of men, boats, and nets, such figures as those quoted above, are far
below the mark. At St. Ives, for example, 1,000 hogsheads were taken in
the first three seine nets cast into the water. The number of hogsheads
exported annually, averages 22,000. In 1850, 27,000 were secured for the
foreign markets. Incredible as these numbers may appear to some readers,
they may nevertheless be relied on; for they are derived from
trustworthy sources--partly from local returns furnished to me; partly
from the very men who filled the baskets from the boat-side, and who
afterwards verified their calculations by frequent visits to the
salting-houses.
Such is the pilchard fishery of Cornwall--a small unit, indeed, in the
vast aggregate of England's internal sources of wealth: but yet neither
unimportant nor uninteresting, if it be regarded as giving active
employment to a hardy and honest race who would starve without it; as
impartially extending the advantages of commerce to one of the remotest
corners of our island; and, more than all, as displaying a wise and
beautiful provision of Nature, by which the rich tribute of the great
deep is most generously lavished on the land most in need of a
compensation for its own sterility.
VIII.
THE LAND'S END.
Something like what Jerusalem was to the pilgrim in the Holy Land, the
Land's End is--comparing great things with small--to the tourist in
Cornwall. It is the Ultima Thule where his progress stops--the shrine
towards which his face has been set, from the first day when he started
on his travels--the main vent, through which all the pent-up enthusiasm
accumulated along the line of route is to burst its way out, in one long
flow of admiration and delight.
The Land's End! There is something in the very words that stirs us all.
It was the name that struck us most, and was best remembered by us, as
children, when we learnt our geography. It fills the minds of
imaginative people with visions of barrenness and solitude, with dreams
of some lonely promontory, far away by itself out in the sea--the sort
of place where the last man in England would be most likely to be found
waiting for death, at the end of the world! It suggests even to the most
prosaically constituted people, ideas of tremendous storms, of flakes of
foam flying over the land before the wind, of billows in convulsion, of
rocks shaken to their centre, of caves where smugglers lurk in ambush,
of wrecks and hurricanes, desolation, danger, and death. It awakens
curiosity in the most careless--once hear of it, and you long to see
it--tell your friends that you have travelled in Cornwall, and ten
thousand chances to one, the first question they ask is:--"Have you been
to the Land's End?"
And yet, strange to say, this spot so singled out and set apart by our
imaginations as something remarkable and even unique of its kind, is as
a matter of fact, not distinguishable from any part of the coast on
either side of it, by any local peculiarity whatever. If you desire
really and truly to stand on the Land's End itself, you must ask your
way to it, or you are in danger of mistaking any one of the numerous
promontories on the right hand and the left, for your actual place of
destination. But I am anticipating. Before I say more about the Land's
End, it is necessary to relate how my companion and I got there, and
what we saw that was interesting and characteristic on our road.
The reader may perhaps remember that he last left us scrambling out of
reach of the tide, up the cliffs overlooking Kynance Cove. From that
place we got back to Helston in mist and rain, just as we had left it.
From Helston we proceeded to Marazion,--stopping there to visit St.
Michael's Mount, so well known to readers of all classes by innumerable
pictures and drawings, and by descriptions scarcely less plentiful, that
they will surely be relieved rather than disappointed, if these pages
exhibit the distinguished negative merit of passing the Mount without
notice. From Marazion we walked to Penzance, from Penzance to the
beautiful coast scenery at Lamorna Cove, and thence to Trereen,
celebrated as the halting place for a visit to one of Cornwall's
greatest curiosities--the Loggan Stone.
This far-famed rock rises on the top of a bold promontory of granite,
jutting far out into the sea, split into the wildest forms, and towering
precipitously to a height of a hundred feet. When you reach the Loggan
Stone, after some little climbing up perilous-looking places, you see a
solid, irregular mass of granite, which is computed to weigh eighty
five tons, supported by its centre only, on a flat, broad rock, which,
in its turn, rests on several others stretching out around it on all
sides. You are told by the guide to turn your back to the uppermost
stone; to place your shoulders under one particular part of its lower
edge, which is entirely disconnected, all round, with the supporting
rock below; and in this position to push upwards slowly and steadily,
then to leave off again for an instant, then to push once more, and so
on, until after a few moments of exertion, you feel the whole immense
mass above you moving as you press against it. You redouble your
efforts--then turn round--and see the massy Loggan Stone, set in motion
by nothing but your own pair of shoulders, slowly rocking backwards and
forwards with an alternate ascension and declension, at the outer edges,
of at least three inches. You have treated eighty-five tons of granite
like a child's cradle; and, like a child's cradle, those eighty-five
tons have rocked at your will!
The pivot on which the Loggan Stone is thus easily moved, is a small
protrusion in its base, on all sides of which the whole surrounding
weight of rock is, by an accident of Nature, so exactly equalized, as
to keep it poised in the nicest balance on the one little point in its
lower surface which rests on the flat granite slab beneath. But perfect
as this balance appears at present, it has lost something, the merest
hair's-breadth, of its original faultlessness of adjustment. The rock is
not to be moved now, either so easily or to so great an extent, as it
could once be moved. Six-and-twenty years since, it was overthrown by
artificial means; and was then lifted again into its former position.
This is the story of the affair, as it was related to me by a man who
was an eyewitness of the process of restoring the stone to its proper
place.
In the year 1824, a certain Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, then in
command of a cutter stationed off the southern coast of Cornwall, was
told of an ancient Cornish prophecy, that no human power should ever
succeed in overturning the Loggan Stone. No sooner was the prediction
communicated to him, than he conceived a mischievous ambition to falsify
practically an assertion which the commonest common sense might have
informed him had sprung from nothing but popular error and popular
superstition. Accompanied by a body of picked men from his crew, he
ascended to the Loggan Stone, ordered several levers to be placed under
it at one point, gave the word to "heave"--and the next moment had the
miserable satisfaction of seeing one of the most remarkable natural
curiosities in the world utterly destroyed, for aught he could foresee
to the contrary, under his own directions!
But Fortune befriended the Loggan Stone. One edge of it, as it rolled
over, became fixed by a lucky chance in a crevice in the rocks
immediately below the granite slab from which it had been started. Had
this not happened, it must have fallen over a sheer precipice, and been
lost in the sea. By another accident, equally fortunate, two labouring
men at work in the neighbourhood, were led by curiosity secretly to
follow the Lieutenant and his myrmidons up to the Stone. Having
witnessed, from a secure hiding-place, all that occurred, the two
workmen, with great propriety, immediately hurried off to inform the
lord of the manor of the wanton act of destruction which they had seen
perpetrated.
The news was soon communicated throughout the district, and thence,
throughout all Cornwall. The indignation of the whole county was
aroused. Antiquaries, who believed the Loggan Stone to have been
balanced by the Druids; philosophers who held that it was produced by
an eccentricity of natural formation; ignorant people, who cared nothing
about Druids, or natural formations, but who liked to climb up and rock
the stone whenever they passed near it; tribes of guides who lived by
showing it; innkeepers in the neighbourhood, to whom it had brought
customers by hundreds; tourists of every degree who were on their way to
see it--all joined in one general clamour of execration against the
overthrower of the rock. A full report of the affair was forwarded to
the Admiralty; and the Admiralty, for once, acted vigorously for the
public advantage, and mercifully spared the public purse.
The Lieutenant was officially informed that his commission was in
danger, unless he set up the Loggan Stone again in its proper place. The
materials for compassing this achievement were offered to him, _gratis_,
from the Dock Yards; but he was left to his own resources to defray the
expense of employing workmen to help him. Being by this time awakened to
a proper sense of the mischief he had done, and to a tolerably strong
conviction of the disagreeable position in which he was placed with the
Admiralty, he addressed himself vigorously to the task of repairing his
fault. Strong beams were planted about the Loggan Stone, chains were
passed round it, pulleys were rigged, and capstans were manned. After a
week's hard work and brave perseverance on the part of every one
employed in the labour, the rock was pulled back into its former
position, but not into its former perfection of balance: it has never
moved since as freely as it moved before.
It is only fair to the Lieutenant to add to this narrative of his
mischievous frolic the fact, that he defrayed, though a poor man, all
the heavy expenses of replacing the rock. Just before his death, he paid
the last remaining debt, and paid it with interest.
* * * * *
Leaving the Loggan Stone, we next shaped our course for the Land's End.
We stopped on our way, to admire the desolate pile of rocks and caverns
which form the towering promontory, called "Tol-Peden-Penwith," or, "The
Holed Headland on the Left." Thence, turning a little inland--passing
over wild, pathless moors; occasionally catching distant glimpses of the
sea, with the mist sometimes falling thick down to the very edges of the
waves, sometimes parting mysteriously and discovering distant crags of
granite rising shadowy out of the foaming waters,--we reached, at last,
the limits of our outward journey, and saw the Atlantic before us,
rolling against the westernmost extremity of the shores of England.
I have already said, that the stranger must ask his way before he can
find out the particular mass of rocks, geographically entitled to the
appellation of the "Land's End." He may, however, easily discover when
he has reached the _district_ of the "Land's End," by two rather
remarkable indications that he will meet with on his road. He will
observe, at some distance from the coast, an old milestone marked "I,"
and will be informed that this is the real original first mile in
England; as if all measurement of distances began strictly from the
West! A little further on he will come to a house, on one wall of which
he will see written in large letters, "This is the first Inn in
England," and on the other: "This is the last Inn in England;" as if the
recognised beginning, and end too, of the Island of Britain were here,
and here only! Having pondered a little on the slightly exclusive view
of the attributes of their locality, taken by the inhabitants, he will
then be led forward, about half a mile, by his guide, will descend some
cliffs, will walk out on a ridge of rocks till he can go no
farther--and will then be told that he is standing on the Land's End!
Here, as elsewhere, there are certain "sights" which a stranger is
required to examine assiduously, as a duty if not as a pleasure, by
guide-book law, rigidly administered by guides. There is, first of all,
the mark of a horse's hoof, which is with great care kept _sharply
modelled_ (to borrow the painter's phrase), in the thin grass at the
edge of a precipice. This mark commemorates the narrow escape from death
of a military man who, for a wager, rode a horse down the cliff to the
extreme verge of the Land's End; where the poor animal, seeing its
danger, turned in affright, reared, and fell back into the sea raging
over the rocks beneath. The foolhardy rider had just sense enough left
to throw himself off in time--he tumbled on the ground, within a few
inches of the precipice, and so barely saved the life which he had
richly deserved to lose.
After the mark of the hoof, the traveller is next desired to look at a
natural tunnel in the outer cliff, which pierces it through from one end
to the other. Then his attention is directed to a lighthouse built on a
reef of rocks detached from the land; and he is told of the great waves
which break over the top of the building during the winter storms.
Lastly, he is requested to inspect a quaint protuberance in a pile of
granite at a little distance off, which bears a remote resemblance to a
gigantic human face, adorned with a short beard; and which, he is
informed, is considered quite a portrait (of all the people in the world
to liken it to!) of Dr. Johnson! It is, therefore, publicly known as
"Johnson's Head." If it can fairly be compared with any of the
countenances of any remarkable characters that ever existed, it may be
said to exhibit, in violent exaggeration, the worst physiognomical
peculiarities of Nero and Henry the Eighth, combined in one face!
These several local curiosities duly examined, you are at last left free
to look at the Land's End in your own way. Before you, stretches the
wide, wild ocean; the largest of the Scilly Islands being barely
discernible on the extreme horizon, on clear days. Tracts of heath;
fields where corn is blown by the wind into mimic waves; downs, valleys,
and crags, mingle together picturesquely and confusedly, until they are
lost in the distance, on your left. On your right is a magnificent bay,
bounded at either extremity by far-stretching promontories rising from a
beach of the purest white sand, on which the yet whiter foam of the
surf is ever seething, as waves on waves break one behind the other. The
whole bold view possesses all the sublimity that vastness and space can
bestow; but it is that sublimity which is to be seen, not described,
which the heart may acknowledge and the mind contain, but which no mere
words may delineate--which even painting itself may but faintly reflect.
However, it is, after all, the walk to the Land's End along the southern
coast, rather than the Land's End itself, which displays the grandest
combinations of scenery in which this grandest part of Cornwall abounds.
There, Nature appears in her most triumphant glory and beauty--there,
every mile as you proceed, offers some new prospect, or awakens some
fresh impression. All objects that you meet with, great and small,
moving and motionless, seem united in perfect harmony to form a scene
where original images might still be found by the poet; and where
original pictures are waiting, ready composed, for the painter's eye.
On approaching the wondrous landscapes between Trereen and the Land's
End, the first characteristic that strikes you, is the change that has
taken place in the forms of the cliffs since you left the Lizard Head.
You no longer look on variously shaped and variously coloured
"serpentine" rocks; it is granite, and granite alone, that appears
everywhere--granite, less lofty and less eccentric in form than the
"serpentine" cliffs and crags; but presenting an appearance of
adamantine solidity and strength, a mighty breadth of outline and an
unbroken vastness of extent, nobly adapted to the purpose of protecting
the shores of Cornwall, where they are most exposed to the fury of the
Atlantic waves. In these wild districts, the sea rolls and roars in
fiercer agitation, and the mists fall thicker, and at the same time fade
and change faster, than elsewhere. Vessels pitching heavily in the
waves, are seen to dawn, at one moment, in the clearing atmosphere--and
then, at another, to fade again mysteriously, as it abruptly thickens,
like phantom ships. Up on the top of the cliffs, furze and heath in
brilliant clothing of purple and yellow, cluster close round great
white, weird masses of rock, dotted fantastically with patches of
grey-green moss. The solitude on these heights is unbroken--no houses
are to be seen--often, no pathway is to be found. You go on, guided by
the _sight_ of the sea, when the sky brightens fitfully: and by the
_sound_ of the sea, when you stray instinctively from the edge of the
cliff, as mist and darkness gather once more densely and solemnly all
around you.
Then, when the path appears again--a winding path, that descends
rapidly--you gradually enter on a new scene. Old horses startle you,
scrambling into perilous situations, to pick dainty bits by the
hillside; sheep, fettered by the fore and hind leg, hobble away
desperately as you advance. Suddenly, you discern a small strip of beach
shut in snugly between protecting rocks. A spring bubbles down from an
inland valley; while not far off, an old stone well collects the water
into a calm, clear pool. Sturdy little cottages, built of rough granite,
and thickly thatched, stand near you, with gulls' and cormorants' eggs
set in their loop-holed windows for ornament; great white sections of
fish hang thickly together on their walls to dry, looking more like many
legs of many dirty duck trousers, than anything else; pigsties are
hard-by the cottages, either formed by the Cromlech stones of the
Druids, or excavated like caves in the side of the hill. Down on the
beach, where the rough old fishing-boats lie, the sand is entirely
formed by countless multitudes of the tiniest, fairy-like shells, often
as small as a pin's head, and all exquisitely tender in colour and
wonderfully varied in form. Up the lower and flatter parts of the hills
above, fishing nets are stretched to dry. While you stop to look forth
over the quiet, simple scene, wild little children peep out at you in
astonishment; and hard-working men and women greet you with a hearty
Cornish salutation, as you pass near their cottage doors.
You walk a few hundred yards inland, up the valley, and discover in a
retired, sheltered situation, the ancient village church, with its
square grey tower surmounted by moss-grown turrets, with its venerable
Saxon stone cross in the churchyard--where the turf graves rise humbly
by twos and threes, and where the old coffin-shaped stone stands midway
at the entrance gates, still used, as in former times, by the bearers of
a rustic funeral. Appearing thus amid the noblest scenery, as the simple
altar of the prayers of a simple race, this is a church which speaks of
religion in no formal or sectarian tone. Appealing to the heart of every
traveller be his creed what it may, in loving and solemn accents, it
sends him on his way again, up the mighty cliffs and through the mist
driving cloud-like over them, the better fitted for his journey forward
here; the better fitted, it may be, even for that other dread journey
of one irrevocable moment--the last he shall ever take--to his
abiding-place among the spirits of the dead!
* * * * *
These are some of the attractions which home rambles can offer to tempt
the home traveller; for these are the impressions produced, and the
incidents presented during a walk to the Land's End.
IX.
BOTALLACK MINE.
I have little doubt that the less patient among the readers of this
narrative have already, while perusing it, asked themselves some such
questions as these:--"Is not Cornwall a celebrated mineral country? Why
has the author not taken us below the surface yet? Why have we heard
nothing all this time about the mines?"
Readers who have questioned thus, may be assured that their impatience
to go down a mine, in this book, was fully equalled by our impatience to
go down a mine, in the county of which this book treats. Our anxiety,
however, when we mentioned it to Cornish friends, was invariably met by
the same answer. "Wait"--they all said--"until you have turned your
backs on the Land's End; and then go to Botallack. The mine there is the
most extraordinary mine in Cornwall; go down that, and you will not
want to go down another--wait for Botallack." And we did wait for
Botallack, just as the reader has waited for it in these pages. May he
derive as much satisfaction from the present description of the mine, as
we did from visiting the mine itself!
We left the Land's End, feeling that our homeward journey had now begun
from that point; and walking northward, about five miles along the
coast, arrived at Botallack. Having heard that there was some
disinclination in Cornwall to allow strangers to go down the mines, we
had provided ourselves--through the kindness of a friend--with a proper
letter of introduction, in case of emergency. We were told to go to the
counting-house to present our credentials; and on our road thither, we
beheld the buildings and machinery of the mine, literally stretching
down the precipitous face of the cliff, from the land at the top, to the
sea at the bottom.
This sight was, in its way, as striking and extraordinary as the first
view of the Cheese-Wring itself. Here, we beheld a scaffolding perched
on a rock that rose out of the waves--there, a steam-pump was at work
raising gallons of water from the mine every minute, on a mere ledge of
land half way down the steep cliff side. Chains, pipes, conduits,
protruded in all directions from the precipice; rotten-looking wooden
platforms, running over deep chasms, supported great beams of timber and
heavy coils of cable; crazy little boarded houses were built, where
gulls' nests might have been found in other places. There did not appear
to be a foot of level space anywhere, for any part of the works of the
mine to stand upon; and yet, there they were, fulfilling all the
purposes for which they had been constructed, as safely and completely
on rocks in the sea, and down precipices in the land, as if they had
been cautiously founded on the tracts of smooth solid ground above!
The counting-house was built on a projection of earth about midway
between the top of the cliff and the sea. When we got there, the agent,
to whom our letter was addressed, was absent; but his place was supplied
by two miners who came out to receive us; and to one of them we
mentioned our recommendation, and modestly hinted a wish to go down the
mine forthwith.
But our new friend was not a person who did anything in a hurry. He was
a grave, courteous, and rather melancholy man, of great stature and
strength. He looked on us with a benevolent, paternal expression, and
appeared to think that we were nothing like strong enough, or cautious
enough to be trusted down the mine. "Did we know," he urged, "that it
was dangerous work?" "Yes; but we didn't mind danger!"--"Perhaps we were
not aware that we should perspire profusely, and be dead tired getting
up and down the ladders?" "Very likely; but we didn't mind that,
either!"--"Surely we shouldn't like to strip and put on miners'
clothes?" "Yes, we should, of all things!" and pulling off coat and
waistcoat, on the spot, we stood half-undressed already, just as the big
miner was proposing another objection, which, under existing
circumstances, he good-naturedly changed into a speech of acquiescence.
"Very well, gentlemen," he said, taking up two suits of miners' clothes,
"I see you are determined to go down; and so you shall! You'll be wet
through with the heat and the work before you come up again; so just put
on these things, and keep your own clothes dry."