which we only trusted would be as warm and as kindly as that we
+left behind us at Marazion.</p>
+
+<p>The line of railway which goes to the far west of England is one of the
+prettiest in the kingdom on a fine day, which we were again blessed
+with. It had been a wet summer, we heard, throughout Cornwall, but
+in all our journey, save that one wild storm at the Lizard, sunshine
+scarcely ever failed us. Now&mdash;whether catching glimpses of St. Ives
+Bay or sweeping through the mining district of Redruth, and the wooded
+country near Truro, Grampound, and St. Austell, till we again saw the
+glittering sea on the other side of Cornwall&mdash;all was brightness. Then
+darting inland once more, our iron horse carried us past Lostwithiel,
+the little town which once boasted Joseph Addison, M.P., as its
+representative; gave us a fleeting vision of Ristormel, one of the
+ancient castles of Cornwall, and on through a leafy land, beginning to
+change from rich green to the still richer yellows and reds of autumn,
+till we stopped at Bodmin Road.</p>
+
+<p><a name="TINTAGEL" id="TINTAGEL"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/140.jpg" width="500" height="600" alt="TINTAGEL." />
+<div class="caption">TINTAGEL.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>No difficulty in finding our carriage, for it was the only one there;
+a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> huge vehicle, of ancient build, the horses to match, capable of
+accommodating a whole family and its luggage. We missed our compact
+little machine, and our brisk, kindly Charles, but soon settled
+ourselves in dignified, roomy state, for the twenty miles, or rather
+more, which lay between us and the coast.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> Our way ran along lonely
+quiet country roads and woods almost as green as when Queen Guinevere
+rode through them "a maying," before the dark days of her sin and King
+Arthur's death.</p>
+
+<p>Here it occurs to me, as it did this day to a practical youthful mind,
+"What in the world do people know about King Arthur?"</p>
+
+<p>Well, most people have read Tennyson, and a few are acquainted with
+the "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. But, perhaps I had better
+briefly give the story, or as much of it as is necessary for the
+edification of outsiders.</p>
+
+<p>Uther Pendragon, King of Britain, falling in love with Ygrayne, wife of
+the duke of Cornwall, besieged them in their twin castles of Tintagel
+and Terrabil, slew the husband, and the same day married the wife. Unto
+whom a boy was born, and by advice of the enchanter Merlin, carried
+away, from the sea-shore beneath Tintagel, and confided to a good
+knight, Sir Ector, to be brought up as his own son, and christened
+Arthur. On the death of the king, Merlin produced the youth, who was
+recognized by his mother Ygrayne, and proclaimed king in the stead
+of Uther Pendragon. He instituted the Order of Knights of the Round
+Table, who were to go everywhere, punishing vice and rescuing oppressed
+virtue, for the love of God and of some noble lady. He married
+Guinevere, daughter of King Leodegrance, who forsook him for the love
+of Sir Launcelot, his bravest knight and dearest friend. One by one,
+his best knights fell away into sin, and his nephew Mordred raised a
+rebellion, fought with him, and conquered him at Camelford. Seeing his
+end was near, Arthur bade his last faithful knight, Sir Bedevere, carry
+him to the shore of a mere (supposed to be Dozmare Pool) and throw in
+there his sword Excalibur; when appeared a boat with three queens,
+who lifted him in, mourning over him. With them he sailed away across
+the mere, to be healed of his grievous wound. Some say that he was
+afterwards buried in a chapel near, others declare that he lives still
+in fairy land, and will reappear in latter days, to reinstate the Order
+of Knights of the Round Table, and rule his beloved England, which will
+then be perfect as he once tried to make it, but in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Camelford of to-day is certainly not the Camelot of King Arthur&mdash;but
+a very respectable, commonplace little town, much like other country
+towns; the same genteel linendrapers' and un-genteel ironmongers'
+shops; the same old-established commercial inn, and a few ugly, but
+solid-looking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> private houses, with their faces to the street and
+their backs nestled in gardens and fields. Some of the inhabitants of
+these said houses were to be seen taking a quiet afternoon stroll.
+Doubtless they are eminently respectable and worthy folk, leading a
+mild provincial life like the people in Miss Martineau's <i>Deerbrook</i>,
+or Miss Austen's <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>&mdash;of which latter quality they
+have probably a good share.</p>
+
+<p>We let our horses rest, but we ourselves felt not the slightest wish to
+rest at Camelford, so walked leisurely on till we came to the little
+river Camel, and to Slaughter Bridge, said to be the point where King
+Arthur's army was routed and where he received his death-wound. A
+slab of stone, some little distance up the stream, is still called
+"King Arthur's Tomb." But as his coffin is preserved, as well as his
+Round Table, at Winchester; where, according to mediæval tradition,
+the bodies of both Arthur and Guinevere were found, and the head
+of Guinevere had yellow hair; also that near the little village of
+Davidstow, is a long barrow, having in the centre a mound, which is
+called "King Arthur's grave"&mdash;inquiring minds have plenty of "facts" to
+choose from. Possibly at last they had better resort to fiction, and
+believe in Arthur's disappearance, as Tennyson makes him say,</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"To the island-valley of Avillion ...</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where I may heal me of my grievous wound."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Dozmare Pool we found so far out of our route that we had to make a
+virtue of necessity, and imagine it all; the melancholy moorland lake,
+with the bleak hill above it, and stray glimpses of the sea beyond.
+A ghostly spot, and full of many ghostly stories besides the legend
+of Arthur. Here Tregeagle, the great demon of Cornwall, once had his
+dwelling, until, selling his soul to the devil, his home was sunk to
+the bottom of the mere, and himself is heard of stormy nights, wailing
+round it with other ghost-demons, in which the Cornish mind still
+lingeringly believes. Visionary packs of hounds; a shadowy coach and
+horses, which drives round and round the pool, and then drives into it;
+flitting lights, kindled by no human hand, in places where no human
+foot could go&mdash;all these tales are still told by the country folk, and
+we might have heard them all. Might also have seen, in fancy, the flash
+of the "brand Excalibur"; heard the wailing song of the three queens;
+and pictured the dying Arthur lying on the lap of his sister Morgane la
+Faye. But, I forgot, this is an un-sentimental journey.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Delabole quarries are as un-sentimental a place as one could
+desire. It was very curious to come suddenly upon this world of slate,
+piled up in enormous masses on either side the road, and beyond them
+hills of debris, centuries old&mdash;for the mines have been worked ever
+since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Houses, walls, gates, fences,
+everything that can possibly be made of slate, is made. No green or
+other colour tempers the all-pervading shade of bluish-grey, for
+vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the quarries is abolished,
+the result of which would be rather dreary, save for the cheerful
+atmosphere of wholesome labour, the noise of waggons, horses,
+steam-engines&mdash;such a contrast to the silence of the deserted tin-mines.</p>
+
+<p>But, these Delabole quarries passed, silence and solitude come back
+again. Even the yearly-increasing influx of tourists fails to make
+the little village of Trevena anything but a village, where the
+said tourists lounge about in the one street, if it can be called a
+street, between the two inns and the often-painted, picturesque old
+post-office. Everything looked so simple, so home-like, that we were
+amused to find we had to get ready for a <i>table d'hôte</i> dinner, in
+the only available eating room where the one indefatigable waitress,
+a comely Cornish girl, who seemed Argus and Briareus rolled into one,
+served us&mdash;a party small enough to make conversation general, and
+pleasant and intelligent enough to make it very agreeable, which does
+not always happen at an English hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Then we sallied out to find the lane which leads to Tintagel Castle,
+or Castles&mdash;for one sits in the sea, the other on the opposite heights
+in the mainland, with power of communicating by the narrow causeway
+which now at least exists between the rock and the shore. This seems to
+confirm the legend, how the luckless husband of Ygrayne shut up himself
+and his wife in two castles, he being slain in the one, and she married
+to the victorious King Uther Pendragon, in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Both looked so steep and dangerous in the fast-coming twilight that we
+thought it best to attempt neither, so contented ourselves with a walk
+on the cliffs and the smooth green field which led thither. Leaning
+against a gate, we stood and watched one of the grandest out of the
+many grand sunsets which had blessed us in Cornwall. The black rock of
+Tintagel filled the foreground; beyond, the eye saw nothing but sea,
+the sea which covers vanished Lyonesse, until it met the sky, a clear
+amber with long bars like waves, so that you could hardly tell where
+sea ended and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> sky began. Then into it there swam slowly a long low
+cloud, shaped like a boat, with a raised prow, and two or three figures
+sitting at the stern.</p>
+
+<p>"King Arthur and the three queens," we declared, and really a very
+moderate imagination could have fancied it this. "But what is that long
+black thing at the bow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," observed drily the most practical of the three, "it's King
+Arthur's luggage."</p>
+
+<p>Sentiment could survive no more. We fell into fits of laughter, and
+went home to tea and bed.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAYS_FOURTEENTH_FIFTEENTH_AND_SIXTEENTH" id="DAYS_FOURTEENTH_FIFTEENTH_AND_SIXTEENTH">DAYS FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH&mdash;</a></h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">And</span> all Arthurian days, so I will condense them into one chapter, and
+not spin out the hours that were flying so fast. Yet we hardly wished
+to stop them; for pleasant as travelling is, the best delight of all
+is&mdash;the coming home.</p>
+
+<p>Walking, to one more of those exquisite autumn days, warm as summer,
+yet with a tender brightness that hot summer never has, like the love
+between two old people, out of whom all passion has died&mdash;we remembered
+that we were at Tintagel, the home of Ygrayne and Arthur, of King Mark
+and Tristram and Iseult. I had to tell that story to my girls in the
+briefest form, how King Mark sent his nephew, Sir Tristram, to fetch
+home Iseult of Ireland for his queen, and on the voyage Bragswaine,
+her handmaiden, gave each a love-potion, which caused the usual fatal
+result; how at last Tristram fled from Tintagel into Brittany, where
+he married another Iseult "of the white hands," and lived peacefully,
+till, stricken by death, his fancy went back to his old love, whom he
+implored to come to him. She came, and found him dead. A tale&mdash;of which
+the only redeeming point is the innocence, simplicity, and dignity of
+the second Iseult, the unloved Breton wife, to whom none of our modern
+poets who have sung or travestied the wild, passionate, miserable, ugly
+story, have ever done full justice.</p>
+
+<p>These sinful lovers, the much-wronged but brutal King Mark, the
+scarcely less brutal Uther Pendragon, and hapless Ygrayne&mdash;what a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+curious condition of morals and manners the Arthurian legends unfold!
+A time when might was right; when every one seized what he wanted just
+because he wanted it, and kept it, if he could, till a stronger hand
+wrenched it from him. That in such a state of society there should
+ever have arisen the dimmest dream of a man like Arthur&mdash;not perhaps
+Tennyson's Arthur, the "blameless king," but even Sir Thomas Malory's,
+founded on mere tradition&mdash;is a remarkable thing. Clear through all
+the mists of ages shines that ideal of knighthood, enjoining courage,
+honour, faith, chastity, the worship of God and the service of men.
+Also, in the very highest degree, inculcating that chivalrous love of
+woman&mdash;not women&mdash;which barbaric nations never knew. As we looked at
+that hoar ruin sitting solitary in the sunny sea, and thought of the
+days when it was a complete fortress, inclosing a mass of human beings,
+all with human joys, sorrows, passions, crimes&mdash;things that must have
+existed in essence, however legend has exaggerated or altered them&mdash;we
+could not but feel that the mere possibility of a King Arthur shining
+down the dim vista of long-past centuries, is something to prove that
+goodness, like light, has an existence as indestructible as Him from
+whom it comes.</p>
+
+<p>We looked at Tintagel with its risky rock-path. "It will be a hot
+climb, and our bathing days are numbered. Let us go in the opposite
+direction to Bossinney Cove."</p>
+
+<p>Practicality when weighed against Poetry is poor&mdash;Poetry always kicks
+the beam. We went to Bossinney.</p>
+
+<p>Yet what a pretty cove it was! and how pleasant! While waiting for
+the tide to cover the little strip of sand, we re-mounted the winding
+path, and settled ourselves like seabirds on the furthermost point of
+rock, whence, just by extending a hand, we could have dropped anything,
+ourselves even, into a sheer abyss of boiling waves, dizzy to look down
+into, and yet delicious.</p>
+
+<p>So was the bath, though a little gloomy, for the sun could barely reach
+the shut-in cove; and we were interfered with considerably by&mdash;not
+tourists&mdash;but a line of donkeys! They were seen solemnly descending the
+narrow cliff-path one by one&mdash;eleven in all&mdash;each with an empty sack
+over his shoulder. Lastly came a very old man, who, without taking the
+least notice of us, disposed himself to fill these sacks with sand.
+One after the other the eleven meek animals came forward and submitted
+each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> to his load, which proceeding occupied a good hour and a half.
+I hardly know which was the most patient, the old man or his donkeys.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="CRESWICK" id="CRESWICK"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 629px;">
+<img src="images/147.jpg" width="529" height="700" alt="CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY." />
+<div class="caption">CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We began some of us to talk to his beasts, and others to himself. "Yes,
+it was hard work," he said, "but he managed to come down to the cove
+three times a day. And the asses were good asses. They all had their
+names; Lucy, Cherry, Sammy, Tom, Jack, Ned;" each animal pricked up its
+long ears and turned round its quiet eyes when called. Some were young
+and some old, but all were very sure-footed, which was necessary here.
+"The weight some of 'em would carry was wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>The old man seemed proud of the creatures, and kind to them too in a
+sort of way. He had been a fisherman, he said, but now was too old for
+that; so got his living by collecting sand.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes capital garden-paths, this sand. I'd be glad to bring you
+some, ladies," said he, evidently with an eye to business. When we
+explained that this was impracticable, unless he would come all the way
+to London, he merely said, "Oh," and accepted the disappointment. Then
+bidding us a civil "Good day," he disappeared with his laden train.</p>
+
+<p>Poor old fellow! Nothing of the past knightly days, nothing of the
+busy existing modern present affected him, or ever would do so. He
+might have been own brother, or cousin, to Wordsworth's "Leech-gatherer
+on the lonely moor." Whenever we think of Bossinney Cove, we shall
+certainly think of that mild old man and his eleven donkeys.</p>
+
+<p>The day was hot, and it had been a steep climb; we decided to drive in
+the afternoon, "for a rest," to Boscastle.</p>
+
+<p>Artists and tourists haunt this picturesque nook. A village built at
+the end of a deep narrow creek, which runs far inland, and is a safe
+shelter for vessels of considerable size. On either side is a high
+footpath, leading to two headlands, from both of which the views of
+sea and coast are very fine. And there are relics of antiquity and
+legends thereto belonging&mdash;a green mound, all that remains of Bottrieux
+Castle; and Ferrabury Church, with its silent tower. A peal of bells
+had been brought, and the ship which carried them had nearly reached
+the cove, when the pilot, bidding the captain "thank God for his safe
+voyage," was answered that he "thanked only himself and a fair wind."
+Immediately a storm arose; and the ship went down with every soul on
+board&mdash;except the pilot. So the church tower is mute&mdash;but on winter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+nights the lost bells are still heard, sounding mournfully from the
+depths of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>As we sat, watching with a vague fascination the spouting, minute by
+minute, of a "blow-hole," almost as fine as the Kynance post-office&mdash;we
+moralised on the story of the bells, and on the strange notions people
+have, even in these days, of Divine punishments; imputing to the
+Almighty Father all their own narrow jealousies and petty revenges,
+dragging down God into the likeness of men, such an one as themselves,
+instead of striving to lift man into the image of God.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the young folks rambled and scrambled&mdash;watched with anxious
+and even envious eyes&mdash;for it takes one years to get entirely
+reconciled to the quiescence of the down-hill journey. And then we
+drove slowly back&mdash;just in time for another grand sunset, with Tintagel
+black in the foreground, until it and all else melted into darkness,
+and there was nothing left but to</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Watch the twilight stars come out</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Above the lonely sea."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Next morning we must climb Tintagel, for it would be our last day.</p>
+
+<p>And what a heavenly day it was! How softly the waves crept in upon the
+beach&mdash;just as they might have done when they laid at Merlin's feet
+"the little naked child," disowned of man but dear to Heaven, who was
+to grow up into the "stainless king."</p>
+
+<p>He and his knights&mdash;the "shadowy people of the realm of dream,"&mdash;were
+all about us, as, guided by a rheumatic old woman, who climbed feebly
+up the stair, where generations of ghostly feet must have ascended and
+descended, we reached a bastion and gateway, quite pre-historic. Other
+ruins apparently belong to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. But to
+this there is no clue. It may have been the very landing-place of King
+Uther or King Mark, or other Cornish heroes, who held this wonderful
+natural-artificial fortress in the dim days of old romance.</p>
+
+<p>"Here are King Arthur's cups and saucers," said the old woman, pausing
+in the midst of a long lament over her own ailments, to point out some
+holes in the slate rock. "And up there you'll find the chapel. It's an
+easy climb&mdash;if you mind the path&mdash;just where it passes the spring."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="BOSCASTLE" id="BOSCASTLE"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 586px;">
+<img src="images/151.jpg" width="550" height="700" alt="BOSCASTLE." />
+<div class="caption">BOSCASTLE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a><br /><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That spring, trickling down from the very top of the rock, and making
+a verdant space all round it&mdash;what a treasure it must have been to the
+unknown inhabitants who, centuries ago, entrenched themselves here&mdash;for
+offence or defence&mdash;against the main-land. Peacefully it flowed on
+still, with the little ferns growing, and the sheep nibbling beside
+it. We idle tourists alone occupied that solitary height where those
+long-past warlike races&mdash;one succeeding the other&mdash;lived and loved,
+fought and died.</p>
+
+<p>The chapel&mdash;where the high altar and a little burial-ground beside it
+can still be traced&mdash;is clearly much later than Arthur's time. However,
+there are so few data to go upon, and the action of sea-storms destroys
+so much every year, that even to the learned archæologist, Tintagel is
+a great mystery, out of which the imaginative mind may evolve almost
+anything it likes.</p>
+
+<p>We sat a long time on the top of the rock&mdash;realising only the one
+obvious fact that our eyes were gazing on precisely the same scene,
+seawards and coastwards, that all these long-dead eyes were accustomed
+to behold. Beaten by winds and waves till the grey of its slate
+formation is nearly black; worn into holes by the constant action of
+the tide which widens yearly the space between it and the main-land,
+and gnaws the rock below into dangerous hollows that in time become
+sea-caves, Tintagel still remains&mdash;and one marvels that so much of it
+does still remain&mdash;a landmark of the cloudy time between legend and
+actual history.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the ruin on the opposite height was once a portion of
+Tintagel Castle, before the sea divided it, making a promontory into
+an island&mdash;or whether it was the Castle Terrabil, in which Gorlois,
+Ygrayne's husband, was slain&mdash;no one now can say. That both the twin
+fortresses were habitable till Elizabeth's time, there is evidence to
+prove. But since then they have been left to decay, to the silent sheep
+and the screeching ravens, including doubtless that ghostly chough, in
+whose shape the soul of King Arthur is believed still to revisit the
+familiar scene.</p>
+
+<p>We did not see that notable bird&mdash;though we watched with interest two
+tame and pretty specimens of its almost extinct species walking about
+in a flower-garden in the village, and superstitiously cherished there.
+We were told that to this day no Cornishman likes to shoot a chough
+or a raven. So they live and breed in peace among the twin ruins, and
+scream contentedly to the noisy stream which dances down the rocky
+hollow from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> Trevena, and leaps into the sea at Porth Hern&mdash;the "iron
+gate," over against Tintagel. Otherwise, all is solitude and silence.</p>
+
+<p>We thought we had seen everything, and come to an end, but at the hotel
+we found a party who had just returned from visiting some sea-caves
+beyond Tintagel, which they declared were "the finest things they had
+found in Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely calm day, and it was our last day. A few hours of it
+alone remained. Should we use them? We might never be here again.
+And, I think, the looser grows one's grasp of life, the greater is
+one's longing to make the most of it, to see all we can see of this
+wonderful, beautiful world. So, after a hasty meal, we found ourselves
+once more down at Porth Hern, seeking a boat and man&mdash;alas! not John
+Curgenven&mdash;under whose guidance we might brave the stormy deep.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed stormy! No sooner had we rounded the rock, than the baby
+waves of the tiny bay grew into hills and valleys, among which our boat
+went dancing up and down like a sea-gull!</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, there's some sea on, there always is here, but we'll be through it
+presently," indifferently said the elder of the two boatmen; and plied
+his oars, as, I think, only these Cornish boatmen can do, talking all
+the while. He pointed out a slate quarry, only accessible from the sea,
+unless the workmen liked to be let down by ropes, which sometimes had
+to be done. We saw them moving about like black emmets among the clefts
+of the rocks, and heard plainly above the sound of the sea the click
+of their hammers. Strange, lonely, perilous work it must be, even in
+summer. In winter&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they're used to it; we're all used to it," said our man, who was
+intelligent enough, though nothing equal to John Curgenven. "Many a
+time I've got sea-fowls' eggs on those rocks there," pointing to a
+cliff which did not seem to hold footing for a fly. "We all do it. The
+gentry buy them, and we're glad of the money. Dangerous?&mdash;yes, rather;
+but one must earn one's bread, and it's not so bad when you take to it
+young."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I think I shall never look at a collection of sea-birds'
+eggs without a slight shudder, remembering those awful cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>"Here you are, ladies, and the sea's down a bit, as I said. Hold on,
+mate, the boat will go right into the cave."</p>
+
+<p>And before we knew what was happening, we found ourselves floated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> out
+of daylight into darkness&mdash;very dark it seemed at first&mdash;and rocking
+on a mass of heaving waters, shut in between two high walls, so narrow
+that it seemed as if every heave would dash us in pieces against them;
+while beyond was a dense blackness, from which one heard the beat of
+the everlasting waves against a sort of tunnel, a stormy sea-grave from
+which no one could ever hope to come out alive.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like this at all," said a small voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't we better get out again?" practically suggested another.</p>
+
+<p>But no sooner was this done than the third of the party longed to
+return; and begged for "only five minutes" in that wonderful place,
+compared to which Dolor Ugo, and the other Lizard caves, became as
+nothing. They were beautiful, but this was terrible. Yet with its
+terror was mingled an awful delight. "Give me but five, nay, two
+minutes more!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, just as you choose," was the response of meek despair.
+So of course, Poetry yielded. The boatmen were told to row on into
+daylight and sunshine&mdash;at least as much sunshine as the gigantic
+overhanging cliffs permitted. And never, never, never in this world
+shall I again behold that wonderful, mysterious sea-cave.</p>
+
+<p>But like all things incomplete, resigned, or lost, it has fixed itself
+on my memory with an almost painful vividness. However, I promised not
+to regret&mdash;not to say another word about it; and I will not. I did see
+it, for just a glimpse; and that will serve.</p>
+
+<p>Two more pictures remain, the last gorgeous sunset, which I watched in
+quiet solitude, sitting on a tombstone by Tintagel church&mdash;a building
+dating from Saxon times, perched on the very edge of a lofty cliff,
+and with a sea-view that reaches from Trevose Head on one side to Bude
+Haven on the other. Also, our last long dreamy drive; in the mild
+September sunshine, across the twenty-one miles of sparsely inhabited
+country which lie between Tintagel and Launceston. In the midst of
+it, on the top of a high flat of moorland, our driver turned round
+and pointed with his whip to a long low mound, faintly visible about
+half-a-mile off. "There, ladies, that's King Arthur's grave."</p>
+
+<p>The third, at least, that we had either seen or heard of. These varied
+records of the hero's last resting-place remind one of the three heads,
+said to be still extant, of Oliver Cromwell, one when he was a little
+boy, one as a young man, and the third as an old man.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But after all my last and vividest recollection of King Arthur's
+country is that wild sail&mdash;so wild that I wished I had taken it
+alone&mdash;in the solitary boat, up and down the tossing waves in face of
+Tintagel rock; the dark, iron-bound coast with its awful caves, the
+bright sunshiny land, and ever-threatening sea. Just the region, in
+short, which was likely to create a race like that which Arthurian
+legend describes, full of passionate love and deadly hate, capable of
+barbaric virtues, and equally barbaric crimes. An age in which the mere
+idea of such a hero as that ideal knight</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Who reverenced his conscience as his God:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose glory was redressing human wrong:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who loved one only, and who clave to her&mdash;"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>rises over the blackness of darkness like a morning star.</p>
+
+<p>If Arthur could "come again"&mdash;perhaps in the person of one of the
+descendants of a prince who was not unlike him, who lived and died
+among us in this very nineteenth century&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Wearing the white flower of a blameless life&mdash;"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>if this could be&mdash;what a blessing for Arthur's beloved England!</p>
+
+<p><a name="OLD" id="OLD"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 586px;">
+<img src="images/157.jpg" width="486" height="700" alt="THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA." />
+<div class="caption">THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA.</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="LENVOI" id="LENVOI">L'ENVOI</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Written</span> more than a year after. The "old hen" and her chickens have
+long been safe at home. A dense December fog creeps in everywhere,
+choking and blinding, as I finish the history of those fifteen innocent
+days, calm as autumn, and bright as spring, when we three took our
+Unsentimental Journey together through Cornwall. Many a clever critic,
+like Sir Charles Coldstream when he looked into the crater of Vesuvius,
+may see "nothing in it"&mdash;a few kindly readers looking a little further,
+may see a little more: probably the writer only sees the whole.</p>
+
+<p>But such as it is, let it stay&mdash;simple memorial of what Americans would
+call "a good time," the sunshine of which may cast its brightness far
+forward, even into that quiet time "when travelling days are done."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">THE END.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">LONDON:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor</span>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Unsentimental Journey through
+Cornwall, by Dinah Maria Craik
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,5023 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Unsentimental Journey through Cornwall, by
+Dinah Maria Craik
+
+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: An Unsentimental Journey through Cornwall
+
+Author: Dinah Maria Craik
+
+Illustrator: C. Napier Hemy
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2014 [EBook #44557]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
+
+  THROUGH CORNWALL
+
+  [Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.]
+
+
+
+
+  AN
+
+  UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
+
+  THROUGH
+
+  CORNWALL
+
+  BY
+
+  THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN"
+
+  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  BY
+
+  C. NAPIER HEMY
+
+  London
+
+  MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+  1884
+
+  _The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved_
+
+  LONDON:
+
+  R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
+
+  BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+  DAY THE FIRST                                             1
+
+  DAY THE SECOND                                            9
+
+  DAY THE THIRD                                            25
+
+  DAY THE FOURTH                                           45
+
+  DAY THE FIFTH                                            53
+
+  DAY THE SIXTH                                            59
+
+  DAY THE SEVENTH                                          67
+
+  DAY THE EIGHTH                                           75
+
+  DAY THE NINTH                                            86
+
+  DAY THE TENTH                                           101
+
+  DAY THE ELEVENTH                                        110
+
+  DAY THE TWELFTH                                         118
+
+  DAY THE THIRTEENTH                                      127
+
+  DAYS FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH               133
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+  ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT                           _Frontispiece_
+
+  FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING                                   1
+
+  ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY                           5
+
+  VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH      7
+
+  A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD                     11
+
+  THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT         15
+
+  THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT                               23
+
+  CORNISH FISH                                             24
+
+  POLTESCO                                                 29
+
+  CADGWITH COVE                                            32
+
+  THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH                    34
+
+  MULLION COVE, CORNWALL                                   38
+
+  A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY                           41
+
+  STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT                              46
+
+  HAULING IN THE BOATS--EVENING                            50
+
+  HAULING IN THE LINES                                     55
+
+  THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY                                 60
+
+  THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER--A CORNISH STUDY                63
+
+  KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL                                   68
+
+  THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE                           71
+
+  THE LION ROCKS--A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE          76
+
+  HAULING IN THE BOATS                                     79
+
+  ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS                         83
+
+  JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING                                   87
+
+  THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE          94
+
+  CORNISH FISHERMAN                                       100
+
+  THE SEINE BOAT--A PERILOUS MOMENT                       103
+
+  ST. IVES      108
+
+  THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK                       114
+
+  SENNEN COVE, WAITING FOR THE BOATS                      119
+
+  ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE                      124
+
+  TINTAGEL                                                128
+
+  CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY                     135
+
+  BOSCASTLE                                               139
+
+  THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA                            145
+
+
+
+
+AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
+
+THROUGH CORNWALL
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING.]
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE FIRST
+
+
+I believe in holidays. Not in a frantic rushing about from place to
+place, glancing at everything and observing nothing; flying from town
+to town, from hotel to hotel, eager to "do" and to see a country, in
+order that when they get home they may say they have done it, and seen
+it. Only to say;--as for any real vision of eye, heart, and brain, they
+might as well go through the world blindfold. It is not the things
+we see, but the mind we see them with, which makes the real interest
+of travelling. "Eyes and No Eyes,"--an old-fashioned story about two
+little children taking a walk; one seeing everything, and enjoying
+everything, and the other seeing nothing, and thinking the expedition
+the dullest imaginable. This simple tale, which the present generation
+has probably never read, contains the essence of all rational
+travelling.
+
+So when, as the "old hen," (which I am sometimes called, from my habit
+of going about with a brood of "chickens," my own or other people's) I
+planned a brief tour with two of them, one just entered upon her teens,
+the other in her twenties, I premised that it must be a tour after my
+own heart.
+
+"In the first place, my children, you must obey orders implicitly. I
+shall collect opinions, and do my best to please everybody; but in
+travelling one only must decide, the others coincide. It will save them
+a world of trouble, and their 'conductor' also; who, if competent to be
+trusted at all, should be trusted absolutely. Secondly, take as little
+luggage as possible. No sensible people travel with their point-lace
+and diamonds. Two 'changes of raiment,' good, useful dresses, prudent
+boots, shawls, and waterproofs--these I shall insist upon, and nothing
+more. Nothing for show, as I shall take you to no place where you can
+show off. We will avoid all huge hotels, all fashionable towns; we
+will study life in its simplicity, and make ourselves happy in our own
+humble, feminine way. Not 'roughing it' in any needless or reckless
+fashion--the 'old hen' is too old for that; yet doing everything with
+reasonable economy. Above all, rushing into no foolhardy exploits, and
+taking every precaution to keep well and strong, so as to enjoy the
+journey from beginning to end, and hinder no one else from enjoying
+it. There are four things which travellers ought never to lose: their
+luggage, their temper, their health, and their spirits. I will make
+you as happy as I possibly can, but you must also make me happy by
+following my rules: especially the one golden rule, Obey orders."
+
+So preached the "old hen," with a vague fear that her chickens might
+turn out to be ducklings, which would be a little awkward in the
+region whither she proposed to take them. For if there is one place
+more risky than another for adventurous young people with a talent
+for "perpetuating themselves down prejudices," as Mrs. Malaprop would
+say, it is that grandest, wildest, most dangerous coast, the coast of
+Cornwall.
+
+I had always wished to investigate Cornwall. This desire had existed
+ever since, at five years old, I made acquaintance with Jack the
+Giantkiller, and afterwards, at fifteen or so, fell in love with my
+life's one hero, King Arthur.
+
+Between these two illustrious Cornishmen,--equally mythical, practical
+folk would say--there exists more similarity than at first appears.
+The aim of both was to uphold right and to redress wrong. Patience,
+self-denial; tenderness to the weak and helpless, dauntless courage
+against the wicked and the strong: these, the essential elements of
+true manliness, characterise both the humble Jack and the kingly
+Arthur. And the qualities seem to have descended to more modern times.
+The well-known ballad:--
+
+  "And shall they scorn Tre, Pol, and Pen?
+    And shall Trelawny die?
+  There's twenty thousand Cornishmen
+    Will know the reason why,"
+
+has a ring of the same tone, indicating the love of justice, the spirit
+of fidelity and bravery, as well as of that common sense which is at
+the root of all useful valour.
+
+I wanted to see if the same spirit lingered yet, as I had heard it did
+among Cornish folk, which, it was said, were a race by themselves,
+honest, simple, shrewd, and kind. Also, I wished to see the Cornish
+land, and especially the Land's End, which I had many a time beheld in
+fancy, for it was a favourite landscape-dream of my rather imaginative
+childhood, recurring again and again, till I could almost have painted
+it from memory. And as year after year every chance of seeing it in its
+reality seemed to melt away, the desire grew into an actual craving.
+
+After waiting patiently for nearly half a century, I said to myself, "I
+will conquer Fate; I _will_ go and see the Land's End."
+
+And it was there that, after making a circuit round the coast, I
+proposed finally to take my "chickens."
+
+We concocted a plan, definite yet movable, as all travelling plans
+should be, clear in its dates, its outline, and intentions, but
+subject to modifications, according to the exigency of the times
+and circumstances. And with that prudent persistency, without which
+all travelling is a mere muddle, all discomfort, disappointment,
+and distaste--for on whatever terms you may be with your travelling
+companions when you start, you are quite sure either to love them or
+hate them when you get home--we succeeded in carrying it out.
+
+The 1st of September, 1881, and one of the loveliest of September
+days, was the day we started from Exeter, where we had agreed to meet
+and stay the night. There, the previous afternoon, we had whiled away
+an hour in the dim cathedral, and watched, not without anxiety, the
+flood of evening sunshine which poured through the great west window,
+lighting the tombs, old and new, from the Crusader, cross-legged and
+broken-nosed, to the white marble bas-relief which tells the story of a
+not less noble Knight of the Cross, Bishop Patteson. Then we wandered
+round the quaint old town, in such a lovely twilight, such a starry
+night! But--will it be a fine day to-morrow? We could but live in hope:
+and hope did not deceive us.
+
+To start on a journey in sunshine feels like beginning life well.
+Clouds may come--are sure to come: I think no one past earliest youth
+goes forth into a strange region without a feeling akin to Saint Paul's
+"not knowing what things may befall me there." But it is always best
+for each to keep to himself all the shadows, and give his companions
+the brightness, especially if they be young companions.
+
+And very bright were the eyes that watched the swift-moving landscape
+on either side of the railway: the estuary of Exe; Dawlish, with its
+various colouring of rock and cliff, and its pretty little sea-side
+houses, where family groups stood photographing themselves on our
+vision, as the train rushed unceremoniously between the beach and their
+parlour windows; then Plymouth and Saltash, where the magnificent
+bridge reminded us of the one over the Tay, which we had once crossed,
+not long before that Sunday night when, sitting in a quiet sick-room
+in Edinburgh, we heard the howl outside of the fearful blast which
+destroyed such a wonderful work of engineering art, and whirled so many
+human beings into eternity.
+
+But this Saltash bridge, spanning placidly a smiling country,
+how pretty and safe it looked! There was a general turning to
+carriage-windows, and then a courteous drawing back, that we,
+the strangers, should see it, which broke the ice with our
+fellow-travellers. To whom we soon began to talk, as is our
+conscientious custom when we see no tangible objection thereto, and
+gained, now, as many a time before, much pleasant as well as useful
+information. Every one evinced an eager politeness to show us the
+country, and an innocent anxiety that we should admire it; which we
+could honestly do.
+
+I shall long remember, as a dream of sunshiny beauty and peace, this
+journey between Plymouth and Falmouth, passing Liskeard, Lostwithiel,
+St. Austell, &c. The green-wooded valleys, the rounded hills, on one of
+which we were shown the remains of the old castle of Ristormel, noted
+among the three castles of Cornwall; all this, familiar to so many,
+was to us absolutely new, and we enjoyed it and the kindly interest
+that was taken in pointing it out to us, as happy-minded simple folk do
+always enjoy the sight of a new country.
+
+[Illustration: ST. MAWE'S CASTLE, FALMOUTH BAY.]
+
+Our pleasure seemed to amuse an old gentleman who sat in the corner.
+He at last addressed us, with an unctuous west-country accent which
+suited well his comfortable stoutness. He might have fed all his life
+upon Dorset butter and Devonshire cream, to one of which counties
+he certainly belonged. Not, I think, to the one we were now passing
+through, and admiring so heartily.
+
+"So you're going to travel in Cornwall. Well, take care, they're sharp
+folk, the Cornish folk. They'll take you in if they can." (Then, he
+must be a Devon man. It is so easy to sit in judgment upon next-door
+neighbours.) "I don't mean to say they'll actually cheat you, but
+they'll take you in, and they'll be careful that you don't take them
+in--no, not to the extent of a brass farthing."
+
+We explained, smiling, that we had not the slightest intention of
+taking anybody in, that we liked justice, and blamed no man, Cornishman
+or otherwise, for trying to do the best he could for himself, so that
+it was not to the injury of other people.
+
+"Well, well, perhaps you're right. But they are sharp, for all that,
+especially in the towns."
+
+We replied that we meant to escape towns, whenever possible, and encamp
+in some quiet places, quite out of the world.
+
+Our friend opened his eyes, evidently thinking this a most singular
+taste.
+
+"Well, if you really want a quiet place, I can tell you of one, almost
+as quiet as your grave. I ought to know, for I lived there sixteen
+years." (At any rate, it seemed to have agreed with him.) "Gerrans is
+its name--a fishing village. You get there from Falmouth by boat. The
+fare is "--(I regret to say my memory is not so accurate as his in the
+matter of pennies), "and mind you don't pay one farthing more. Then you
+have to drive across country; the distance is--and the fare per mile--"
+(Alas! again I have totally forgotten.) "They'll be sure to ask you
+double the money, but never you mind! refuse to pay it, and they'll
+give in. You must always hold your own against extortion in Cornwall."
+
+I thanked him, with a slightly troubled mind. But I have always noticed
+that in travelling "with such measure as ye mete it shall be meted
+to you again," and that those who come to a country expecting to be
+cheated generally are cheated. Having still a lingering belief in human
+nature, and especially in Cornish nature, I determined to set down the
+old gentleman's well-meant advice for what it was worth, no more, and
+cease to perplex myself about it. For which resolve I have since been
+exceedingly thankful.
+
+He gave us, however, much supplementary advice which was rather useful,
+and parted from us in the friendliest fashion, with that air of bland
+complaisance natural to those who assume the character of adviser in
+general.
+
+"Mind you go to Gerrans. They'll not take you in more than they do
+everywhere else, and you'll find it a healthy place, and a quiet
+place--as quiet, I say, as your grave. It will make you feel exactly as
+if you were dead and buried."
+
+That not being the prominent object of our tour in Cornwall, we thanked
+him again, but as soon as he left the carriage determined among
+ourselves to take no further steps about visiting Gerrans.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF FLUSHING FROM THE GREEN BANK HOTEL, FALMOUTH.]
+
+However, in spite of the urgency of another fellow-traveller--it is
+always good to hear everybody's advice, and follow your own--we carried
+our love of quietness so far that we eschewed the magnificent new
+Falmouth Hotel, with its _table d'hote_, lawn tennis ground, sea baths
+and promenade, for the old-fashioned Green Bank, which though it had no
+green banks, boasted, we had been told, a pleasant little sea view and
+bay view, and was a resting-place full of comfort and homely peace.
+
+Which we found true, and would have liked to stay longer in its
+pleasant shelter, which almost conquered our horror of hotels; but we
+had now fairly weighed anchor and must sail on.
+
+"You ought to go at once to the Lizard," said the friend who met us,
+and did everything for us at Falmouth--and the remembrance of whom, and
+of all that happened in our brief stay, will make the very name of the
+place sound sweet in our ears for ever. "The Lizard is the real point
+for sightseers, almost better than the Land's End. Let us see if we can
+hear of lodgings."
+
+She made inquiries, and within half an hour we did hear of some most
+satisfactory ones. "The very thing! We will telegraph at once--answer
+paid," said this good genius of practicality, as sitting in her
+carriage she herself wrote the telegram and despatched it. Telegrams to
+the Lizard! We were not then at the Ultima Thule of civilisation.
+
+"Still," she said, "you had better provide yourself with some food,
+such as groceries and hams. You can't always get what you want at the
+Lizard."
+
+So, having the very dimmest idea what the Lizard was--whether a town,
+a village, or a bare rock--when we had secured the desired lodgings
+("quite ideal lodgings," remarked our guardian angel), I proceeded to
+lay in a store of provisions, doing it as carefully as if fitting out
+a ship for the North Pole--and afterwards found out it was a work of
+supererogation entirely.
+
+The next thing to secure was an "ideal" carriage, horse, and man, which
+our good genius also succeeded in providing. And now, our minds being
+at rest, we were able to write home a fixed address for a week, and
+assure our expectant and anxious friends that all was going well with
+us.
+
+Then, after a twilight wander round the quaint old town--so like a
+foreign town--and other keen enjoyments, which, as belonging to the
+sanctity of private life I here perforce omit, we laid us down to
+sleep, and slept in peace, having really achieved much; considering it
+was only the first day of our journey.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE SECOND
+
+
+Is there anything more delightful than to start on a smiling morning
+in a comfortable carriage, with all one's _impedimenta_ (happily not
+much!) safely stowed away under one's eyes, with a good horse, over
+which one's feelings of humanity need not be always agonising, and a
+man to drive, whom one can trust to have as much sense as the brute,
+especially in the matter of "refreshment." Our letters that morning had
+brought us a comico-tragic story of a family we knew, who, migrating
+with a lot of children and luggage, and requiring to catch a train
+thirteen miles off, had engaged a driver who "refreshed himself" so
+successfully at every public-house on the way, that he took five hours
+to accomplish the journey, and finally had to be left at the road-side,
+and the luggage transferred to another vehicle, which of course lost
+the train. We congratulated ourselves that no such disaster was likely
+to happen to us.
+
+"Yes; I've been a teetotaller all my life," said our driver, a
+bright-looking, intelligent young fellow, whom, as he became rather a
+prominent adjunct to our life and decidedly to our comfort, I shall
+individualise by calling him Charles. "I had good need to avoid
+drinking. My father drank through a small property. No fear of me,
+ma'am."
+
+So at once between him and us, or him and "we," according to the
+Cornish habit of transposing pronouns, was established a feeling of
+fraternity, which, during the six days that we had to do with him,
+deepened into real regard. Never failing when wanted, never presuming
+when not wanted, straightforward, independent, yet full of that
+respectful kindliness which servants can always show and masters
+should always appreciate, giving us a chivalrous care, which, being
+"unprotected females," was to us extremely valuable, I here record that
+much of the pleasure of our tour was owing to this honest Cornishman,
+who served us, his horse, and his master--he was one of the employes of
+a livery-stable keeper--with equal fidelity.
+
+Certainly, numerous as were the parties he had driven--("I go to the
+Lizard about three times a week," he said)--Charles could seldom have
+driven a merrier trio than that which leisurely mounted the upland road
+from Falmouth, leading to the village of Constantine.
+
+"Just turn and look behind you, ladies" (we had begged to be shown
+everything and told everything); "isn't that a pretty view?"
+
+It certainly was. From the high ground we could see Falmouth with its
+sheltered bay and glittering sea beyond. Landward were the villages of
+Mabe and Constantine, with their great quarries of granite, and in the
+distance lay wide sweeps of undulating land, barren and treeless, but
+still beautiful--not with the rich pastoral beauty of our own Kent, yet
+having a charm of its own. And the air, so fresh and pure, yet soft and
+balmy, it felt to tender lungs like the difference between milk and
+cream. To breathe became a pleasure instead of a pain. I could quite
+understand how the semi-tropical plants that we had seen in a lovely
+garden below, grew and flourished, how the hydrangeas became huge
+bushes, and the eucalyptus an actual forest tree.
+
+But this was in the sheltered valley, and we had gained the hill-top,
+emerging out of one of those deep-cut lanes peculiar to Devon and
+Cornwall, and so pretty in themselves, a perfect garden of wild flowers
+and ferns, except that they completely shut out the view. This did not
+much afflict the practical minds of my two juniors. Half an hour before
+they had set up a shout--
+
+"Stop the carriage! _Do_ stop the carriage! Just look there! Did you
+ever see such big blackberries? and what a quantity! Let us get out;
+we'll gather them for to-morrow's pudding."
+
+Undoubtedly a dinner earned is the sweetest of all dinners. I remember
+once thinking that our cowslip tea (I should not like to drink it
+now) was better than our grandmother's best Bohea or something out
+of her lovely old tea-caddy. So the carriage, lightened of all but
+myself, crawled leisurely up and waited on the hill-top for the busy
+blackberry-gatherers.
+
+While our horse stood cropping an extempore meal, I and his driver
+began to talk about him and other cognate topics, including the
+permanent one of the great advantage to both body and soul in being
+freed all one's life long from the necessity of getting "something to
+drink" stronger than water.
+
+[Illustration: A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD.]
+
+"Yes," he said, "I find I can do as much upon tea or coffee as other
+men upon beer. I'm just as strong and as active, and can stand weather
+quite as well. It's a pretty hard life, winter and summer, driving all
+day, coming in soaked, sometimes in the middle of the night, having to
+turn in for an hour or two, and then turn out again. And you must look
+after your horse, of course, before you think of yourself. Still, I
+stand it well, and that without a drop of beer from years end to years
+end."
+
+I congratulated and sympathised; in return for which Charles entered
+heart and soul into the blackberry question, pointed out where the
+biggest blackberries hung, and looked indeed--he was still such a young
+fellow!--as if he would have liked to go blackberry-hunting himself.
+
+I put, smiling, the careless question, "Have you any little folks of
+your own? Are you married?"
+
+How cautious one should be over an idle word! All of a sudden the
+cheerful face clouded, the mouth began to quiver, with difficulty I
+saw he kept back the tears. It was a version in every-day life of
+Longfellow's most pathetic little poem, "The Two Locks of Hair."
+
+"My wife broke her heart after the baby, I think. It died. She went off
+in consumption. It's fifteen months now"--(he had evidently counted
+them)--"fifteen months since I have been alone. I didn't like to give
+up my home and my bits of things; still, when a man has to come in wet
+and tired to an empty house----"
+
+He turned suddenly away and busied himself over his horse, for just
+that minute the two girls came running back, laughing heartily, and
+showing their baskets full of "the very biggest blackberries you ever
+saw!" I took them back into the carriage; the driver mounted his box,
+and drove on for some miles in total silence. As, when I had whispered
+that little episode to my two companions, so did we.
+
+There are two ways of going from Falmouth to the Lizard--the regular
+route through the town of Helstone, and another, a trifle longer,
+through the woods of Trelowarren, the seat of the old Cornish family of
+Vyvyan.
+
+"I'll take you that road, ma'am, it's much the prettiest," said Charles
+evidently exerting himself to recover his cheerful looks and be the
+civil driver and guide, showing off all the curiosities and beauties
+of the neighbourhood. And very pretty Trelowarren was, though nothing
+remarkable to us who came from the garden of England. Still, the trees
+were big--for Cornwall, and in the ferny glade grew abundantly the
+_Osmunda regalis_, a root of which we greatly coveted, and Charles
+offered to get. He seemed to take a pride in showing us everything,
+except what he probably did not know of, and which, when I heard of
+too late, was to me a real regret.
+
+At Trelowarren, not far from the house, are a series of subterranean
+chambers and galleries, in all ninety feet long and about the height
+of a man. The entrance is very low. Still it is possible to get into
+them and traverse them from end to end, the walls being made of blocks
+of unhewn stone, leaning inward towards the roof, which is formed of
+horizontal blocks. How, when, and for what purpose this mysterious
+underground dwelling was made, is utterly lost in the mists of time.
+I should exceedingly have liked to examine it, and to think we passed
+close by and never knew of it will always be a certain regret, of which
+I relieve my mind by telling it for the guidance of other archaeological
+travellers.
+
+One of the charms of Cornwall is that it gives one the sense of being
+such an old country, as if things had gone exactly as they do now, not
+merely since the days of King Arthur, but for ever so long before then.
+The Romans, the Ph[oe]nicians, nay, the heroes of pre-historic ages,
+such as Jack the Giantkiller and the giant Cormoran, seemed to be not
+impossible myths, as we gradually quitted civilisation in the shape of
+a village or two, and a few isolated farm-houses, and came out upon the
+wild district known as Goonhilly Down.
+
+Certainly not from its hills, for it is as flat as the back of your
+hand, and as bare. But the word, which is old Cornish--that now extinct
+tongue, which only survives in the names of places and people--means a
+_hunting ground_; and there is every reason to believe that this wide
+treeless waste was once an enormous forest, full of wild beasts. There
+St. Rumon, an Irish bishop, long before there were any Saxon bishops
+or saints, is said to have settled, far away from the world, and made
+a cell and oratory, the memory of which, and of himself, is still kept
+up by the name of the two villages, Ruan Major and Ruan Minor, on the
+outskirts of this Goonhilly Down.
+
+In later times the down was noted for a breed of small, strong ponies,
+called "Goonhillies." Charles had heard of them, but I do not suppose
+he had ever heard of St. Rumon, or of the primeval forest. At present,
+the fauna of Goonhilly is represented by no animal more dangerous
+than a rabbit or a field-mouse, and its vegetation includes nothing
+bigger than the _erica vagans_--the lovely Cornish heath, lilac,
+flesh-coloured and white which will grow nowhere else, except in a
+certain district of Portugal.
+
+"There it is!" we cried, at the pleasant first sight of a new flower:
+for though not scientific botanists, we have what I may call a speaking
+acquaintance with almost every wild flower that grows. To see one that
+we had never seen before was quite an excitement. Instantly we were out
+of the carriage, and gathering it by handfuls.
+
+Botanists know this heath well--it has the peculiarity of the anthers
+being outside instead of inside the bell--but we only noticed the
+beauty of it, the masses in which it grew, and how it would grow only
+within a particular line--the sharp geological line of magnesian earth,
+which forms the serpentine district. Already we saw, forcing itself
+up through the turf, blocks of this curious stone, and noticed how
+cottage-walls were built, and fences made of it.
+
+"Yes, that's the serpentine," said Charles, now in his depth once more;
+we could not have expected him to know about St. Rumon, &c. "You'll see
+plenty of it when you get to the Lizard. All the coast for miles and
+miles is serpentine. Such curious rocks, reddish and greenish; they
+look so pretty when the water washes against them, and when polished,
+and made into ornaments, candlesticks, brooches and the like. But I'll
+show you the shops as we pass. We shall be at Lizard Town directly."
+
+So it was a town, and it had shops. We should not have thought so,
+judging by the slender line of white dots which now was appearing on
+the horizon--Cornish folk seemed to have a perfect mania for painting
+their houses a glistening white. Yes, that was the Lizard; we were
+nearing our journey's end. At which we were a little sorry, even though
+already an hour or two behind-hand--that is, behind the hour we had
+ordered dinner. But "time was made for slaves"--and railway travellers,
+and we were beyond railways.
+
+"Never mind, what does dinner matter?" (It did not seriously, as we had
+taken the precaution, which I recommend to all travellers, of never
+starting on any expedition without a good piece of bread, a bunch of
+raisins, and a flask of cold tea or coffee.) "What's the odds so long
+as you're happy? Let us linger and make the drive as long as we can.
+The horse will not object, nor Charles either."
+
+Evidently not; our faithful steed cropped contentedly an extempore
+meal, and Charles, who would have scrambled anywhere or dug up anything
+"to please the young ladies," took out his pocket-knife, and devoted
+himself to the collection of all the different coloured heaths; roots
+which we determined to send home in the hope, alas! I fear vain, that
+they would grow in our garden, afar from their native magnesia.
+
+[Illustration: THE CORNISH COAST: FROM YNYS HEAD TO BEAST POINT.]
+
+So for another peaceful hour we stayed; wandering about upon Goonhilly
+Down. How little it takes to make one happy, when one wants to be
+happy, and knows enough of the inevitable sorrows of life to be glad to
+be happy--as long as fate allows. Each has his burthen to bear, seen or
+unseen by the world outside, and some of us that day had not a light
+one; yet was it a bright day, a white day, a day to be thankful for.
+
+Nor did it end when, arriving at the "ideal" lodgings, and being
+received with a placidity which we felt we had not quite deserved, and
+fed in a manner which reflected much credit not only on the cook's
+skill, but her temper--we sallied out to see the place.
+
+Not a picturesque place exactly. A high plain, with the sparkling sea
+beyond it; the principal object near being the Lizard Lights, a huge
+low building, with a tower at either side, not unlike the Sydenham
+Crystal palace, only dazzling white, as every building apparently was
+at the Lizard.
+
+"We'll go out and adventure," cried the young folks; and off
+they started down the garden, over a stile--made of serpentine
+of course--and across what seemed a field, till they disappeared
+mysteriously where the line of sea cut the line of cliffs, and were
+heard of no more for two hours.
+
+Then they returned, all delight and excitement. They had found such
+a lovely little cove, full of tiny pools, a perfect treasure-house
+of sea-weeds and sea-anemones; and the rocks, so picturesque, and
+"so grand to scramble over." (I must confess that to these, my
+practically-minded "chickens," the picturesque or the romantic always
+ranked second to the fun of a scramble.) The descent to this marine
+paradise also seemed difficult enough to charm anybody.
+
+"But _you_ wouldn't do it. Quite impossible! You would break all your
+legs and arms, and sprain both your ankles."
+
+Alas, for a hen--and an old hen--with ducklings! But mine, though
+daring, were not rash, and had none of that silly fool-hardiness
+which for the childish vanity of doing, or of saying one has done, a
+dangerous thing, risks health, comfort, life, and delights selfishly
+in making other people utterly miserable. So, being feeble on my feet,
+though steady in my head, I agreed to sit like a cormorant on the
+nearest cliff, and look down placidly upon the young adventurers in
+their next delightful scramble.
+
+It could not be to-night, however, for the tide was coming in fast; the
+fairy cove would soon be all under water.
+
+"Shall we get a boat? It will soon be sunset and moon-rise; we can
+watch both from the sea."
+
+That sea! Its broad circle had no other bound than the shores of
+America, and its blueness, or the strange, changing tint often called
+blue, almost equalled the blue of the Mediterranean.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, it's a fine evening for a row," said the faithful Charles.
+"And it isn't often you can get a row here; the sea is so rough, and
+the landing so difficult. But there's a man I know; he has a good
+boat, he knows the coast well, and he'll not go out unless it's really
+safe."
+
+This seemed ultra-prudent, with such a smiling sky and sea; but we
+soon found it was not unnecessary at the Lizard. Indeed all along the
+Cornish coast the great Atlantic waves come in with such a roll or a
+heavy ground-swell, windless, but the precursor of a storm that is
+slowly arriving from across the ocean, that boating here at best is no
+child's play.
+
+We had been fair-weather sailors, over shut-in lochs or smooth rivers;
+all of us could handle an oar, or had handled it in old days, but
+this was a different style of thing. Descending the steep zigzag path
+to the next cove--the only one where there was anything like a fair
+landing--we found we still had to walk through a long bed of sea-weed,
+and manage somehow to get into the boat between the recoil and advance
+of a wave. Not one of the tiny waves of quiet bays, but an Atlantic
+roller, which, even if comparatively small and tame, comes in with a
+force that will take you off your feet at any time.
+
+However, we managed it, and found ourselves floating among an
+archipelago of rocks, where the solemn cormorants sat in rows, and
+affectionate families of gulls kept swimming about in a large flotilla
+of white dots on the dark water. Very dark the sea was: heaving and
+sinking in great hills and valleys, which made rowing difficult. Also,
+for several yards round every rock extended a perfect whirlpool of
+foaming waves, which, if any boat chanced to be caught therein, would
+have dashed it to pieces in no time. But our boatmen seemed used to the
+danger, and took us as near it as possible, without actually running
+into it.
+
+They were both far from commonplace-looking men, especially the elder,
+our stroke-oar. Being rather given to ethnological tastes, we had
+already noticed the characteristic Cornish face, not unlike the Norman
+type, and decidedly superior to that of the inland counties of England.
+But this was a face by itself, which would have attracted any artist or
+student of human nature; weather-beaten, sharp-lined, wrinkled as it
+was--the man must have been fully sixty--there was in it a sweetness,
+an absolute beauty, which struck us at once. The smile, placid and
+paternal, came often, though words were few; and the keen, kindly eyes
+were blue as a child's, or as Tennyson describes King Arthur's.
+
+"I can imagine," whispered one of us who had imaginative tendencies,
+"that King Arthur might have looked thus, had he lived to grow old."
+
+"I don't believe King Arthur ever lived at all," was the knock-me-down
+utilitarian answer, to which the other had grown accustomed and
+indifferent. Nevertheless, there was such a refinement about the man,
+spite of his rough fisherman's dress, and he had been so kind to the
+young folks, so considerate to "the old lady," as Cornish candour
+already called me, that, intending to employ him again, we asked his
+name.
+
+"John Curgenven."
+
+"John what?" We made several hopeless plunges at it, and finally asked
+him to spell it.
+
+"Cur-gen-ven," said he; adding, with a slight air of pride, "one of the
+oldest families in Cornwall."
+
+(I have no hesitation in stating this, because, when we afterwards
+became great friends, I told John Curgenven I should probably "put
+him in a book"--if he had no objection. To which he answered with his
+usual composure, "No, he did not think it would harm him." He evidently
+considered "writing a book" was a very inferior sort of trade.)
+
+But looking at him, one could not help speculating as to how far the
+legend of King Arthur had been really true, and whether the type of
+man which Tennyson has preserved--or created--in this his "own ideal
+knight," did once exist, and still exists, in a modified modern form,
+throughout Cornwall. A fancy upon which we then only argued; now I, at
+least, am inclined to believe it.
+
+"There is Lord Brougham's head, his wig and his turn-up nose, you can
+see all distinctly. At least, you could if there was light enough."
+
+But there was not light, for the sun was setting, and the moon only
+just rising. Black looked the heaving sea, except where rings of white
+foam encircled each group of rocks, blacker still. And blackest of all
+looked the iron-bound coast, sharp against the amber western sky.
+
+"Yes, that's Kynance Cove, and the Gull Rock and Asparagus Island.
+Shall we row there? It's only about two miles."
+
+Two miles there, and two back, through this angry sea, and then to land
+in the dim light about 9 p.m.! Courage failed us. We did not own this;
+we merely remarked that we would rather see Kynance by daylight, but I
+think each of us felt a sensation of relief when the boat's head was
+turned homewards.
+
+Yet how beautiful it all was! Many a night afterwards we watched
+the same scene, but never lovelier than that night, the curved line
+of coast traceable distinctly up to Mount's Bay, and then the long
+peninsula which they told us was the Land's End, stretching out into
+the horizon, where sea and sky met in a mist of golden light, through
+which the sun was slowly dropping right from the sky into the sea.
+Beyond was a vague cloud-land, which might be the fair land of Lyonesse
+itself, said still to lie there submerged, with all its cities and
+towers and forests; or the "island-valley of Avillion," whither Arthur
+sailed with the three queens to be healed of his "grievous wound," and
+whence he is to come again some day. Popular superstition still expects
+him, and declares that he haunts this coast even now in the shape of a
+Cornish chough.
+
+Modern ghosts, too, exist, decidedly more alarming.
+
+"Look up there, ladies, that green slope is Pistol Meadow. Nobody likes
+to walk there after dark. Other things walk as well."
+
+"What things?"
+
+"Two hundred and more of foreign sailors, whose ship went to pieces in
+the little cove below. They're buried under the green mounds you see.
+Out of a crew of seven hundred only two men were washed ashore alive,
+and they were in irons, which the captain had put on them because
+they said he was going too near in shore. It was called Pistol Meadow
+because most of 'em were found with pistols in their hands, which may
+have been true or may not, since it happened more than a hundred years
+ago. However, there are the green mounds, you see, and Lizard folk
+don't much like passing the place after dark."
+
+"But you?"
+
+John Curgenven smiled. "Oh, us and the coast-guards! Us goes anywhere,
+at all hours, and never meets nothing. D'ye see those white marks all
+along the coast every few yards? They're rocks, kept white-washed, to
+guide the men of dark nights between here and Kynance. It's a ticklish
+path, when all's as black as pitch, with a stiff wind blowing."
+
+I should think it was! One almost shuddered at the idea, and then
+felt proud of the steady heads and cool courage of these coast-guard
+men--always the pick of the service, true Englishmen, fearless
+and faithful--the business of whose whole lives is to save other
+lives--that is, now that smuggling has abated, and those dreadful
+stories once current all along the coast of Cornwall have become
+mostly legends of the past. No tales of wreckers, or of fights between
+smugglers and revenue officers, reached our ears, but the stories of
+shipwrecks were endless. Every winter, and many times through the
+winter, some ghastly tragedy had happened. Every half-mile along this
+picturesque shore was recorded the place where some good ship went to
+pieces, often with the brief addendum, "all hands lost."
+
+"The sun's just setting. Look out for the Lizard Lights," called out
+Charles, who sat in the bow of the boat in faithful attendance upon his
+"ladies,"--another Knight of the Round Table in humble life--we met
+many such in Cornwall. "Look! There they are."
+
+And sure enough, the instant the sun's last spark was quenched in
+the sea, into which he dropped like a red round ball, out burst two
+substitute suns, and very fair substitutes too, making the poor little
+moon in the east of no importance whatever. The gleam of them extended
+far out upon the darkening ocean, and we could easily believe that
+their light was "equal to 20,000 candles," and that they were seen out
+at sea to a distance of twenty, some said even thirty, miles.
+
+"Except in a fog; and the fogs at the Lizard are very bad. Then you
+can see nothing, not even the Lights, but they keep sounding the
+fog-horn every minute or so. It works by the same machinery as works
+the Lights--a big steam-engine; you can hear it bum-bumming now, if you
+listen."
+
+So we could, a mysterious noise like that of a gigantic bumble-bee,
+coming across the water from that curious building, long and white,
+with its two towers and those great eyes in each of them, at either end.
+
+"They're wonderful bright;" said John Curgenven; "many's the time I've
+sat and read my newspaper by them a quarter of a mile off. They're seen
+through the blackest night, the blacker the brighter, seen through
+everything--except fog. Now, ladies, d'ye think you can jump ashore?"
+
+Some of us did, airily enough, though it required to choose your
+moment pretty cleverly so as to escape the incoming wave. And some of
+us--well, we accepted the inevitable, and were only too thankful to
+scramble anyhow, wet or dry, on terra firma.
+
+And then we had to ascend the zigzag path, slippery with loose stones,
+and uncertainly seen in the dim half-twilight, half-moonlight. At
+last we came out safe by the life-boat house, which we had noticed in
+passing, with the slit in its door for "Contributions," and a notice
+below that the key was kept at such and such a house--I forget the
+man's name--"and at the Rectory."
+
+[Illustration: THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY NIGHT.]
+
+"Yes," said Curgenven, "in many places along this coast, when there's a
+wreck, and we're called out, the parson's generally at the head of us.
+Volunteers? Of course we're all volunteers, except the coast-guard, who
+are paid. But they're often glad enough of us and of our boats too. The
+life-boat isn't enough. They keep her here, the only place they can,
+but it's tough work running her down to the beach on a black winter's
+night, with a ship going to pieces before your eyes, as ships do here
+in no time. I've seen it myself--watched her strike, and in ten minutes
+there was not a bit of her left."
+
+We could well imagine it. Even on this calm evening the waves kept
+dashing themselves against every rock with a roar and a swell and a
+circle of boiling foam. What must it be on a stormy winter night, or
+through the deathly quiet of a white mist, with nothing visible or
+audible except the roar of the waters and the shriek of the fog-horn!
+
+"I think it's full time we were in-doors," suggested a practical and
+prudent little voice; "we can come again and see it in the daylight.
+Here's the road."
+
+"That's the way you came, Miss," said Charles, "but I can take you a
+much shorter one on the top of the hedges"--or edges, we never quite
+knew which they were, though on the whole the letter _h_ is tolerably
+well treated in Cornwall.
+
+These "hedges" were startling to any one not Cornish-born. In the
+Lizard district the divisions of land are made not by fences, but by
+walls, built in a peculiar fashion, half stones, half earth, varying
+from six to ten feet high, and about two feet broad. On the top of this
+narrow giddy path, fringed on either side by deceitful grass, you are
+expected to walk!--in fact, are obliged to walk, for there is often no
+other road. There was none here.
+
+I looked round in despair. Once upon a time I could have walked upon
+walls as well as anybody, but now--!
+
+"I'll help you, ma'am; and I'm sure you can manage it," said Charles
+consolingly. "It's only three-quarters of a mile."
+
+Three-quarters of a mile along a two-foot path on the top of a wall,
+and in this deceitful light, when one false step would entail a certain
+fall. And at my age one doesn't fall exactly like a feather or an
+india-rubber ball.
+
+"Ma'am, if you go slow and steady, with me before and Curgenven behind,
+you'll _not_ fall."
+
+Nor did I. I record it with gratitude to those two honest men--true
+_gentlemen_, such as I have found at times in all ranks--who never
+once grumbled or relaxed in their care of their tardy and troublesome
+charge; one instance more of that kindly courtesy which it does any
+man good to offer, and which any woman, "lady" though she be, may feel
+proud to receive.
+
+When we reached "home," as we had already begun to call it, a smiling
+face and a comfortable tea justified the word. And when we retired,
+a good deal fatigued, but quite happy, we looked out upon the night,
+where the fiery stream of the Lizard Lights was contending with the
+brightest of harvest moons. It was a hopeful ending of our second day.
+
+[Illustration: CORNISH FISH.]
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE THIRD
+
+
+"And a beautiful day it is, ladies, though it won't do for Kynance."
+
+Only 8 a.m., yet there stood the faithful Charles, hat in hand, having
+heard that his ladies were at breakfast, and being evidently anxious
+that they should not lose an hour of him and his carriage, which were
+both due at Falmouth to-night. For this day was Saturday, and we were
+sending him home for Sunday.
+
+"As I found out last night, the tide won't suit for Kynance till
+Wednesday or Thursday, and you'll be too tired to walk much to-day.
+I've been thinking it all over. Suppose I were to drive you to Kennack
+Sands, back by the serpentine works to Cadgwith, and home to dinner?
+Then after dinner I'll give the horse a rest for two hours, and take
+you to Mullion; we can order tea at Mary Mundy's, and go on to the cove
+as far as I can get with the carriage. I'll leave it at the farm and be
+in time to help you over the rocks to see the caves, run ahead and meet
+you again with the carriage, and drive you back to Mary Mundy's. You
+can have tea and be home in the moonlight before nine o'clock."
+
+"And you?" we asked, a good deal bewildered by this carefully-outlined
+plan and all the strange names of places and people, yet not a little
+touched by the kindly way in which we were "taken in and done for" by
+our faithful squire of dames.
+
+"Me, ma'am? Oh, after an hour or two's rest the horse can start
+again--say at midnight, and be home by daylight. Or we could go to bed
+and be up early at four, and still get to Falmouth by eight, in time
+for the church work. Don't you trouble about us, we'll manage. He" (the
+other and four-footed half of the "we") "is a capital animal, and he'd
+get much harder work than this if he was at home."
+
+So we decided to put ourselves entirely in the hands of Charles,
+who seemed to have our interest so much at heart, and yet evinced a
+tenderness over his horse that is not too common among hired drivers.
+We promised to be ready in half an hour, so as to waste nothing of this
+lovely day, in which we had determined to enjoy ourselves.
+
+Who could help it? It was delightful to wake up early and refreshed,
+and come down to this sunshiny, cheerful breakfast-table, where, though
+nothing was grand, all was thoroughly comfortable.
+
+"I'm sure you're very kind, ladies, to be so pleased with everything,"
+apologised our bright-looking handmaiden; "and since you really wish
+to keep this room"--a very homely parlour which we had chosen in
+preference to a larger one, because it looked on the sea--"I only wish
+things was better for you; still, if you can make shift--"
+
+Well, if travellers cannot "make shift" with perfectly clean tidy
+rooms, well-cooked plain food, and more than civil, actually kindly,
+attendance, they ought to be ashamed of themselves! So we declared we
+would settle down in the evidently despised little parlour.
+
+It was not an aesthetic apartment, certainly. The wall-paper and carpet
+would have driven Morris and Co. nearly frantic; the furniture--mere
+chairs and a table--belonged "to the year one"--but (better than many
+modern chairs and tables) you could sit down upon the first and dine
+upon the second, in safety. There was no sofa, so we gladly accepted
+an offered easy-chair, and felt that all really useful things were now
+ours.
+
+But the ornamental? There was a paper arrangement in the grate, and
+certain vases on the chimney-piece which literally made our hair stand
+on end! After a private consultation as to how far we might venture,
+without wounding the feelings of our landlady, we mildly suggested that
+"perhaps we could do without these ornaments." All we wanted in their
+stead were a few jars, salt-jars or jam-pots, in which to arrange our
+wild flowers, of which yesterday the girls had gathered a quantity.
+
+The exchange was accepted, though with some surprise. But when, half
+an hour afterwards, the parlour appeared quite transformed, decorated
+in every available corner with brilliant autumn flowers--principally
+yellow--intermixed with the lovely Cornish heath; when, on some excuse
+or other, the hideous "ornament for your fire-stoves" was abolished,
+and the grate filled with a mass of green fern and grey sea-holly--I
+know no combination more exquisite both as to colour and form--then we
+felt that we could survive, at least for a week, even if shut up within
+this humble room, innocent of the smallest attraction as regarded art,
+music, or literature.
+
+But without doors? There Nature beat Art decidedly.
+
+What a world it was! Literally swimming in sunshine, from the sparkling
+sea in the distance, to the beds of marigolds close by--huge marigolds,
+double and single, mingled with carnations that filled the air with
+rich autumnal scent, all the more delicious because we feel it is
+autumnal, and therefore cannot last. It was a very simple garden,
+merely a square grass-plot with a walk and a border round it, and its
+only flowers were these marigolds, carnations, with quantities of
+mignonette, and bounded all round with a hedge of tamarisk; yet I think
+we shall always remember it as if it were the Garden of Armida--without
+a Tancred to spoil it!
+
+For--under the rose--one of the pleasures of our tour was that it was
+so exclusively feminine. We could feed as we liked, dress as we liked,
+talk to whom we liked, without any restriction, from the universal
+masculine sense of dignity and decorum in travelling. We felt ourselves
+unconventional, incognito, able to do exactly as we chose, provided we
+did nothing wrong.
+
+So off we drove through Lizard Town into the "wide, wide world;" and
+I repeat, what a world it was! Full filled with sunlight, and with an
+atmosphere so fresh and bracing, yet so dry and mild and balmy, that
+every breath was a pleasure to draw. We had felt nothing like it since
+we stood on the top of the highest peak in the Island of Capri, looking
+down on the blue Mediterranean. But this sea was equally blue, the sky
+equally clear, yet it was home--dear old England, so often misprized.
+Yet, I believe, when one does get really fine English weather, there is
+nothing like it in the whole world.
+
+The region we traversed was not picturesque--neither mountains, nor
+glens, nor rivers, nor woods; all was level and bare, for the road lay
+mostly inland, until we came out upon Kennack Sands.
+
+They might have been the very "yellow sands" where Shakespeare's elves
+were bidden to "take hands" and "foot it featly here and there." You
+might almost have searched for the sea-maids' footsteps along the
+smooth surface where the long Atlantic waves crept harmlessly in,
+making a glittering curve, and falling with a gentle "thud"--the only
+sound in the solitary bay, until all at once we caught voices and
+laughter, and from among some rock, emerged a party of girls.
+
+They had evidently come in a cart, which took up its station beside
+our carriage, laden with bundles which looked uncommonly like bathing
+gowns; and were now seeking a convenient dressing-room--one of
+those rock-parlours, roofed with serpentine and floored with silver
+sand--which are the sole bathing establishments here.
+
+All along the Cornish coast the bathing is delightful--when you can
+get it; but sometimes for miles and miles the cliffs rise in a huge
+impregnable wall, without a single break. Then perhaps there comes a
+sudden cleft in the rock, a green descent, possibly with a rivulet
+trickling through it, and leading to a sheltered cove or a sea-cave,
+accessible only at low water, but one of the most delicious little
+nooks that could be imagined. Kynance, we were told, with its "kitchen"
+and "drawing-room," was the most perfect specimen of the kind; but
+Kennack was sufficiently lovely. With all sorts of fun, shouting, and
+laughter, the girls disappeared to their evidently familiar haunts, to
+reappear as merry mermaids playing about in a crystalline sea.
+
+A most tantalising sight to my two, who vowed never again to attempt
+a day's excursion without taking bathing dresses, towels, and the
+inevitable fish-line, to be tied round the waist,--with a mother
+holding the other end. For we had been warned against these long and
+strong Atlantic waves, the recoil of which takes you off your feet even
+in calm weather. As bathing must generally be done at low water, to
+ensure a sandy floor and a comfortable cave, it is easy enough to be
+swept out of one's depth; and the cleverest swimmer, if tossed about
+among these innumerable rocks circled round by eddies of boiling white
+water, would have small chance of returning with whole bones, or of
+returning at all.
+
+Indeed, along this Cornish coast, life and death seem very near
+together. Every pleasure carries with it a certain amount of risk; the
+utmost caution is required both on land and sea, and I cannot advise
+either rash or nervous people to go travelling in Cornwall.
+
+Bathing being impracticable, we consoled ourselves with ascending the
+sandy hillock, which bounded one side of the bay, and sat looking from
+it towards the coast-line eastwards.
+
+[Illustration: POLTESCO.]
+
+What a strange peace there is in a solitary shore, an empty sea, for
+the one or two white dots of silent ships seemed rather to add to than
+diminish its loneliness--lonelier in sunshine, I think, than even in
+storm. The latter gives a sense of human life, of struggle and of
+pain; while the former is all repose, the bright but solemn repose of
+infinity or eternity.
+
+But these thoughts were for older heads; the only idea of the young
+heads--uncommonly steady they must have been!--was of scrambling
+into the most inaccessible places, and getting as near to the sea as
+possible without actually tumbling into it. After a while the land
+attracted them in turn, and they came back with their hands full of
+flowers, some known, some unknown; great bunches of honeysuckle,
+curious sand-plants, and cliff-plants; also water-plants, which fringed
+a little rivulet that ran into the bay, while, growing everywhere
+abundantly, was the lovely grey-green cringo, or sea-holly.
+
+All these treasures, to make the parlour pretty, required much
+ingenuity to carry home safely, the sun withered them so fast. But
+there was the pleasure of collecting.
+
+We could willingly have stayed here all day--how natural is that wish
+of poor young Shelley, that in every pretty place he saw he might
+remain "for ever"!--but the forenoon was passing, and we had much to
+see.
+
+"Poltesco, everybody goes to Poltesco," observed the patient Charles.
+
+So of course we went there too. At Poltesco are the principal
+serpentine works--the one commerce of the district. The monotonous hum
+of its machinery mingled oddly with the murmur of a trout-stream which
+ran through the pretty little valley, crossed by a wooden bridge, where
+a solitary angler stood fishing in imperturbable content.
+
+There were only about a dozen workmen visible; one of whom came
+forward and explained to us the mode of work, afterwards taking us
+to the show-room, which contained everything possible to be made of
+serpentine, from mantelpieces and tombstones, down to brooches and
+studs. Very delicate and beautiful was the workmanship; the forms of
+some of the things--vases and candlesticks especially--were quite
+Pompeian. In truth, throughout Cornwall, we often came upon shapes,
+Roman or Greek, proving how even yet relics of its early masters or
+colonisers linger in this western corner of England.
+
+In its inhabitants too. When, as we passed, more than one busy
+workman lifted up his head for a moment, we noticed faces almost
+classic in type, quite different from the bovine, agricultural
+Hodge of the midland counties. In manner different likewise.
+There was neither stupidity nor servility, but a sort of dignified
+independence. No pressing to buy, no looking out for gratuities,
+only a kindly politeness, which did not fail even when we departed,
+taking only a few little ornaments. We should have liked to carry off
+a cart-load--especially two enormous vases and a chimney-piece--but
+travellers have limits to luggage, and purse as well.
+
+Pretty Poltesco! we left it with regret, but we were in the hands
+of the ever-watchful Charles, anxious that we should see as much as
+possible.
+
+"The driving-road goes far inland, but there's a splendid cliff-walk
+from Poltesco to Cadgwith direct. The young ladies might do it with a
+guide--here he is, a man I know, quite reliable. They'll walk it easily
+in half an hour. But you, ma'am, I think you'd better come with me."
+
+No fighting against fate. So I put my "chickens" in safe charge, meekly
+re-entered the carriage, and drove, humbly and alone, across a flat
+dull country, diversified here and there by a few cottages, politely
+called a village--the two villages of Ruan Minor and Ruan Major. I
+afterwards found that they were not without antiquarian interest, that
+I might have gone to examine a curious old church, well, and oratory,
+supposed to have been inhabited by St. Rumon. But we had left the
+guide-book at home, with the so longed-for bathing gowns, and Charles
+was not of archaeological mind, so I heard nothing and investigated
+nothing.
+
+Except, indeed, numerous huge hand-bills, posted on barn doors and
+gates, informing the inhabitants that an Exhibition of Fine Arts,
+admittance one shilling, was on view close by. Charles was most anxious
+I should stop and visit it, saying it was "very fine." But as within
+the last twelvemonth I had seen the Royal Academy, Grosvenor Gallery,
+and most of the galleries and museums in Italy, the Fine Art Exhibition
+of Ruan Minor was not overwhelmingly attractive. However, not to wound
+the good Cornishman, who was evidently proud of it, I explained that,
+on the whole, I preferred nature to art.
+
+And how grand nature was in this fishing-village of Cadgwith, to which
+after a long round, we came at last!
+
+[Illustration: CADGWITH COVE.]
+
+Nestled snugly in a bend of the coast which shelters it from north
+and east, leaving it open to southern sunshine, while another curve
+of land protects it from the dense fogs which are so common at the
+Lizard, Cadgwith is, summer and winter, one of the pleasantest nooks
+imaginable. The climate, Charles told me, is so mild, that invalids
+often settle down in the one inn--a mere village inn externally, but
+very comfortable. And, as I afterwards heard at Lizard Town, the parson
+and his wife--"didn't I know them?" and I felt myself rather looked
+down upon because I did not know them--are the kindest of people,
+who take pleasure in looking after the invalids, rich or poor. "Yes,"
+Charles considered Cadgwith was a nice place to winter in, "only just a
+trifle dull."
+
+Probably so, to judge by the interest which, even in this
+tourist-season, our carriage excited, as we wound down one side and
+up another of the ravine in which the village is built, with a small
+fishing-station at the bottom, rather painfully odoriferous. The
+fisher-wives came to their doors, the old fisher-men stood, hands in
+pockets, the roly-poly healthy fisher-children stopped playing, to
+turn round and stare. In these parts everybody stares at everybody,
+and generally everybody speaks to everybody--a civil "good-day" at any
+rate, sometimes more.
+
+"This is a heavy pull for you," said a sympathetic old woman, who had
+watched me leave the carriage and begin mounting the cliff towards the
+Devil's Frying-pan--the principal thing to be seen at Cadgwith. She
+followed me, and triumphantly passed me, though she had to carry a bag
+of potatoes on her back. I wondered if her feeling was pity or envy
+towards another old person who had to carry nothing but her own self.
+Which, alas! was enough!
+
+She and I sat down together on the hill-side and had a chat, while I
+waited for the two little black dots which I could see moving round the
+opposite headland. She gave me all kinds of information, in the simple
+way peculiar to country folk, whose innocent horizon comprises the
+whole world, which, may be, is less pleasant than the little world of
+Cadgwith. Then we parted for ever and aye.
+
+The Devil's Frying-pan is a wonderful sight. Imagine a natural
+amphitheatre two acres in extent, inclosed by a semi-circular slope
+about two hundred feet high, covered with grass and flowers and low
+bushes. Outside, the wide, open sea, which pours in to the shingly
+beach at the bottom through an arch of serpentine, the colouring of
+which, and of the other rocks surrounding it, is most exquisite,
+varying from red to green, with sometimes a tint of grey. Were Cadgwith
+a little nearer civilisation, what a show-place it would become!
+
+But happily civilisation leaves it alone. The tiny farm-house on the
+hill-side near the Frying-pan looked, within and without, much as it
+must have looked for the last hundred years; and the ragged, unkempt,
+tongue-tied little girl, from whom we succeeded in getting a drink
+of milk in a tumbler which she took five minutes to search for, had
+certainly never been to a Board School. She investigated the penny
+which we deposited as if it were a great natural curiosity rarely
+attainable, and she gazed after us as we climbed the stile leading to
+the Frying-pan as if wondering what on earth could tempt respectable
+people, who had nothing to do, into such a very uncomfortable place.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH.]
+
+Uncomfortable, certainly, as we sat with our feet stuck in the long
+grass to prevent slipping down the slope--a misadventure which would
+have been, to say the least, awkward. Those boiling waves, roaring each
+after each through the arch below; and those jagged rocks, round which
+innumerable sea-birds were flying--one could quite imagine that were
+any luckless vessel to find itself in or near the Frying-pan, it would
+never get out again.
+
+To meditative minds there is something very startling in the perpetual
+contrast between the summer tourist-life, so cheerful and careless,
+and the winter life of the people here, which must be so full of
+privations; for one half the year there is nothing to do, no market
+for serpentine, and almost no fishing possible: they have to live
+throughout the dark days upon the hay made while the sun shines.
+
+"No, no," said one of the Lizard folk, whom I asked if there was much
+drunkenness thereabout, for I had seen absolutely none; "no, us don't
+drink; us can't afford it. Winter's a bad time for we--sometimes for
+four months a man doesn't earn a halfpenny. He has to save in summer,
+or he'd starve the rest of the year."
+
+Which apparently is not altogether bad for him. I have seldom seen,
+in any part of England or Scotland, such an honest, independent,
+respectable race as the working people on this coast, and indeed
+throughout Cornwall.
+
+We left with regret the pretty village, resolving to come back again
+in a day or two; it was barely three miles from the Lizard, though the
+difference in climate was said to be so great. And then we drove back
+across the bleak down and through the keen "hungry" sea-air, which made
+dinner a matter of welcome importance. And without dwelling too much
+on the delights of the flesh--very mild delights after all--I will say
+that the vegetables grown in the garden, and the grapes in the simple
+green-house beside it, were a credit to Cornwall, especially so near
+the sea-coast.
+
+We had just time to dine, repose a little, and communicate our address
+to our affectionate friends at home--so as to link ourselves for a few
+brief days with the outside world--when appeared the punctual Charles.
+
+"Don't be afraid, ladies, he's had a good rest,"--this was the
+important animal about whose well-being we were naturally anxious.
+Charles patted his shoulder, and a little person much given to deep
+equine affections tenderly stroked his nose. He seemed sensible of the
+attention and of what was expected from him, and started off, as lively
+as if he had been idle for a week, across the Lizard Down and Pradenack
+Down to Mullion.
+
+"I hope Mary will be at home," said Charles, turning round as usual to
+converse; "she'll be sure to make you comfortable. Of course you've
+heard of Mary Mundy?"
+
+Fortunately we had. There was in one of our guide-books a most
+glowing description of the Old Inn, and also an extract from a poem,
+apostrophising the charms of Mary Mundy. When we said we knew the
+enthusiastic Scotch Professor who had written it, we felt that we rose
+a step in the estimation of Charles.
+
+"And Mary will be so pleased to see anybody who knows the
+gentleman"--in Cornwall the noted Greek Professor was merely "the
+gentleman." "She's got his poem in her visitors' book and his portrait
+in her album. I do hope Mary will be at home."
+
+But fate was against us. When we reached Mullion and drove up to the
+door of the Old Inn, there darted out to meet us, not Mary, but an
+individual concerning whom Fame has been unjustly silent.
+
+"It's only Mary's brother," said Charles, with an accent of deep
+disappointment.
+
+But as the honest man who had apparently gone through life as "Mary's
+brother" stood patting our horse and talking to our driver, with both
+of whom he seemed on terms of equal intimacy, his welcome to ourselves
+was such a mixture of cordiality and despair that we could scarcely
+keep from laughing.
+
+"Mary's gone to Helstone, ladies; her would have been delighted, but
+her's gone marketing to Helstone. I hope her'll be back soon, for I
+doesn't know what to do without she. The house is full, and there's a
+party of eleven come to tea, and actually wanting it sent down to them
+at the Cove. They won't get it though. And you shall get your tea,
+ladies, even if they have to go without."
+
+We expressed our gratitude, and left Charles to arrange all for us,
+which he did in the most practical way.
+
+"And you think Mary may be back at six?"
+
+"Her said her would, and I hope her will," answered the brother
+despondently. "Her's very seldom out; us can't get on at all without
+she."
+
+This, and several more long and voluble speeches given in broad
+Cornish, with the true Cornish confusion of pronouns, and with an air
+of piteous perplexity--nay, abject helplessness, the usual helplessness
+of man without woman--proved too much for our risible nerves. We
+maintained a decorous gravity till we had driven away, and then fell
+into shouts of laughter--the innocent laughter of happy-minded people
+over the smallest joke or the mildest species of fun.
+
+"Never mind, ladies, you'll get your tea all right. If Mary said she'd
+be back at six, back she'll be. And you'll find a capital tea waiting
+for you; there isn't a more comfortable inn in all Cornwall."
+
+Which, we afterwards found, was saying a great deal.
+
+Mullion Cove is a good mile from Mullion village, and as we jolted over
+the rough road I was remorseful over both carriage and horse.
+
+"Not at all, ma'am, he's used to it. Often and often he comes here with
+pic-nic parties, all the way from Falmouth. I'll put him in at the
+farm, and be down with you at the Cove directly. You'll find the rocks
+pretty bad walking, but there's a cave which you ought to see. We'll
+try it."
+
+There was no resisting the way the kindly young Cornishman thus
+identified himself with our interests, and gave himself all sorts
+of extra trouble on our account. And when after a steep and not too
+savoury descent--the cove being used as a fish cellar--we found
+ourselves on the beach, shut in by those grand rocks of serpentine,
+with Mullion Island lying ahead about a quarter of a mile off, we felt
+we had not come here for nothing.
+
+The great feature of Mullion Cove is its sea-caves, of which there are
+two, one on the beach, the other round the point, and only accessible
+at low water. Now, we saw the tide was rising fast.
+
+"They'll have to wade; I told them they would have to wade!" cried an
+anxious voice behind me; and "I was ware," as ancient chroniclers say,
+of the presence of another "old hen," the same whom we had noticed
+conducting her brood of chickens, or ducklings--they seemed more like
+the latter now--to bathe on Kennack Sands.
+
+"Yes, they have been away more than half an hour, all my children
+except this one"--a small boy who looked as if he wished he had gone
+too. "They would go, though I warned them they would have to wade. And
+there they are, just going into the cave. One, two, three, four, five,
+six," counting the black specks that were seen moving on, or rather in,
+the water. "Oh dear, they've _all_ gone in! I wish they were safe out
+again."
+
+[Illustration: MULLION COVE, CORNWALL.]
+
+Nevertheless, in the midst of her distress, the benevolent lady stopped
+to give me a helping hand into the near cave, a long, dark passage,
+with light at either end. My girls had already safely threaded it and
+come triumphantly out at the other side. But what with the darkness and
+the uncertain footing over what felt like beds of damp seaweed, with
+occasional stones, through which one had to grope every inch of one's
+way, my heart rather misgave me, until I was cheered by the apparition
+of the faithful Charles.
+
+"Don't go back, ma'am, you'll be so sorry afterwards. I'll strike a
+light and help you. Slow and steady, you'll come to no harm. And it's
+beautiful when you get out at the other end."
+
+So it was. The most exquisite little nook; where you could have
+imagined a mermaid came daily to comb her hair; one can easily believe
+in mermaids or anything else in Cornwall. What a charming dressing-room
+she would have, shut in on three sides by those great walls of
+serpentine, and in front the glittering sea, rolling in upon a floor of
+the loveliest silver sand.
+
+But the only mermaid there was an artist's wife, standing beside her
+husband's easel, at which he was painting away so earnestly that he
+scarcely noticed us. Very picturesque he looked, and she too, in her
+rough serge dress, with her pretty bare feet and ankles, the shoes and
+stockings lying in a corner as if they had not been worn for hours.
+Why should they be? they were quite unnecessary on those soft sands,
+and their owner stood and talked with me as composedly as if it were
+the height of the fashion to go barefoot. And far more than anything
+concerning herself, she seemed interested in my evident interest in the
+picture, which promised to be a remarkably good one, and which, if I
+see it on the R. A. walls next year will furnish my only clue to the
+identity of the couple, or theirs to mine.
+
+But the tide was fast advancing; they began to take down the easel, and
+I remembered that the narrow winding cave was our only way out from
+this rock-inclosed fairy paradise to the prosaic beach.
+
+"Look, they are wading ashore up to the knees! And we shall have to
+wade too if we don't make haste back."
+
+So cried the perplexed mother of the six too-adventurous ducklings.
+But mine, more considerate, answered me from the rocks where they were
+scrambling, and helped me back through the cave into safe quarters,
+where we stood watching the waders with mingled excitement and--envy?
+
+Alas! I can still recall the delicious sensation of paddling across the
+smooth sea-sand, and of walking up the bed of a Highland burn. But "Oh!
+the change twixt Now and Then," I sat calmly on a stone, dry-shod; as
+was best. Still, is it not a benign law of nature, that the things we
+are no longer able to do, we almost cease to wish to do? Perhaps even
+the last cessation of all things will come naturally at the end, as
+naturally as we turn round and go to sleep at night?
+
+But it was not night yet. I am proud to think how high and steep was
+the cliff we re-ascended, all three of us, and from which we stood
+and looked at sky and sea. Such a sea and such a sky: amber clear, so
+that one could trace the whole line of coast--Mount's Bay, with St.
+Michael's Mount dotted in the midst of it, and even the Land's End,
+beyond which the sun, round and red, was just touching the top of the
+waves. We should have liked to watch him drop below them--that splendid
+sea-sunset of which one never tires, but we had some distance to walk,
+and we began to rejoice in the prospect of Mary Mundy's tea.
+
+"I'll go on ahead and have the carriage ready," said the ever
+thoughtful Charles. "You can't miss your way, ladies. Just follow the
+hedges"--that tempting aerial promenade, to which we were now getting
+accustomed, becoming veritable Blondins in petticoats--"then cross the
+cornfield; and take to the hedges again. You'll be at the farm-yard
+directly."
+
+Not quite--for we lingered, tempted by the abundance of corn-flowers,
+of which we gathered, not handfuls but armfuls. When we reached
+it, what a picture of an English farm-yard it was! With a regular
+old-fashioned English milk-maid--such as Izaak Walton would have loved
+to describe--sitting amidst her shining pails, her cows standing round
+her, meekly waiting their turn. Sleek, calm creatures they were,
+Juno-eyed and soft-skinned--of that peculiar shade of grey which I
+have seen only in Cornwall. And, being rather a connoisseur in cows,
+I have often amused myself to notice how the kine of each country
+have their own predominant colour, which seems to harmonise with its
+special landscape. The curious yellow tint of Highland cattle, the red,
+white, or brown of those of the midland counties, and the delicate
+grey of Cornish cows, alike suit the scene around them, and belong to
+it as completely as the dainty little Swiss herds do to their Alpine
+pastures, or the large, mild, cream-coloured oxen to the Campagna at
+Rome.
+
+But we had to tear ourselves away from this Arcadia, for in the midst
+of the farm-yard appeared the carriage and Charles. So we jolted
+back--it seemed as if Cornish carriages and horses could go anywhere
+and over everything--to the Old Inn and Mary Mundy.
+
+She _had_ come home, and everything was right. As we soon found,
+everything and everybody was accustomed to be put to rights by Miss
+Mary Mundy.
+
+She stood at the door to greet us--a bright, brown-faced little
+woman with the reddest of cheeks and the blackest of eyes; I have no
+hesitation in painting her portrait here, as she is, so to speak,
+public property, known and respected far and wide.
+
+[Illustration: A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY.]
+
+"Delighted to see you, ladies; delighted to see any friends of the
+Professor's; and I hope you enjoyed the Cove, and that you're all
+hungry, and will find your tea to your liking. It's the best we can do;
+we're very homely folk here, but we try to make people comfortable,"
+and so on and so on, a regular stream of chatty conversation, given in
+the strongest Cornish, with the kindliest of Cornish hearts, as she
+ushered us into a neat little parlour at the back of the inn.
+
+There lay spread, not one of your dainty afternoon teas, with two or
+three wafery slices of bread and butter, but a regular substantial
+meal. Cheerful candles--of course in serpentine candlesticks--were
+already lit, and showed us the bright teapot full of that welcome drink
+to weary travellers, hot, strong and harmless; the gigantic home-baked
+loaf, which it seemed sacrilegious to have turned into toast; the rich,
+yellow butter--I am sure those lovely cows had something to do with
+it, and also with the cream, so thick that the spoon could almost have
+stood upright in it. Besides, there was a quantity of that delicious
+clotted cream, which here accompanies every meal and of which I had
+vainly tried to get the receipt, but was answered with polite scorn,
+"Oh, ma'am, it would be of no use to _you_: Cornish cream can only be
+made from Cornish cows!"
+
+Whether this remarkable fact in natural history be true or not, let me
+record the perfection of Mary Mundy's cream, which, together with her
+jam and her marmalade, was a refection worthy of the gods.
+
+She pressed us again and again to "have some more," and her charge for
+our magnificent meal was as small as her gratitude was great for the
+slight addition we made to it.
+
+"No, I'll not say no, ma'am, it'll come in handy; us has got a young
+niece to bring up--my brother and me--please'm. Yes, I'm glad you came,
+and I hope you'll come again, please'm. And if you see the Professor,
+you'll tell him he's not forgotten, please'm."
+
+This garniture of "please'm" at the end of every sentence reminded
+us of the Venetian "probbedirla," _per ubbedirla_, with which our
+gondolier Giovanna used to amuse us, often dragging it in in the oddest
+way. "Yes, the Signora will get a beautiful day, probbedirla," or "My
+wife has just lost her baby, probbedirla." Mary Mundy's "please'm"
+often came in with equal incongruity, and her voluble tongue ran on
+nineteen to the dozen; but her talk was so shrewd and her looks so
+pleasant--once, no doubt, actually pretty, and still comely enough for
+a middle-aged woman--that we departed, fully agreeing with her admiring
+Professor that
+
+  "The brightest thing on Cornish land
+  Is the face of Miss Mary Mundy."
+
+Recrossing Pradenack down in the dim light of a newly-risen moon,
+everything looked so solitary and ghostly that we started to see moving
+from behind a furz-bush, a mysterious figure, which crossed the road
+slowly, and stood waiting for us. Was it man or ghost, or--
+
+Only a donkey! A ridiculous grey donkey. It might have been Tregeagle
+himself--Tregeagle, the grim mad-demon of Cornish tradition, once a
+dishonest steward, who sold his soul to the devil, and is doomed to
+keep on emptying Dozmare Pool, near St. Neots (the same mere wherein
+Excalibur was thrown), with a limpet-shell; and to spend his nights in
+other secluded places balancing interminable accounts, which are always
+just sixpence wrong.
+
+Poor Tregeagle! I fear some of us, weak in arithmetic, had a secret
+sympathy for him! But we never met him--nor anything worse than that
+spectral donkey, looming large and placid against the level horizon.
+
+Soon, "the stars came out by twos and threes,"--promising a fine night
+and finer morning, during which, while we were comfortably asleep,
+our good horse and man would be driving across this lonely region to
+Falmouth, in time to take the good people to church on Sunday morning.
+
+"And we'll do it, too--don't you be anxious about us, ladies," insisted
+Charles. "I'll feed him well, and groom him well. I likes to take care
+of a good horse, and you'll see, he'll take no harm. I'll be back when
+you want me, at the week's end, or perhaps before then, with some party
+or other--we're always coming to the Lizard--and I'll just look in and
+see how you're getting on, and how you liked Kynance. But take care of
+the tide."
+
+We thanked our kindly charioteer, bade him and his horse good-bye,
+wished him a pleasant journey through the moonlight, which was every
+minute growing more beautiful, then went indoors to supper--no! supper
+would have been an insult to Mary Mundy's tea--to bed.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE FOURTH
+
+
+Sunday, September 4th--and we had started on September 1st; was it
+possible we had only been travelling four days?
+
+It felt like fourteen at least. We had seen so much, taken in so many
+new interests--nay, made several new friends. Already we began to plan
+another meeting with John Curgenven, who we found was a relation of
+our landlady, or of our bright-faced serving maiden, Esther--I forget
+which. But everybody seemed connected with everybody at the Lizard,
+and everybody took a friendly interest in everybody. The arrival of
+new lodgers in the "genteel" parlour which we had not appreciated
+was important information, and we were glad to hear that Charles had
+started about four in the morning quite cheery.
+
+And what a morning it was!--a typical Sabbath, a day of rest, a day
+to rejoice in. Strolling round the garden at eight o'clock, while the
+dew still lay thick on the grass, and glittered like diamonds on the
+autumnal spider-webs, even the flowers seemed to know it was Sunday,
+the mignonette bed to smell sweeter, the marigolds--yes! aesthetic
+fashion is right in its love for marigolds--burnt in a perfect blaze
+of golden colour and aromatic scent. The air was so mild that we could
+imagine summer was still with us: and the great wide circle of sea
+gleamed in the sunshine as if there never had been, never could be,
+such a thing as cloud or storm.
+
+Having ascertained that there was no service nearer than Grade, some
+miles off, until the afternoon, we "went to church" on the cliffs, in
+Pistol Meadow, beside the green mounds where the two hundred drowned
+sailors sleep in peace.
+
+[Illustration: STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT.]
+
+And such a peaceful place! Absolutely solitary: not a living creature,
+not even a sheep came near me the whole morning:--and in the silence
+I could hear almost every word said by my young folks, searching for
+sea-treasures among the rocks and little pools far below. Westwards
+towards Kynance, and eastwards towards Landewednack--the church we were
+to go to in the afternoon--the cliff path was smooth and green, the
+short grass full of those curious dainty flowers, some of which were
+new to our eager eyes. At other times the road was so precipitous that
+we did not wonder at those carefully white-washed stones every few
+yards, which are the sole guide to the coastguard men of dark nights.
+Even in daylight, if the wind were high, or the footing slippery with
+rain, the cliff-walk from the Lizard to Kynance would be no joke to
+uninitiated feet.
+
+Now, all was so still that the wind never once fluttered the letter I
+was writing, and so warm that we were glad to escape the white glare of
+the wall of the Lizard Lights and sit in a cool hollow, watching sky
+and ocean, with now and then a sea-bird floating lazily between, a dark
+speck on the perpetual blue.
+
+"If it will only keep like this all week!" And, as we sat, we planned
+out each day, so as to miss nothing, and lose nothing--either of time
+or strength: doing enough, but never too much--as is often the fatal
+mistake of tourists. And then, following the grand law of travelling,
+to have one's "meals reg'lar"--we went indoors and dined. Afterwards in
+honour of the day
+
+        "that comes between
+  The Saturday and Monday,"
+
+we dressed ourselves in all our best--very humble best it was!--to join
+the good people going to church at Landewednack.
+
+This, which in ancient Cornish means "the white-roofed church of St.
+Wednack"--hagiologists must decide who that individual was!--is the
+name of the parish to which the comparatively modern Lizard Town
+belongs. The church is in a very picturesque corner, close to the sea,
+though both it and the rectory are protected by a sudden dip in the
+ground, so that you see neither till you are close upon them. A fine
+Norman doorway, a curious hagioscope, and other points, interesting to
+archaeologists--also the neatest and prettiest of churchyards--make
+note-worthy this, the most southerly church in England. A fine old
+building, not spoiled though "restored." The modern open pews, and a
+modern memorial pulpit of serpentine, jarred less than might have been
+expected with the carefully-preserved remains of the past.
+
+In Landewednack church is said to have been preached the last sermon in
+Cornish. This was in 1678. Since, the ancient tongue has completely
+died out, and the people of King Arthur's country have become wholly
+English.
+
+Still, they are not the English of the midland and northern districts,
+but of a very different type and race. I have heard it said that a
+seaboard population, accustomed to wrestle with the dangers of the
+coast, to move about from place to place, see foreign countries, and
+carry on its business in the deep waters, is always more capable, more
+intelligent, as a whole, than an inland people, whether agricultural
+or manufacturing. It may be so: but certainly the aborigines of
+Lizard Town, who could easily be distinguished from the visitors--of
+whom there was yet a tolerable sprinkling--made a very interesting
+congregation; orderly, respectable, reverent; simple in dress and
+manner, yet many of them, both the men and women, exceedingly
+picturesque. That is, the old men and the old women: the younger ones
+aped modern fashion even here, in this out-of-the-way corner, and
+consequently did not look half so well as their seniors.
+
+I must name one more member of the congregation--a large black dog,
+who walked in and settled himself in the pew behind, where he behaved
+during half the service in an exemplary manner, worthy of the Highland
+shepherds' dogs, who always come to church with their masters, and
+conduct themselves with equal decorum.
+
+There is always a certain pathos in going in to worship in a strange
+church, with a strange congregation, of whom you are as ignorant as
+they of you. In the intervals of kneeling with them as "miserable
+sinners," one finds oneself speculating upon them, their possible
+faults and virtues, joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, watching the
+unknown faces, and trying to read thereon the records of a common
+humanity. A silent homily, better perhaps than most sermons.
+
+Not that there was aught to complain of in the sermon, and the singing
+was especially good. Many a London choir might have taken a lesson from
+this village church at the far end of Cornwall. When service was over,
+we lingered in the pretty and carefully tended churchyard, where the
+evening light fell softly upon many curious gravestones, of seafaring
+men, and a few of wrecked sailors--only a few, since it is but within
+a generation that bodies washed ashore from the deep were allowed to
+be buried in consecrated ground; most of them, like the two hundred in
+Pistol Meadow, being interred as near as convenient to where they were
+found, without any burial rites. Still, in all the churchyards along
+this coast are graves with a story. A little corner railed off has an
+old and sad one. There lie buried the victims of the plague, which in
+1645 devastated the village. No one since has ever ventured to disturb
+their resting-place.
+
+Very green and peaceful the churchyard looked: the beautiful day was
+dying, beautiful to the last. We stood and watched the congregation
+melt slowly away, disappearing down the lane, and then, attracted by
+the sound of music, we re-entered the church. There we sat and listened
+for another half-hour to the practising of an anthem ready for the
+harvest festival, which had been announced for the following Tuesday;
+exceedingly well done too, the rector's voice leading it all, with an
+energy and enthusiasm that at once accounted for the capital condition
+of the choir.
+
+"If this weather will only last!" was our earnest sigh as we walked
+home; and anxious not to lose a minute of it, we gave ourselves the
+briefest rest, and turned out again, I to watch the sunset from the
+cliffs, while the others descended once more to their beloved sea-pools.
+
+"Such anemones, such sea-weed! and scrambling is so delicious! Besides,
+sunsets are all alike," added the youthful, practical, and slightly
+unpoetical mind.
+
+No, they are not alike. Every one has a mysterious charm of its
+own--just like that in every new human face. I have seen hundreds of
+sunsets in my time, and those I shall see are narrowing down now, but
+I think to the end of my life I shall always feel a day incomplete of
+which I did not see the sunset.
+
+This one was splendid. The usual place where the sun dropped into the
+sea, just beyond the point of the Land's End, was all a golden mist.
+I hastened west, climbing one intervening cliff after the other,
+anxious not to miss the clear sight of him as he set his glowing
+feet, or rather his great round disc, on the sea. At last I found a
+"comfortable" stone, sheltered from the wind, which blew tolerably
+fresh, and utterly solitary (as I thought), the intense silence
+being such that one could almost hear the cropping of three placid
+sheep--evidently well accustomed to sunsets, and thinking them of
+little consequence.
+
+There I sat until the last red spark had gone out, quenched in the
+Atlantic waters, and from behind the vanished sun sprung a gleam of
+absolutely green light, "like a firework out of a rocket," the young
+people said; such as I had never seen before, though we saw it once
+afterwards. Nature's fireworks they were; and I could see even the two
+little black figures moving along the rocks below stand still to watch
+them. I watched too, with that sort of lonely delight--the one shadow
+upon it being that it is so lonely--with which all one's life one is
+accustomed to watch beautiful and vanishing things. Then seeing how
+fast the colours were fading and the sky darkening, I rose; but just
+took a step or two farther to look over the edge of my stone into the
+next dip of the cliff, and there I saw--
+
+[Illustration: HAULING IN THE BOATS--EVENING.]
+
+Actually, two human beings! Lovers, of course. Nothing else would have
+sat so long and so silently, for I had been within three yards of them
+all the time, and had never discovered them, nor they me. Poor young
+things! they did not discover me even yet. They sat, quite absorbed in
+one another, hand in hand, looking quietly seaward, their faces bathed
+in the rosy sunset--which to them was a sunrise, the sort of sun which
+never rises twice in a life-time.
+
+I left them to it. Evidently they did not see me, in fact I just
+peered over the rock's edge and drew back again; any slight sound they
+probably attributed to the harmless sheep. Well, it was but an equally
+harmless old woman, who did not laugh at them, as some might have done,
+but smiled and wished them well, as she left them to their sunset, and
+turned to face the darkening east, where the sun would rise to-morrow.
+
+The moon was rising there now, and it was a picture to behold. Indeed,
+all these Cornish days seemed so full of moonrises and sunsets--and
+sunrises too--that it was really inconvenient. Going to bed seemed
+almost a sin--as on this night, when, opening our parlour door, which
+looked right on to the garden, we saw the whole world lying in a flood
+of moonlight peace, the marigolds and carnations leaning cheek to
+cheek, as motionless as the two young lovers on the cliff. Who, alas!
+must long ago have had their dream broken, for five minutes afterwards
+I had met a most respectable fat couple from Lizard Town taking their
+Sunday evening stroll, in all their Sunday best, along those very
+cliffs. Most painful interruption! But perhaps, the good folks had once
+been lovers too.
+
+What a night it was! fit night to such a perfect day. How the stars
+shone, without a mist or a cloud; how the Lizard Lights gleamed, even
+in spite of the moonlight, and how clear showed the black outline of
+Kynance Cove, from which came through the silence a dull murmur of
+waves! It was, as we declared, a sin and a shame to go to bed at all
+though we had been out the whole day, and hoped to be out the whole of
+to-morrow. Still, human nature could not keep awake for ever. We passed
+from the poetical to the practical, and decided to lay us down and
+sleep.
+
+But, in the middle of the night I woke, rose, and looked out of the
+window.
+
+What a change! Sea and sky were one blackness, literally as "black as
+ink," and melting into one another so that both were undistinguishable.
+As for the moon and stars--heaven knows where they had gone to, for
+they seemed utterly blotted out. The only light visible was the ghostly
+gleam of those two great eyes, the Lizard Lights, stretching far out
+into the intense darkness. I never saw such darkness--unbroken even by
+the white crest of a wave. And the stillness was like the stillness of
+death, with a heavy weight in the air which made me involuntarily go
+to sleep again, though with an awed impression of "something going to
+happen."
+
+And sure enough in another hour something did happen. I started awake,
+feeling as if a volley of artillery had been poured in at my window.
+It was the wildest deluge of rain, beating against the panes, and with
+it came a wind that howled and shrieked round the house as if all the
+demons in Cornwall, Tregeagle himself included, were let loose at once.
+
+Now we understood what a Lizard storm could be. I have seen
+Mediterranean storms, sweeping across the Campagna like armed
+battalions of avenging angels, pouring out their vials of wrath--rain,
+hail, thunder, and lightning--unceasingly for two whole days. I have
+been in Highland storms, so furious that one had to sit down in the
+middle of the road with one's plaid over one's head, till the worst of
+their rage was spent. But I never saw or heard anything more awful than
+this Lizard storm, to which I lay and listened till the day began to
+dawn.
+
+Then the wind lulled a little, but the rain still fell in torrents,
+and the sky and sea were as black as ever. The weather had evidently
+broken for good--that is, for evil. Alas! the harvest, and the harvest
+festival! And alas--of minor importance, but still some, to us at
+least--alas for our holiday in Cornwall! Only four days, and--this!
+
+It was with a heavy heart that, feeling there was not the slightest use
+in getting up, I turned round and took another sleep.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE FIFTH
+
+
+"Hope for the best, and be prepared for the worst," had been the motto
+of our journey. So when we rose to one of the wettest mornings that
+ever came out of the sky, there was a certain satisfaction in being
+prepared for it.
+
+"We must have a fire, that is certain," was our first decision. This
+entailed the abolition of our beautiful decorations--our sea-holly
+and ferns; also some anxious looks from our handmaiden. Apparently no
+fire, had been lit in this rather despised room for many months--years
+perhaps--and the chimney rather resented being used. A few agonised
+down-puffs greatly interfered with the comfort of the breakfast table,
+and an insane attempt to open the windows made matters worse.
+
+Which was most preferable--to be stifled or deluged? We were just
+considering the question, when the chimney took a new and kinder
+thought, or the wind took a turn--it seemed to blow alternately from
+every quarter, and then from all quarters at once--the smoke went up
+straight, the room grew warm and bright, with the cosy peace of the
+first fire of the season. Existence became once more endurable, nay,
+pleasant.
+
+"We shall survive, spite of the rain!" And we began to laugh over our
+lost day which we had meant to begin by bathing in Housel Cove; truly,
+just to stand outside the door would give an admirable douche bath in
+three minutes. "But how nice it is to be inside, with a roof over our
+heads, and no necessity for travelling. Fancy the unfortunate tourists
+who have fixed on to-day for visiting the Lizard!" (Charles had told us
+that Monday was a favourite day for excursions.) "Fancy anybody being
+obliged to go out such weather as this!"
+
+And in our deep pity for our fellow-creatures we forgot to pity
+ourselves.
+
+Nor was there much pity needed; we had provided against emergencies,
+with a good store of needlework and knitting, anything that would
+pack in small compass, also a stock of unquestionably "light"
+literature--paper-covered, double-columned, sixpenny volumes, inclosing
+an amount of enjoyment which those only can understand who are true
+lovers of Walter Scott. We had enough of him to last for a week of wet
+days. And we had a one-volume Tennyson, all complete, and a "Morte
+d'Arthur"--Sir Thomas Malory's. On this literary provender we felt that
+as yet we should not starve.
+
+Also, some little fingers having a trifling turn for art, brought out
+triumphantly a colour-box, pencils, and pictures. And the wall-paper
+being one of the very ugliest that ever eye beheld, we sought and
+obtained permission to adorn it with these, our _chefs-d'[oe]uvre_,
+pasted at regular intervals. Where we hope they still remain, for the
+edification of succeeding lodgers.
+
+We read the "Idylls of the King" all through, finishing with "The
+Passing of Arthur," where the "bold Sir Bedivere" threw Excalibur into
+the mere--which is supposed to be Dozmare Pool. Here King Arthur's
+faithful lover was so melted--for the hundredth time--by the pathos
+of the story, and by many old associations, that the younger and
+more practical minds grew scornful, and declared that probably King
+Arthur had never existed at all--or if he had, was nothing but a rough
+barbarian, unlike even the hero of Sir Thomas Malory, and far more
+unlike the noble modern gentleman of Tennyson's verse. Maybe: and yet,
+seeing that
+
+  "'Tis better to have loved and lost
+  Than never to have loved at all,"
+
+may it not be better to have believed in an impossible ideal man, than
+to accept contentedly a low ideal, and worship blindly the worldly, the
+mean, or the base?
+
+This topic furnished matter for so much hot argument, that, besides
+doing a quantity of needlework, we succeeded in making our one wet day
+by no means the least amusing of our seventeen days in Cornwall.
+
+[Illustration: HAULING IN THE LINES.]
+
+Hour after hour we watched the rain--an even down-pour. In the midst
+of it we heard a rumour that Charles had been seen about the town, and
+soon after he appeared at the door, hat in hand, soaked but smiling,
+to inquire for and sympathise with his ladies. Yes, he _had_ brought a
+party to the Lizard that day!--unfortunate souls (or bodies), for there
+could not have been a dry thread left on them! We gathered closer round
+our cosy fire; ate our simple dinner with keen enjoyment, and agreed
+that after all we had much to be thankful for.
+
+In the afternoon the storm abated a little, and we thought we would
+seize the chance of doing some shopping, if there was a shop in Lizard
+Town. So we walked--I ought rather to say waded, for the road was
+literally swimming--meeting not one living creature, except a family of
+young ducks, who, I need scarcely say, were enjoying supreme felicity.
+
+"Yes, ladies, this is the sort of weather we have pretty well all
+winter. Very little frost or snow, but rain and storm, and plenty of
+it. Also fogs; I've heard there's nothing anywhere like the fogs at the
+Lizard."
+
+So said the woman at the post-office, which, except the serpentine
+shops, seemed to be the one emporium of commerce in the place. There we
+could get all we wanted, and a good deal that we were very thankful we
+did not want, of eatables, drinkables, and wearables. Also ornaments,
+china vases, &c., of a kind that would have driven frantic any person
+of aesthetic tastes. Among them an active young Cornishman of about a
+year old was meandering aimlessly, or with aims equally destructive
+to himself and the community. He all but succeeded in bringing down a
+row of plates upon his devoted head, and then tied himself up, one fat
+finger after another, in a ball of twine, upon which he began to howl
+violently.
+
+"He's a regular little trial," said the young mother proudly. "He's
+only sixteen months old, and yet he's up to all sorts of mischief. I
+don't know what in the world I shall do with he, presently. Naughty
+boy!" with a delighted scowl.
+
+"Not naughty, only active," suggested another maternal spirit, and
+pleaded that the young jackanapes should be found something to do that
+was not mischief, but yet would occupy his energies, and fill his mind.
+At which, the bright bold face looked up as if he had understood it
+all--an absolutely fearless face, brimming with fun, and shrewdness
+too. Who knows? The "regular little trial" may grow into a valuable
+member of society--fisherman, sailor, coastguardman--daring and doing
+heroic deeds; perhaps saving many a life on nights such as last night,
+which had taught us what Cornish coast-life was all winter through.
+
+The storm was now gradually abating; the wind had lulled entirely, the
+rain had ceased, and by sunset a broad yellow streak all along the west
+implied that it might possibly be a fine day to-morrow.
+
+But the lane was almost a river still, and the slippery altitudes of
+the "hedges" were anything but desirable. As the only possible place
+for a walk I ventured into a field where two or three cows cropped
+their supper of damp grass round one of those green hillocks seen in
+every Cornish pasture field--a manure heap planted with cabbages, which
+grow there with a luxuriance that turns ugliness into positive beauty.
+Very dreary everything was--the soaking grass, the leaden sky, the
+angry-looking sea, over which a rainy moon was just beginning to throw
+a faint glimmer; while shorewards one could just trace the outline of
+Lizard Point and the wheat-field behind it. Yesterday those fields had
+looked so sunshiny and fair, but to-night they were all dull and grey,
+with rows of black dots indicating the soppy, sodden harvest sheaves.
+
+Which reminded me that to-morrow was the harvest festival at
+Landewednack, when all the world and his wife was invited by shilling
+tickets to have tea in the rectory garden, and afterwards to assist at
+the evening thanksgiving service in the church.
+
+"Thanksgiving! What for?" some poor farmer might well exclaim,
+especially on such a day as this. Some harvest festivals must
+occasionally seem a bitter mockery. Indeed, I doubt if the next
+generation will not be wise in taking our "Prayers for Rain,"
+"Prayers for Fair Weather," clean out of the liturgy. Such conceited
+intermeddling with the government of the world sounds to some
+ridiculous, to others actually profane. "Snow and hail, mists and
+vapours, wind and storm, fulfilling His Word." And it must be
+fulfilled, no matter at what cost to individuals or to nations. The
+laws of the universe must be carried out, even though the mystery
+of sorrow, like the still greater mystery of evil, remains for ever
+unexplained. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
+
+And how right is His right! How marvellously beautiful He can make this
+world! until we can hardly imagine anything more beautiful in the world
+everlasting. Ay, even after such a day as to-day, when the world seems
+hardly worth living in, yet we live on, live to wake up unto such a
+to-morrow--
+
+But I must wait to speak of it in another page.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE SIXTH
+
+
+And a day absolutely divine! Not a cloud upon the sky, not a ripple
+upon the water, or it appeared so in the distance. Nearer, no doubt,
+there would have been that heavy ground-swell which is so long in
+subsiding, in fact is scarcely ever absent on this coast. The land,
+like the sea, was all one smile; the pasture fields shone in brilliant
+green, the cornfields gleaming yellow--at once a beauty and a
+thanksgiving.
+
+It was the very perfection of an autumn morning. We would not lose
+an hour of it, but directly after breakfast started leisurely to
+find Housel Cove and try our first experiment of bathing in the wide
+Atlantic.
+
+The Atlantic it certainly was. Not a rood of land lay between us and
+America. Yet the illimitable ocean "where the great ships go down,"
+rolled in to our feet in baby ripples, disporting itself harmlessly,
+and tempting my two little mermaids to swim out to the utmost limit
+that prudence allowed. And how delightful it was to run back barefoot
+across the soft sand to the beautiful dressing-room of serpentine
+rock, where one could sit and watch the glittering sea, untroubled by
+any company save the gulls and cormorants. What a contrast to other
+bathing places--genteel Eastbourne and Brighton, or vulgar Margate and
+Ramsgate, where, nevertheless, the good folks look equally happy. But
+our happiness! No words could describe it. Shall we stamp ourselves
+as persons of little mind, easily satisfied, if I confess that we
+spent the whole morning in Housel Cove without band or promenade,
+without even a Christy Minstrel or a Punch and Judy, our sole amusement
+being the vain attempt to catch a tiny fish, the Robinson Crusoe of
+a small pool in the rock above high-water mark, where by some ill
+chance he found himself. But he looked extremely contented with his
+sea hermitage, and evaded so cleverly all our efforts to get hold of
+him, that after a while we left him to his solitude--where possibly he
+resides still.
+
+[Illustration: THE LIZARD LIGHTS BY DAY.]
+
+How delicious it is for hard-worked people to do nothing, absolutely
+nothing! Of course only for a little while--a few days, a few hours.
+The love of work and the necessity for it soon revive. But just for
+those few harmless hours to let the world and its duties and cares
+alike slip by, to be absolutely idle, to fold one's hands and look
+at the sea and the sky, thinking of nothing at all, except perhaps
+to count and watch for every ninth wave--said to be the biggest
+always--and wonder how big it will be, and whether it will reach that
+stone with the little colony of limpets and two red anemones beside
+them, or stop short at the rock where we sit placidly dangling our
+feet, waiting, Canute-like, for the supreme moment when the will of
+humanity sinks conquered by the immutable powers of nature. Then,
+greatest crisis of all, the sea will attack that magnificent castle and
+moat, which we grown-up babies have constructed with such pride. Well,
+have we not all built our sand-castles and seen them swept away? happy
+if by no unkinder force than the remorseless wave of Time, which will
+soon flow over us all.
+
+But how foolish is moralising--making my narrative halt like that horse
+whom we amused ourselves with half the afternoon. He was tied by the
+leg, poor beast, the fore leg fastened to the hind one, as seemed to be
+the ordinary Cornish fashion with all animals--horses, cows, and sheep.
+It certainly saves a deal of trouble, preventing them from climbing the
+"hedges" which form the sole boundary of property, but it makes the
+creatures go limping about in rather a melancholy fashion. However,
+as it is their normal condition, probably they communicate it to one
+another, and each generation accepts its lot.
+
+This horse did. He was a handsome animal, who came and peered at
+the sketch which one of us was doing, after the solemn fashion of
+quadrupedal connoisseurship, and kept us company all the afternoon. We
+sat in a row on the top of the "hedge," enjoying the golden afternoon,
+and scarcely believing it possible that yesterday had been yesterday.
+Of the wild storm and deluge of rain there was not a single trace;
+everything looked as lovely as if it had been, and was going to be,
+summer all the year.
+
+We were so contented, and were making such progress in our sketch and
+distant view of Kynance over the now dry and smiling cornfield, that we
+had nigh forgotten the duties of civilisation, until some one brought
+the news that all the household was apparently dressing itself in its
+very best, to attend the rectory tea. We determined to do the same,
+though small were our possibilities of toilette.
+
+"But what does it matter?" argued we. "Nobody knows us, and we know
+nobody."
+
+A position rather rare to those who "dwell among their own people,"
+who take a kindly interest in everybody, and believe with a pardonable
+credulity that everybody takes a kindly interest in them.
+
+But human nature is the same all the world over. And here we saw it in
+its pleasantest phase; rich and poor meeting together, not for charity,
+but courtesy--a courtesy that was given with a kindliness and accepted
+with a quiet independence which seemed characteristic of these Cornish
+folk.
+
+Among the little crowd, gentle and simple, we, of course, did not know
+a single soul. Nevertheless, delivering up our tickets to the gardener
+at the gate, we entered, and wandered at ease through the pretty
+garden, gorgeous with asters, marigolds, carnations, and all sorts of
+rich-coloured and rich-scented autumn flowers; where the hydrangeas
+grew in enormous bushes, and the fuchsias had stems as thick and solid
+as trees.
+
+In front of the open hall door was a gravel sweep where were ranged
+two long tea-tables filled with the humbler but respectable class of
+parishioners, chiefly elderly people, and some very old. The Lizard is
+a place noted for longevity, as is proved by the register books, where
+several deaths at over a hundred may be found recorded, and one--he was
+the rector of Landewednack in 1683--is said to have died at the age of
+120 years.
+
+The present rector is no such Methuselah. He moved actively to and fro
+among his people, and so did his wife, whom we should have recognised
+by her omnipresent kindliness, even if she had not come and welcomed
+us strangers--easily singled out as strangers, where all the rest were
+friends.
+
+Besides the poor and the aged, there was a goodly number of guests
+who were neither the one nor the other, playing energetically at
+lawn-tennis behind the house, on a "lawn" composed of sea-sand. All
+seemed determined to amuse themselves and everybody else, and all did
+their very best--including the band.
+
+Alas, that band! I would fain pass it over in silence (would it
+had returned the compliment!); but truth is truth, and may benefit
+rather than harm. The calm composure with which those half-dozen
+wind-instruments sat in a row, playing determinedly flat, bass coming
+in with a tremendous boom here and there, entirely at his own volition,
+without regard to time or tune, was the most awful thing I ever heard
+in music! Agony, pure and simple, was the only sensation it produced.
+When they struck up, we just ran away till the tune was ended--what
+tune, familiar or unfamiliar, it was impossible to say. Between us
+three, all blessed, or cursed, with musical ears, there existed such
+difference of opinion on this head, that decision became vain. And
+when at last, as the hour of service approached, little groups began
+strolling towards the church, the musicians began a final "God save the
+Queen," barely recognisable, a feeling of thankfulness was the only
+sensation left.
+
+[Illustration: THE FISHERMAN'S DAUGHTER--A CORNISH STUDY.]
+
+Now, let me not be hard upon these village Orpheuses. They did their
+best, and for a working man to study music in any form is a good and
+desirable thing. But whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing
+well. The great bane of provincial life is that people have so few
+opportunities of finding out when they do _not_ do things well, and so
+little ambition to learn to do them better. If these few severe remarks
+should spur on that anonymous band to try and emulate the Philharmonic
+or the Crystal Palace orchestra, it will be all the better for the
+little community at the Lizard.
+
+The music in the church was beautiful. A crowded congregation--not a
+seat vacant--listened to the excellent chanting, hymns, and a harvest
+anthem, most accurately and correctly sung. The organist too--it was
+a pleasure to watch that young man's face and see with what interest
+and enthusiasm he entered into it all. Besides the rector, there were
+several other clergymen, one of whom, an old man, read the prayers
+with an intonation and expression which I have rarely heard equalled,
+and another preached what would have been called anywhere a thoroughly
+good sermon. All the statelier guests at the Rectory tea--probably
+county families (one stout lady had the dignity of a duchess at
+least)--"assisted" at this evening service, and behind them was a
+throng of humbler folk, among whom we recognised our sole friend here,
+John Curgenven. We had passed him at the church door, and he had lifted
+his hat with the air of a _preux chevalier_ of the olden time; "more
+like King Arthur than ever"--we observed to one another.
+
+He, and we, and the aristocratic groups, with a few more of the
+congregation, lingered for several minutes after service was over,
+admiring the beautiful flowers and fruit. I think I never saw any
+decorations so rich or so tasteful. And then, as the organ played us
+out with an exceedingly brilliant voluntary, the vision of light and
+colour melted away, and we came out upon the quiet churchyard, lying in
+the cold, still moonlight.
+
+But what a moonlight! Clear as day, the round silver orb sailing
+through a cloudless sky of that deep dark which we know is blue, only
+moonlight shows no colours. Oh, Lady Moon, Lady Moon, what a dangerous
+night for some of those groups to go walking home in! We saw them in
+twos and threes, various young people whom we had got to know by sight,
+and criticise, and take an interest in, wandering slowly on through
+Lizard Town, and then diverging into quieter paths.
+
+As we gladly did too. For there, in an open space near the two hotels
+which co-exist close together--I hope amicably, and divide the tourist
+custom of the place--in front of a row of open windows which showed the
+remains of a _table d'hote_, and playing lively tunes to a group of
+delighted listeners, including some children, who had struck up a merry
+dance--stood that terrible wind band!
+
+It was too much! All our sympathy with our fellow-creatures, our
+pleasure in watching them enjoy themselves, our interest in studying
+human nature in the abstract, nay, even the picturesqueness of the
+charming moonlight scene, could not tempt us to stay. We paused a
+minute, then put our fingers in our ears and fled. Gradually those
+fearful sounds melted away into distance, and left us to the silence of
+moonshine, and the sight, now grown familiar, but never less beautiful,
+of the far-gleaming Lizard Lights.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE SEVENTH
+
+
+John Curgenven had said last night, with his air of tender patronising,
+half regal, half paternal, which we declared always reminded us of King
+Arthur--"Ladies, whenever you settle to go to Kynance, I'll take you."
+
+And sure enough there he stood, at eight in the morning, quite a
+picture, his cap in one hand, a couple of fishes dangling from the
+other--he had brought them as a present, and absolutely refused to be
+paid--smiling upon us at our breakfast, as benignly as did the sun. He
+came to say that he was at our service till 10 A.M.; when he
+had an engagement.
+
+Our countenances fell. We did not like venturing in strange and
+dangerous ground, or rather sea, without our protector. But this was
+our last chance, and such a lovely day.
+
+"You won't come to any harm, ladies," said the consoling John. "I'll
+take you by a short cut across the down, much better than the cliff.
+You can't possibly miss your way: it'll lead you straight to Kynance,
+and then you go down a steep path to the Cove. You'll have plenty of
+time before the tide comes in to see everything."
+
+"And to bathe?"
+
+"Oh yes, miss, there's the Drawing-room, the Dining-room, and the
+Kitchen--all capital caves close together; I wouldn't advise you to
+swim out far, though. And keep a sharp look out for the tide--it runs
+in pretty fast."
+
+"And the scrambling?"
+
+"Oh, you can easy get on Asparagus Island, miss; it's quite safe. Only
+don't try the Devil's Throat--or Hell's Mouth, as some folk call it."
+
+Neither name was inviting; but studying our guide-books, we thought we
+could manage even without our friend. So, long ere the dew was dried on
+the sunshiny down, we all started off together, Curgenven slackening
+his quick active steps--very light and most enviably active for a man
+of his years--to accommodate us, and conversing courteously with us all
+the way.
+
+[Illustration: KYNANCE COVE, CORNWALL.]
+
+"Ower the muir amang the heather" have I tramped many a mile in
+bonnie Scotland, but this Cornish moor and Cornish heather were quite
+different. As different as the Cornishman with his bright, frank face,
+and his mixture of British honesty and Gallic courtesy, from the Scotch
+peasant--equally worthy, but sometimes just a trifle "dour."
+
+John had plenty to say for himself, and said it well, with a quiet
+independence that there was no mistaking; never forgetting meanwhile to
+stop and offer a helping hand over every bit of rough road, puddle, or
+bog. He gave us a vivid picture of winter life at the Lizard: when the
+little community has to hybernate, like the squirrels and field-mice,
+upon its summer savings.
+
+"Sometimes we don't earn a halfpenny for weeks and months, and then if
+we've got nothing to fall back upon it's a bad job, you see, ma'am."
+
+I asked him if much money went for drink; they seemed to me a
+remarkably sober set at the Lizard.
+
+"Yes, I think we are; we're obliged to be; we can't spend money at the
+public-house, for we've got none to spend. I'm no teetotaller myself,"
+added John boldly. "I don't dislike a glass of beer now and then, if I
+can afford it, and when I can't afford it I can do without it, and if I
+do take it I always know when to stop."
+
+Ay, that is the crucial test--the knowing when to stop. It is this
+which makes all the difference between a good man and a villain, a wise
+man and a fool. Self-control--a quality which, guided by conscience and
+common sense, is the best possession of any human being. And looking at
+the honest fisherman, one felt pretty sure he had his share of it.
+
+"Now I must leave you, ladies," said he, a great deal sooner than we
+wished, for we much liked talking to him. "My time's nearly up, and I
+mustn't keep my gentleman waiting; he goes out in my boat every day,
+and has been a good friend to me. The road's straight before you,
+ladies; and there's another party just ahead of you. Follow the track,
+and you'll soon be at Kynance. It's a lovely day for the Cove, and I
+hope you'll enjoy yourselves."
+
+John bared his grey head, with a salutation worthy of some old knight
+of the Round Table, and then strode back, in double-quick time, as
+active and upright as any young fellow of twenty-five, across the level
+down.
+
+Beautiful Kynance! When, afterwards, I stood one dull winter day
+in a London Art Gallery, opposite the _Cornish Lions_, how well I
+recalled this day! How truly Brett's picture gives the long roll of
+the wave upon the silver sands, the richly-tinted rocks and caves, the
+brightness and freshness of everything. And those merry girls beside
+me, who had the faculty of enjoying all they had, and all they did,
+without regretting what they had not or what they might not do--with
+heroic resignation they promised not to attempt to swim in the tempting
+smooth water beyond the long rollers. Though knocked down again and
+again, they always emerged from the waves with shouts of laughter. Mere
+dots they looked to my anxious eyes--a couple of corks tossed hither
+and thither on the foaming billows--and very thankful I was to get them
+safe back into the "drawing-room," the loveliest of lovely caves.
+
+There was no time to lose; by noon our parlour floor--what a fairy
+floor it was! of the softest, most delicious sand--would be all covered
+with waves. And before then there was a deal to be seen and done, the
+Bellows, the Gull Rock, Asparagus Island--even if we left out the
+dangerous points with the ugly names that Curgenven had warned us
+against.
+
+What is there in humanity, certainly in youthful humanity, that if
+it can attain its end in two ways, one quiet and decorous, the other
+difficult and dangerous, is certain to choose the latter?
+
+"We must manage to get you to the Bellows, it is such a curious sight,"
+said my girls as they returned from it. "Don't be frightened--come
+along!"
+
+By dint of pulling, pushing, and the help of stick and arm, I came:
+stood watching the spout of water which, in certain conditions of the
+tide, forces itself through a tiny fissure in the rock with a great
+roar, and joined in the childish delight of waiting, minute by minute,
+for the biggest spout, the loudest roar.
+
+But Asparagus Island (where was no asparagus at all) I totally
+declined. Not being a goat or a chamois, I contented myself with
+sitting where I could gain the best view of the almost invisible
+path by which my adventurous young "kids" disappeared. Happily they
+had both steady heads and cool nerves; they were neither rash nor
+unconscientious. I knew they would come back as soon as they could. So
+I waited patiently, contemplating a fellow-victim who seemed worse off
+than myself; a benign-looking clergyman, who kept walking up and down
+the soppy sands, and shouting at intervals to two young people, a man
+and a woman, who appeared to be crawling like flies along the face of
+the rock towards another rock, with a yawning cave and a wide fissure
+between.
+
+"Don't attempt it!" the clergyman cried at the top of his voice.
+"That's the Devil's Throat. She'll never manage it. Come down. Do make
+her come down."
+
+"Your young people seem rather venturesome," said I sympathetically.
+
+[Illustration: THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE.]
+
+"Not _my_ young people," was the dignified answer. "My girls are up
+there, on Asparagus Rock, which is easy enough climbing. They promised
+not to go farther, and they never disobey their mother and me. But
+those two! I declare he is taking her to the most dangerous part, that
+rock where you have to jump--a good jump it is, and if you miss your
+footing you are done for, you go right into the boiling waves below.
+Well, it's no business of mine; she is his own property; he is engaged
+to her, but"--
+
+I fear I made some very severe remarks on the folly of a young man who
+could thus risk life and limbs--not only his own, but those of his wife
+to be; and on the weakness of a girl who could allow herself to be
+tempted, even by a lover, into such selfish foolhardiness.
+
+"They must manage their own affairs," said the old gentleman
+sententiously, perhaps not being so much given to preaching (out of the
+pulpit) as I was. "My daughters are wiser. Here come two of them."
+
+And very sensible girls they looked, clad in a practical, convenient
+fashion, just fitted for scrambling. By them I sent a message to my own
+girls, explaining the best descent from Asparagus Island, and repeating
+the warning against attempting Hell's Mouth.
+
+"Yes, you are quite right," said my elderly friend, as we sat down
+together on the least uncomfortable stone we could find, and watched
+the juniors disappear over the rocks. "I like to see girls active and
+brave; I never hinder them in any reasonable enjoyment, even though
+there may be risk in it--one must run some risk--and a woman may
+have to save life as well as a man. But foolhardy bravado I not only
+dislike--I _despise_ it."
+
+In which sentiments I so entirely agreed that we fraternised there
+and then; began talking on all sorts of subjects--some of them the
+very serious and earnest subjects that one occasionally drops into by
+mere chance, with mere strangers. I recall that half hour on Kynance
+Sands as one of the pleasant memories of our tour, though to this day
+I have not the remotest idea who my companion was. Except that as soon
+as he spoke I recognised the reader whose voice had so struck me in
+last night's thanksgiving service; reminding me of Frederick Denison
+Maurice, whom this generation is almost beginning to forget, but whom
+we elders never can forget.
+
+The tide was creeping on now--nay, striding, wave after wave, through
+"parlour" and "drawing-room," making ingress and egress alike
+impossible. In fact, a newly arrived party of tourists, who had stood
+unwisely long contemplating the Bellows, were seen to gaze in despair
+from their rock which had suddenly become an island. No chance for them
+except to wade--and in a few minutes more they would probably have
+to swim ashore. What became of them we did not stay to see, for an
+anxious, prudent little voice, always thoughtful for "mother," insisted
+on our precipitate flight before the advancing tide. Kynance, lovely as
+it is, has its inconveniences.
+
+Departing, we met a whole string of tourist-looking people, whom we
+benevolently warned that they were too late, at which they did not
+seem in the least disappointed. Probably they were one of the numerous
+pic-nic parties who come here from Falmouth or Helstone, to spend a
+jovial day of eating and drinking, and enjoy the delights of the flesh
+rather than the spirit.
+
+At any rate the romance and solitude of the place were gone. The quaint
+old woman at the serpentine shop--a mild little wooden erection under
+the cliff--was being chaffed and bargained with by three youths with
+cigars, which defiled the whole air around, and made us take refuge up
+the hill. But even there a white umbrella had sprung up like a gigantic
+mushroom, and under it sat an energetic lady artist, who, entering at
+once into conversation, with a cheerful avidity that implied her not
+having talked for a week, informed us of all she was painting, and all
+she had meant to paint, where she lodged, and how much she paid for her
+lodging--evidently expecting the same confidences from us in return.
+
+But we were getting hungry, and between us and dinner was a long
+two-miles walk over the steep downs, that were glowing, nay, burning,
+under the September sun. So we turned homeward, glad of more than one
+rest by the way, and a long pause beside a pretty little stream; where
+we were able to offer the immemorial cup of cold water to several
+thirsty souls besides ourselves. Some of us by this time were getting
+to feel not so young as we had fancied ourselves in the early morning,
+and to wish regretfully for Charles and his carriage.
+
+However, we got home at last--to find that sad accompaniment of many a
+holiday--tidings of sickness and death. Nothing very near us--nothing
+that need hurry us home--but enough to sadden us, and make our evening
+walk, which we bravely carried out, a far less bright one than that of
+the forenoon.
+
+The girls had found a way, chiefly on the tops of "hedges," to the
+grand rock called Lizard Point. Thither we went, and watched the
+sunset--a very fine one; then came back through the village, and made
+various purchases of serpentine from John Curgenven's wife, who was
+a great deal younger than himself, but not near so handsome or so
+original.
+
+But a cloud had come over us; it did not, and must not stay--still,
+there it was for the time. When the last thing at night I went out into
+the glorious moonlight--bright as day--and thought of the soul who had
+just passed out of a long and troubled life into the clearness of life
+eternal, it seemed as if all was right still. Small cares and worries
+dwindled down or melted away--as the petty uglinesses around melted
+in the radiance of this glorious harvest moon, which seemed to wrap
+one round in a silent peace, like the "garment of praise," which David
+speaks about--in exchange for "the spirit of heaviness."
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE EIGHTH
+
+
+And seven days were all we could allow ourselves at the Lizard, if we
+meant to see the rest of Cornwall. We began to reckon with sore hearts
+that five days were already gone, and it seemed as if we had not seen
+half we ought to see, even of our near surroundings.
+
+"We will take no excursion to-day. We will just have our bath at Housel
+Cove and then we will wander about the shore, and examine the Lizard
+Lights. Only fancy, our going away to-morrow without having seen the
+inside of the Lizard Lights! Oh, I wish we were not leaving so soon. We
+shall never like any place as we like the Lizard."
+
+It was indeed very delightful. Directly after breakfast--and we are
+people who never vary from our eight o'clock breakfast, so that we
+always see the world in its early morning brightness and freshness--we
+went
+
+  "Brushing with hasty steps the dew away,"
+
+along the fields, which led down to Housel or Househole Cove. Before
+us, clear in the sunshine, rose the fine headland of Penolver, and
+the green slopes of the amphitheatre of Belidden, supposed to be the
+remains of a Druidical temple. That, and the chair of Belidden, a
+recess in the rock, whence there is a splendid view, with various
+archaeological curiosities, true or traditionary, we ought to have
+examined, I know. But--we didn't do it. Some of us were content to
+rejoice in the general atmosphere of beauty and peace without minute
+investigation, and some of us were so eminently practical that "a good
+bathe" appeared more important than all the poetry and archaeology in
+the world.
+
+So we wandered slowly on, rejoicing at having the place all to
+ourselves, when we came suddenly upon a tall black figure intently
+watching three other black figures, or rather dots, which were climbing
+slowly over Penolver.
+
+It was our clerical friend of Kynance; with whom, in the natural and
+right civility of holiday-makers, we exchanged a courteous good morning.
+
+[Illustration: THE LION ROCKS--A SEA IN WHICH NOTHING CAN LIVE.]
+
+"Yes, those are my girls up on the cliff there. They have been bathing,
+and are now going to walk to Cadgwith."
+
+"Then nobody fell into the Devil's Throat at Kynance? They all came
+back to you with whole limbs?"
+
+"Yes," said he smiling, "and they went again for another long walk
+in the afternoon. At night, when it turned out to be such splendid
+moonlight, they actually insisted on going launce-fishing. Of course
+you know about launce-fishing?"
+
+I pleaded my utter ignorance of that noble sport.
+
+"Oh, it is _the_ thing at the Lizard. My boys--and girls too--consider
+it the best fun going. The launce is a sort of sand-eel peculiar to
+these coasts. It swims about all day, and at night burrows in the sand
+just above the waterline, where, when the moon shines on it, you can
+trace the silvery gleam of the creature. So you stand up to your ankles
+on wet sand, with a crooked iron spear which you dart in and hook him
+up, keeping your left hand free to seize him with."
+
+"Easy fishing," said I, with a certain pity for the sand-eel.
+
+"Not so easy as appears. You are apt either to chop him right in
+two, or miss him altogether, when off he wriggles in the sand and
+disappears. My young people say it requires a practised hand and a
+peculiar twist of the wrist, to have any success at all in launce
+fishing. It can only be done on moonlight nights--the full moon and
+a day or two after--and they are out half the night. They go about
+barefoot, which is much safer than soaked shoes and stockings. About
+midnight they light a fire on the sand, cook all the fish they have
+caught, and have a grand supper, as they had last night. They came home
+as merry as crickets about two o'clock this morning. Perhaps you might
+not have noticed what a wonderful moonlight night it was?"
+
+I had; but it would not have occurred to me to spend it in standing for
+hours up to the knees in salt water, catching unfortunate fish.
+
+However, tastes differ, and launce-fishing may be a prime delight to
+some people; so I faithfully chronicle it, and the proper mode of
+pursuing it, as one of the attractions at the Lizard. I am not aware
+that it is practised at any other part of the Cornish coast, nor can
+I say whether or not it was a pastime of King Arthur and his Knights.
+One cannot imagine Sir Tristram or Sir Launcelot occupied in spearing a
+small sand-eel.
+
+The bathing at Housel Cove was delightful as ever. And afterwards we
+saw that very rare and beautiful sight, a perfect solar rainbow. Not
+the familiar bow of Noah, but a great luminous circle round the sun,
+like the halo often seen round the moon, extending over half the sky;
+yellow at first, then gradually assuming faint prismatic tints. This
+colouring, though never so bright as the ordinary arched rainbow, was
+wonderfully tender and delicate. We stood a long time watching it,
+till at last it melted slowly out of the sky, leaving behind a sense of
+mystery, as of something we had never seen before and might never see
+again in all our lives.
+
+It was a lovely day, bright and warm as midsummer, tempting us to some
+distant excursion; but we had decided to investigate the Lizard Lights.
+We should have been content to take them for granted, in their purely
+poetical phase, as we had watched them night after night. But some of
+us were blessed with scientific relatives, who would have despised us
+utterly if we had spent a whole week at the Lizard and never gone to
+see the Lizard Lights. So we felt bound to do our duty, and admire, if
+we could not understand.
+
+Which we certainly did not. I chronicle with shame that the careful and
+courteous explanations of that most intelligent young man, who met us
+at the door of the huge white building, apparently quite glad to have
+an opportunity of conducting us through it, were entirely thrown away.
+We mounted ladders, we looked at Brobdingnagian lamps, we poked into
+mysterious machinery for lighting them and for sounding the fog-horn,
+we listened to all that was told us, and tried to look as if we took it
+in. Very much interested we could not but be at such wonderful results
+of man's invention, but as for comprehending! we came away with our
+minds as dark as when we went in.
+
+I have always found through life that, next to being clever, the safest
+thing is to know one's own ignorance and acknowledge it. Therefore let
+me leave all description of the astonishing mechanism of the Lizard
+Lights--I believe the first experiment of their kind, and not very
+long established--to abler pens and more intelligent brains. To see
+that young man, scarcely above the grade of a working man, handling
+his instruments and explaining them and their uses, seeming to take
+for granted that we could understand--which alas! we didn't, not
+an atom!--inspired me with a sense of humiliation and awe. Also of
+pride at the wonders this generation has accomplished, and is still
+accomplishing; employing the gradually comprehended forces of Nature
+against herself, as it were, and dominating her evil by ever-new
+discoveries and applications of the recondite powers of good.
+
+The enormous body of light produced nightly--equal, I think he said,
+to 30,000 candles--and the complicated machinery for keeping the
+fog-horn continually at work, when even that gigantic blaze became
+invisible--all this amount of skill, science, labour, and money,
+freely expended for the saving of life, gave one a strong impression of
+not only British power but British beneficence. Could King Arthur have
+come back again from his sea-engulfed Land of Lyonesse, and stood where
+we stood, beside the Lizard Lights, what would he have said to it all?
+
+[Illustration: HAULING IN THE BOATS.]
+
+Even though we did not understand, we were keenly interested in all we
+saw, and still more so in the stories of wrecks which this young man
+had witnessed even during the few years, or months--I forget which--of
+his stay at the Lizard. He, too, agreed, that the rocks there, called
+by the generic name of the Stags, were the most fatal of all on our
+coasts to ships outward and homeward bound. Probably because in the
+latter case, captain and crews get a trifle careless; and in the
+former--as I have heard in sad explanation of many emigrant ships being
+lost almost immediately after quitting port--they get drunk. Many of
+the sailors are said to come on board "half-seas over," and could the
+skilfullest of pilots save a ship with a drunken crew?
+
+Be that as it may, the fact remains, that throughout winter almost
+every week's chronicle at the Lizard is the same story--wild storms, or
+dense fogs, guns of distress heard, a hasty manning of the life-boat,
+dragged with difficulty down the steep cliff-road, a brief struggle
+with the awful sea, and then, even if a few lives are saved, with the
+ship herself all is over.
+
+"Only last Christmas I saw a vessel go to pieces in ten minutes on the
+rocks below there," said the man, after particularising several wrecks,
+which seemed to have imprinted themselves on his memory with all their
+incidents. "Yes, we have a bad time in winter, and the coastguard
+men lead a risky life. They are the picked men of the service, and
+tolerably well paid, but no money could ever pay them for what they go
+through--or the fishermen, who generally are volunteers, and get little
+or nothing."
+
+"It must be a hard life in these parts, especially in winter," we
+observed.
+
+"Well, perhaps it is, but it's our business, you see."
+
+Yes, but not all people do their business, as the mismanagements and
+mistakes of this world plainly show.
+
+Still, it is a good world, and we felt it so as we strolled along the
+sunshiny cliff, talking over all these stories, tragical or heroic,
+which had been told us in such a simple matter-of-fact way, as if they
+were every-day occurrences. And then, while the young folks went on
+"for a good scramble" over Penolver, I sat down for a quiet "think";
+that enforced rest, which, as years advance, becomes not painful, but
+actually pleasant; in which, if one fails to solve the problems of the
+universe, one is prone to con them over, wondering at them all.
+
+From the sunny sea and sunny sky, full of a silence so complete that I
+could hear every wave as it broke on the unseen rocks below, my mind
+wandered to that young fellow among his machinery, with his sickly
+eager face and his short cough--indicating that _his_ "business" in
+this world, over which he seemed so engrossed, might only too soon
+come to an end. Between these apparently eternal powers of Nature,
+so strong, so fierce, so irresistible, against which man fought so
+magnificently with all his perfection of scientific knowledge and
+accuracy of handiwork--and this poor frail human life, which in a
+moment might be blown out like a candle, suddenly quenched in darkness,
+"there is no skill or knowledge in the grave whither thou goest"--what
+a contrast it was!
+
+And yet--and yet?--We shall sleep with our fathers, and some of us feel
+sometimes so tired that we do not in the least mind going to sleep. But
+notwithstanding this, notwithstanding everything without that seems to
+imply our perishableness, we are conscious of something within which
+is absolutely imperishable. We feel it only stronger and clearer as
+life begins to melt away from us; as "the lights in the windows are
+darkened, and the daughters of music are brought low." To the young,
+death is often a terror, for it seems to put an end to the full, rich,
+passionate life beyond which they can see nothing; but to the old,
+conscious that this their tabernacle is being slowly dissolved, and yet
+its mysterious inhabitant, the wonderful, incomprehensible _me_, is
+exactly the same--thinks, loves, suffers, and enjoys, precisely as it
+did heaven knows how many years ago--to them, death appears in quite
+another shape. He is no longer Death the Enemy, but Death the Friend,
+who may--who can tell?--give back all that life has denied or taken
+away. He cannot harm us, and he may bless us, with the blessing of
+loving children, who believe that, whatever happens, nothing can take
+them out of their Father's arms.
+
+But I had not come to Cornwall to preach, except to myself now and
+then, as this day. My silent sermon was all done by the time the
+young folks came back, full of the beauties of their cliff walk, and
+their affectionate regrets that I "could never manage it," but must
+have felt so dull, sitting on a stone and watching the sheep and the
+sea-gulls. Not at all! I was obliged to confess that I never am "dull,"
+as people call it, and love solitude almost as much as society.
+
+[Illustration: ENYS DODNAN AND PARDENICK POINTS.]
+
+So, each contented in our own way, we went merrily home, to find
+waiting for us our cosy tea--the last!--and our faithful Charles, who,
+according to agreement, appeared overnight, to take charge of us till
+we got back to civilisation and railways.
+
+"Yes, ladies, here I am," said he with a beaming countenance. "And
+I've got you the same carriage and the same horse, as you wished, and
+I've come in time to give him a good night's rest. Now, when shall you
+start, and what do you want to do to-morrow?"
+
+Our idea had been to take for our next resting-place Marazion. This
+queer-named town had attracted us ever since the days when we learnt
+geography. Since, we had heard a good deal about it: how it had
+been inhabited by Jewish colonists, who bought tin from the early
+Ph[oe]nician workers of the Cornish mines, and been called by them
+Mara-Zion--bitter Zion--corrupted by the common people into Market-Jew.
+It was a quiet place, with St. Michael's Mount opposite; and attracted
+us much more than genteel Penzance. So did a letter we got from the
+landlord of its one hotel, promising to take us in, and make us
+thoroughly comfortable.
+
+Could we get there in one day? Charles declared we could, and even see
+a good deal on the road.
+
+"We'll go round by Mullion. Mary will be delighted to get another
+peep at you ladies, and while I rest the horse you can go in and look
+at the old church--it's very curious, they say. And then we'll go on
+to Gunwalloe,--there's another church there, close by the sea, built
+by somebody who was shipwrecked. But then it's so old and so small.
+However, we can stop and look at it if you like."
+
+His good common sense, and kindliness, when he might so easily have
+done his mere duty and taken us the shortest and ugliest route, showing
+us nothing, decided us to leave all in Charles's hands, and start at
+10 A.M. for Penzance, _via_ Helstone, where we all wished to
+stay an hour or two, and find out a "friend," the only one we had in
+Cornwall.
+
+So all was settled, with but a single regret, that several boating
+excursions we had planned with John Curgenven had all fallen through,
+and we should never behold some wonderful sea-caves between the Lizard
+and Cadgwith, which we had set our hearts upon visiting.
+
+Charles fingered his cap with a thoughtful air. "I don't see why you
+shouldn't, ladies. If I was to go direct and tell John Curgenven to
+have a boat ready at Church Cove, and we was to start at nine instead
+of ten, and drive there, the carriage might wait while you rowed to
+the caves and back; we should still reach Helstone by dinner-time, and
+Marazion before dark."
+
+"We'll do it!" was the unanimous resolve. And at this addition to his
+work Charles looked actually pleased!
+
+So--all was soon over, our easy packing done, our bill paid--a very
+small one--our goodnights said to the kindly handmaid, Esther, who
+hoped we would come back again some time, and promised to keep the
+artistic mural decorations of our little parlour in memory of us. My
+young folks went to bed, and then, a little before midnight, when all
+the house was quiet, I put a shawl over my head, unlatched the innocent
+door--no bolts or bars at the Lizard--and went out into the night.
+
+What a night it was!--mild as summer, clear as day: the full moon
+sailing aloft in an absolutely cloudless sky. Not a breath, not a
+sound--except the faint thud-thud of the in-coming waves, two miles
+off, at Kynance, the outline of which, and of the whole coast, was
+distinctly visible. A silent earth, lying under a silent heaven.
+Looking up, one felt almost like a disembodied soul, free to cleave
+through infinite space and gain--what?
+
+Is it human or divine, this ceaseless longing after something never
+attained, this craving after the eternal life, which, if fully believed
+in, fully understood, would take all the bitterness out of this life?
+And yet, that knowledge is not given.
+
+But so much is given, and all given is so infinitely good, except where
+we ourselves turn it into evil, that surely more, and better, will be
+given to us by and by.
+
+And so, to bed--to bed! Those only truly enjoy life who fear not death:
+who can say of the grave as if it were their bed: "I will lay me down
+in peace and take my rest, for it is Thou only, O God, who makest me to
+dwell in safety."
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE NINTH
+
+
+And our last at the Lizard, which a week ago had been to us a mere word
+or dot in a map; now we carried away from it a living human interest in
+everything and everybody.
+
+Esther bade us a cordial farewell: Mrs. Curgenven, standing at the
+door of her serpentine shop, repeated the good wishes, and informed
+us that John and his boat had already started for Church Cove. As we
+drove through the bright little Lizard Town, and past the Church of
+Landewednack, wondering if we should ever see either again, we felt
+quite sad.
+
+But sentimental considerations soon vanished in practical alarms.
+Leaving the carriage and Charles at the nearest point to the Cove, we
+went down the steep descent, and saw John rocking in his boat, and
+beckoning to us with a bland and smiling countenance. But between us
+and him lay a sort of causeway, of the very roughest rocks, slippery
+with sea-weed, and beat upon by waves--such waves! Yet clearly, if we
+meant to get into the boat at all, we must seize our opportunity and
+jump in between the flux and reflux of that advancing tide.
+
+I am not a coward: I love boats, and was well used to them in my youth,
+but now--my heart misgave me. There were but two alternatives--to
+stop the pleasure of the whole party, and leave Cornwall with these
+wonderful sea-caves unseen, or to let my children go alone. Neither was
+possible; so I hailed a sturdy youth at work hard by, and asked him if
+he would take charge of an old lady across the rocks. He grinned from
+ear to ear, but came forward, and did his duty manfully and kindly. My
+young folks, light as feathers, bounded after; and with the help of
+John Curgenven, chivalrous and careful as ever, we soon found ourselves
+safely in the boat.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING.]
+
+Safe, but not quite happy. "Here we go up, up, up, and here we go down,
+down, down," was the principle of our voyage, the most serious one we
+ever took in an open boat with a single pair of oars. Never did I see
+such waves,--at least, never did I float upon them, in a boat that went
+tossing like a bit of cork out into the open sea.
+
+John seemed not to mind them in the least. His strong arms swept the
+boat along, and he still found breath to talk to us, pointing out the
+great gloomy cliffs we were passing under, and telling us stories of
+wrecks, the favourite theme--and no wonder.
+
+This sunshiny morning that iron-bound coast looked awful enough; what
+must it have looked like, on the winter night when the emigrant ship
+_Brest_ went down!
+
+"Yes, it was about ten o'clock at night," said John. "I was fast asleep
+in bed, but they knocked me up; I got on my clothes and was off in
+five minutes. They are always glad enough to get us fishermen, the
+coastguard are. Mine was the first boat-load we brought ashore; we
+would only take women and children that time. They were all in their
+night-gowns, and they couldn't speak a word of English, but we made
+them understand somehow. One woman threw her three children down to me,
+and stayed behind on the wreck with two more."
+
+"Were the women frightened?"
+
+"Oh, no, they were very quiet, dazed like. Some of them seemed to be
+saying their prayers. But they made no fuss at all, not even the little
+ones. They lay down in the bottom of the boat, and we rowed ashore
+as fast as we could, to Cadgwith. Then we rowed back and fetched two
+boatloads more. We saved a lot of lives that wreck, but only their
+lives; they had scarcely a rag of clothes on, and some of the babies
+were as naked as when they were born."
+
+"And who took them in?"
+
+"Everybody: we always do it," answered John, as if surprised at
+the question. "The fishermen's cottages were full, and so was the
+parsonage. We gave them clothes, and kept them till they could be sent
+away. Yes, it was an awful night; I got something to remember it by,
+here."
+
+He held out his hand, from which we noticed half of one finger was
+missing.
+
+"It got squeezed off with a rope somehow. I didn't heed it much at
+the time," said John carelessly. "But look, we're at the first of the
+caves. I'll row in close, ladies, and let you see it."
+
+So we had to turn our minds from the vision of the wreck of the
+_Brest_, which John's simple words made so terribly vivid, to examine
+Raven's Ugo, and Dolor Ugo; _ugo_ is Cornish for cave. Over the
+entrance of the first a pair of ravens have built from time immemorial.
+It is just accessible, the opening being above the sea-line, and hung
+with quantities of sea-ferns. Here in smuggling days, many kegs of
+spirits used to be secreted: and many a wild drama no doubt has been
+acted there--daring encounters between smugglers and coastguard men,
+not bloodless on either side.
+
+Dolor Ugo is now inaccessible and unusable. Its only floor is of
+heaving water, a deep olive green, and so clear that we could see the
+fishes swimming about pursuing a shoal of launce. Its high-vaulted roof
+and sides were tinted all colours--rose-pink, rich dark brown, and
+purple. The entrance was wide enough to admit a boat, but it gradually
+narrowed into impenetrable darkness. How far inland it goes no one can
+tell, as it could only be investigated by swimming, a rather dangerous
+experiment. Boats venture as far as the daylight goes; and it is a
+favourite trick of the boatman suddenly to fire off a pistol, which
+reverberates like thunder through the mysterious gloom of the cave.
+
+A solemn place; an awful place, some of us thought, as we rowed in, and
+out again, into the sunshiny open sea. Which we had now got used to;
+and it was delicious to go dancing like a feather up and down, trusting
+to John Curgenven's stout arm and fearless, honest face. We felt sad to
+think this would be our last sight of him and of the magnificent Lizard
+coast. But the minutes were lessening, and we had some way still to
+row. Also to land, which meant a leap between the waves upon slippery
+sea-weedy rocks. In silent dread I watched my children accomplish this
+feat, and then--
+
+Well, it is over, and I sit here writing these details. But I would
+not do it again, not even for the pleasure of revisiting Dolor Ugo and
+having a row with John Curgenven.
+
+Honest fellow! he looked relieved when he saw "the old lady" safe on
+_terra firma_, and we left him waving adieux, as he "rocked in his
+boat in the bay." May his stout arms and kindly heart long remain to
+him! May his summer tourists be many and his winter shipwrecks few!
+I am sure he will always do his duty, and see that other people do
+theirs, or, like the proverbial Cornishmen, he "will know the reason
+why."
+
+Charles was ready; waiting patiently in front of a blacksmith's shop.
+But, alas! fate had overtaken us in the shape of an innocent leak in
+John Curgenven's boat; nothing, doubtless, to him, who was in the habit
+of baling it out with his boots, and then calmly putting them on again,
+but a little inconvenient to us. To drive thirty miles with one's
+garments soaked up to the knees was not desirable.
+
+There was a cottage close by, whence came the gleam of a delicious fire
+and the odour of ironing clothes. We went in: the mistress, evidently
+a laundress, advanced and offered to dry us--which she did, chattering
+all the while in the confidential manner of country folks.
+
+A hard working, decent body she was, and as for her house, it was a
+perfect picture of cleanliness and tidiness. Its two rooms, kitchen and
+bedroom, were absolutely speckless. When we noticed this, and said we
+found the same in many Cornish cottages; she almost seemed offended at
+the praise.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing, ma'am. We hereabouts all likes to have our places
+tidy. Mine's not over tidy to-day because of the washing. I hadn't time
+to clean up. But if you was to come of a Sunday. Look there!" Her eye
+caught something in a dark corner, at which she flew, apron in hand. "I
+declare, I'm quite ashamed. I didn't think we had one in the house."
+
+"One what?"
+
+"One spider web!"
+
+Dried, warmed, and refreshed, but having found the greatest difficulty
+in inducing the good woman to receive any tangible thanks for her
+kindness, we proceeded on our journey; going over the same ground which
+we had traversed already, and finding Pradenack Down as bleak and
+beautiful as ever. Our first halt was at the door of Mary Mundy, who,
+with her unappreciated brother, ran out to meet us, and looked much
+disappointed when she found we had not come to stay.
+
+"But you will come some time, ladies, and I'll make you so comfortable.
+And you'll give my duty to the professor"--it was vain to explain that
+four hundred miles lay between our home and his. "I hope he's quite
+well. He was a very nice gentleman, please'm. I shall be delighted to
+see him again, please'm," &c., &c.
+
+We left the three--Mary, her brother, and Charles--chattering together
+in a dialect which I do not attempt to reproduce, and sometimes could
+hardly understand. Us, the natives indulged with their best English,
+but among themselves they talked the broadest Cornish.
+
+It was a very old church, and a preternaturally old beadle showed it in
+a passive manner, not recognising in the least its points of interest
+and beauty, except some rows of open benches with ancient oak backs,
+wonderfully carved.
+
+"Our vicar dug them up from under the flooring and turned them into
+pews. There was a gentleman here the other day who said there was
+nothing like them in all England."
+
+Most curious, in truth, they were, and suited well the fine old
+building--a specimen of how carefully and lavishly our forefathers
+built "for God." We, who build for ourselves, are rather surprised
+to find in out-of-the-way nooks like this, churches that in size and
+adornment must have cost years upon years of loving labour as well as
+money.
+
+It was pleasant to know that the present incumbent, a man of
+archaeological tastes, appreciated his blessings, and took the utmost
+care of his beautiful old church. Success to him! even though he cannot
+boast the power of his predecessor, the Reverend Thomas Flavel, who
+died in 1682, and whose monument in the chancel really expresses the
+sentiments--in epitaph--of the period:
+
+  "Earth, take thine earth; my sin, let Satan have it;
+  The world my goods; my soul my God who gave it.
+  For from these four, Earth, Satan, World, and God,
+  My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul, I had."
+
+But it does not mention that the reverend gentleman was the best
+_ghost-layer_ in all England, and that when he died his ghost also
+required to be laid, by a brother clergyman, in a spot on the down
+still pointed out by the people of Mullion, who, being noted for
+extreme longevity, have passed down this tradition from generation
+to generation, with an earnest credulity that we of more enlightened
+counties can hardly understand.
+
+From Mullion we went on to Gunwalloe. Its church, "small and old," as
+Charles had depreciatingly said, had been so painfully "restored,"
+and looked so bran-new and uninteresting that we contented ourselves
+with a distant look. It was close to the sea--probably built on the
+very spot where its pious founder had been cast ashore. The one curious
+point about it was the detached belfry, some yards distant from the
+church itself. It sat alone in a little cove, down which a sluggish
+river crawled quietly seaward. A sweet quiet place, but haunted, as
+usual, by tales of cruel shipwrecks--of sailors huddled for hours on
+a bit of rock just above the waves, till a boat could put out and
+save the few survivors; of sea treasures continually washed ashore
+from lost ships--Indian corn, coffee, timber, dollars--many are still
+found in the sand after a storm. And one treasure more, of which the
+recollection is still kept at Gunwalloe, "a little dead baby in its cap
+and night-gown, with a necklace of coral beads."
+
+After this our road turned inland. Our good horse, with the dogged
+persistency of Cornish horses and Cornish men, plodded on mile after
+mile. Sometimes for an hour or more we did not meet a living soul;
+then we came upon a stray labourer, or passed through a village where
+healthy-looking children, big-eyed, brown-faced, and dirty-handed,
+picturesque if not pretty, stared at us from cottage doors, or from the
+gates of cottage gardens full of flowers and apples.
+
+Those apples! They were a picture. Hungry and thirsty, we could not
+resist them. After passing several trees, hung thickly with delicious
+fruit, we attacked the owner of one of them, a comely young woman, with
+a baby in her arms and another at her gown.
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am, you may have as many apples as you like, if your young
+ladies will go and get them."
+
+And while they did it, she stood talking by the carriage door, pouring
+out to me her whole domestic history with a simple frankness worthy of
+the golden age.
+
+"No, really I couldn't," putting back my payment--little enough-- for
+the splendid basket of apples which the girls brought back in triumph.
+"This is such a good apple year; the pigs would get them if the young
+ladies didn't. You're kindly welcome to them--well then, if you are
+determined, say sixpence."
+
+On which magnificent "sixpenn'orth," we lived for days! Indeed I think
+we brought some of it home as a specimen of Cornish fruit and Cornish
+liberality.
+
+[Illustration: THE ARMED KNIGHT AND THE LONG SHIP'S LIGHTHOUSE.]
+
+Helstone was reached at last, and we were not sorry for rest and food
+in the old-fashioned inn, whence we could look out of window, and
+contemplate the humours of the little town, which doubtless considered
+itself a very great one. It was market day, and the narrow street was
+thronged with beasts and men--the latter as sober as the former,
+which spoke well for Cornwall. Sober and civil too was every one we
+addressed in asking our way to the house of our unknown friend, whose
+only address we had was Helstone. But he seemed well known in the town,
+though neither a rich man, nor a great man, nor--No, I cannot say he
+was not a clever man, for in his own line, mechanical engineering, he
+must have been exceedingly clever. And he was what people call "a great
+character;" would have made such an admirable study for a novelist,
+manipulated into an unrecognisable ideal--the only way in which it is
+fair to put people in books. When I saw him I almost regretted that I
+write novels no more.
+
+We passed through the little garden--all ablaze with autumn colour,
+every inch utilised for either flowers, vegetables, or fruit--went into
+the parlour, sent our cards and waited the result.
+
+In two minutes our friend appeared, and gave us such a welcome! But to
+explain it I must trench a little upon the sanctities of private life,
+and tell the story of this honest Cornishman. It will not harm him.
+
+When still young he went to Brazil, and was employed by an English
+gold-mining company there, for some years. Afterwards he joined
+an engineering firm, and superintended dredging, the erection of
+saw-mills, &c., finally building a lighthouse, of which latter work he
+had the sole charge, and was exceedingly proud. His conscientiousness,
+probity, and entire reliableness made him most valuable to the
+firm; whom he served faithfully for many years. When they, as well
+as himself, returned to England, he still kept up a correspondence
+with them, preserving towards every member of the family the most
+enthusiastic regard and devotion.
+
+He rushed into the parlour, a tall, gaunt, middle-aged man, with a
+shrewd, kindly face, which beamed all over with delight, as he began
+shaking hands indiscriminately, saying how kind it was of us to come,
+and how welcome we were.
+
+It was explained which of us he had specially to welcome, the others
+being only humble appendages, friends of the family, this well-beloved
+family, whose likenesses for two generations we saw everywhere about
+the room.
+
+"Yes, miss, there they all are, your dear grandfather" (alas, only a
+likeness now!), "your father, and your uncle. They were all so good to
+me, and I would do anything for them, or for any one of their name. If
+I got a message that they wanted me for anything, I'd be off to London,
+or to Brazil, or anywhere, in half-an-hour."
+
+And he really looked as if he would.
+
+"But what will you take?" added the good man when the rapture and
+excitement of the moment had a little subsided, and his various
+questions as to the well-being of "the family" had been asked and
+answered. "You have dined, you say, but you'll have a cup of tea. My
+wife (that's the little maid I used to talk to your father about, miss;
+I always told him I wouldn't stay in Brazil, I must go back to England
+and marry my little maid), my wife makes the best cup of tea in all
+Cornwall. Here she is!"
+
+And there entered, in afternoon gown and cap, probably just put on, a
+middle-aged, but still comely matron, who insisted that, even at this
+early hour--3 P.M.--to get a cup of tea for us was "no trouble
+at all."
+
+"Indeed, she wouldn't think anything a trouble, no more than I should,
+miss, if it was for your family. They never forget me, nor I them."
+
+It was here suggested that they were not a "forgetting" family. Nor
+was he a man likely to be soon forgotten. While the cup of tea, which
+proved to be a most sumptuous meal, was preparing, he took us all over
+his house, which was full of foreign curiosities, and experimental
+inventions. One, I remember, being a musical instrument, a sort of
+organ, which he had begun making when a mere boy, and taken with him
+all the way to Brazil and back. It had now found refuge in the little
+room he called his "workshop," which was filled with odds and ends that
+would have been delightful to a mechanical mind. He expounded them with
+enthusiasm, and we tried not to betray an ignorance, which in some of
+us would have been a sort of hereditary degradation.
+
+"Ah! they were clever--your father and your uncle!--and how proud we
+all were when we finished our lighthouse, and got the Emperor to light
+it up for the first time. Look here, ladies, what do you think this is?"
+
+He took out a small parcel, and solemnly unwrapped from it fold after
+fold of paper, till he came to the heart of it--a small wax candle!
+
+"This was the candle the Emperor used to light our lighthouse. I've
+kept it for nearly thirty years, and I'll keep it as long as I live.
+Every year on the anniversary of the day I light it, drink his
+Majesty's health, and the health of all your family, miss, and then I
+put it out again. So"--carefully re-wrapping the relic in its numerous
+envelopes--"so I hope it will last my time."
+
+Here the mistress came behind her good man, and they exchanged a
+smile--the affectionate smile of two who had never been more than two,
+Darby and Joan, but all sufficient to each other. She announced that
+tea was ready. And such a tea! How we got through it I hardly know,
+but travelling is hungry work, and the viands were delicious. The
+beneficence of our kind hosts, however, was not nearly done.
+
+"Come, ladies, I'll show you my garden, and--(give me a basket and the
+grape-scissors,)" added he in a conjugal aside. Which resulted in our
+carrying away with us the biggest bunches in the whole vinery, as well
+as a quantity of rosy apples, stuffed into every available pocket and
+bag.
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," was the answer to vain remonstrances. "D'ye
+think I wouldn't give the best of everything I had to your family? and
+so would my missis too. How your father used to laugh at me about my
+little maid! But he understood it for all that. Oh yes, I'm glad I came
+home. And now your father and your uncle are home too, and perhaps some
+day they'll come to see me down here--wouldn't it be a proud day for
+me! You'll tell them so?"
+
+It was touching, and rare as touching, this passionate personal
+fidelity. It threw us back, at least such of us as were sentimentally
+inclined, upon that something in Cornish nature which found its
+exposition in Arthur and his faithful knights, down to "bold Sir
+Bedevere," and apparently, is still not lost in Cornwall.
+
+With a sense of real regret, feeling that it would be long ere we
+might meet his like--such shrewd simplicity, earnest enthusiasm, and
+exceeding faithfulness--we bade good-bye to the honest man; leaving him
+and his wife standing at their garden-gate, an elderly Adam and Eve,
+desiring nothing outside their own little paradise. Which of us could
+say more, or as much?
+
+Gratefully we "talked them over," as we drove on through the pretty
+country round Helstone--inland country; for we had no time to go and
+see the Loe Pool, a small lake, divided from the sea by a bar of sand.
+This is supposed to be the work of the Cornwall man-demon, Tregeagle;
+and periodically cut through, with solemn ceremonial, by the Mayor of
+Helstone, when the "meeting of the waters," fresh and salt, is said to
+be an extremely curious sight. But we did not see it, nor yet Nonsloe
+House, close by, which is held by the tenure of having to provide a
+boat and nets whenever the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cornwall
+wishes to fish in the Loe Pool. A circumstance which has never happened
+yet, certainly!
+
+Other curiosities _en route_ we also missed, the stones of
+Tremenkeverne, half a ton each, used as missiles in a notable fight
+between two saints, St. Just of the Land's End, and St. Keverne of the
+Lizard, and still lying in a field to prove the verity of the legend.
+Also the rock of Goldsithney, where, when the "fair land of Lyonesse"
+was engulfed by the sea, an ancestor of the Trevelyans saved himself by
+swimming his horse, and landing; and various other remarkable places,
+with legends attached, needing much credulity, or imagination, to
+believe in.
+
+But, fearing to be benighted ere reaching Marazion, we passed them all,
+and saw nothing more interesting than the ruins of disused tin mines,
+which Charles showed us, mournfully explaining how the mining business
+had of late years drifted away from Cornwall, and how hundreds of the
+once thriving community had been compelled to emigrate or starve. As we
+neared Marazion, these melancholy wrecks with their little hillocks of
+mining debris rose up against the evening sky, the image of desolation.
+And then St. Michael's Mount, the picture in little of Mont St. Michel,
+in Normandy, appeared in the middle of Mount's Bay. Lastly, after
+a gorgeous sunset, in a golden twilight and silvery moonlight, we
+entered Marazion;-and found it, despite its picturesque name, the most
+commonplace little town imaginable!
+
+We should have regretted our rash decision, and gone on to Penzance,
+but for the hearty welcome given us at a most comfortable and home-like
+inn, which determined us to keep to our first intention, and stay.
+
+So, after our habit of making the best of things, we walked down to the
+ugly beach, and investigated the dirty-looking bay--in the lowest of
+all low tides, with a soppy, sea-weedy causeway running across to St.
+Michael's Mount. By advice of Charles, we made acquaintance with an old
+boatman he knew, a Norwegian who had drifted hither--shipwrecked, I
+believe--settled down and married an English woman, but whose English
+was still of the feeblest kind. However, he had an honest face; so we
+engaged him to take us out bathing early to-morrow.
+
+"And to-night, ladies?" suggested the faithful Charles. "Wouldn't you
+like to row round the Mount?--When you've had your tea, I'll come back
+for you, and help you down to the shore--it's rather rough, but nothing
+like what you have done, ma'am," added he encouragingly. "And it will
+be bright moonlight, and the Mount will look so fine."
+
+So, the spirit of adventure conquering our weariness, we went. When
+I think how it looked next morning--the small, shallow bay, with its
+toy-castle in the centre, I am glad our first vision of it was under
+the glamour of moonlight, with the battlemented rock throwing dark
+shadows across the shimmering sea. In the mysterious beauty of that
+night row round the Mount, we could imagine anything; its earliest
+inhabitant, the giant Cormoran, killed by that "valiant Cornishman,"
+the illustrious Jack; the lovely St. Keyne, a king's daughter, who came
+thither on pilgrimage; and, passing down from legend to history, Henry
+de la Pomeroy, who, being taken prisoner, caused himself to be bled to
+death in the Castle; Sir John Arundel, slain on the sands, and buried
+in the Chapel; Perkin Warbeck's unfortunate wife, who took refuge at
+St. Michael's shrine, but was dragged thence. And so on, and so on,
+through the centuries, to the family of St. Aubyn, who bought it in
+1660, and have inhabited it ever since. "Very nice people," we heard
+they were; who have received here the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and
+other royal personages. What a contrast to the legendary Cormoran!
+
+Yet, looking up as we rowed under the gloomy rock, we could fancy his
+giant ghost sitting there, on the spot where he killed his wife, for
+bringing in her apron greenstone, instead of granite, to build the
+chapel with. Which being really built of greenstone the story must be
+true! What a pleasure it is to be able to believe anything!
+
+Some of us could have stayed out half the night, floating along in the
+mild soft air and dreamy moonlight, which made even the commonplace
+little town look like a fairy scene, and exalted St. Michael's Mount
+into a grand fortress, fit for its centuries of legendary lore--but
+others preferred going to bed.
+
+So we landed, and retired. Not however without taking a long look out
+of the window upon the bay, which now, at high tide, was one sheet of
+rippling moon-lit water, with the grim old Mount, full of glimmering
+lights like eyes, sitting silent in the midst of the silent sea.
+
+[Illustration: CORNISH FISHERMAN.]
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE TENTH
+
+
+I cannot advise Marazion as a bathing place. What a down-come from the
+picturesque vision of last night, to a small ugly fishy-smelling beach,
+which seemed to form a part of the town and its business, and was
+overlooked from everywhere! Yet on it two or three family groups were
+evidently preparing for a dip, or rather a wade of about a quarter of a
+mile in exceedingly dirty sea water.
+
+"This will never do," we said to our old Norwegian. "You must row us to
+some quiet cove along the shore, and away from the town."
+
+He nodded his head, solemn and mute as the dumb boatman of dead Elaine,
+rowed us out seaward for about half-a-mile, and then proceeded to
+fasten the boat to a big stone, and walk ashore. The water still did
+not come much above his knees--he seemed quite indifferent to it. But
+we?
+
+Well, we could but do at Rome as the Romans do. Toilette in an open
+boat was evidently the custom of the country. And the sun was warm, the
+sea safe and shallow. Indeed, so rapidly did it subside, that by the
+time the bath was done, we were aground, and had to call at the top of
+our voices to our old man, who sat, with his back to us, dim in the
+distance, on another big stone, calmly smoking the pipe of peace.
+
+"We'll not try this again," was the unanimous resolve, as, after
+politely declining a suggestion that "the ladies should walk ashore--"
+did he think we were amphibious?--we got ourselves floated off at last,
+and rowed to the nearest landing point, the entrance to St. Michael's
+Mount.
+
+Probably nowhere in England is found the like of this place. Such
+a curious mingling of a mediaeval fortress and modern residence; of
+antiquarian treasures and everyday business; for at the foot of the
+rock is a fishing village of about thirty cottages, which carries
+on a thriving trade; and here also is a sort of station for the tiny
+underground-railway, which worked by a continuous chain, fulfils the
+very necessary purpose (failing Giant Cormoran, and wife) of carrying
+up coals, provisions, luggage, and all other domestic necessaries to
+the hill top.
+
+Thither we climbed by a good many weary steps, and thought, delightful
+as it may be to dwell on the top of a rock in the midst of the sea,
+like eagles in an eyrie, there are certain advantages in living on a
+level country road, or even in a town street. How in the world do the
+St. Aubyns manage when they go out to dinner? Two years afterwards,
+when I read in the paper that one of the daughters of the house,
+leaning over the battlements, had lost her balance and fallen down,
+mercifully unhurt, to the rocky slope below--the very spot where we
+to-day sat so quietly gazing out on the lovely sea view--I felt with
+a shudder that on the whole, it would be a trying thing to bring up a
+young family on St. Michael's Mount.
+
+Still, generation after generation of honourable St. Aubyns have
+brought up their families there, and oh! what a beautiful spot it is!
+How fresh, and yet mild blew the soft sea-wind outside of it, and
+inside, what endless treasures there were for the archaeological mind!
+The chapel alone was worth a morning's study, even though shown--odd
+anachronism--by a footman in livery, who pointed out with great gusto
+the entrance to a vault discovered during the last repairs, where was
+found the skeleton of a large man--his bones only--no clue whatever as
+to who he was or when imprisoned there. The "Jeames" of modern days
+told us this tale with a noble indifference. Nothing of the kind was
+likely to happen to him.
+
+Further still we were fortunate enough to penetrate, and saw the Chevy
+Chase Hall, with its cornice of hunting scenes, the drawing-room, the
+school-room--only fancy learning lessons there, amidst the veritable
+evidence of the history one was studying! And perhaps the prettiest bit
+of it all was our young guide, herself a St. Aubyn, with her simple
+grace and sweet courtesy, worthy of one of the fair ladies worshipped
+by King Arthur's knights.
+
+[Illustration: THE SEINE BOAT--A PERILOUS MOMENT.]
+
+We did not like encroaching on her kindness, though we could have
+stayed all day, admiring the curious things she showed us. So we
+descended the rock, and crossed the causeway, now dry, but very rough
+walking--certainly St. Michael's Mount has its difficulties as a modern
+dwelling-house--and went back to our inn. For, having given our
+horse a forenoon's rest, we planned a visit to that spot immortalised
+by nursery rhyme--
+
+  "As I was going to St. Ives
+  I met a man with seven wives.
+  Each wife had seven sacks;
+  Each sack had seven cats;
+  Each cat had seven kits;
+  Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,--
+  How many were there going to St. Ives?"
+
+--One; and after we had been there, we felt sure he never went again!
+
+There were two roads, we learnt, to that immortal town; one very good,
+but dull; the other bad--and beautiful. We chose the latter, and never
+repented.
+
+Nor, in passing through Penzance, did we repent not having taken up our
+quarters there. It was pretty, but so terribly "genteel," so extremely
+civilised. Glancing up at the grand hotel, we thought with pleasure of
+our old-fashioned inn at Marazion, where the benign waiter took quite
+a fatherly interest in our proceedings, even to giving us for dinner
+our very own blackberries, gathered yesterday on the road, and politely
+hindering another guest from helping himself to half a dishful, as
+"they belonged to the young ladies." Truly, there are better things in
+life than fashionable hotels.
+
+But the neighbourhood of Penzance is lovely. Shrubs and flowers such
+as one sees on the shores of the Mediterranean grew and flourished in
+cottage-gardens, and the forest trees we drove under, whole avenues
+of them, were very fine; gentlemen's seats appeared here and there,
+surrounded with the richest vegetation, and commanding lovely views. As
+the road gradually mounted upwards, we saw, clear as in a panorama, the
+whole coast from the Lizard Point to the Land's End,--which we should
+behold to-morrow.
+
+For, hearing that every week-day about a hundred tourists in carriages,
+carts, and omnibuses, usually flocked thither, we decided that the
+desire of our lives, the goal of our pilgrimage, should be visited
+by us on a Sunday. We thought that to drive us thither in solitary
+Sabbatic peace would be fully as good for Charles's mind and morals as
+to hang all day idle about Marazion; and he seemed to think so himself.
+Therefore, in prospect of to-morrow, he dealt very tenderly with his
+horse to-day, and turned us out to walk up the heaviest hills, of which
+there were several, between Penzance and Castle-an-Dinas.
+
+"There it is," he said at last, stopping in the midst of a wide moor
+and pointing to a small building, sharp against the sky. "The carriage
+can't get further, but you can go on, ladies, and I'll stop and gather
+some blackberries for you."
+
+For brambles, gorse bushes, and clumps of fading heather, with one or
+two small stunted trees, were now the only curiosities of this, King
+Arthur's famed hunting castle, and hunting ground, which spread before
+us for miles and miles. Passing a small farm-house, we made our way to
+the building Charles pointed out, standing on the highest ridge of the
+promontory, whose furthest point is the Land's End. Standing there, we
+could see--or could have seen but that the afternoon had turned grey
+and slightly misty--the ocean on both sides. Inland, the view seemed
+endless. Roughtor and Brown Willy, two Dartmoor hills, are said to be
+visible sometimes. Nearer, little white dots of houses show the mining
+districts of Redruth and Camborne.
+
+But here, all was desolate solitude. A single wayfarer, looking like a
+working man in his Sunday best going to visit friends, but evidently
+tired, as if he had walked for miles, just glanced at us, and passed
+on. We stood, all alone, on the very spot where many a time must have
+stood King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Sir Launcelot, and the other
+knights--or the real human beings, whether barbarian or not, who formed
+the originals of those mythical personages.
+
+All had vanished now. Nothing was left but a common-place little tower,
+built up of the fragments of the old castle, and a wide, pathless
+moor, over which the wind sighed, and the mist crept. No memorial
+whatever of King Arthur, except the tradition--which time and change
+have been powerless to annihilate--that such a man once existed. The
+long vitality which the legend keeps proves that he must have been
+a remarkable man in his day. Romance itself cannot exist without a
+foundation in reality.
+
+So I preached to my incredulous juniors, who threw overboard King
+Arthur and took to blackberry-gathering; and to conversation with a
+most comely Cornishwoman, milking the prettiest of Cornish cows in the
+lonely farm-yard, which was the only sign of humanity for miles and
+miles. We admired herself and her cattle; we drank her milk, offering
+for it the usual payment. But the picturesque milkmaid shook her head
+and demanded just double what even the dearest of London milk-sellers
+would have asked for the quantity. Which sum we paid in silence,
+and I only record the fact here in order to state that spite of our
+foreboding railway friend at Falmouth, this was the only instance in
+which we were ever "taken in," or in the smallest degree imposed upon,
+in Cornwall.
+
+Another hour, slowly driving down the gradual slope of the country,
+through a mining district much more cheerful than that beyond Marazion.
+The mines were all apparently in full work, and the mining villages
+were pretty, tidy, and cosy-looking, even picturesque. Approaching St.
+Ives the houses had quite a foreign look, but when we descended to
+the town, its dark, narrow streets, pervaded by a "most ancient and
+fish-like smell," were anything but attractive.
+
+As was our hotel, where, as a matter of duty, we ordered tea, but
+doubted if we should enjoy it, and went out again to see what little
+there seemed to be seen, puzzling our way through the gloomy and not
+too fragrant streets, till at last in despair we stopped a bland,
+elderly, Methodist-minister-looking gentleman, and asked him the way to
+the sea.
+
+He eyed us over. "You're strangers here, ma'am?"
+
+I owned the humbling fact, as the inhabitant of St. Ives must doubtless
+consider it.
+
+"And is it the pilchard fishery you want to see? It is just beginning.
+A few pilchards have been seen already. There are the boats, the
+fishermen are all getting ready. It's a fine sight to see them start.
+Would you like to come and look at them?"
+
+He had turned back and was walking with us down the street, pointing
+out everything that occurred to him as noticeable, in the kindest and
+civilest way. When we apologised for troubling him, and would have
+parted company, our friend made no attempt to go.
+
+"Oh, I've nothing at all to do, except"--he took out the biggest and
+most respectable of watches--"except to attend a prayer-meeting at
+half-past six. I should have time to show you the town; we think it is
+a very nice little town. I ought to know it; I've lived in it, boy and
+man for thirty-seven years. But now I have left my business to my sons,
+and I just go about and amuse myself, looking into the shop now and
+then just for curiosity. You must have seen my old shop, ladies, if you
+came down that street."
+
+[Illustration: ST. IVES.]
+
+Which he named, and also gave us his own name, which we had seen over
+the shop door, but I shall not record either. Not that I think the
+honest man is ever likely to read such "light" literature as this book,
+or to recall the three wanderers to whom he was so civil and kind, and
+upon whom he poured out an amount of local and personal facts, which
+we listened to--as a student of human nature is prone to do--with an
+amused interest in which the comic verged on the pathetic. How large
+to each man seems his own little world, and what child-like faith he
+has in its importance to other people! I shall always recall our friend
+at St. Ives, with his prayer-meetings, his chapel-goings--I concluded
+he was a Methodist, a sect very numerous in Cornwall--his delight in
+his successful shop and well-brought-up sons, who managed it so well,
+leaving him to enjoy his _otium cum dignitate_--no doubt a municipal
+dignity, for he showed us the Town Hall with great gusto. Evidently to
+his honest, simple soul, St. Ives was the heart of the world.
+
+By and by again he pulled out the turnip-like watch. "Just ten minutes
+to get to my prayer-meeting, and I never like to be late, I have been a
+punctual man all my life, ma'am," added he, half apologetically, till
+I suggested that this was probably the cause of his peace and success.
+Upon which he smiled, lifted his hat with a benign adieu, hoped we had
+liked St. Ives--we had liked his company at any rate--and with a final
+pointing across the street, "There's my shop, ladies, if you would care
+to look at it," trotted away to his prayer-meeting.
+
+I believe the neighbourhood of St. Ives, especially Tregenna, its
+ancient mansion transformed into an hotel, is exceedingly pretty, but
+night was falling fast, and we saw nothing. Speedily we despatched a
+most untempting meal, and hurried Charles's departure, lest we should
+be benighted, as we nearly were, during the long miles of straight and
+unlovely road--the good road--between here and Penzance. We had done
+our duty, we had seen the place, but as, in leaving it behind us, we
+laughingly repeated the nursery rhyme, we came to the conclusion that
+the man who was "_going_ to St. Ives" was the least fortunate of all
+those notable individuals.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE ELEVENTH
+
+
+The last thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a
+starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on St.
+Michael's Mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. It would be hard,
+if after journeying thus far and looking forward to it so many years,
+the day on which we went to the Land's End should turn out a wet day!
+Still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. Some
+of us, I think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so
+till the hand is dust.
+
+It was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out
+on the dawn, grey and misty, but still not wet. To be just on the point
+of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare
+enough to have a certain pathos in it. We slept again, and trusted
+for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering
+sun-gleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky. We wondered for the last
+time, as we had wondered for half a century, "what the Land's End would
+be like," and then started, rather thoughtful than merry, to find out
+the truth of the case.
+
+Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead
+of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote us in driving through
+Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along
+to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage
+to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew
+by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted
+with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised
+faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."
+
+But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. I shall
+never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely
+roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about
+Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the
+high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island.
+The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was
+now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer
+leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three
+children trotting to school or church, with their books under their
+arms. Unquestionably Cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county;
+religious-minded too, whether Methodist, Quaker, or other nonconformist
+sects, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative Church
+of England.
+
+We passed St. Buryan's--a curious old church founded on the place where
+an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. A
+few stray cottages comprised the whole village. There was nothing
+special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and
+sunshine and solitude, till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the
+celebrated Logan or rocking-stone.
+
+From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in
+England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial,
+who can decide?
+
+  "Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving,
+  But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."
+
+Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant
+Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's
+crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point
+on which it rests. Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at
+great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked
+properly since.
+
+By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who
+stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the
+Lizard, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards.
+Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a
+labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.
+
+"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of
+them in answer to a question.
+
+And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been
+much readier than his tongue. I, at least, should never have got even
+so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself--a somewhat
+anxious-minded old hen--and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that
+enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the Logan.
+
+"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the
+lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must
+honestly confess _I_ could not see it stir a single inch.
+
+However, it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones
+around it were equally huge and most picturesquely thrown together.
+Also--delightful to my young folks!--they furnished the most
+adventurous scramble that heart could desire. I alone felt a certain
+relief when we were all again on smooth ground, with no legs or arms
+broken.
+
+The cliff-walk between the Logan and the Land's End is said to be one
+of the finest in England for coast scenery. Treryn or Treen Dinas,
+Pardeneck Point, and Tol Pedn Penwith had been named as places we ought
+to see, but this was impracticable. We had to content ourselves with a
+dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and
+ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of
+a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came
+forward to the carriage, and Charles jumped down from his box.
+
+"You can get out now, ladies. This is the Land's End."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+I forbear to translate the world of meaning implied in that brief
+exclamation.
+
+"Let us go in and get something. Perhaps we shall admire the place more
+when we have ceased to be hungry."
+
+The words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of
+an hour at the Land's End in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too
+daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour
+of the--let me give it its right name--First and Last Inn, of Great
+Britain.
+
+"We never provide for Sunday," said the waitress, responding to a
+sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here.
+"It's very seldom any tourists come on a Sunday."
+
+At which we felt altogether humbled; but in a few minutes more our
+contrition passed into sovereign content.
+
+We went out of doors, upon the narrow green plateau in front of the
+house, and then we recognised where we were--standing at the extreme
+end of a peninsula, with a long line of rocks running out still further
+into the sea. That "great and wide sea, wherein are moving things
+innumerable," the mysterious sea "kept in the hollow of His hand," who
+is Infinity, and looking at which, in the intense solitude and silence,
+one seems dimly to guess at what Infinity may be. Any one who wishes to
+go to church for once in the Great Temple which His hands have builded,
+should spend a Sunday at the Land's End.
+
+At first, our thought had been, What in the world shall we do here for
+two mortal hours! Now, we wished we had had two whole days. A sunset, a
+sunrise, a star-lit night, what would they not have been in this grand
+lonely place--almost as lonely as a ship at sea? It would be next best
+to finding ourselves in the middle of the Atlantic.
+
+But this bliss could not be; so we proceeded to make the best of what
+we had. The bright day was darkening, and a soft greyness began to
+creep over land and sea. No, not soft, that is the very last adjective
+applicable to the Land's End. Even on that calm day there was a fresh
+wind--there must be always wind--and the air felt sharper and more salt
+than any sea-air I ever knew. Stimulating too, so that one's nerves
+were strung to the highest pitch of excitement. We felt able to do
+anything, without fear and without fatigue. So that when a guide came
+forward--a regular man-of-war's-man he looked--we at once resolved to
+adventure along the line of rocks, seaward, "out as far as anybody was
+accustomed to go."
+
+"Ay, ay; I'll take you, ladies. That is--the young ladies might go--but
+you--" eying me over with his keen sailor's glance, full of honesty and
+good humour, "you're pretty well on in years, ma'am."
+
+Laughing, I told him how far on, but that I was able to do a good deal
+yet. He laughed too.
+
+"Oh, I've taken ladies much older than you. One the other day was
+nearly seventy. So we'll do our best, ma'am. Come along."
+
+He offered a rugged, brown hand, as firm and steady as a mast, to hold
+by, and nothing could exceed the care and kindliness with which he
+guided every step of every one of us, along that perilous path, that
+is, perilous except for cautious feet and steady heads.
+
+"Take care, young ladies. If you make one false step, you are done
+for," said our guide, composedly as he pointed to the boiling whirl of
+waters below.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK.]
+
+Still, though a narrow and giddy path, there was a path, and the
+exploit, though a little risky, was not fool-hardy. We should have
+been bitterly sorry not to have done it--not to have stood for one
+grand ten minutes, where in all our lives we may never stand again, at
+the farthest point where footing is possible, gazing out upon that
+magnificent circle of sea which sweeps over the submerged "land of
+Lyonesse," far, far away, into the wide Atlantic.
+
+There were just two people standing with us, clergymen evidently, and
+one, the guide told us, was "the parson at St. Sennen." We spoke to
+him, as people do speak, instinctively, when mutually watching such a
+scene, and by and by we mentioned the name of the long-dead curate of
+St. Sennen's.
+
+The "parson" caught instantly at the name.
+
+"Mr. ----? Oh, yes, my father knew him quite well. He used constantly
+to walk across from Sennen to our house, and take us children long
+rambles across the cliffs, with a volume of Southey or Wordsworth under
+his arm. He was a fine young fellow in those days, I have heard, and an
+excellent clergyman. And he afterwards married a very nice girl from
+the north somewhere."
+
+"Yes;" we smiled. The "nice girl" was now a sweet silver-haired little
+lady of nearly eighty; the "fine young fellow" had long since departed;
+and the boy was this grave middle-aged gentleman, who remembered both
+as a tradition of his youth. What a sermon it all preached, beside this
+eternal rock, this ever-moving, never-changing sea!
+
+But time was passing--how fast it does pass, minutes, ay, and years! We
+bade adieu to our known unknown friend, and turned our feet backwards,
+cautiously as ever, stopping at intervals to listen to the gossip of
+our guide.
+
+"Yes, ladies, that's the spot--you may see the hoof-mark--where General
+Armstrong's horse fell over; he just slipped off in time, but the poor
+beast was drowned. And here, over that rock, happened the most curious
+thing. I wouldn't have believed it myself, only I knew a man that saw
+it with his own eyes. Once a bullock fell off into the pool below
+there--just look, ladies." (We did look, into a perfect Maelstrom of
+boiling waves.) "Everybody thought he was drowned, till he was seen
+swimming about unhurt. They fished him up, and exhibited him as a
+curiosity."
+
+And again, pointing to a rock far out in the sea.
+
+"That's the Brisons. Thirty years ago a ship went to pieces there, and
+the captain and his wife managed to climb on to that rock. They held
+on there for two days and a night, before a boat could get at them.
+At last they were taken off one at a time, with rockets and a rope;
+the wife first. But the rope slipped and she fell into the water. She
+was pulled out in a minute or so, and rowed ashore, but they durst
+not tell her husband she was drowned. I was standing on the beach at
+Whitesand Bay when the boat came in. I was only a lad, but I remember
+it well, and her too lifted out all dripping and quite dead. She was
+such a fine woman."
+
+"And the captain?"
+
+"They went back for him, and got him off safe, telling him nothing. But
+when he found she was dead he went crazy-like--kept for ever saying,
+'She saved my life, she saved my life,' till he was taken away by his
+friends. Look out, ma'am, mind your footing; just here a lady slipped
+and broke her leg a week ago. I had to carry her all the way to the
+hotel. I shouldn't like to carry you."
+
+We all smiled at the comical candour of the honest sailor, who
+proceeded to give us bits of his autobiography. He was Cornish born,
+but had seen a deal of the world as an A.B. on board her Majesty's ship
+_Agamemnon_.
+
+"Of course you have heard of the _Agamemnon_, ma'am. I was in her off
+Balaklava. You remember the Crimean war?"
+
+Yes, I did. His eyes brightened as we discussed names and places once
+so familiar, belonging to that time, which now seems so far back as to
+be almost historical.
+
+"Then you know what a winter we had, and what a summer afterwards. I
+came home invalided, and didn't attempt the service afterwards; but I
+never thought I should come home at all. Yes, it's a fine place the
+Land's End, though the air is so strong that it kills some folks right
+off. Once an invalid gentleman came, and he was dead in a fortnight.
+But I'm not dead yet, and I stop here mostly all the year round."
+
+He sniffed the salt air and smiled all over his weather-beaten
+face--keen, bronzed, blue-eyed, like one of the old Vikings. He was a
+fine specimen of a true British tar. When, having seen all we could, we
+gave him his small honorarium, he accepted it gratefully, and insisted
+on our taking in return a memento of the place in the shape of a stone
+weighing about two pounds, glittering with ore, and doubtless valuable,
+but ponderous. Oh, the trouble it gave me to carry it home, and pack
+and unpack it among my small luggage! But I did bring it home, and
+I keep it still in remembrance of the Land's End, and of the honest
+sailor of H.M.S. _Agamemnon_.
+
+So all was over. We could dream of an unknown Land's End no more. It
+became now a real place, of which the reality, though different from
+the imagination, was at least no disappointment. How few people in
+attaining a life-long desire can say as much!
+
+Our only regret, an endurable one now, was that we had not carried out
+our original plan of staying some days there--tourist-haunted, troubled
+days they might have been, but the evenings and mornings would have
+been glorious. With somewhat heavy hearts we summoned Charles and the
+carriage, for already a misty drift of rain began sweeping over the sea.
+
+"Still, we must see Whitesand Bay," said one of us, recalling a story
+a friend had once told how, staying at Land's End, she crossed the bay
+alone in a blinding storm, took refuge at the coastguard station, where
+she was hospitably received, and piloted back with most chivalric care
+by a coastguard, who did not tell her till their journey's end that he
+had left at home a wife, and a baby just an hour old.
+
+No such romantic adventure befell us. We only caught a glimmer of the
+bay through drizzling rain, which by the time we reached Sennen village
+had become a regular downpour. Evidently, we could do no more that day,
+which was fast melting into night.
+
+"We'll go home," was the sad resolve, glad nevertheless that we had a
+comfortable "home" to go to.
+
+So closing the carriage and protecting ourselves as well as we could
+from the driving rain, we went forward, passing the Quakers' burial
+ground, where is said to be one of the finest views in Cornwall; the
+Nine Maidens, a circle of Druidical stones, and many other interesting
+things, without once looking at or thinking of them.
+
+Half a mile from Marazion the rain ceased, and a light like that of the
+rising moon began to break through the clouds. What a night it might
+be, or might have been, could we have stayed at the Land's End!
+
+That ghostly "might have been!" It is in great things as in small, the
+worry, the torment, the paralysing burden of life. Away with it! We
+have done our best to be happy, and we have been happy. We have seen
+the Land's End.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE TWELFTH
+
+
+Monday morning. Black Monday we were half inclined to call it, knowing
+that by the week's end our travels must be over and done, and that if
+we wished still to see all we had planned, we must inevitably next
+morning return to civilisation and railways, a determination which
+involved taking this night "a long, a last farewell" of our comfortable
+carriage and our faithful Charles.
+
+"But it needn't be until night," said he, evidently loth to part from
+his ladies. "If I get back to Falmouth by daylight to-morrow morning,
+master will be quite satisfied. I can take you wherever you like
+to-day."
+
+"And the horse?"
+
+"Oh, he shall get a good feed and a rest till the middle of the night,
+then he'll do well enough. We shall have the old moon after one o'clock
+to get home by. Between Penzance and Falmouth it's a good road, though
+rather lonely."
+
+I should think it was, in the "wee hours" by the dim light of a waning
+moon. But Charles seemed to care nothing about it, so we said no more,
+but decided to take the drive--our last drive.
+
+Our minds were perplexed between Botallack Mine, the Gurnard's Head,
+Lamorna Cove, and several other places, which we were told we must on
+no account miss seeing, the first especially. Some of us, blessed with
+scientific relatives, almost dreaded returning home without having seen
+a single Cornish mine; others, lovers of scenery, longed for more of
+that magnificent coast. But finally, a meek little voice carried the
+day.
+
+[Illustration: SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS.]
+
+"I was so disappointed--more than I liked to say--when it rained,
+and I couldn't get my shells for our bazaar. How shall I ever get them
+now? If it wouldn't trouble anybody very much, mightn't we go again to
+Whitesand Bay?"
+
+A plan not wholly without charm. It was a heavenly day; to spend it
+in delicious idleness on that wide sweep of sunshiny sand would be a
+rest for the next day's fatigue. Besides, consolatory thought! there
+would be no temptation to put on miners' clothes, and go dangling in
+a basket down to the heart of the earth, as the Princess of Wales was
+reported to have done. The pursuit of knowledge may be delightful, but
+some of us owned to a secret preference for _terra firma_ and the upper
+air. We resolved to face opprobrium, and declare boldly we had "no
+time" (needless to add no inclination) to go and see Botallack Mine.
+The Gurnard's Head cost us a pang to miss; but then we should catch a
+second view of the Land's End. Yes, we would go to Whitesand Bay.
+
+It was a far shorter journey in sunshine than in rain, even though we
+made various divergencies for blackberries and other pleasures. Never
+had the sky looked bluer or the sea brighter, and much we wished that
+we could have wandered on in dreamy peace, day after day, or even gone
+through England, gipsy-fashion, in a house upon wheels, which always
+seemed to me the very ideal of travelling.
+
+We reached Sennen only too soon. Pretty little Sennen, with its ancient
+church and its new school house, where the civil schoolmaster gave me
+some ink to write a post-card for those to whom even the post-mark
+"Sennen" would have a touching interest, and where the boys and girls,
+released for dinner, were running about. Board school pupils, no doubt,
+weighted with an amount of learning which would have been appalling
+to their grandfathers and grandmothers, the simple parishioners of
+the "fine young fellow" half a century ago. As we passed through the
+village with its pretty cottages and "Lodgings to Let," we could not
+help thinking what a delightful holiday resort this would be for
+a large small family, who could be turned out as we were when the
+carriage could no farther go, on the wide sweep of green common,
+gradually melting into silvery sand, so fine and soft that it was
+almost a pleasure to tumble down the slopes, and get up again, shaking
+yourself like a dog, without any sense of dirt or discomfort. What a
+paradise for children, who might burrow like rabbits and wriggle about
+like sand-eels, and never come to any harm!
+
+Without thought of any danger, we began selecting our bathing-place,
+shallow enough, with long strips of wet shimmering sand to be crossed
+before reaching even the tiniest waves; when one of us, the cautious
+one, appealed to an old woman, the only human being in sight.
+
+"Bathe?" she said. "Folks ne'er bathe here. 'Tain't safe."
+
+"Why not? Quicksands?"
+
+She nodded her head. Whether she understood us or not, or whether we
+quite understood her, I am not sure, and should be sorry to libel such
+a splendid bathing ground--apparently. But maternal wisdom interposed,
+and the girls yielded. When, half an hour afterwards, we saw a solitary
+figure moving on a distant ledge of rock, and a black dot, doubtless
+a human head, swimming or bobbing about in the sea beneath--maternal
+wisdom was reproached as arrant cowardice. But the sand was delicious,
+the sea-wind so fresh, and the sea so bright, that disappointment could
+not last. We made an encampment of our various impedimenta, stretched
+ourselves out, and began the search for shells, in which every
+arm's-length involved a mine of wealth and beauty.
+
+Never except at one place, on the estuary of the Mersey, have I
+seen a beach made up of shells so lovely in colour and shape; very
+minute; some being no bigger than a grain of rice or a pin's head. The
+collecting of them was a fascination. We forgot all the historical
+interests that ought to have moved us, saw neither Athelstan, King
+Stephen, King John, nor Perkin Warbeck, each of whom is said to have
+landed here--what were they to a tiny shell, like that moralised over
+by Tennyson in "Maud"--"small, but a work divine"? I think infinite
+greatness sometimes touches one less than infinite littleness--the
+exceeding tenderness of Nature, or the Spirit which is behind Nature,
+who can fashion with equal perfectness a starry hemisphere and a
+glow-worm; an ocean and a little pink shell. The only imperfection in
+creation seems--oh, strange mystery!--to be man. Why?
+
+But away with moralising, or dreaming, though this was just a day for
+dreaming, clear, bright, warm, with not a sound except the murmur
+of the low waves, running in an enormous length--curling over and
+breaking on the soft sands. Everything was so heavenly calm, it seemed
+impossible to believe in that terrible scene when the captain and his
+wife were seen clinging to the Brisons rock, just ahead.
+
+Doubtless our friend of the _Agamemnon_ was telling this and all
+his other stories to an admiring circle of tourists, for we saw the
+Land's End covered with a moving swarm like black flies. How thankful
+we felt that we had "done" it on a Sunday! Still, we were pleased
+to have another gaze at it, with its line of picturesque rocks, the
+Armed Knight and the Irish Lady--though, I confess, I never could make
+out which was the knight and which was the lady. Can it be that some
+fragment of the legend of Tristram and Iseult originated these names?
+
+After several sweet lazy hours, we went through a "fish-cellar," a
+little group of cottages, and climbed a headland, to take our veritable
+farewell of the Land's End, and then decided to go home. We had rolled
+or thrown our provision basket, rugs, &c., down the sandy slope, but it
+was another thing to carry them up again. I went in quest of a small
+boy, and there presented himself a big man, coastguard, as the only
+unemployed hand in the place, who apologised with such a magnificent
+air for not having "cleaned" himself, that I almost blushed to ask
+him to do such a menial service as to carry a bundle of wraps. But
+he accepted it, conversing amiably as we went, and giving me a most
+graphic picture of life at Sennen during the winter. When he left me,
+making a short cut to our encampment--a black dot on the sands, with
+two moving black dots near it--a fisher wife joined me, and of her own
+accord began a conversation.
+
+She and I fraternised at once, chiefly on the subject of children, a
+group of whom were descending the road from Sennen School. She told me
+how many of them were hers, and what prizes they had gained, and what
+hard work it was. She could neither read nor write, she said, but she
+liked her children to be good scholars, and they learnt a deal up at
+Sennen.
+
+Apparently they did, and something else besides learning, for when I
+had parted from my loquacious friend, I came up to the group just in
+time to prevent a stand-up fight between two small mites, the _casus
+belli_ of which I could no more arrive at, than a great many wiser
+people can discover the origin of national wars. So I thought the
+strong hand of "intervention"--civilised intervention--was best, and
+put an end to it, administering first a good scolding, and then a coin.
+The division of this coin among the little party compelled an extempore
+sum in arithmetic, which I required them to do (for the excellent
+reason that I couldn't do it myself!)--and they did it! Therefore I
+conclude that the heads of the Sennen school-children are as solid as
+their fists, and equally good for use.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE.]
+
+Simple little community! which as the fisher wife told me, only goes to
+Penzance about once a year, and is, as yet, innocent of tourists, for
+the swarm at the Land's End seldom goes near Whitesand Bay. Existence
+here must be very much that of an oyster,--but perhaps oysters are
+happy.
+
+By the time we reached Penzance the lovely day was dying into an
+equally lovely evening. St. Michael's Mount shone in the setting sun.
+It was high water, the bay was all alive with boats, and there was
+quite a little crowd of people gathered at the mild little station of
+Marazion. What could be happening?
+
+A princess was expected, that young half-English, half-foreign
+princess, in whose romantic story the British public has taken such an
+interest, sympathising with the motherly kindness of our good Queen,
+with the wedding at Windsor, and the sad little infant funeral there,
+a year after. The Princess Frederica of Hanover, and the Baron Von
+Pawel-Rammingen, her father's secretary, who, like a stout mediaeval
+knight, had loved, wooed, and married her, were coming to St. Michael's
+Mount on a visit to the St. Aubyns.
+
+Marazion had evidently roused itself, and risen to the occasion. Half
+the town must have turned out to the beach, and the other half secured
+every available boat, in which it followed, at respectful distance,
+the two boats, one full of luggage, the other of human beings, which
+were supposed to be the royal party. People speculated with earnest
+curiosity, which was the princess, and which her husband, and what the
+St. Aubyns would do with them; whether they would be taken to see the
+Land's End, and whether they would go there as ordinary tourists, or in
+a grand visit of state. How hard it is that royal folk can never see
+anything except in state, or in a certain adventitious garb, beautiful,
+no doubt, but satisfactorily hiding the real thing. How they must long
+sometimes for a walk, after the fashion of Haroun Alraschid, up and
+down Regent Street and Oxford Street! or an incognito foreign tour, or
+even a solitary country walk, without a "lady-in-waiting."
+
+We had no opera-glass to add to the many levelled at those two boats,
+so we went in--hoping host and guests would spend a pleasant evening in
+the lovely old rooms we knew. We spent ours in rest, and in arranging
+for to-morrow's flight. Also in consulting with our kindly landlady
+as to a possible house at Marazion for some friends whom the winter
+might drive southwards, like the swallows, to a climate which, in this
+one little bay shut out from east and north, is--they told us--during
+all the cruel months which to many of us means only enduring life, not
+living--as mild and equable almost as the Mediterranean shores. And
+finally, we settled all with our faithful Charles, who looked quite
+mournful at parting with his ladies.
+
+"Yes, it is rather a long drive, and pretty lonely," said he. "But I'll
+wait till the moons up, and that'll help us. We'll get into Falmouth
+by daylight. I've got to do the same thing often enough through the
+summer, so I don't mind it."
+
+Thus said the good fellow, putting a cheery face on it, then with a
+hasty "Good-bye, ladies," he rushed away. But we had taken his address,
+not meaning to lose sight of him. (Nor have we done so up to this date
+of writing; and the fidelity has been equal on both sides.)
+
+Then, in the midst of a peal of bells which was kept up unweariedly
+till 10 P.M.--evidently Marazion is not blessed with the sight
+of a princess every day--we closed our eyes upon all outward things,
+and went away to the Land of Nod.
+
+
+
+
+DAY THE THIRTEENTH
+
+
+Into King Arthurs land--Tintagel his birth-place, and Camelford,
+where he fought his last battle--the legendary region of which one
+may believe as much or as little as one pleases--we were going
+to-day. With the good common sense which we flattered ourselves had
+accompanied every step of our unsentimental journey, we had arranged
+all before-hand, ordered a carriage to meet the mail train, and hoped
+to find at Tintagel--not King Uther Pendragon, King Arthur or King
+Mark, but a highly respectable landlord, who promised us a welcome at
+an inn--which we only trusted would be as warm and as kindly as that we
+left behind us at Marazion.
+
+The line of railway which goes to the far west of England is one of the
+prettiest in the kingdom on a fine day, which we were again blessed
+with. It had been a wet summer, we heard, throughout Cornwall, but
+in all our journey, save that one wild storm at the Lizard, sunshine
+scarcely ever failed us. Now--whether catching glimpses of St. Ives
+Bay or sweeping through the mining district of Redruth, and the wooded
+country near Truro, Grampound, and St. Austell, till we again saw the
+glittering sea on the other side of Cornwall--all was brightness. Then
+darting inland once more, our iron horse carried us past Lostwithiel,
+the little town which once boasted Joseph Addison, M.P., as its
+representative; gave us a fleeting vision of Ristormel, one of the
+ancient castles of Cornwall, and on through a leafy land, beginning to
+change from rich green to the still richer yellows and reds of autumn,
+till we stopped at Bodmin Road.
+
+[Illustration: TINTAGEL.]
+
+No difficulty in finding our carriage, for it was the only one there;
+a huge vehicle, of ancient build, the horses to match, capable of
+accommodating a whole family and its luggage. We missed our compact
+little machine, and our brisk, kindly Charles, but soon settled
+ourselves in dignified, roomy state, for the twenty miles, or rather
+more, which lay between us and the coast. Our way ran along lonely
+quiet country roads and woods almost as green as when Queen Guinevere
+rode through them "a maying," before the dark days of her sin and King
+Arthur's death.
+
+Here it occurs to me, as it did this day to a practical youthful mind,
+"What in the world do people know about King Arthur?"
+
+Well, most people have read Tennyson, and a few are acquainted with
+the "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. But, perhaps I had better
+briefly give the story, or as much of it as is necessary for the
+edification of outsiders.
+
+Uther Pendragon, King of Britain, falling in love with Ygrayne, wife of
+the duke of Cornwall, besieged them in their twin castles of Tintagel
+and Terrabil, slew the husband, and the same day married the wife. Unto
+whom a boy was born, and by advice of the enchanter Merlin, carried
+away, from the sea-shore beneath Tintagel, and confided to a good
+knight, Sir Ector, to be brought up as his own son, and christened
+Arthur. On the death of the king, Merlin produced the youth, who was
+recognized by his mother Ygrayne, and proclaimed king in the stead
+of Uther Pendragon. He instituted the Order of Knights of the Round
+Table, who were to go everywhere, punishing vice and rescuing oppressed
+virtue, for the love of God and of some noble lady. He married
+Guinevere, daughter of King Leodegrance, who forsook him for the love
+of Sir Launcelot, his bravest knight and dearest friend. One by one,
+his best knights fell away into sin, and his nephew Mordred raised a
+rebellion, fought with him, and conquered him at Camelford. Seeing his
+end was near, Arthur bade his last faithful knight, Sir Bedevere, carry
+him to the shore of a mere (supposed to be Dozmare Pool) and throw in
+there his sword Excalibur; when appeared a boat with three queens,
+who lifted him in, mourning over him. With them he sailed away across
+the mere, to be healed of his grievous wound. Some say that he was
+afterwards buried in a chapel near, others declare that he lives still
+in fairy land, and will reappear in latter days, to reinstate the Order
+of Knights of the Round Table, and rule his beloved England, which will
+then be perfect as he once tried to make it, but in vain.
+
+Camelford of to-day is certainly not the Camelot of King Arthur--but
+a very respectable, commonplace little town, much like other country
+towns; the same genteel linendrapers' and un-genteel ironmongers'
+shops; the same old-established commercial inn, and a few ugly, but
+solid-looking private houses, with their faces to the street and
+their backs nestled in gardens and fields. Some of the inhabitants of
+these said houses were to be seen taking a quiet afternoon stroll.
+Doubtless they are eminently respectable and worthy folk, leading a
+mild provincial life like the people in Miss Martineau's _Deerbrook_,
+or Miss Austen's _Pride and Prejudice_--of which latter quality they
+have probably a good share.
+
+We let our horses rest, but we ourselves felt not the slightest wish to
+rest at Camelford, so walked leisurely on till we came to the little
+river Camel, and to Slaughter Bridge, said to be the point where King
+Arthur's army was routed and where he received his death-wound. A
+slab of stone, some little distance up the stream, is still called
+"King Arthur's Tomb." But as his coffin is preserved, as well as his
+Round Table, at Winchester; where, according to mediaeval tradition,
+the bodies of both Arthur and Guinevere were found, and the head
+of Guinevere had yellow hair; also that near the little village of
+Davidstow, is a long barrow, having in the centre a mound, which is
+called "King Arthur's grave"--inquiring minds have plenty of "facts" to
+choose from. Possibly at last they had better resort to fiction, and
+believe in Arthur's disappearance, as Tennyson makes him say,
+
+  "To the island-valley of Avillion ...
+  Where I may heal me of my grievous wound."
+
+Dozmare Pool we found so far out of our route that we had to make a
+virtue of necessity, and imagine it all; the melancholy moorland lake,
+with the bleak hill above it, and stray glimpses of the sea beyond.
+A ghostly spot, and full of many ghostly stories besides the legend
+of Arthur. Here Tregeagle, the great demon of Cornwall, once had his
+dwelling, until, selling his soul to the devil, his home was sunk to
+the bottom of the mere, and himself is heard of stormy nights, wailing
+round it with other ghost-demons, in which the Cornish mind still
+lingeringly believes. Visionary packs of hounds; a shadowy coach and
+horses, which drives round and round the pool, and then drives into it;
+flitting lights, kindled by no human hand, in places where no human
+foot could go--all these tales are still told by the country folk, and
+we might have heard them all. Might also have seen, in fancy, the flash
+of the "brand Excalibur"; heard the wailing song of the three queens;
+and pictured the dying Arthur lying on the lap of his sister Morgane la
+Faye. But, I forgot, this is an un-sentimental journey.
+
+The Delabole quarries are as un-sentimental a place as one could
+desire. It was very curious to come suddenly upon this world of slate,
+piled up in enormous masses on either side the road, and beyond them
+hills of debris, centuries old--for the mines have been worked ever
+since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Houses, walls, gates, fences,
+everything that can possibly be made of slate, is made. No green or
+other colour tempers the all-pervading shade of bluish-grey, for
+vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the quarries is abolished,
+the result of which would be rather dreary, save for the cheerful
+atmosphere of wholesome labour, the noise of waggons, horses,
+steam-engines--such a contrast to the silence of the deserted tin-mines.
+
+But, these Delabole quarries passed, silence and solitude come back
+again. Even the yearly-increasing influx of tourists fails to make
+the little village of Trevena anything but a village, where the
+said tourists lounge about in the one street, if it can be called a
+street, between the two inns and the often-painted, picturesque old
+post-office. Everything looked so simple, so home-like, that we were
+amused to find we had to get ready for a _table d'hote_ dinner, in
+the only available eating room where the one indefatigable waitress,
+a comely Cornish girl, who seemed Argus and Briareus rolled into one,
+served us--a party small enough to make conversation general, and
+pleasant and intelligent enough to make it very agreeable, which does
+not always happen at an English hotel.
+
+Then we sallied out to find the lane which leads to Tintagel Castle,
+or Castles--for one sits in the sea, the other on the opposite heights
+in the mainland, with power of communicating by the narrow causeway
+which now at least exists between the rock and the shore. This seems to
+confirm the legend, how the luckless husband of Ygrayne shut up himself
+and his wife in two castles, he being slain in the one, and she married
+to the victorious King Uther Pendragon, in the other.
+
+Both looked so steep and dangerous in the fast-coming twilight that we
+thought it best to attempt neither, so contented ourselves with a walk
+on the cliffs and the smooth green field which led thither. Leaning
+against a gate, we stood and watched one of the grandest out of the
+many grand sunsets which had blessed us in Cornwall. The black rock of
+Tintagel filled the foreground; beyond, the eye saw nothing but sea,
+the sea which covers vanished Lyonesse, until it met the sky, a clear
+amber with long bars like waves, so that you could hardly tell where
+sea ended and sky began. Then into it there swam slowly a long low
+cloud, shaped like a boat, with a raised prow, and two or three figures
+sitting at the stern.
+
+"King Arthur and the three queens," we declared, and really a very
+moderate imagination could have fancied it this. "But what is that long
+black thing at the bow?"
+
+"Oh," observed drily the most practical of the three, "it's King
+Arthur's luggage."
+
+Sentiment could survive no more. We fell into fits of laughter, and
+went home to tea and bed.
+
+
+
+
+DAYS FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH--
+
+
+And all Arthurian days, so I will condense them into one chapter, and
+not spin out the hours that were flying so fast. Yet we hardly wished
+to stop them; for pleasant as travelling is, the best delight of all
+is--the coming home.
+
+Walking, to one more of those exquisite autumn days, warm as summer,
+yet with a tender brightness that hot summer never has, like the love
+between two old people, out of whom all passion has died--we remembered
+that we were at Tintagel, the home of Ygrayne and Arthur, of King Mark
+and Tristram and Iseult. I had to tell that story to my girls in the
+briefest form, how King Mark sent his nephew, Sir Tristram, to fetch
+home Iseult of Ireland for his queen, and on the voyage Bragswaine,
+her handmaiden, gave each a love-potion, which caused the usual fatal
+result; how at last Tristram fled from Tintagel into Brittany, where
+he married another Iseult "of the white hands," and lived peacefully,
+till, stricken by death, his fancy went back to his old love, whom he
+implored to come to him. She came, and found him dead. A tale--of which
+the only redeeming point is the innocence, simplicity, and dignity of
+the second Iseult, the unloved Breton wife, to whom none of our modern
+poets who have sung or travestied the wild, passionate, miserable, ugly
+story, have ever done full justice.
+
+These sinful lovers, the much-wronged but brutal King Mark, the
+scarcely less brutal Uther Pendragon, and hapless Ygrayne--what a
+curious condition of morals and manners the Arthurian legends unfold!
+A time when might was right; when every one seized what he wanted just
+because he wanted it, and kept it, if he could, till a stronger hand
+wrenched it from him. That in such a state of society there should
+ever have arisen the dimmest dream of a man like Arthur--not perhaps
+Tennyson's Arthur, the "blameless king," but even Sir Thomas Malory's,
+founded on mere tradition--is a remarkable thing. Clear through all
+the mists of ages shines that ideal of knighthood, enjoining courage,
+honour, faith, chastity, the worship of God and the service of men.
+Also, in the very highest degree, inculcating that chivalrous love of
+woman--not women--which barbaric nations never knew. As we looked at
+that hoar ruin sitting solitary in the sunny sea, and thought of the
+days when it was a complete fortress, inclosing a mass of human beings,
+all with human joys, sorrows, passions, crimes--things that must have
+existed in essence, however legend has exaggerated or altered them--we
+could not but feel that the mere possibility of a King Arthur shining
+down the dim vista of long-past centuries, is something to prove that
+goodness, like light, has an existence as indestructible as Him from
+whom it comes.
+
+We looked at Tintagel with its risky rock-path. "It will be a hot
+climb, and our bathing days are numbered. Let us go in the opposite
+direction to Bossinney Cove."
+
+Practicality when weighed against Poetry is poor--Poetry always kicks
+the beam. We went to Bossinney.
+
+Yet what a pretty cove it was! and how pleasant! While waiting for
+the tide to cover the little strip of sand, we re-mounted the winding
+path, and settled ourselves like seabirds on the furthermost point of
+rock, whence, just by extending a hand, we could have dropped anything,
+ourselves even, into a sheer abyss of boiling waves, dizzy to look down
+into, and yet delicious.
+
+So was the bath, though a little gloomy, for the sun could barely reach
+the shut-in cove; and we were interfered with considerably by--not
+tourists--but a line of donkeys! They were seen solemnly descending the
+narrow cliff-path one by one--eleven in all--each with an empty sack
+over his shoulder. Lastly came a very old man, who, without taking the
+least notice of us, disposed himself to fill these sacks with sand.
+One after the other the eleven meek animals came forward and submitted
+each to his load, which proceeding occupied a good hour and a half.
+I hardly know which was the most patient, the old man or his donkeys.
+
+[Illustration: CRESWICK'S MILL IN THE ROCKY VALLEY.]
+
+We began some of us to talk to his beasts, and others to himself. "Yes,
+it was hard work," he said, "but he managed to come down to the cove
+three times a day. And the asses were good asses. They all had their
+names; Lucy, Cherry, Sammy, Tom, Jack, Ned;" each animal pricked up its
+long ears and turned round its quiet eyes when called. Some were young
+and some old, but all were very sure-footed, which was necessary here.
+"The weight some of 'em would carry was wonderful."
+
+The old man seemed proud of the creatures, and kind to them too in a
+sort of way. He had been a fisherman, he said, but now was too old for
+that; so got his living by collecting sand.
+
+"It makes capital garden-paths, this sand. I'd be glad to bring you
+some, ladies," said he, evidently with an eye to business. When we
+explained that this was impracticable, unless he would come all the way
+to London, he merely said, "Oh," and accepted the disappointment. Then
+bidding us a civil "Good day," he disappeared with his laden train.
+
+Poor old fellow! Nothing of the past knightly days, nothing of the
+busy existing modern present affected him, or ever would do so. He
+might have been own brother, or cousin, to Wordsworth's "Leech-gatherer
+on the lonely moor." Whenever we think of Bossinney Cove, we shall
+certainly think of that mild old man and his eleven donkeys.
+
+The day was hot, and it had been a steep climb; we decided to drive in
+the afternoon, "for a rest," to Boscastle.
+
+Artists and tourists haunt this picturesque nook. A village built at
+the end of a deep narrow creek, which runs far inland, and is a safe
+shelter for vessels of considerable size. On either side is a high
+footpath, leading to two headlands, from both of which the views of
+sea and coast are very fine. And there are relics of antiquity and
+legends thereto belonging--a green mound, all that remains of Bottrieux
+Castle; and Ferrabury Church, with its silent tower. A peal of bells
+had been brought, and the ship which carried them had nearly reached
+the cove, when the pilot, bidding the captain "thank God for his safe
+voyage," was answered that he "thanked only himself and a fair wind."
+Immediately a storm arose; and the ship went down with every soul on
+board--except the pilot. So the church tower is mute--but on winter
+nights the lost bells are still heard, sounding mournfully from the
+depths of the sea.
+
+As we sat, watching with a vague fascination the spouting, minute by
+minute, of a "blow-hole," almost as fine as the Kynance post-office--we
+moralised on the story of the bells, and on the strange notions people
+have, even in these days, of Divine punishments; imputing to the
+Almighty Father all their own narrow jealousies and petty revenges,
+dragging down God into the likeness of men, such an one as themselves,
+instead of striving to lift man into the image of God.
+
+Meantime the young folks rambled and scrambled--watched with anxious
+and even envious eyes--for it takes one years to get entirely
+reconciled to the quiescence of the down-hill journey. And then we
+drove slowly back--just in time for another grand sunset, with Tintagel
+black in the foreground, until it and all else melted into darkness,
+and there was nothing left but to
+
+  "Watch the twilight stars come out
+    Above the lonely sea."
+
+Next morning we must climb Tintagel, for it would be our last day.
+
+And what a heavenly day it was! How softly the waves crept in upon the
+beach--just as they might have done when they laid at Merlin's feet
+"the little naked child," disowned of man but dear to Heaven, who was
+to grow up into the "stainless king."
+
+He and his knights--the "shadowy people of the realm of dream,"--were
+all about us, as, guided by a rheumatic old woman, who climbed feebly
+up the stair, where generations of ghostly feet must have ascended and
+descended, we reached a bastion and gateway, quite pre-historic. Other
+ruins apparently belong to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. But to
+this there is no clue. It may have been the very landing-place of King
+Uther or King Mark, or other Cornish heroes, who held this wonderful
+natural-artificial fortress in the dim days of old romance.
+
+"Here are King Arthur's cups and saucers," said the old woman, pausing
+in the midst of a long lament over her own ailments, to point out some
+holes in the slate rock. "And up there you'll find the chapel. It's an
+easy climb--if you mind the path--just where it passes the spring."
+
+[Illustration: BOSCASTLE.]
+
+That spring, trickling down from the very top of the rock, and making
+a verdant space all round it--what a treasure it must have been to the
+unknown inhabitants who, centuries ago, entrenched themselves here--for
+offence or defence--against the main-land. Peacefully it flowed on
+still, with the little ferns growing, and the sheep nibbling beside
+it. We idle tourists alone occupied that solitary height where those
+long-past warlike races--one succeeding the other--lived and loved,
+fought and died.
+
+The chapel--where the high altar and a little burial-ground beside it
+can still be traced--is clearly much later than Arthur's time. However,
+there are so few data to go upon, and the action of sea-storms destroys
+so much every year, that even to the learned archaeologist, Tintagel is
+a great mystery, out of which the imaginative mind may evolve almost
+anything it likes.
+
+We sat a long time on the top of the rock--realising only the one
+obvious fact that our eyes were gazing on precisely the same scene,
+seawards and coastwards, that all these long-dead eyes were accustomed
+to behold. Beaten by winds and waves till the grey of its slate
+formation is nearly black; worn into holes by the constant action of
+the tide which widens yearly the space between it and the main-land,
+and gnaws the rock below into dangerous hollows that in time become
+sea-caves, Tintagel still remains--and one marvels that so much of it
+does still remain--a landmark of the cloudy time between legend and
+actual history.
+
+Whether the ruin on the opposite height was once a portion of
+Tintagel Castle, before the sea divided it, making a promontory into
+an island--or whether it was the Castle Terrabil, in which Gorlois,
+Ygrayne's husband, was slain--no one now can say. That both the twin
+fortresses were habitable till Elizabeth's time, there is evidence to
+prove. But since then they have been left to decay, to the silent sheep
+and the screeching ravens, including doubtless that ghostly chough, in
+whose shape the soul of King Arthur is believed still to revisit the
+familiar scene.
+
+We did not see that notable bird--though we watched with interest two
+tame and pretty specimens of its almost extinct species walking about
+in a flower-garden in the village, and superstitiously cherished there.
+We were told that to this day no Cornishman likes to shoot a chough
+or a raven. So they live and breed in peace among the twin ruins, and
+scream contentedly to the noisy stream which dances down the rocky
+hollow from Trevena, and leaps into the sea at Porth Hern--the "iron
+gate," over against Tintagel. Otherwise, all is solitude and silence.
+
+We thought we had seen everything, and come to an end, but at the hotel
+we found a party who had just returned from visiting some sea-caves
+beyond Tintagel, which they declared were "the finest things they had
+found in Cornwall."
+
+It was a lovely calm day, and it was our last day. A few hours of it
+alone remained. Should we use them? We might never be here again.
+And, I think, the looser grows one's grasp of life, the greater is
+one's longing to make the most of it, to see all we can see of this
+wonderful, beautiful world. So, after a hasty meal, we found ourselves
+once more down at Porth Hern, seeking a boat and man--alas! not John
+Curgenven--under whose guidance we might brave the stormy deep.
+
+It was indeed stormy! No sooner had we rounded the rock, than the baby
+waves of the tiny bay grew into hills and valleys, among which our boat
+went dancing up and down like a sea-gull!
+
+"Ay, there's some sea on, there always is here, but we'll be through it
+presently," indifferently said the elder of the two boatmen; and plied
+his oars, as, I think, only these Cornish boatmen can do, talking all
+the while. He pointed out a slate quarry, only accessible from the sea,
+unless the workmen liked to be let down by ropes, which sometimes had
+to be done. We saw them moving about like black emmets among the clefts
+of the rocks, and heard plainly above the sound of the sea the click
+of their hammers. Strange, lonely, perilous work it must be, even in
+summer. In winter--
+
+"Oh, they're used to it; we're all used to it," said our man, who was
+intelligent enough, though nothing equal to John Curgenven. "Many a
+time I've got sea-fowls' eggs on those rocks there," pointing to a
+cliff which did not seem to hold footing for a fly. "We all do it. The
+gentry buy them, and we're glad of the money. Dangerous?--yes, rather;
+but one must earn one's bread, and it's not so bad when you take to it
+young."
+
+Nevertheless, I think I shall never look at a collection of sea-birds'
+eggs without a slight shudder, remembering those awful cliffs.
+
+"Here you are, ladies, and the sea's down a bit, as I said. Hold on,
+mate, the boat will go right into the cave."
+
+And before we knew what was happening, we found ourselves floated out
+of daylight into darkness--very dark it seemed at first--and rocking
+on a mass of heaving waters, shut in between two high walls, so narrow
+that it seemed as if every heave would dash us in pieces against them;
+while beyond was a dense blackness, from which one heard the beat of
+the everlasting waves against a sort of tunnel, a stormy sea-grave from
+which no one could ever hope to come out alive.
+
+"I don't like this at all," said a small voice.
+
+"Hadn't we better get out again?" practically suggested another.
+
+But no sooner was this done than the third of the party longed to
+return; and begged for "only five minutes" in that wonderful place,
+compared to which Dolor Ugo, and the other Lizard caves, became as
+nothing. They were beautiful, but this was terrible. Yet with its
+terror was mingled an awful delight. "Give me but five, nay, two
+minutes more!"
+
+"Very well, just as you choose," was the response of meek despair.
+So of course, Poetry yielded. The boatmen were told to row on into
+daylight and sunshine--at least as much sunshine as the gigantic
+overhanging cliffs permitted. And never, never, never in this world
+shall I again behold that wonderful, mysterious sea-cave.
+
+But like all things incomplete, resigned, or lost, it has fixed itself
+on my memory with an almost painful vividness. However, I promised not
+to regret--not to say another word about it; and I will not. I did see
+it, for just a glimpse; and that will serve.
+
+Two more pictures remain, the last gorgeous sunset, which I watched in
+quiet solitude, sitting on a tombstone by Tintagel church--a building
+dating from Saxon times, perched on the very edge of a lofty cliff,
+and with a sea-view that reaches from Trevose Head on one side to Bude
+Haven on the other. Also, our last long dreamy drive; in the mild
+September sunshine, across the twenty-one miles of sparsely inhabited
+country which lie between Tintagel and Launceston. In the midst of
+it, on the top of a high flat of moorland, our driver turned round
+and pointed with his whip to a long low mound, faintly visible about
+half-a-mile off. "There, ladies, that's King Arthur's grave."
+
+The third, at least, that we had either seen or heard of. These varied
+records of the hero's last resting-place remind one of the three heads,
+said to be still extant, of Oliver Cromwell, one when he was a little
+boy, one as a young man, and the third as an old man.
+
+But after all my last and vividest recollection of King Arthur's
+country is that wild sail--so wild that I wished I had taken it
+alone--in the solitary boat, up and down the tossing waves in face of
+Tintagel rock; the dark, iron-bound coast with its awful caves, the
+bright sunshiny land, and ever-threatening sea. Just the region, in
+short, which was likely to create a race like that which Arthurian
+legend describes, full of passionate love and deadly hate, capable of
+barbaric virtues, and equally barbaric crimes. An age in which the mere
+idea of such a hero as that ideal knight
+
+  "Who reverenced his conscience as his God:
+  Whose glory was redressing human wrong:
+  Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it:
+  Who loved one only, and who clave to her--"
+
+rises over the blackness of darkness like a morning star.
+
+If Arthur could "come again"--perhaps in the person of one of the
+descendants of a prince who was not unlike him, who lived and died
+among us in this very nineteenth century--
+
+  "Wearing the white flower of a blameless life--"
+
+if this could be--what a blessing for Arthur's beloved England!
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD POST-OFFICE, TREVENA.]
+
+
+
+
+L'ENVOI
+
+
+Written more than a year after. The "old hen" and her chickens have
+long been safe at home. A dense December fog creeps in everywhere,
+choking and blinding, as I finish the history of those fifteen innocent
+days, calm as autumn, and bright as spring, when we three took our
+Unsentimental Journey together through Cornwall. Many a clever critic,
+like Sir Charles Coldstream when he looked into the crater of Vesuvius,
+may see "nothing in it"--a few kindly readers looking a little further,
+may see a little more: probably the writer only sees the whole.
+
+But such as it is, let it stay--simple memorial of what Americans would
+call "a good time," the sunshine of which may cast its brightness far
+forward, even into that quiet time "when travelling days are done."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+  LONDON:
+  R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
+  BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Unsentimental Journey through
+Cornwall, by Dinah Maria Craik
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