THE PENZANCE DISTRICT
Whatever claims other places may set up, Penzance is truly the
business capital of western Cornwall, the metropolis of the Land's End
district. It is first and foremost a market-town. Of course, it is
also a coasting port and fishing port and a watering-place; but none
of these things so wholly absorb it as do the weekly markets, when
countryfolk from all the neighbouring villages throng Market-Jew
Street with their conveyances, their parcels and packages, their
cattle, their eager chatter. These people and their forbears have made
Penzance what it is; they have not sought to beautify it much--a
reputation as a holiday resort has been thrust on the place by its
convenience, its commanding position as the gate-town of Land's End;
Penzance did little to advertise itself, but the visitors have come,
and are coming, and the town is doing its best to give them a fair
entertainment. Though from the coast or the sea it often makes a fine
appearance, the town is one of utility rather than of adornment. It
feels that its existence is fully justified, without having to resort
to artificial attractions. It builds no pavilions or glass-houses or
aquarium, it needs no constructed lakes to retain its sea, nor towers
to emulate rocks that Nature has denied. Primarily a place of business
rather than of pleasure, one soon learns to admire and to respect it;
there is nothing garish and little that is fashionable about it. Not
many of its buildings are calculated to make an impression on the
visitor, except the Market Hall that makes Market-Jew Street a rather
striking thoroughfare, and the church of St. Mary, which has at least
a charm of position. The Municipal buildings are a handsome piece of
architecture; but it is not in these features, nor in the Morrab
Gardens, in spite of their subtropical vegetation, that the charm of
the town lies. That charm is a certain homely friendliness in the
aspect of the place, the bustle, the soberness and geniality of its
people. Further, Penzance is a good place to get away from--which
sounds like a left-handed compliment, but has really quite other
meaning; it is a fine centre for the whole far west of Cornwall.
As a town Penzance cannot claim great antiquity, though its district
is remarkably rich in prehistoric remains. The name is _pen-sans_, the
"holy headland"; evidently misread by the town authorities as "holy
head," when they adopted the head of John the Baptist as the town
arms. There was an ancient chapel standing on the present Battery
Rocks, and this without doubt was the sacred headland which the title
refers to. The mother-parish was St. Madron, about 2 1/2 miles to the
north-west; and it is by no means clear who Madron was. Some think he
was an Irish Medhran, some a Welsh Madrun; some even assert that he
was none other than the great Padarn of Wales. But in 1835 St. Mary's
was built at Penzance, on the site of an old chapel to Our Lady, of
which some relics are preserved. The town was granted a market in
1332, a charter in 1512, and in 1614 deeds of incorporation. But the
most important event in the history of early Penzance was its burning
by the Spaniards in 1595. There was an old Cornish folk-rhyme which
foretold that--
"They shall land on the rock of Merlin,
Who shall burn Paul, Penzance, and Newlyn";
and perhaps this led the inhabitants to regard the enemy as invincible
when they really did land, especially as their descent took place on a
rock at Mousehole that bore the name of Merlin. The Spanish were left
to do pretty well as they pleased, burning and pillaging Mousehole,
Paul, Newlyn, and Penzance, but they thought it advisable to retreat
to their galleons in Mount's Bay for the night, and next day, the
countryfolk having plucked up some heart, and there being rumours of
English seamen drawing near, it was found prudent to decamp
altogether. A new town rose from the ashes of the old one, but there
was further trouble in the time of the Civil War, and Penzance
suffered for loyalty to the King. Under the circumstances we must not
look for any remains of great antiquity in the town, though that which
is historical antiquity is mere youth in comparison with the
immemorial age that invests this farthest corner of Britain with a
garb of wonder and mystery. Close to Chyandour (the "house by the
water"), and not far from the Penzance terminus, is the Lescudjack
encampment, or castle, which carries us back to the early settlement
of the shores of Mount's Bay; only about three miles inland are the
huts of Chysauster, where there was evidently an extensive village in
days long before Penzance was dreamed of. Whether it was that this
farthest neck of land became the refuge of driven races, pushed
further and further westward by new encroaching hordes, it is certain
that the Land's End district offers more relics of prehistoric
antiquity than any other equal tract of land can show.
[Illustration: PENZANCE.
_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]
When Defoe came to Penzance, he seems to have been surprised to find
it so civilised and so comfortable, "being so remote from London,
which is the centre of our wealth." That is the remark of a true
Londoner, showing an attitude of mind towards the provincial that is
not quite extinct. He says: "This town of Penzance is a place of good
business, well built and populous, has a good trade, and a great many
ships belonging to it, notwithstanding it is so remote. Here are also
a great many good families of gentlemen, though in this utmost angle
of the nation." It is clear he expected to find a village of savages.
As a matter of fact Penzance now, with its admirable train service,
seems nearer to Paddington than many places that are not half so far
off; every express that comes westward brings a savour of the great
city with it, just as each train that leaves Penzance carries material
evidence of Cornwall's existence into the very heart of old London.
All the flowers from Scilly go by this route, and the Penzance
neighbourhood has many flowers, fruits, and early vegetables of its
own to dispatch to Covent Garden, together with a considerable
quantity of fish. The railway is carried by viaduct across Marazion
sands; in 1869 a large portion was shattered by the sea, and the
line had to be removed further back. Sea and winds remain as untamable
as they were when men of the Stone Age broke each other's heads at
Chysauster. In Alverton Street (retaining the name of the old
Alwaretone estate, mentioned in Domesday) are the museums and
buildings of the Natural History, Antiquarian, and Cornish Royal
Geological Societies, with the Guildhall, and a public room for
meetings; but the Penzance Library, containing about 25,000 volumes,
many of great rarity, is kept at Morrab House. There are Schools of
Art and of Mining--both subjects strongly to the front in Cornwall.
Immediately below the domed market-house, once the Town Hall, is a
statue of the town's most famous son, Sir Humphry Davy, born here in
1778, his father being a wood-carver. He was educated partly at Truro,
and early evinced that taste for poetry and angling that never left
him. After serving with a Penzance surgeon, he went to Dr. Beddoes at
Clifton, where he met Coleridge and Southey, and discovered the
curious effects of "laughing-gas." His further career does not belong
to Cornwall, but he proved himself a true son of the Duchy by
inventing the Davy safety-lamp for miners. Another great man in a
different school of activity, Pellew, better known as Lord Exmouth,
though born at Dover, spent much of his boyhood with his Cornish
grandmother at Penzance. His gallant deeds against the enemies of his
country form a stirring page in our national history, but Mr. Norway
has told us of one occasion on which he ran away from a pursuer. He
was a mischievous lad, and once, "having wandered with a friend up
Castle Horneck Avenue, he was inspired to discharge a few shots
through the latticed window of a cottage inhabited by two excellent
old maiden ladies. The pellets were aimed at pewter plates, and struck
those only, but the insult knocked at the heart of one of the old
ladies, who seized the firehook, as the nearest weapon, kilted up her
gown, and gave chase. Pellew's courage dissolved at the first sight of
this gaunt apparition, running as he thought no lady of her age could
run. He fled like a hare; she cast away her firehook and followed; he
threw away his musket and gained some ground; she caught him up again,
and in Madron church-town was almost on his back, when there came a
kindly hill. The old lady's wind was gone, she could spurt no more; so
while the culprit fled away in shameful rout without his arms, she
retreated honourably, the one person (if she could have known it) who
ever terrified Pellew."
Penzance has quite a commodious harbour, as it deserves, having spent
at least L100,000 on it; there is a regular service to Scilly, a good
deal of coasting, much fishing, and some ship-building. The west arm
of the pier is built on a vein of felspar porphyry, visible at low
water. Around the harbour cluster the narrow streets of the older
town, with nothing particular to recommend them; beyond this is the
town's one conventional feature, its promenade. A rather dreary and
unkempt mile of road takes us to Newlyn; and in this part Penzance has
certainly unduly emphasised its carelessness of appearance. It need
not be quite so slovenly and slipshod. Newlyn, the paradise of
artists, deserves a better approach, and Penzance itself merits a
fairer exit.
But before passing on to Newlyn something must be said both of Gulval
and of Madron. The tract of sheltered land in which Gulval lies,
reaching from Mount's Bay to Ludgvan, is one of the most productive in
Cornwall, being chiefly devoted to market-gardens and flowers; its
rare mildness and productiveness is proved by the wealth of exotic
vegetation around Gulval Church and Vicarage. In this respect the
place actually rivals Tresco, and the fields of narcissi are as
luxuriant as those of the Scillies. Much of this soil is worked by
hand, in the good old-fashioned style, whose results always seem
better than those of machinery. It is quite an idyllic corner of land,
with a tangible outcome that goes to the markets in the shape of early
vegetables and spring flowers. Below stretches the wide Bay, with its
gem, the Mount, of which it is so glorious a setting. There is another
gem close at hand, and that is Gulval Church itself, dedicated to a
St. Gudval or Wolvele. The general character of the church is Early
English, but there were two restorations in the past century, the last
being in 1892, and a great deal of modern decoration has been added,
largely in Derbyshire felspar, with excellent result. The church has
been under the special care of the Bolitho family, whose monuments
abound here, and it is a proof that old ecclesiastic buildings may be
beautified by modern adornment, without the disastrous result that
sometimes attends such attempts. Gulval holy well was one of the most
famous in Cornwall, and there can be little doubt that the saint's
early oratory was on the site of the church--a few traces, indeed, may
remain in the walling, a successful blending of the very ancient and
the recent. Even more famous was the well of St. Madron or Maddern,
which was quite a Lourdes in its way. The church here, probably on an
older site, dates from the time of Richard I., being built by one of
the Pomeroys; but little remains of this earlier building except its
very curious and apparently mutilated font. The present church is
chiefly Perpendicular.
In the graveyard is the epitaph of George Daniell, the founder of
Madron schools in days when men built schools instead of quarrelling
about them:--
"Belgia me birth, Britaine me breeding gave;
Cornwall a wife, ten children, and a grave."
Madron Feast (Advent Sunday) was always an occasion of prolonged
merrymakings and dissipation. It seems to have been in this district
that the last bull-baiting took place in Cornwall. A witness states
that it took place in Gulval parish, in the summer of 1814: "I
remember the black bull being led by four men. The crowd was dispersed
early in the morning by a severe thunderstorm, which much alarmed the
people, who thought it (I was led to believe) a judgment from heaven."
This proves that their minds were already uneasy. It is devoutly to be
wished that all those whose so-called sports cause suffering to
animals may be equally on the watch for judgments from heaven. The
village of old Madron is very beautiful and interesting.
Newlyn, a long mile beyond Penzance, in spite of the painters who have
carried its name far and wide, is still largely unspoiled. It must be
said for painters that they do not spoil a place as other visitors so
often do; in fact, all change--modernising, restoring, destroying--is
opposed to their sense of fitness; they are champions of the
picturesque and sworn foes of the jerry-builder. Newlyn remains quaint
and fishy, though it has its little Art Gallery and its Rue des Beaux
Arts. There are artistic industries also--copper repousse and
enamel jewellery; a new Renaissance has come to this Cornish
fishing-village--its youths and maidens are learning mysteries of
beautiful craft which may save them from the deadly inanities of the
average British workman. When we speak of early Newlyn days, of course
we mean the days of the first artistic settlement, some thirty years
since; older Newlyn has little to tell, except that it was burnt by
the Spanish, and that its life has always been bound up with the
fortunes of the fishery. Mr. Stanhope Forbes has told us something of
the place as he first knew it. "I had come from France, where I had
been studying, and wandering down into Cornwall, came one spring
morning along that dusty road by which Newlyn is approached from
Penzance. Little did I think that the cluster of grey-roofed houses
which I saw before me against the hillside would be my home for so
many years." But he bewails that Newlyn is not what it was; there has
been some spoliation, some pulling down of old cottages, some
unsightly intrusion of the ugly and modern, though certainly less than
might have been feared. It was here that Frank Bramley painted his
"Hopeless Dawn" and "After Fifty Years"; here Walter Langley painted
"Among the Missing," and Mr. Forbes "The Health of the Bride." It
would be hopeless to attempt to name all the pictures that
have carried different aspects of Newlyn life to the London
exhibitions--the piers, the blue-guernseyed fishermen, the
brown-sailed smacks (now partly giving place to steam-drifters), the
rich-complexioned old men and women, the lovely bright-eyed children,
the sturdy lads, the gulls, the wonderful bay. From the first there
was an excellent understanding between the painters and the people;
great tact was shown by the artists, and a mutual pride sprang up
between them. What is true of Newlyn is true also of St. Ives and of
all the haunts around Land's End where painters have established;
rarely has there been any friction, even if the artists have sometimes
been regarded as amiable madmen. It is true that John Brett, the
marine painter, before Newlyn's most palmy days, managed to offend the
natives by his too outspoken religious opinions and his habit of
laying on colour with his palette-knife. "What can you expect," asked
a fisherman, "of a man who says there's no God and paints his pictures
with a knife?" It will be remembered that religious differences have
been a cause of strife before now between Cornish fishermen and
fishers who brought laxer views of Sunday fishing from the East
Country. Such things have still a strong hold on those who "do
business in great waters." But there are times when politics, blown to
white-heat by the Bethels, will drive even religion from the minds of
the fisher-folk, as we may judge by a story told by Mr. Hudson. It was
after the visit of a lady missioner, who usually reaped a rich harvest
of converts; some one asked the minister how many souls had been won
on this occasion. "Not one this time," he answered; "we were too busy
with the elections."
The Newlyn corner of Mount's Bay is named Gwavas Lake, and it is said
that it once really was a lake. A little southward we get into the
parish of Paul, whose name probably embodies no dedication to any St.
Paul, but is a corruption of the Cornish _pol_--a pool or creek.
Mousehole, one of the most delightful fishing-villages in England, is
in this parish, far more unspoiled even than Newlyn. As has been
already mentioned, Paul was burned by Spaniards, July 23, 1595, on
which day, the parish register tells us, "the church, towre, bells,
and all other things pertaining to the same, together with the houses
and goods, was burn'd and spoil'd by the Spaniards in the said parish,
being Wensdaie the daie aforsaid, in the 37th yeare of the Reigne of
our Sovereigne Ladie Elizabeth, by the grace of God, of England,
Fraunce, and Ireland, defender of the Faith." It seems, however, that
the church was not so utterly destroyed as this might lead us to
believe; much of the stonework survived, including the lofty granite
tower. Most persons remember Paul as the burial-place of Dolly
Pentreath, whose claim to be the last person speaking Cornish can
hardly be maintained, though even she did not speak it habitually. Her
married name appears to have been Jeffery, but that did not matter;
when the wife was the better half her maiden name often prevailed over
that of the husband, in later days than this. In 1768 Daines
Barrington visited her, and was heartily abused by her in Cornish
because he slyly suggested that she did not understand the tongue. He
says: "She does indeed talk Cornish as readily as others do English,
being bred up from a child to know no other language, nor could she
talk a word of English before she was past twenty years of age, as,
her father being a fisherman, she was sent with fish to Penzance at
twelve years old, and sold them in the Cornish language, which the
inhabitants in general, even the gentry, did then well understand. She
is positive, however, that there is neither in Mousehole, nor in any
other part of the county, any other person who knows anything of it,
or at least can converse in it. She is poor, and maintained partly by
the parish and partly by fortune-telling and gabbling Cornish." The
stone above her grave was erected in 1860 by "the Prince Louis Lucien
Bonaparte, in union with the Rev. John Garrett, Vicar of St. Paul."
Prince Lucien, nephew of the first Napoleon, was an eager student of
philology. In 1854 George Borrow, then touring Cornwall (his father
was a Cornishman), visited Paul Church, and noticed a Cornish epitaph
on the walls--said to be the only inscription in the old vernacular
surviving in this fashion. It may be given as a specimen of the
extinct language:--
"Bounas heb dueth Eu poes Karens wei
tha Pobl Bohodzhak Paull han Egles nei";
which has been thus rendered:--
"Eternal life be his whose loving care
Gave Paul an almshouse and the church repair."
Two words here prove how Cornish was affected by the Roman
occupation--_pobl_ for people, and _egles_ for church.
[Illustration: LANYON CROMLECH.
_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]
When Paul was burned Mousehole suffered also, and its only house that
survived was the manor of the Keigwins, now the "Keigwin Arms," whose
appearance quite justifies the antiquity claimed for it. Borrow, when
he came here, must have been struck by the similarity of the name
of Mousehole with that of Mousehold Heath, with which he was so
familiar at Norwich; there seems no satisfactory explanation of either
name. Perhaps both embody some Celtic root. Mousehole was once called
Porth Enys, the island-port; and there is a little islet, St.
Clement's, lying off it. The place is in every way quieter than
Newlyn; there are fewer visitors in the summer months, less bustle on
the quays, less stir of fish-auctions; even the artists are rarer. All
is quaintness and primitive seclusion. There may be a somewhat too
aggressive savour of pilchards; but we must excuse this when we
remember what the pilchards mean to these fisher-folk, who were once
considered somewhat of a race apart, with a supposed infusion of
Spanish blood in them. There was a quay here and a chapelry in very
early days, and the place was active enough before Penzance had come
forward as a port at all; it is said that there was also a small
oratory on St. Clement's Isle. The fisher-folk have spent a good deal
on improving their harbour. The coast is grand and cavernous. On both
sides, near Newlyn and at Lamorna, there is some busy quarrying; the
quarries at Lamorna supplied much of the granite for the Thames
Embankment. Being a favourite trip from Penzance, the cove at Lamorna
is pretty well known; it opens to the sea from a very beautiful little
valley formed by the Lamorna stream, wooded with hazels and alders.
There need be no complaint just here that Cornwall is treeless, though
beyond and above the land stretches unwooded and desolate. But it is a
grand sort of desolation; only in thick weather or fierce driving
storms do we feel in a kind of lost world. At the head of the Lamorna
valley is an estate known as Trewoofe, or Troove, with a remarkable
_fogou_ (subterranean passage), not easy to find and not easy to
enter. It runs for about 36 feet, being 6 feet high and nearly as
wide, and is formed of rugged unhewn blocks. Stories tell that it
successfully sheltered a party of fugitive Royalists once, and it may
also have been used by smugglers of later date; but for its origin we
must go farther back, and perhaps it takes us to the dim days when
race was struggling with race on this far western limit of land. There
are so many prehistoric relics near as to be almost bewildering, and
this is surely not the place in which to discourse learnedly of them
all; besides which, the utmost learning does little but reveal our
dense ignorance of their real significance. Troove belonged to the Le
Veales, or Levelis, family, who came over with the Conqueror, and
flourished in this spot for six centuries, dying at last in the person
of Arthur Levelis, who was buried at St. Buryan in 1671. The modern
house retains only a few fragments of the mansion; but the doorway
remains, its jambs sculptured with queer figures, and three calves'
heads carved above it as the family arms. About half a mile westward
is Boleigh, or Boleit, with the Pipers--two rough granite figures.
When Athelstan traversed Cornwall from end to end, about the year 936,
he is said to have fought his last battle against the defeated British
at Boleit; not content with the whole of Cornwall, he crossed to the
Scillies and took these also. It is quite possible that there was
fighting here at that time, but very certainly the Pipers were not
then raised as burial monoliths; they are clearly of far earlier date.
In an open field near is the stone circle of _Dawns men_, the
dancing-stones, known as the Merry Maidens; there are nineteen rough
boulders of granite, and there was probably a twentieth. Naturally,
there is the usual story that they were maidens who danced on the
Sabbath and were thus punished, the Pipers being similarly doomed for
playing the dances.
Though St. Buryan lies about three miles from the coast, it must be
visited for the beauty of its church and the interest of its
traditions. The church is so named after Buriena, a beautiful Irish
girl who came to Cornwall to become a saint, but it is very difficult
to decide definitely as to her personality. We may conjecture that she
came to Cornwall about the same time as St. Piran, perhaps in his
company, and that she set up her cell in a field formerly called the
Sanctuary, and later the Sentry. The present church is always
understood to have been founded by Athelstan, when he sighted the
Scilly Isles from this high ground, and vowed that if he returned
safely from their conquest he would endow a collegiate establishment
here. The expedition to Scilly accomplished, he observed his vow, and
founded an establishment consisting of a dean and three prebendaries,
with jurisdiction over the parishes of Buryan, Levan, and Sennen.
There was trouble later, because the Buryan priests claimed freedom
from episcopal control; but we find the Bishop of Exeter dedicating
the church here in 1238, of which some Norman arches, font, and stoup
survive; Athelstan's church has quite vanished. The building is about
100 feet long, and compared with the nave the chancel is almost like a
cathedral choir, thus proving its collegiate character, the stalls
still remaining. Much foolish restoration has done irreparable
damage, but the church is still beautiful in design and detail;
unhappily the screen was badly mutilated, and many bench-ends
destroyed. When Blight wrote his admirable book on the churches of
West Cornwall the Miserere seats could be raised; later, they were
very stupidly fixed down. On the floor of the tower lies the ancient
tomb of "Clarice La Femme Cheffrei De Bolleit," with an inscription in
Norman-French characters of the thirteenth century, begging visitors
to pray for her soul, and promising a ten days' pardon to those who do
so; there can be no harm in our testing the efficacy of this offer.
The tower that rises above this remarkably interesting grave is 90
feet in height, and as the church itself stands high it forms a fine
landmark. Outside there is a shaftless cross of Celtic appearance, but
not supposed to be Celtic in origin, though it certainly may have been
adapted from a Celtic original. There is another old cross outside the
churchyard gate, which may perhaps at one time have been included
within the sacred pale, as traces of burial have been found. But
churchyards were not often diminished in this manner, and the graves
must probably be otherwise accounted for. In the church is an
altar-cloth, now rarely used, worked by two maiden ladies more than
two centuries since.
St. Buryan is familiar to all visitors to the Land's End, as the cars
usually make it a halting-place. Even more famous, and perhaps more
attractive to the conventional sight-seer, is the Logan Stone of
Treryn, or Treen; but what makes this spot truly worth seeing is not
the mass of poised rock, which certainly stirs clumsily when pushed,
but the grand headland itself, on which there is a _dinas_, or old
entrenchment. The coast here has more beauties than can be named, but
this immemorial stronghold of a vanished race, on its magnificent
bluff of granite that juts from a turf-clad neck of land, is far more
glorious than any logging-stone, even though it may have been
displaced and replaced by a nephew of the poet Goldsmith. The little
hamlet of Treen is just across the fields. Logan rocks are simply a
freak of nature, in spite of the Druidic nonsense that has been talked
about them; softer soils have been eroded beneath, and the rock has
remained balanced. Treen is in the parish of St. Levan, but we have to
pass Porthcurnow Cove before reaching that saint's immediate locality.
Porthcurnow, with its fine shore and grand seas, and its memories of
Tregeagle, whose doom is to sweep the sands from Porthcurnow to the
farther side of Land's End, has in some sense had its romance knocked
out of it by the establishment of the Eastern Telegraph Company, and
the presence of about a hundred keen, sport-loving telegraphists. They
have a comfortable settlement for their exile here, with excellent
cricket and tennis grounds and perfect accommodation. Their duties
resemble those of any telegraph instrument-room in the country, but
the locality should render their leisure hours delightful. Hunt tells
a tale of a Spectre Ship at Porthcurnow, but all these traditions were
dying when he told them, and that is a good while ago now. The name of
Porthcurnow is interesting, as it probably embodies the root of the
name of Cornwall itself; and there was once a very ancient chapel
here, raised on a burial cairn of far greater antiquity; very slight
traces remain. Perhaps Penberth and St. Loy's Coves ought to have been
mentioned; but we must pass on to St. Levan, who was a very attractive
saint, with an engaging touch of human nature about him. Even so, his
identity is a little doubtful. The prefix St. is quite modern in
Cornwall, and as this parish was once spoken of as Siluan, and is
still sometimes called Slevan, it is possible that the real saint was
Silvanus, and not Levan at all. Whoever he was, he had a little
oratory and holy well on the cliff below the site of the present
church; and he lived on a single fish each day. One day two fish
persisted in being caught; and when he reached his cell he found that
his sister Breaca (whose name survives at Breage) had paid him a visit
with her two children. This legend goes on the usual supposition that
the saint was really the Irish Levan, brother of St. Breage. Unhappily
the children ate so eagerly that they were choked by the fishbones, in
memory of which bream (or sometimes chad) used to be called
"choke-cheeld." Mr. Baring-Gould says this caused a coolness between
brother and sister. He had another unpleasantness with a woman Joanna,
who lived near, who was a rigid vegetarian, and quarrelled with the
saint for catching his fish on Sunday. He said that to fish was no
worse than to do gardening. We may repeat these old stories, but the
Cornish folk of to-day know nothing of them; they are dead, except as
matter for the guide-books. St. Levan Church is snugly sheltered. It
has been carefully restored and is very attractive, with a good tower,
some fine bench-ends, and a beautiful screen. Outside the church is a
cleft boulder of granite, and there used to be a local saying that
when a pack-horse should ride through St. Levan's stone the world
would come to an end. A little beyond is the really delightful
Porthgwarra, with its rugged stone slip and tunnels leading to the
little fishing-cove. Visitors are beginning to discover Porthgwarra,
and it is one of those quiet, lonely haunts where lodgings must be
booked long in advance. Cornwall has a good many such--the resort of
those who shun the ordinary watering-place.