unfriended, melancholy, slow"--for a chance of finer weather before we
started to explore the Lizard promontory. But our patience availed us
little. The next morning, there was the soft, thick, misty Cornish rain
still falling, just as it had already fallen without cessation for
twenty-four hours. To wait longer, in perfect inactivity, and in the
dullest of towns--doubtful whether the sky would clear even in a week's
time--was beyond mortal endurance. We shouldered our knapsacks, and
started for the Lizard in defiance of rain, and in defiance of our
landlady's reiterated assertions that we should lose our way in the
mist, when we walked inland; and should slip into invisible holes, and
fall over fog-veiled precipices among the rocks, if we ventured to
approach the coast.
What sort of scenery we walked through, I am unable to say. The rain was
above--the mud was below--the mist was all around us. The few objects,
near at hand, that we did now and then see, dripped with wet, and had a
shadowy visionary look. Sometimes, we met a forlorn cow steaming
composedly by the roadside--or an old horse, standing up to his fetlocks
in mire, and sneezing vociferously--or a good-humoured peasant, who
directed us on our road, and informed us with a grin, that this sort of
"fine rain" often lasted for a fortnight. Sometimes we passed little
villages built in damp holes, where trees, cottages, women scampering
backwards and forwards peevishly on domestic errands, big boys with
empty sacks over their heads and shoulders, gossiping gloomily against
barn walls, and ill-conditioned pigs grunting for admission at closed
kitchen doors, all looked soaked through and through together. Nothing,
in short, could be more dreary and comfortless than our walk for the
first two hours. But, after that, as we approached "Lizard Town," the
clouds began to part to seaward; layer after layer of mist drove past
us, rolling before the wind; peeps of faint greenish-blue sky appeared
and enlarged apace. By the time we had arrived at our destination, a
white, watery sunlight was falling over the wet landscape. The
prognostications of our Cornish friends were pleasantly falsified. A
fine day was in store for us after all.
The man who first distinguished the little group of cottages that we now
looked on, by the denomination of Lizard _Town_, must have possessed
magnificent ideas indeed on the subject of nomenclature. If the place
looked like anything in the world, it looked like a large collection of
farm out-buildings without a farm-house. Muddy little lanes intersecting
each other at every possible angle; rickety little cottages turned about
to all the points of the compass; ducks, geese, cocks, hens, pigs, cows,
horses, dunghills, puddles, sheds, peat-stacks, timber, nets, seemed to
be all indiscriminately huddled together where there was little or no
room for them. To find the inn amid this confusion of animate and
inanimate objects, was no easy matter; and when we at length discovered
it, pushed our way through the live stock in the garden, and opened the
kitchen door, this was the scene which burst instantaneously on our
view:--
We beheld a small room literally full of babies, and babies' mothers.
Interesting infants of the tenderest possible age, draped in long
clothes and short clothes, and shawls and blankets, met the eye
wherever it turned. We saw babies propped up uncomfortably on the
dresser, babies rocking snugly in wicker cradles, babies stretched out
flat on their backs on women's knees, babies prone on the floor toasting
before a slow fire. Every one of these Cornish cherubs was crying in
every variety of vocal key. Every one of their affectionate parents was
talking at the top of her voice. Every one of their little elder
brothers was screaming, squabbling, and tumbling down in the passage
with prodigious energy and spirit. The mothers of England--and they
only--can imagine the deafening and composite character of the noise
which this large family party produced. To describe it is impossible.
Ere long, while we looked on it, the domestic scene began to change.
Even as porters, policemen, and workmen of all sorts, gathered together
on the line of rails at a station, move aside quickly and with one
accord out of the way of the heavy engine slowly starting on its
journey--so did the congregated mothers in the inn kitchen now move back
on either hand with their babies, and clear a path for the great bulk of
the hostess leisurely advancing from the fireside, to greet us at the
door. From this most corpulent and complaisant of women, we received a
hearty welcome, and a full explanation of the family orgies that were
taking place under her roof. The great public meeting of all the babies
in Lizard Town and the neighbouring villages, on which we had intruded,
had been convened by the local doctor, who had got down from London,
what the landlady termed a "lot of fine fresh matter," and was now about
to strike a decisive blow at the small-pox, by vaccinating all the
babies he could lay his hands on at "one fell swoop." The surgical
ceremonies were expected to begin in a few minutes.
This last piece of information sent us out of the house without a
moment's delay. The sunlight had brightened gloriously since we had last
beheld it--the rain was over--the mist was gone. But a short distance
before us, rose the cliffs at the Lizard Head--the southernmost land in
England--and to this point we now hastened, as the fittest spot from
which to start on our rambles along the coast.
On our way thither, short as it was, we observed a novelty. In the South
and West of Cornwall, the footpaths, instead of leading through or round
the fields, are all on the top of the thick stone walls--some four feet
high--which divide them. This curious arrangement for walking gives a
startling and picturesque character to the figures of the country
people, when you see them at a distance, striding along, not on the
earth but above it, and often relieved throughout the whole length of
their bodies against the sky. Preserving our equilibrium, on these
elevated pathways, with some difficulty against the strong south-west
wind that was now blowing in our faces, we soon reached the topmost
rocks that crown the Lizard Head: and then, the whole noble line of
coast and the wild stormy ocean opened grandly into view.
On each side of us, precipice over precipice, cavern within cavern, rose
the great cliffs protecting the land against the raging sea. Three
hundred feet beneath, the foam was boiling far out over a reef of black
rocks. Above and around, flocks of sea-birds flew in ever lengthening
circles, or perched flapping their wings and sunning their plumage, on
ledges of riven stone below us. Every object forming the wide sweep of
the view was on the vastest and most majestic scale. The wild varieties
of form in the jagged line of rocks stretched away eastward and
westward, as far as the eye could reach; black shapeless masses of mist
scowled over the whole landward horizon; the bright blue sky at the
opposite point was covered with towering white clouds which moved and
changed magnificently; the tossing and raging of the great bright sea
was sublimely contrasted by the solitude and tranquillity of the desert,
overshadowed land--while ever and ever, sounding as they first sounded
when the morning stars sang together, the rolling waves and the rushing
wind pealed out their primeval music over the whole scene!
And now, when we began to examine the coast more in detail, inquiring
the names of remarkable objects as we proceeded, we found ourselves in a
country where each succeeding spot that the traveller visited, was
memorable for some mighty convulsion of Nature, or tragically associated
with some gloomy story of shipwreck and death. Turning from the Lizard
Head towards a cliff at some little distance, we passed through a field
on our way, overgrown with sweet-smelling wild flowers, and broken up
into low grassy mounds. This place is called "Pistol Meadow," and is
connected with a terrible event which is still spoken of by the country
people with superstitious awe.
Some hundred years since, a transport-ship, filled with troops, was
wrecked on the reef off the Lizard Head. Two men only were washed ashore
alive. Out of the fearful number that perished, two hundred corpses
were driven up on the beach below Pistol Meadow; and there they were
buried by tens and twenties together in great pits, the position of
which is still revealed by the low irregular mounds that chequer the
surface of the field. The place was named, in remembrance of the
quantity of fire-arms,--especially pistols--found about the wreck of the
ill-fated ship, at low tide, on the reef below the cliffs. To this day,
the peasantry continue to regard Pistol Meadow with feelings of awe and
horror, and fear to walk near the graves of the drowned men at night.
Nor have many of the inhabitants yet forgotten a revolting circumstance
connected by traditional report with the burial of the corpses after the
shipwreck. It is said, that when dead bodies were first washed ashore,
troops of ferocious, half-starved dogs suddenly appeared from the
surrounding country, and could with difficulty be driven from preying on
the mangled remains that were cast up on the beach. Ever since that
period, the peasantry have been reported as holding the dog in
abhorrence. Whether this be true or not, it is certainly a rare
adventure to meet with a dog in the Lizard district. You may walk
through farm-yard after farm-yard, you may enter cottage after cottage,
and never hear any barking at your heels;--you may pass, on the road,
labourer after labourer, and yet never find one of them accompanied, as
in other parts of the country, by his favourite attendant cur.
Leaving Pistol Meadow, after gathering a few of the wild herbs growing
fragrant and plentiful over the graves of the dead, we turned our steps
towards the Lizard Lighthouse. As we passed before the front of the
large and massive building, our progress was suddenly and startlingly
checked by a hideous chasm in the cliff, sunk to a perpendicular depth
of seventy feet, and measuring more than a hundred in circumference.
Nothing prepares the stranger for this great gulf; no railing is placed
about it; it lies hidden by rising land, and the earth all around is
treacherously smooth. The first moment when you see it, is the moment
when you start back instinctively from its edge, doubtful whether the
hole has not yawned open in that very instant before your feet.
This chasm--melodramatically entitled by the people, "The Lion's
Den"--was formed in an extraordinary manner, not many years since. In
the evening the whole surface of the down above the cliff was smooth to
the eye, and firm to the foot--in the morning it had opened into an
enormous hole. The men who kept watch at the Lighthouse, heard no sounds
beyond the moaning of the sea--felt no shock--looked out on the night,
and saw that all was apparently still and quiet. Nature suffered her
convulsion and effected her change in silence. Hundreds on hundreds of
tons of soil had sunk down into depths beneath them, none knew in how
long, or how short a time; but there the Lion's Den was in the morning,
where the firm earth had been the evening before.
The explanation of the manner in which this curious landslip occurred,
is to be found by descending the face of the cliff, beyond the Lion's
Den, and entering a cavern in the rocks, called "Daw's Hugo" (or Cave).
The place is only accessible at low water. Passing from the beach
through the opening of the cavern, you find yourself in a lofty,
tortuous recess, into the farthest extremity of which, a stream of light
pours down from some eighty or a hundred feet above. This light is
admitted through the Lion's Den, and thus explains by itself the nature
of the accident by which that chasm was formed. Here, the weight of the
upper soil broke through the roof of the cave; and the earth which then
fell into it, was subsequently washed away by the sea, which fills Daw's
Hugo at every flow of the tide. It has lately been noticed that the
loose particles of ground at the bottom of the Lion's Den, still
continue to sink gradually through the narrow, slanting passage into the
cave already formed; and it is expected that in no very long time the
lower extremity of the chasm will widen so far, as to make the sea
plainly visible through it from above. At present, the effect of the two
streams of light pouring into Daw's Hugo from two opposite
directions--one from the Lion's Den, the other from the seaward opening
in the rocks--and falling together, in cross directions on the black
rugged walls of the cave and the beautiful marine ferns growing from
them, is supernaturally striking and grand. Here, Rembrandt would have
loved to study; for here, even _his_ sublime perception of the poetry of
light and shade might have received a new impulse, and learned from the
teaching of Nature one immortal lesson more.
Daw's Hugo and the Lion's Den may be fairly taken as characteristic
types of the whole coast scenery about the Lizard Head, in its general
aspects. Great caves and greater landslips are to be seen both eastward
and westward. In calm weather you may behold the long prospects of riven
rock, in their finest combination, from a boat. At such times, you may
row into vast caverns, always filled by the sea, and only to be
approached when the waves ripple as calmly as the waters of a lake.
Then, you may see the naturally arched roof high above you, adorned in
the loveliest manner by marine plants waving to and fro gently in the
wind. Rocky walls are at each side of you, variegated in dark red and
dark green colours--now advancing, now receding, now winding in and out,
now rising straight and lofty, until their termination is hid in a
pitch-dark obscurity which no man has ever ventured to fathom to its
end. Beneath, is the emerald-green sea, so still and clear that you can
behold the white sand far below, and can watch the fish gliding swiftly
and stealthily out and in: while, all around, thin drops of moisture are
dripping from above, like rain, into the deep quiet water below, with a
monotonous echoing sound which half oppresses and half soothes the ear,
at the same time.
On stormy days your course is different. Then, you wander along the
summits of the cliffs; and looking down, through the hedges of tamarisk
and myrtle that skirt the ends of the fields, see the rocks suddenly
broken away beneath you into an immense shelving amphitheatre, on the
floor of which the sea boils in fury, rushing through natural archways
and narrow rifts. Beyond them, at intervals as the waves fall, you catch
glimpses of the brilliant blue main ocean, and the outer reefs
stretching into it. Often, such wild views as these are relieved from
monotony by the prospect of smooth cornfields and pasture-lands, or by
pretty little fishing villages perched among the rocks--each with its
small group of boats drawn up on a slip of sandy beach, and its modest,
tiny gardens rising one above another, wherever the slope is gentle, and
the cliff beyond rises high to shelter them from the winter winds.
But the place at which the coast scenery of the Lizard district arrives
at its climax of grandeur is Kynance Cove. Here, such gigantic specimens
are to be seen of the most beautiful of all varieties of rock--the
"serpentine"--as are unrivalled in Cornwall; perhaps, unrivalled
anywhere. A walk of two miles along the westward cliffs from Lizard
Town, brought us to the top of a precipice of three hundred feet.
Looking forward from this, we saw the white sand of Kynance Cove
stretching out in a half circle into the sea.
What a scene was now presented to us! It was a perfect palace of rocks!
Some rose perpendicularly and separate from each other, in the shapes of
pyramids and steeples--some were overhanging at the top and pierced with
dark caverns at the bottom--some were stretched horizontally on the
sand, here studded with pools of water, there broken into natural
archways. No one of these rocks resembled another in shape, size, or
position--and all, at the moment when we looked on them, were wrapped in
the solemn obscurity of a deep mist; a mist which shadowed without
concealing them, which exaggerated their size, and, hiding all the
cliffs beyond, presented them sublimely as separate and solitary objects
in the sea-view.
It was now necessary, however, to occupy as little time as possible in
contemplating Kynance Cove from a distance; for if we desired to explore
it, immediate advantage was to be taken of the state of the tide, which
was already rapidly ebbing. Hurriedly descending the cliffs, therefore,
we soon reached the sand: and here, leaving my companion to sketch, I
set forth to wander among the rocks, doubtful whither to turn my steps
first. While still hesitating, I was fortunate enough to meet with a
guide, whose intelligence and skill well deserve such record as I can
give of them here; for, to the former I was indebted for much local
information and anecdote, and to the latter, for quitting Kynance Cove
with all my limbs in as sound a condition as when I first approached it.
The guide introduced himself to me by propounding a sort of stranger's
catechism. 1st. "Did I want to see everything?"--"Certainly." 2nd. "Was
I giddy on the tops of high places?"--"No." 3rd. "Would I be so good, if
I got into a difficulty anywhere, as to take it easy, and catch hold of
him tight?"--"Yes, very tight!" With these answers the guide appeared to
be satisfied. He gave his hat a smart knock with one hand, to fix it on
his head; and pointing upwards with the other, said, "We'll try that
rock first, to look into the gulls' nests, and get some wild asparagus."
And away we went accordingly.
* * * * *
We mount the side of an immense rock which projects far out into the
sea, and is the largest of the surrounding group. It is called Asparagus
Island, from the quantity of wild asparagus growing among the long grass
on its summit. Half way up, we cross an ugly chasm. The guide points to
a small chink or crevice, barely discernible in one side of it, and says
"Devil's Bellows!" Then, first courteously putting my toes for me into a
comfortable little hole in the perpendicular rock side, which just fits
them, he proceeds to explain himself. Through the base of the opposite
extremity of the island there is a natural channel, into which the sea
rushes furiously at high tide: and finding no other vent but the little
crevice we now look down on, is expelled through it in long, thin jets
of spray, with a roaring noise resembling the sound of a gigantic
bellows at work. But the sea is not yet high enough to exhibit this
phenomenon, so the guide takes my toes out of the hole again for me,
just as politely as he put them in; and forthwith leads the way up
higher still--expounding as he goes, the whole art and mystery of
climbing, which he condenses into this axiom:--"Never loose one hand,
till you've got a grip with the other; and never scramble your toes
about, where toes have no business to be."
At last we reach the topmost ridge of the island, and look down upon the
white restless water far beneath, and peep into one or two deserted
gulls' nests, and gather wild asparagus--which I can only describe as
bearing no resemblance at all, that I could discover, to the garden
species. Then, the guide points to another perpendicular rock, farther
out at sea, looming dark and phantom-like in the mist, and tells me that
he was the man who built the cairn of stones on its top: and then he
proposes that we shall go to the opposite extremity of the ridge on
which we stand, and look down into "The Devil's Throat."
This desirable journey is accomplished with the greatest ease on his
part, and with considerable difficulty and delay on mine--for the wind
blows fiercely over us on the height; our rock track is narrow, rugged,
and slippery; the sea roars bewilderingly below; and a single false step
would not be attended with agreeable consequences. Soon, however, we
begin to descend a little from our "bad eminence," and come to a halt
before a wide, tunnelled opening, slanting sharply downwards in the very
middle of the island--a black, gaping hole, into the bottom of which the
sea is driven through some unknown subterranean channel, roaring and
thundering with a fearful noise, which rises in hollow echoes through
the aptly-named "Devil's Throat." About this hole no grass grew: the
rocks rose wild, jagged, and precipitous, all around it. If ever the
ghastly imagery of Dante's terrible "Vision" was realized on earth, it
was realized here.
At this place, close to the mouth of the hole, the guide suggests that
we shall sit down and have a little talk!--and very impressive talk it
is, when he begins the conversation by bawling into my ear (and down the
Devil's Throat at the same time) to make himself heard above the fierce
roaring beneath us. Now, his tale is of tremendous jets of water which
he has seen, during the storms of winter, shot out of the hole before
which we sit, into the creek of the sea below--now, he tells me of a
shipwreck off Asparagus Island, of half-drowned sailors floating ashore
on pieces of timber, and dashed out to sea again just as they touched
the strand, by a jet from the Devil's Throat--now, he points away in the
opposite direction, under one of the steeple-shaped rocks, and speaks of
a chase after smugglers that began from this place; a desperate chase,
in which some of the smugglers' cargo, but not one of the smugglers
themselves, was seized--now, he talks of another great hole in the
landward rocks, where the sea may be seen boiling within: a hole into
which a man who was fishing for fragments of a wreck fell and was
drowned; his body being sucked away through some invisible channel,
never to be seen again by mortal eyes.
Anon, the guide's talk changes from tragedy to comedy. He begins to
recount odd adventures of his own with strangers. He tells me of a huge
fat woman who was got up to the top of Asparagus Island, by the easiest
path, and by the exertions of several guides; who, left to herself,
gasped, reeled, and fell down immediately; and was just rolling off,
with all the momentum of sixteen stone, over the precipice below her,
when she was adroitly caught, and anchored fast to the ground, by the
ankle of one leg and the calf of the other. Then he speaks of an elderly
gentleman, who, while descending the rocks with him, suddenly stopped
short at the most dangerous point, giddy and panic-stricken, pouring
forth death-bed confessions of all his sins, and wildly refusing to move
another inch in any direction. Even this man the guide got down in
safety at last, by making stepping places of his hands, on which the
elderly gentleman lowered himself as on a ladder, ejaculating
incoherently all the way, and trembling in great agony long after he had
been safely landed on the sands.
This last story ended, it is settled that we shall descend again to the
beach. Stimulated by the ease with which my worthy leader goes down
beneath me, I get over-confident in my dexterity, and begin to slip
here, and slide there, and come to awkward pauses at precipitous
places, in what would be rather an alarming manner, but for the potent
presence of the guide, who is always beneath me, ready to be fallen
upon. Sometimes, when I am holding on with all the necessary tenacity of
grip, as regards my hands, but, "scrambling my toes about" in a very
disorderly and unworkmanlike fashion, he pops his head up from below for
me to sit on; and puts my feet into crevices for me, with many apologies
for taking the liberty! Sometimes, I fancy myself treading on what feels
like soft turf; I look down, and find that I am standing like an acrobat
on his shoulders, and hear him civilly entreating me to take hold of his
jacket next, and let myself down over his body to the ledge where he is
waiting for me. He never makes a false step, never stumbles, scrambles,
hesitates, or fails to have a hand always at my service. The nautical
metaphor of "holding on by your eyelids" becomes a fact in his case. He
really views his employer, as porters are expected to view a package
labelled "_glass with care_." I am firmly persuaded that he could take a
drunken man up and down Asparagus Island, without the slightest risk
either to himself or his charge; and I hold him in no small admiration,
when, after landing on the sand with something between a tumble and a
jump, I find him raising me to my perpendicular almost before I have
touched the ground, and politely hoping that I feel quite satisfied,
hitherto, with his conduct as a guide.