SKETCHES OF OUR COASTS.—CORNWALL.
The Land’s End—Cornwall and her Contributions to the Navy—The
Great Botallack Mine—Curious Sight Outwardly—Plugging Out the
Atlantic Ocean—The Roar of the Sea Heard Inside—In a Storm—The
Miner’s Fears—The Loggan Stone—A Foolish Lieutenant and his Little
Joke—The Penalty—The once‐feared Wolf Rock—Revolving Lights—Are
they Advantageous to the Mariner—Smuggling in Cornwall—A
Coastguardsman Smuggler—Landing 150 Kegs under the Noses of the
Officers—A Cornish Fishing‐town—Looe, the Ancient—The Old
Bridge—Beauty of the Place from a Distance—Closer
Inspection—Picturesque Streets—The Inhabitants—Looe Island and the
Rats—A Novel Mode of Extirpation—The Poor of Cornwall Better Off
than Elsewhere—Mines and Fisheries—Working on “Tribute”—Profits of
the Pilchard Season—Cornish Hospitality and Gratitude.
The Land’s End has a particular interest to the reader of this work, for
its very name indicates a point beyond which one cannot go, except we step
into the great ocean. Round the spot a certain air of mystery and interest
also clings. What is this ending place like? It is the extreme western
termination of one of the most rugged of England’s counties, one which has
produced some of her greatest men, and has always been intimately
connected with the history of the sea. Cornwall has afforded more hardy
sailors to the royal navy and merchant marine than any other county
whatever, Devonshire, perhaps, excepted. One must remember her sparse
population in making any calculation on this point. Her fishermen and
miners are among the very best in the world. Some sketches therefore of
Cornish coasts and coast life may be acceptable.(54)
One of the great features of the Land’s End is the famed Botallack Mine,
which stretches out thousands of feet beyond the land, and under the sea.
Wilkie Collins, in an excellent description of his visit to the old mine
says:—“The 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 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 gull’s 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 the smooth solid ground above!”
[Illustration: THE BOTALLACK MINE, CORNWALL.]
The Botallack is principally a copper and tin mine, and has in days gone
by yielded largely. Mr. Collins descended it to some depth, and found the
salt water percolating from the ocean above, through holes and crannies.
In one place he noted a great wooden plug the thickness of a man’s leg
driven into a cranny of the rock. It was placed there to prevent the sea
from swamping the mine! Fancy placing a plug to literally keep out the
Atlantic Ocean!
“We are now,” says Mr. Collins in his narrative, “400 yards out _under the
bottom of the sea_, and twenty fathoms, or 120 feet below the sea level.
Coast trade vessels are sailing over our heads. Two hundred and forty feet
beneath us men are at work, and there are galleries deeper yet, even below
that.... After listening for a few moments, a distant, unearthly noise
becomes faintly audible—a long, low, mysterious moaning, that never
changes, that is felt on the ear as well as heard by it—a sound that might
proceed from some incalculable distance—from some far invisible height—a
sound unlike anything that is heard on the upper ground, in the free air
of heaven, a sound so sublimely mournful and still, so ghostly and
impressive when listened to in the subterranean recesses of the earth,
that we continue instinctively to hold our peace, as if enchanted by it,
and think not of communicating to each other the strange awe and
astonishment which it has inspired in us both from the very first.
“At last the miner speaks again, and tells us that what we hear is the
sound of the surf lashing the rocks a hundred and twenty feet above us,
and of the waves that are breaking on the beach beyond. The tide is now at
the flow, and the sea is in no extraordinary state of agitation, so the
sound is low and distant just at this period. But when storms are at their
height, when the ocean hurls mountain after mountain of water on the
cliffs, then the noise is terrific; the roaring heard down in the mine is
so inexpressibly fierce and awful that the boldest men at work are afraid
to continue their labour; all ascend to the surface to breathe the upper
air and stand on the firm earth, dreading, though no such catastrophe has
ever happened yet, that the sea will break in on them if they remain in
the caverns below.”
[Illustration: THE LOGGAN STONE.]
One of the great sights of the Land’s End is the famous Loggan Stone.
After climbing up some perilous‐looking places you see a solid, irregular
mass of granite, which is computed to weigh eighty‐five tons, resting by
its centre only on another rock, the latter itself supported by a number
of others around. “You are told,” says Wilkie Collins, “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!”
In the year 1824 a lieutenant in the royal navy, commanding a gunboat then
cruising off that coast, heard that it was generally believed in Cornwall
that no human power could or should ever overturn the Loggan Stone. Fired
with an ignoble ambition, he took a number of his crew ashore, and by
applying levers did succeed in upsetting it from its pivot. His little
joke was observed by two labourers, who immediately reported it to the
lord of the manor.
All Cornwall was in arms, and the indignation was general, from that of
philosophers, who believed that the Druids had placed it on its balance,
to those who regarded it as one of the sights of the county, and as a
holiday resort. The guides who showed it to visitors, and the hotel‐
keepers, were furious. Representations were made to the Admiralty, and the
unfortunate lieutenant was ordered to replace it.
Fortunately the great stone had not toppled completely over, or it would
have crashed down a precipice into the sea, but it had stuck wedged in a
crevice of the rock below. By means of strong beams, chains, pulleys, and
capstans, and a hard week’s work for a number of men, it was replaced,
although it is said never to have regained its former balance. The
lieutenant was nearly ruined by it, and is said not to have completely
paid the cost of this reparation at the day of his death.
About eleven miles from the Land’s End there lies a dark porphyry rock,
the highest point of which rises seventeen feet above low water. It is
called “The Wolf,” and previous to the construction of a sea‐tower upon it
no rock had been more fatal to the mariner. It is beaten by a terrific
sea, being exposed to the full force of the Atlantic, and it lies just in
the track of vessels entering or leaving the channel. In 1860 the Trinity
House commenced the erection of a lighthouse on it, 116 feet high, with a
revolving dioptric light. “The first flash,” said a leading journal, “from
the Wolf Lighthouse was shot forth on the 1st of January, 1870, and within
the last ten years it is difficult to calculate what good it has done, by
standing like a beneficent monitor in the centre of the greatest highway
for shipping in the world.” The Wolf light flashes alternately red and
white at half‐minute intervals. A great authority on the subject, Sir
William Thomson, however, expostulates vigorously against all revolving
lights, asserting that, for example, the Wolf is more difficult “to pick
up,” in nautical parlance, than the fixed beacon of the Eddystone.
[Illustration: THE LIZARD LIGHT.]
The Rev. C. A. Johns, writing about 1840,(55) says that smuggling was
still practised till within a few years previously. Most families on the
coast were more or less engaged in it, and many of the houses had, and
still have, secret underground chambers, which could be entered only
through the parlour cupboard, which was furnished with a false back. Old
grey‐headed adventurers talked with evident pleasure of the exciting
adventures of their younger days, and of their frequent hairbreadth
escapes. One sturdy veteran in particular, who since he had dropped his
profession of smuggler had on many occasions risked his life in the effort
to save the crews of shipwrecked vessels, told how he was chased by a
king’s boat, how he threw himself overboard and swam for dear life, and
how he eluded, by diving, blow after blow dealt by an oar or cutlass, at
last to escape safely to land. The rowers who pursued may not have put
forth their utmost strength, and the blows may have been dealt with
purposed inaccuracy, for in those days there were many sailors in the navy
who had been smugglers, and had a fellow‐feeling for their kind. “I can
myself,” says Mr. Johns, “recollect having conversed some forty years ago
with a coastguardsman who had been a smuggler, and who had with his
comrades been captured by a revenue cutter. He and another were tried and
convicted, and sentenced, as was then customary, to five years’ service in
the navy. While on board the vessel in which they were to proceed to a
foreign station, anchored at Spithead, they escaped from confinement, and
threw themselves into the sea by night, with the intention of swimming
ashore. They had not, however, gone far when they were descried by the
sentinel on board, who gave the alarm, and they were fired at. My
informant reached the shore in safety, hid himself for a short time, and
being afraid to return to his own neighbourhood, entered into the
preventive service, and was at the very time I saw him, after the lapse of
some years, visiting his friends in his native village, and close to the
scene of his early feats of daring. His comrade was not so fortunate;
either he was struck by a bullet, or became exhausted before he reached
the shore, and was drowned. At all events, he was never seen again.”
About the same period, Mr. Johns tells us, he was, one fine summer
evening, loitering about the beach, near a small fishing‐village, in a
remote part of the county. It was about four o’clock, the sea was as
smooth as glass, and the wind so light that whatever vessels and boats
were in sight were either stationary or sluggishly impelled by oars. One
fishing‐boat only, about a hundred yards from shore, had its sails hanging
idly from the mast, but yet appeared to be creeping towards a quay which
ran out between the beach on which he was standing and the houses in which
the coastguard resided. At the very instant that she had advanced so far
that the pier was interposed between her hull and the houses a great
splashing, as of boxes or kegs, or something else, rapidly thrown in the
water, was heard. Simultaneously a number of men ran down the beach into
the water up to their waists, and then scampered up to their houses, each
bearing an armful of something. In a few minutes the boat capsized;
probably this was done on purpose, but as it was in shallow water no harm
resulted. Some innocent‐looking fishermen soon righted her and baled her
out. Mr. Johns learned later on that no less than 150 kegs of spirits were
landed on that occasion right under the very noses of the coastguard. It
was a desperate venture, but the fishermen‐smugglers had calculated that
the officers would not expect any attempt of the kind in calm weather, and
had reckoned rightly. Smuggling was almost invariably carried on in stormy
weather, or on dark, cloudy nights. On some occasions the people of these
fishing‐towns and the country behind rose _en masse_ and resisted the
revenue officers, even to the extent of stoning and firing upon them.
[Illustration: LOOE.]
The antiquities of Cornwall have called forth a very considerable quantity
of learned literature, but, with the exception of the picturesque and
graphic matter furnished by Wilkie Collins, Philip Henry Gosse, and, in
lesser degree, by the writer just quoted, the county is not popularly
known. Mr. Collins’s description of Looe, an ancient Cornish fishing‐town,
will be read with interest. He says: “The first point for which we made in
the morning was the old bridge, and a most picturesque and singular
structure we found it to be. Its construction dates back as far as the
beginning of the fifteenth century. It is three hundred and eighty‐four
feet long, and has fourteen arches, no two of which are on the same scale.
The stout buttresses built between each arch are hollowed at the top into
curious triangular places of refuge for pedestrians, the roughly‐paved
roadway being just wide enough to allow the passage of one cart at a time.
On some of these buttresses, towards the middle, once stood an oratory, or
chapel, dedicated to St. Anne, but no traces of it now remain. The old
bridge, however, still rises sturdily enough on its old foundations; and,
whatever the point from which its silver‐grey stones and quaint arches of
all shapes and sizes may be beheld, forms no mean adjunct to the charming
landscape around it.
“Looe is known to have existed as a town in the reign of Edward I., and it
remains to this day one of the prettiest and most primitive places in
England. The river divides it into East and West Looe, and the view from
the bridge, looking towards the two little colonies of houses thus
separated, is in some respects almost unique. At each side of you rise
high ranges of beautifully‐wooded hills; here and there a cottage peeps
out among the trees, the winding path that leads to it being now lost to
sight in the thick foliage, now visible again as a thin serpentine line of
soft grey. Midway on the slopes appear the gardens of Looe, built up the
acclivity on stone terraces one above another, thus displaying the
veritable garden architecture of the mountains of Palestine, magically
transplanted to the side of an English hill. Here, in this soft and genial
atmosphere, the hydrangea is a common flower‐bed ornament, the fuchsia
grows lofty and luxuriant in the poorest cottage garden, the myrtle
flourishes close to the sea‐shore, and the tender tamarisk is the wild
plant of every farmer’s hedge. Looking down the hills yet, you see the
town straggling out towards the sea along each bank of the river in mazes
of little narrow streets; curious old quays project over the water at
different points; coast‐trade vessels are being loaded and unloaded, built
in one place and repaired in another, all within view; while the prospect
of hills, harbour, and houses thus quaintly combined together is closed at
length by the English Channel, just visible as a small strip of blue water
pent in between the ridges of two promontories which stretch out on either
side to the beach.
“Such is Looe as beheld from a distance; and it loses none of its
attractions when you look at it more closely. There is no such thing as a
straight street in the place, no martinet of an architect has been here,
to drill the old stone houses into regimental regularity. Sometimes you go
down steps into the ground floor, sometimes you mount an outside staircase
to get to the bed‐rooms. Never were such places devised for hide‐and‐seek
since that exciting nursery game was first invented. No house has fewer
than two doors leading into two different lanes; some have three, opening
at once into a court, a street, and a wharf, all situated at different
points of the compass. The shops, too, have their diverting
irregularities, as well as the town. Here you might call a man Jack‐of‐
all‐trades, as the best and truest compliment you could pay him—for here
one shop combines in itself a smart drug‐mongering, cheese‐mongering,
stationery, grocery, and oil and Italian line of business; to say nothing
of such cosmopolitan commercial miscellanies as wrinkled apples, dusty
nuts, cracked slate pencils, and fly‐blown mock jewellery. The moral good
which you derive, in the first pane of a window, from the contemplation of
brief biographies of murdered missionaries, and serious tracts against
intemperance and tight lacing, you lose in the second, before such fleshly
temptations as ginger‐bread, shirt studs, and fascinating white hats for
Sunday wear at two‐and‐ninepence a‐piece. Let no man rightly say that he
has seen all that British enterprise can do for the extension of British
commerce until he has carefully studied the shop‐fronts of the tradesmen
of Looe.
“Then, when you have at last threaded your way successfully through the
streets, and have got out on the beach, you see a pretty miniature bay
formed by the extremity of a green hill on the right, and by fine jagged
slate rocks on the left. Before this seaward quarter of the town is
erected a strong bulwark of rough stones, to resist the incursion of high
tides. Here the idlers of the place assemble to lounge and gossip, to look
out for any outward‐bound ships that are to be seen in the Channel, and to
criticise the appearance and glorify the capabilities of the little fleet
of Looe fishing‐boats riding snugly at anchor before them at the entrance
of the bay.
“The inhabitants number some fourteen hundred, and are as good‐humoured
and unsophisticated a set of people as you will meet with anywhere. The
fisheries and the coast trade form their principal means of subsistence.
The women take a very fair share of the hard work out of the men’s hands.
You constantly see them carrying coals from the vessels to the quay in
curious hand‐barrows; they laugh, scream, and run in each other’s way
incessantly; but these little irregularities seem to assist rather than
impede them in the prosecution of their tasks. As to the men, one
absorbing interest appears to govern them all. The whole day long they are
mending boats, painting boats, cleaning boats, rowing boats, or, standing
with their hands in their pockets, looking at boats. The children seem to
be children in size, and children in nothing else. They congregate
together in sober little groups, and hold mysterious conversation, in a
dialect which we cannot understand. If they ever tumble down, soil their
pinafores, throw stones, or make mud‐pies, they practise these juvenile
vices in a midnight secresy that no stranger’s eye can penetrate.”
A mile or so out at sea rises a green triangularly‐shaped eminence, called
Looe Island. Several years since a ship was wrecked on the island, but not
only were the crew saved, but several free passengers of the rat species,
who had got on board, nobody knew how, where, or when, were also preserved
by their own strenuous exertions, and wisely took up permanent quarters
for the future on the _terra firma_ of Looe Island. In course of time
these rats increased and multiplied; and, being confined all round within
certain limits by the sea, soon became a palpable and tremendous nuisance.
Destruction was threatened to the agricultural produce of all the small
patches of cultivated land on the island—it seemed doubtful whether any
man who ventured there by himself might not share the fate of Bishop
Hatto, and be devoured by rats. Under these circumstances, the people of
Looe decided to make one determined and united effort to extirpate the
whole colony of invaders. Ordinary means of destruction had been tried
already, and without effect. It was said that the rats left for dead on
the ground had mysteriously revived faster than they could be picked up
and skinned or cast into the sea. Rats desperately wounded had got away
into their holes, and become convalescent, and increased and multiplied
again more productively than ever. The great problem was, not how to kill
the rats, but how to annihilate them so effectually that the whole
population might certainly know that the reappearance of even one of them
was altogether out of the question. This was the problem, and it was
solved practically and triumphantly in the following manner:—All the
inhabitants of the town were called to join in a great hunt. The rats were
caught by every conceivable artifice; and, once taken, were instantly and
ferociously _smothered in onions_; the corpses were then decently laid out
on clean china dishes, and straightway eaten with vindictive relish by the
people of Looe. Never was any invention for destroying rats so complete
and so successful as this. Every man, woman, and child that could eat
could swear to the death and annihilation of all the rats they had eaten.
The local returns of dead rats were not made by the bills of mortality,
but by the bills of fare; it was getting rid of a nuisance by the unheard‐
of process of stomaching a nuisance! Day after day passed on, and rats
disappeared by hundreds, never to return. They had resisted the ordinary
force of dogs, ferrets, traps, sticks, stones, and guns, arrayed against
them; but when to these engines of assault were added, as auxiliaries,
smothering onions, scalding stew‐pans, hungry mouths, sharp teeth, good
digestions, and the gastric juice, what could they do but give in? Swift
and sure was the destruction which now overwhelmed them—everybody who
wanted a dinner had a strong personal interest in hunting them down to the
very last. In a short space of time the island was cleared of the
usurpers. Cheeses remained intact; ricks were uninjured. And this is the
true story of how the people of Looe got rid of the rats!
Many causes, Mr. Collins tell us, combined to secure the poor of Cornwall
from that last worse consequence of poverty to which the poor in most of
the other divisions of England are more or less exposed. The number of
inhabitants in the county is stated by the last census at 341,269—the
number of square miles that they have to live on being 1,327. This will be
found, on proper computation and comparison, to be considerably under the
average population of a square mile throughout the rest of England. Thus,
the supply of men for all purposes does not appear to be greater than the
demand in Cornwall. The remote situation of the county guarantees it
against any considerable influx of strangers to compete with the natives
for work on their own ground. Mr. Collins met a farmer there who was so
far from being besieged in harvest time by claimants for labour on his
land, that he was obliged to go forth to seek them in a neighbouring town,
and was doubtful whether he should find men enough left him unemployed at
the mines and the fisheries to gather in his crops in good time at two
shillings a day and as much “victuals and drink” as they cared to have.
Another cause which has of late years contributed, in some measure, to
keep Cornwall free from the burthen of a surplus population of working men
must not be overlooked. Emigration has been more largely resorted to in
that county than, perhaps, in any other in England. Out of the population
of the Penzance Union alone nearly five per cent. left their native land
for Australia or New Zealand in 1849. The potato blight is assigned as the
chief cause of this, for it has damaged seriously the growth of a
vegetable from the sale of which in the London markets the Cornish
agriculturist derived large profits, and on which (with their fish) the
Cornish poor depended as a staple article of food.
It is by the mines and fisheries that Cornwall is compensated for a soil
too barren in many parts of the country to be ever cultivated except at
such an expenditure of capital as no mere farmer can afford. From the
inexhaustible treasures in the earth, and from the equally inexhaustible
shoals of pilchards which annually visit the coast, the working population
of Cornwall derived their regular means of support where agriculture would
fail them. At the mines the regular rate of wages is from forty to fifty
shillings a month; but miners have opportunities of making more than this.
By what is termed working “on tribute,” that is, agreeing to excavate the
mineral lodes for a percentage on the value of the metal they raise, some
of them have been known to make as much as six and even ten pounds a
month. Even when they are unlucky in their working speculations, or
perhaps thrown out of employment altogether by the shutting up of a mine,
they have a fair opportunity of obtaining farm labour, which is paid for
(out of harvest time) at the rate of nine shillings a week. But this is a
resource of which they are rarely obliged to take advantage. A plot of
common ground is included with the cottages that are let to them; and the
cultivation of this helps to keep them and their families in bad times,
until they find an opportunity of resuming work; when they may perhaps
make as much in one month as an agricultural labourer can in twelve.
The fisheries not only employ all the inhabitants of the coast, but in the
pilchard season many of the farm people work as well. Ten thousand
persons, men, women, and children, derive their regular support from the
fisheries, which are so amazingly productive that the “drift,” or deep‐sea
fishing, in Mount’s Bay alone, is calculated to realise, on the average,
£30,000 per annum.
To the employment thus secured for the poor in the mines and fisheries is
to be added, as an advantage, the cheapness of rent and living in
Cornwall. Good cottages are let at from fifty or sixty shillings to some
few pounds a year. Turf for firing grows in abundance on the vast tracts
of common land overspreading the country. All sorts of vegetables are
plenteous and cheap, with the exception of potatoes, which have so
decreased, in consequence of the disease, that the winter stock is now
imported from France, Belgium, and Holland. The early potatoes, however,
grown in May and June, are still cultivated in large quantities, and
realise on exportation a very high price. Corn generally sells a little
above the average. Fish is always within the reach of the poorest people.
In a good season a dozen pilchards are sold for one penny. Happily for
themselves the poor in Cornwall have none of the foolish prejudices
against fish so obstinately adhered to by the lower classes in many other
parts of England. Their national pride is in their pilchards; they like to
talk of them, and especially to strangers; and well they may, for they
depend for the main support of life on the tribute of these little fish,
which the sea yields annually in almost countless shoals.
“Of Cornish hospitality,” says Wilkie Collins, “we experienced many
proofs, one of which may be related as an example. Arriving late at a
village, we found some difficulty in arousing the people of the inn. While
we were waiting at the door we heard a man, who lived in a cottage near at
hand, and of whom we had asked our way on the road, inquiring of some
female member of his family whether she could make up a spare bed. We had
met this man proceeding in our direction, and had so far outstripped him
in walking, that we had been waiting outside the inn about a quarter of an
hour before he got home. When the woman answered this question in the
negative, he directed her to put clean sheets on his own bed, and then
came out to tell us that if we failed to obtain admission at the public‐
house, a lodging was ready for us for the night under his own roof. We
found on inquiry afterwards that he had looked out of window after getting
home, while we were still disturbing the village by a continuous series of
assaults on the inn door, had recognised us in the moonlight, and had
therefore not only offered us his bed, but had got out of it himself to do
so. When we finally succeeded in gaining admittance to the inn, he
declined an invitation to sup with us, and wishing us a good night’s rest,
returned to his home. I should mention, at the same time, that another bed
was offered to us at the vicarage, by the clergyman of the parish, and
that after this gentleman had himself seen that we were properly
accommodated by our landlady, he left us, with an invitation to breakfast
with him the next morning. This is hospitality practised in Cornwall, a
county where, it must be remembered, a stranger is doubly a stranger, in
relation to provincial sympathies; where the national sympathy is almost
entirely merged in the local feeling; where a man speaks of himself as
_Cornish_ in much the same spirit as a Welshman speaks of himself as
Welsh.
“In like manner, another instance drawn from my own experience will best
display and describe the anxiety which we found generally testified by the
Cornish poor to make the best and most grateful return in their power for
anything which they considered as a favour kindly bestowed. Such anecdotes
as I here relate in illustration of popular character cannot, I think, be
considered trifling; for it is by trifles, after all, that we gain our
truest appreciation of the marking signs of good or evil in the
dispositions of our fellow‐beings, just as in the beating of a single
artery under the touch we discover an indication of the strength or
weakness of the whole vital frame.
[Illustration: VIEW ON THE CORNISH COAST.]
“On the granite cliffs at the Land’s End I met with an old man, seventy‐
two years of age, of whom I asked some questions relative to the
extraordinary rocks scattered about this part of the coast. He immediately
opened his whole budget of local anecdotes, telling them in a high
quavering treble voice, which was barely audible above the dash of the
breakers beneath, and the fierce whistling of the wind among the rocks
around us. However, the old fellow went on talking incessantly, hobbling
along before me, up and down steep paths, and along the very brink of a
fearful precipice, with as much coolness as if his sight was as clear and
his step as firm as in his youth. When he had shown me all that he could
show, and had thoroughly exhausted himself with talking, I gave him a
shilling at parting. He appeared to be perfectly astonished by a
remuneration which the reader will doubtless consider the reverse of
excessive, thanked me at the top of his voice, and then led me in a great
hurry, and with many mysterious nods and gestures, to a hollow in the
grass, where he had spread on a clean handkerchief a little stock‐in‐trade
of his own, consisting of barnacles, bits of rock and ore, and specimens
of dried sea‐weed. Pointing to these, he told me to take anything I liked
as a present in return for what I had given him. He would not hear of my
buying anything; he was not, he said, a regular guide, and I had paid him
more already than such an old man was worth. What I took out of his
handkerchief I must take as a present only. I saw by his manner that he
would be really mortified if I contested the matter with him, so as a
present I received one of his pieces of rock. I had no right to deprive
him of the pleasure of doing a kind action because there happened to be a
few more shillings in my pocket than in his.”