CHAPTER IX

CORNISH CUSTOMS 135

SOME BOOKS ON CORNWALL 145

INDEX 147

List of Illustrations in Colour

1. The Land's End _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

2. Carbis Bay 6

3. Kynance Cove 10

4. At Polperro 14

5. The Coast near the Lizard 16

6. Old Bridge at Lostwithiel 28

7. St. Michael's Mount 34

8. Newlyn 38

9. Lamorna Cove 42

10. Caerthilian Cove 66

11. St. Ives 92

12. A Street in St. Ives 94

13. From Lelant to Godrevy 98

14. Fowey 110

15. Bodinnick Ferry, Fowey 114

16. Looe 118

17. Flushing--from Falmouth 122

18. Truro 124

19. The Banks of the Fal, Falmouth 128

20. At Newlyn 138

_Bird's-Eye View of Fowey Haven, pp._ 112 _and_ 113.

_Sketch-Map at end of volume_.

CORNWALL

I

POPULAR IDEAS OF CORNWALL

To the mind of the ordinary Briton there is a curious attraction in

"getting as far as you can"--a streak in mentality which has accounted

in no small degree for the world-wide Empire. In England you cannot in

one direction get any farther than the extreme point of Cornwall. Owing

to the geographical configuration of Cornwall, the idea is magnified

very vigorously into a really gallant effort to "get there," such as

might be made by an individual stretching out not only to his full

stride, but indulging in a good kick! We feel in very truth we have "got

there," on to the edge of something or somewhere. As Wilkie Collins

expresses it, the Land's End is "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!"

Thus it is that Cornwall holds a special magnet which steadily draws a

never-ending succession of strangers. Look only at those who do the feat

of cycling or motoring from John o' Groat's to Land's End. Picture them

in an indomitable long-drawn-out line, wheel to wheel; shadowy forms

flitting over that last--or first--piece of road, full of hope and

exultation at the thought of the journey's end, or full of anticipation

at the journey's beginning. No road in England has been so wheel-worn as

that strip running out to the most westerly point of England.

Some there are who are drawn by a similar magnet to the Lizard, the most

southerly point of our land, but the attraction is not so potent. From

time immemorial John o' Groat's to Land's End has formed the measure of

Britain.

For very many years Cornwall has been known for its fine coast scenery,

but wild and desolate scenery was not the fashion in Early Victorian

days, and there were comparatively few brave souls who penetrated so

far. It is rather remarkable to notice how many books about the charm of

Cornwall appeared in the sixties, doubtless due to the opening of the

Cornwall Railway in 1859. There is Wilkie Collins's _Rambles Beyond

Railways_, 1861; J. O. Halliwell's _Rambles in Western Cornwall_ and J.

T. Blight's _Land's End_, the same year, followed by Richard Edmonds's

_Land's End District_ the next year.

But Cornwall really began to be known by hundreds of persons in place of

tens about 1904, and since then the number of visitors has increased to

thousands.

This book is not written by a Cornishman, for the very obvious reason

that no Cornishman could for one instant think impartially of his Duchy,

any more than you could expect a Yorkshireman to believe that the "rest

of England" was in any way to be compared with Yorkshire. The more

individual and peculiar a person is, the more deeply is he loved by

those who really know him, provided that he has lovable qualities. No

characterless good soul ever wins the heartfelt devotion that is the

meed of those who have unexpected kinks and corners in their

personality, and in the same way a flat, featureless country, carefully

cultivated and uninteresting, will never win to itself the true

land-love felt for one that is varied, rough maybe, rugged a bit, and in

a hundred ways surprising. Of all things human nature hates boredom, and

the man or the country who can win free of any trace of boredom insures

a reward. Cornwall has in a peculiar measure gained the devotion of its

own people. Not only on account of its unexpectedness, but because it

stands in some measure apart from the rest of England. The Celtic blood

of its older inhabitants, while making them akin to the Welsh and Irish,

cuts them off from the Saxons, whom so often and so heartily in the old

days they fought.

The geographical position of Cornwall, with three sides washed by the

sea, and even the "land" boundary mainly marked by a river, has

influenced its sons, who, never being far from the sound of the surging

waves, have gained something of the robust aloofness of the sailor. They

are friendly to all, but guarded nevertheless; and standing thus apart,

marked out by their territory, with small chance to mingle with

inhabitants of other counties, the clan feeling among them has grown to

be analogous to that of the clans in Scotland. All other Britishers are

to the true Cornishman "foreigners." How then could a man so imbued with

his own and his Duchy's place in regard to the "rest of England" write a

book which should convey in any way the real characteristics of his

land?

It would be a feat impossible.

The rugged outlines of a well-known face lose meaning with years of

familiarity, and are taken for granted; thus it is with landmarks in

Cornwall, which would never figure in such a chronicle at all.

Therefore, as this book is intended not so much for those who know

Cornwall as for those who will know it sometime in that future which

lies beyond the reading of it, the impressions of an outsider are most

fitting.

There are people who go to Cornwall once for a holiday and return to it

ever and again, when they get the chance, unable to find satisfaction

anywhere else; the "atmosphere" of the country has entered into their

blood. They think with an ache of the coast in all its cruelty and

glory, they picture the bright blue of the rain-washed skies in a burst

of sunshine, and they recall the great "hedges" with a foundation or

core of stone, generations old, overlaid by an ample covering of turf

and grass, a hot-bed for the stonecrop and hart's-tongue, fern,

primrose, or foxglove.

But what is a catalogue of words? It conveys nothing, any more than a

catalogue of the names of books. Unless one can conjure up feelings, the

attempt to explain the grip of the Duchy on recollection is useless. The

clammy sea-wind on the face, the sense of great spaces, the grandeur of

the coast, with its solemn, immovable rampart of cliff, and the pulsing

life of the cold spray, for ever beating and frilling against the hard,

glistening surface--these enter into consciousness. Of all things

living, the swing of the seagull on motionless wings over a cavernous

hollow brings one nearest to the realization of a dream.

Others again go to visit the Duchy and come away disappointed because

they have not found exactly what they wanted or expected. They take

small children to coast places of which they have only heard by name,

and are dismayed to find there is no sand, no beach, no bathing--only

hills steep as the blue slate-roofs; and a good deal in the "people's"

part of the town, which is narrow, slatternly and disagreeable. But it

is one of the traits of Cornwall that she embraces such wide variety and

shows such startling contrasts close up against each other. There are

certainly a great many places where there are no sands at all, nothing

but sheer wild cliffs falling perpendicularly to the sea, pierced by

gigantic caves, to be explored at low tide only, and a small strip of

shingle on which bathers are warned to enter at their peril, for the

huge breakers from the Atlantic roll in continually, and one moment

you are over head and shoulders in the smother of their foam, and the

next stand naked to the winds, with a villainous undertow sucking away

the pebbles from beneath your twitching soles. Carew, Cornwall's

best-known historian, speaks of the Duchy's "long, naked sides." The

writer on geology in the _Victoria County History_ says: "It has been

calculated that a single roller of the Atlantic ground-swell (20 feet

high) falls with a pressure of about a ton on every square foot." Places

where such forces are felt are the Poles apart from the usual English

seaside resort, sarcastically described by "Q" as "A line of sea in

front, a row of hotels and lodging-houses behind, all as flat as a

painted cloth, with a brass band to help the morality." Yet even in

Cornwall if you want sandy beach you can have it. There are sands that

stretch for miles, firm and flat, such as the famous beaches at St.

Ives; and in most places, even the rocky ones, there is some provision

made for bathing of a sort.

[Illustration: CARBIS BAY]

I think the reason why a small proportion of people are disappointed in

Cornwall is that the advertisements are focussed on one aspect only. In

almost every one of them is the mildness of the climate insisted on, and

this gives rise to semi-invalidish ideas. It is true that semi-invalids

who go there in winter in search of warmth can find suitable places if

they know where to go. Cornwall as a whole must have an equable climate,

or we should not see the growth of exotic plants out of doors--myrtle,

tree-geranium, aloes, palms, and camellias, to name only a few of the

most abundant--but the whole county is by no means a hot-bed of warmth,

and the winds are frequently very cold indeed. There are everywhere now

first-class hotels, with the ample lounges which have superseded the

shut-up drawing-room and smoking-room compartments of earlier days, and

these hotels mostly have verandahs so placed that the glorious sun can

flood them while the winds are kept at bay. There those who come to

recuperate can bask in delight, and draw straight from the Atlantic the

pure fresh air, which has a wonderfully tonic effect.

"The lungs with the living gas grow tight,

And the limbs feel the strength of ten.

* * * * *

God's glorious oxygen."

Two such verandahs come up before me as I write--that at Fowey, raised

high, and overlooking the most lovely harbour along the whole coast,

shut in by rising banks almost like a Norwegian fiord; the other, the

verandah at Housel Bay Hotel, where, facing due south, you may sit in an

atmosphere of summer which is indeed like a climate usually only to be

looked for many degrees further south.

But though this aspect is the keynote of almost every advertisement, or

at any rate every winter advertisement, it is by no means the most

prominent or characteristic one of Cornwall, which appeals far more to

the hardy than the weak. When I think of Cornwall the vision that comes

before me is not that of sheltered sun-bathed balconies, but rather of a

high wind making the breakers frill around the jagged bases of the

cliffs, while above, amid the towans or sandhills covered with bent

grass, the golf-balls fly. The tang of the air seems once again in my

nostrils, carrying with it an exhilaration that makes the blood race in

the veins and entirely prevents tiredness. Only in one place elsewhere

have I felt that exact stimulus, and that was far west in the

neighbouring land of Brittany, near the Point du Raz, which stretches

razor-like into the ocean, and in many respects strikingly resembles a

bit of the Cornish coast. Many people will object that this is exactly

what they understand Cornwall does not offer; on the contrary they have

heard apologies for its stuffiness and the relaxing qualities of the

air. Why yes, if one visits it in the height of summer, and goes to one

of the many places situated in a hole or funnel and facing south, it

might be very relaxing indeed; but the "advertisements for invalids," if

one may so call them, usually refer to early spring and it is in early

spring that the invigorating breezes may be found almost anywhere the

whole way round, while the northern coasts are never stuffy even in

summer.

Besides unusual golf facilities another feature appealing to the hardy

and sound are the cliff paths, mere coastguard tracks, unfenced and

unspoilt, which circle the whole coast. Those who keep to roads will

never see the real Cornwall and that is why so many motor-bound souls

miss it. One may wander for days on these cliff paths, lured on from

point to point and bay to bay, always rejoicing in something new or

glorious, something which beckons onward. At the foot of the vertical

walls of rock are tiny sandy bays for ever cut off from the foot of man

even at low tide, and inaccessible to all save the sea-birds, who well

know it! My mind brings back visions of great pieces of rock, torn and

ripped from their hold, and apparently flung pell-mell on the beach.

Except that they are usually three-cornered and not columnar, they are

somewhat like the drongs of Shetland in their piercing sharpness.

Remarkably fine specimens of these isolated rocks are seen at Kynance

Cove, near the Lizard, and at Bedruthan Steps, in Watergate Bay; but

almost everywhere some stand up aloof from the neighbouring cliff.

[Illustration: KYNANCE COVE]

Whoever loves the wild desolation of the northernmost Scottish coasts

will feel at home in Cornwall. Of course the cliffs are not nearly so

high--most of the Cornish cliffs could go four times into the finest

specimens of Mull or Shetland--but there is not much lost by this. The

human mind can only grasp up to a certain amount of size conveyed by the

eye in vertical measure, and after the first awed glance down a

1,000-foot cliff, when the mind is almost stunned, the impression

rapidly wears off, and all the grandeur needed is equally well conveyed

by 300 feet of sheer precipice, while the details of the natural carving

and the play of the wild birds on its crevices are far better observed.

The popular idea of Cornwall in the minds of those who have not been

there is that there runs a long raised ridge down the middle like a

spine, and that from this on each side the ground slopes away to the

sea; but this is a very misleading idea. Cornwall is all hills, and yet

has none to boast of. Brown Willy, not far from Launceston, reaching to

1,375 feet, is the highest, but yet there is very little flat land

anywhere. If you took a silk handkerchief, crumpled it up in your hand,

and threw it on the table, it might fall somewhat as Cornwall is

constituted. The people who live there are used to hills and not afraid

of them. Why should they be? In most of the towns--and almost every

small village is a "church-town," while every stream is a river--the

streets are often at about the angle of an ordinary house-roof, and as a

rule there are miles of hill to be negotiated in rising out of the towns

for they lie in hollows or crevices, corresponding to the folds of the

handkerchief. This is not wonderful considering the fact that the wind

blows freely from the sea on both sides, and that it is in the hollows

and sheltered nooks that vegetation flourishes. There are of course

exceptions. Take such a town as Launceston. One main street has been

engineered to go round in curves, so as to enable horses--horses bred to

the work--to get up it, and at the top there is a bit of level, but most

of the other streets fall sheer down. When babes who can scarce toddle

scramble forth from their living-room on to a road slanting at an angle

of forty-five degrees or more, which forms their only playground,

naturally their leg muscles get strengthened, and as they grow up and

have to start off to school, or return from it, up a hill that taxes the

sinews of a "foreigner" till he groans, they make nothing of it. Roads

seem to wander at their own sweet will with no inclination to the Roman

ideal, but they never wander to avoid inclines; they tilt up and down

again with the most gracious equanimity, and a man on a cycle who has

struggled up a steep ascent and feels at last he will be able to reap

the reward, as often as not finds the descent too perilous to ride

without the utmost caution. Cornwall is not a county for cyclists except

they be strong in the leg; but it is good country for those pedestrians

who measure the day's journey by what they have seen and not by ground

got over as the crow flies, for they can follow the enchanting little

paths winding in and out by the great headlands of the coast.

Cornwall is no place for being in a hurry.

Many of the most famous sights, such as the great outlying cliffs at

Gurnard's Head, and the Logan Rock, are not anywhere near a road. The

roads keep inland, and for very good reason. These places have to be

reached over long, sloping fields, and entail a good deal of

scrambling--ideal places to resort to for a whole day with picnic

provision, so long as one has a clear head and steady foot, but not to

be sought as a "side-show."

Very many of the little coast places too are down at the end of what may

be called long shafts, and to the ardent cyclist, intent on mileage, to

go down, down, down, for miles till he can see the cows grazing in the

fields high overhead, and to arrive at last at a little port where a few

old salts sit and smoke and idle, and there is no way of getting out

again but by the funnel, is a matter for as strong comment as conscience

permits. Yet again for those who love what is beautiful and unhackneyed,

there is charm beyond measure in the spirit of these places. In

Polperro, which might be a bit of Brittany planted wholesale in our

land; or Fowey, with its unforgettable harbour, where the blue tide

creeps up like a stain of spreading dye; or in Mullion, with its huge

rounded masses of rock lying off the coast.

Another popular idea of Cornwall, also mistaken, is that the interior of

the Duchy is hideous and only the coast beautiful. There is much that is

ugly no doubt; raw places where the half-grown mounds of rubbish and

crumbling chimneys mark disused tin-mines; where the sharp and hard

outlines of slate shriek at you everywhere; where ragged, scrubby fences

break up an endless series of barren-looking fields, and the whole

landscape gives the impression that it is flying at a terrific speed

westward, heading into the prevailing wind, because all the trees and

shrubs that have managed to survive it at all are bent nearly double.

But what of the glorious wooded slopes in Bodmin neighbourhood where

smooth roads wind between the rich growth of woods? What of the famous

valleys such as Luxulyan and others? There is plenty inland attractive

enough if one knows where to look for it.

[Illustration: AT POLPERRO]

Perhaps this impression as to the interior has grown because the

painting fraternity, now a recognized part of Cornish society, mostly

paint views on or near the coast, having settled chiefly at and near

Newlyn and St. Ives. Mr. Lewis Hind, in his book on Cornwall, says:

"Probably two hundred canvases are despatched each year from the

Delectable Duchy to Burlington House and elsewhere; of this number

seven-eighths have been painted in Newlyn or St. Ives.... The great

centres are Newlyn, St. Ives, and Falmouth, and the votes of the

Cornish contingent, it is said, can turn the scale in an election at the

Royal Academy."

The truth is, Cornwall must be taken in bits, and often the most hideous

lie close up alongside the most attractive; however they only help to

intensify that which is very good. People who look too cursorily are the

most often disappointed.

Wandering about Cornwall certainly induces one ache, and that is the

ache to be more knowledgeable. Those lucky creatures who know something

of botany and geology here have delights not unfolded to others.

Cornwall is a paradise for the botanist and geologist, because for the

former there are rare species and some altogether unknown elsewhere,

such as the _Erica vagans_ so often mentioned, which grows in the

neighbourhood of the Lizard. In fact Cornwall possesses more

specialities in plant-life than any other county in England. For the

latter because even the amateur can see the wonder and difference of the

rocks: the pink tinged granite of Land's End, the great granite tors

inland on the moors, and the variegated serpentine at the Lizard, as

well as the cruel, sharp-edged slate of the northern coast. While as for

the archaeologist is there any part of Britain that affords him such

endless material? A mere enumeration of the ancient stone crosses,

the standing stone circles, the cromlechs, the British huts, the

earthworks, the cliff-castles, the hill-castles or camps, the stone

graves, the chambered cumuli, the barrows, and other relics of a

long-past age, would fill pages. The moors are covered with them and the

bare heights above Land's End are a rich hunting-ground.

[Illustration: THE COAST NEAR THE LIZARD]

This evidence of the lives and habits of the very ancient inhabitants

adds much depth and flavour to the "atmosphere," and especially when it

is remembered that the original Cornish are the purest example of that

old race--the British. Mr. W. H. Hudson, in his book _The Land's End_,

quotes Lord Courtney's saying: "The population of Cornwall in general

has remained much more homogeneous, much more Celtic in type, than in

other parts; and of all Cornwall there is no part like this [Penzance

and Land's End district] in which we meet with probably so pure a breed

of human beings."

The nation now calling itself British has Saxon, Teutonic, French, and

Norse blood in its veins, as well as that of the original stock; but

when the successive waves of invaders swept over the country, they

usually exhausted themselves before reaching this remote corner, into

which the oldest island stock was swept up.

This probably accounts for the queer impression one often gets in

Cornwall of being abroad. It comes suddenly, rising like one of the

Cornish mists and enveloping one, until suddenly the conviction that one

is across the sea, far from home, flows almost overwhelmingly over the

mind. There is much more likeness and kinship between parts of Cornwall

and parts of Brittany than between Cornwall and most of the rest of

England. There is no doubt that Cornwall differeth not as "one county

from another county," but as one county from all the rest. Here, where

the British race had its last stronghold, the stamp of the national

characteristics was retained in its effects much longer than elsewhere.

Nowadays of course there is intermarrying and travelling, and frequent

streams of new blood coming in--half the people you speak to are not

Cornish at all--but still there is something remaining which stamps them

as a whole. It has often been noticed that there are traces of Spanish

blood to be found in the dwellers in the extreme west where many of the

great Spanish galleons were wrecked in bygone days; just as there are

found brown faces and black hair in the Fair Isle of the Shetlands,

where half the population intermarried with some Spaniards of the great

Armada wrecked on their coast. In this part of Cornwall one constantly

sees women with clear-skinned faces, dark-brown eyes and hair, of a

distinctly foreign type. The people, with their rather remote and

surface friendliness, have often been described. They will greet you

pleasantly and courteously--courteous manners have lingered here--small

boys, and men too, still salute a stranger in passing with a greeting,

and if one asks the way the answer will be no abrupt direction, but a

careful and minute description repeated until clearly understood. Even

in Wilkie Collins's time the people were noticeable for their courtesy.

He says: "The manners of the Cornish of all ranks, down to the lowest,

are remarkably distinguished by courtesy--a courtesy of that kind which

is quite independent of artificial breeding, and which proceeds solely

from natural motives of kindness and from an innate anxiety to please.

Few of the people pass you without a salutation."

As it was then so it is now.

Yet everywhere one feels a want; there is a lack of something. Perhaps

it is they are too matter-of-fact; a passing jest leaves them puzzled.

There is none of the dry humour of the Scot, which makes every man you

meet on the road in Scotland instinctively approach a remark from what

may be called the humorous angle. As an example of the Cornish lack of

this quality, when I remarked to a man who was showing me a real fine

golf-links stretching over the sandy towans of bent-grass, "these

sandhills are simply made for golf," he answered: "Oh no, they were not

made for the links; they were here long before!"

The people simply don't understand analogy or imagery; their minds are

very literal. In this part of the world they may well be literal, for

the hard necessity of making a livelihood from very poor material must

crush out fun. Yet in spite of many hardships endured, it is a rare

thing to see a pale or miserable-looking child. The children are round

and rosy, with sturdy legs, as indeed they may well have for they need

them. This general well-being cannot be altogether attributed to the

pure air, because in the Shetlands and on the West Coast of Scotland

where the air is just as pure the children are usually brown and thin.

It may be that this is due to the lack of milk, the heaths of Scotland

affording scant pasturage, while the constant moisture of the air in

Cornwall makes the grass grow richly.

At midday you will see the bairns running along the street munching

great pasties--a Cornish specialty--made with bits of meat and onion and

potato in a cover of paste, and the pasty seems to be the school-child's

usual dinner. Another specialty of Cornwall are the yellow saffron

cakes, so unappetizing in appearance to those unused to them. Of the

cream there is hardly need to speak. As one ardent admirer of the Duchy

remarked: "Of course, Devonshire cream _is_ Cornish cream, only they've

managed to get all the credit for it." In spite of this testimony it

seems to me there is a difference, the Cornish variety is at once more

fluid and more lumpy, but this may be an erroneous opinion based on

insufficient experience.

Of history Cornwall has little. The brightest jewel in her coronet is

that she stood unfailingly for the Stuarts in the Civil Wars, and many a

church holds a letter of thanks from King Charles I. Except for the

struggles of that epoch, the Duchy has little to tell of what may be

called historical times, but before them much. It is in the misty ages

before the Norman Conquest that history was made in Cornwall, and every

now and then we catch fleeting glimpses of scenes standing out bright

and clear amid a general fog, just as we can to-day catch the vivid

pictures of the landscape before the grey mists sweep down with

incredible speed and blot them out. We see Athelstan's terrible fight

with the Britons; his establishment of the collegiate church at St.

Buryan in pursuance of his vow, when he returned victorious from the

Scilly Isles. We get brilliant peeps in the legends of King Arthur; in

the mysterious beehive huts and stone circles of a people who have

vanished; in the whimsical tales of the early saints who scattered

themselves so freely over the land on their arrival from Ireland; and we

find hieroglyphic messages we cannot read in structures we call

cromlechs and in the cliff-castles.

Small wonder that Cornwall is a land of legend and story, and that tales

of fabulous men and wonder-working men abound. In our very earliest

nursery days, long before we could point to Cornwall on the map, we

learned to repeat:

"Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum,

I smell the blood of a Cornishman.

Let him be alive or let him be dead,

I'll grind his bones to make me bread."

And if modern nurseries substitute "Englishman" for "Cornishman," that

is distinctly their loss. The coast with its mighty fragments and giant

"chairs" and enormous blocks of stone is quite obviously the home of

giants.

II

THE GATEWAY OF THE DUCHY

The gateway to the Duchy is impressive--that is to say, the gateway by

which far the largest proportion of visitors enter--the railway bridge

of the Great Western at Saltash. This marvellous bridge of Brunel's has

been often described; it does not impress by its beauty for it has none,

but by its tremendous height and length. It is 2,240 feet from end to

end, and rises 260 feet above the water. It cuts across the narrowest

part of that great ganglion of waters which break up the land behind

Plymouth Sound. On the north lie the broad inlets of the Rivers Tamar

and Tavy, and to the south that of the St. Germans or Lynher River

curves away, and all along it the line runs, crossing the broad inlets

of mud at low tide and shining water at high tide, giving a glimpse of

the famous Hamoaze at Devonport and the busy dockyards filled with the

clang of driven rivets.

In the Hamoaze lies the _Powerful_, an establishment consisting of

three ships for the training of boys, and also the _Impregnable_, used

for the same purpose, with two ships attached; one of them has a fine

figure-head of the Black Prince. These are close to the ferry to Mount

Edgcumbe, the family seat of the Earl of that name. The lads have

drillgrounds and playgrounds ashore, but live on board. When they all

swarm about the decks and rigging in their white suits, to rest in the

sun for a brief half-hour after the midday meal, it is as if a flock of

sea-birds had alighted on the picturesque old hulk.

In old times the destroyers used to be moored, two by two, when in port,

just below Saltash Bridge, and this place was called the "destroyer

trot," but the war has changed all that. Above the bridge are two

powder-hulks.

If we passed up the river in a small boat we should see a variety of

bird-life. The most attractive are the cranes, measuring upwards of 5

feet in length, ash-coloured with blackish wings and black legs. They

stand and fish on the margin of the river, especially at evening time,

planted close together like sentinels up to their knees in the water.

They rise most gracefully and their great wings move slowly in measured

action. The gulls and rooks are jealous of them, possibly seeing in

this measured movement some imagined superiority, for they occasionally

buffet them as they fly. There is a current saying accounting for the

erratic allotment of days in the spring quarter. It is said that March

borrowed a few days of February to catch the crane on her nest, but he

only caught her tail, and so the crane has no tail since then! Milton

speaks of the migration of the cranes when he says:

"Part loosely wing the region; part, more wise,

In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way,

Intelligent of seasons; and set forth

Their airy caravan; high over seas

Flying, and over lands with mutual wing

Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane

Her annual voyage, borne on winds, the air

Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes."

The most common birds up these tidal rivers are the sheldrake. They are

plentiful and very tame as they sit dozing away the hours in little

parties on the tide edge, or flighting over the water with low musical

quacks. They are extremely white when on the wing--in fact that is how

one always thinks of them, white and orange. The orange flash is their

bill, which is brightened in the springtime. They give poor sport for a

gun, and don't seem to be of much use. They were the wildest of all wild

fowl but have now taken on the tamest ways.

And all the time in spring you can hear the wild musical note of the

curlew, and see the dun-coloured birds flitting against the green of the

woods. They are shy and wary, and common along the shores on the sands

which are exposed at low water. Ringed plovers can sometimes be seen

running on the wet surface of the sands at the tide's edge, flocks of

lapwings too. Teal is by no means infrequent up the rivers, and an

occasional shag (cormorant) may be noticed swimming far up towards

Saltash and fishing. In its spring dress, with its horn-like crest, and

miserable-looking yellow face, and its lustrous dark-green plumage, the

shag is a handsome bird. Mallard is fairly plentiful in the rivers, and

you may see flocks sleeping away the day-hours on the flats, and

recognize them by the longitudinally marked plumage of the drakes.

Sometimes they fly back and forth as gulls do while they wait for the

tide to ebb. Small birds there are, of course, in numbers, such as

wag-tails, sandpipers, and the oddly crying and flying redshank, a shore

bird. It wheels above the tide-line, or rests, bowing quaintly, on some

grassy hummock near a pool.

But these things can only be studied in leisured intimacy from a

slow-going boat passing in the spring-time, when the blackthorn frosts

the hedges and starry-eyed primroses grow to monstrous size. The train

which flashes us across the bridge reveals none of them!

In the first glimpse of our first Cornish "town" we catch sight of a

steep winding street, which serves as full introduction, for in many a

Cornish town shall we see the same again! And then, even as the train

runs in the cuttings of Cornish soil, we realize almost at once the

key-note of Cornwall--the extraordinary richness of growth. Ivy bursts

over every wall in a perfect cataract; ferns and small wild things fill

every crevice with their grasping roots, and even in winter there is no

thinness or barrenness to be felt for evergreens flourish amazingly. The

wooded reaches of the hills dispel the idea that Cornwall is everywhere

a treeless land, and the constant dampness of its climate is shown by

the lichen which clings to every branch and twig like hoar-frost, so

that in winter the whole mass has a curious shot-green-and-brown

effect.

[Illustration: OLD BRIDGE AT LOSTWITHIEL]

The West Cornwall Railway, reaching as far as Truro, was opened in 1852,

and the Cornwall Railway in 1859. Both of these were afterwards absorbed

by the Great Western Railway.

One of the most beautiful parts of the whole line is that between

Liskeard and Bodmin Road. The woods run riot on the ever varying slopes,

and the evergreens are so fine, with their abundance of clean, glossy

leaves, that even the ordinary country roads have something of the

appearance of a carefully tended private drive.

The Cornish valleys are especially treasured by the people and much

admired, because they present such a striking contrast to the high bleak

uplands. That it is only the wind which prevents the growth of trees may

be judged from these valleys, where they flourish finely. Take Luxulyan

Valley, running down to St. Blazey, a place where hundreds come for

picnics. Even in any part of England it would be admired; here its charm

is enhanced by its surroundings. There are plenty of trees of a fair

size, and the sides of the valley are covered with bracken and furze,

from which peep out great grey rocks. Primroses and violets abound in

the spring, and the mossy boulders and the extensive variety of ferns

show a flourishing vegetation almost like that of a fern-house under

glass. There is something also about the grey lichened rocks bursting

out of the waist-deep furze and bracken that serves to emphasize the

fulness of growth. The only drawback about Luxulyan is that it lies in

the china-clay country, and the stream which runs down to ugly St.

Blazey is white as milk. This china-clay is one of Cornwall's most

living industries now that the tin-mining has declined, and the

pilchards come so scantily. It is the product of decomposed granite

owing to the action of fluoric acid. The works where it may be seen at

its best are near Roche, on the little line between Newquay and Fowey,

and here the piles of white earth might be mistaken for flour or

whitening by those who did not know what they were. The clay is sent

down by rail to Fowey, and the greater number of the steamers putting

into that harbour are engaged in carrying it away. At Roche is an

extraordinary rock starting sheer up from the plain. On the top was

formerly a cell or hermitage, of which Norden says quaintly, "It

standeth upon the wilde moares farr from comon societie."

There are innumerable "singing valleys" in Cornwall, though mostly

small. I call them so because of the congregation of singing-birds here

crowded together for lack of nesting-places, instead of being spread

thinly over the district. As can easily be understood, there is no

difficulty in nesting for the larks, who make joyous the wide uplands,

or for the sea-birds who haunt the rugged coast, and only come inland at

times of storm, or to follow in a white, restless cloud close at the

heels of the ploughman as he turns up the sod and exposes the fat white

slugs and delicious grubs. Nor is there any difficulty for the smaller

hedge-birds, least of all the wrens, who, like red-brown butterflies,

flit in perfect safety to the roomy depths of the age-old "hedges."

These hedges in Cornwall are, particularly in the west, but a core of

hard stone piled loosely together and covered with mud or sod and the

growth of many generations of plant-life, and knitted by creeping plants

till they stand broad-based and immovable like ramparts, and are used as

paths by the inhabitants, who pass quickly and safely from one swampy

field to another along their turfy tops. Indeed in flooded winter-time

it is often the only possible path, and when the main road lay deep in

water I have been reduced to dragging my bicycle on to the summit of a

"hedge" and wheeling it precariously along. Such places are paradises

for Jenny Wren, who springs into the maze of twisted stalks and heavy

leaves, and hops about the spacious corridors in the perpetual twilight,

perfectly secure from intrusion. Smaller birds too can make shift with

the windblown specimens of shrubs that sometimes adorn such hedges, but

the great majority prefer something of larger size and so gather

wherever trees make an oasis.

One such "singing valley" is Landewednack, near the Lizard, called

locally Church Cove, one of the sweetest of the Cornish chines. The

little church is charming architecturally with its weathered pinnacles

crowning the grey stone tower. The small-leaved Cornish elms cluster

round the graveyard, and show through their warped and twisted stems

glimpses of the infinite blue sea, giving an idea of boundless

expansion, and adding to the snugness of the shut-in valley. The

emerald-green moss clings thickly to the westward or windward side of

the crusted trunks, and at their foot what a riot of vegetation! The

sound of running water and the brilliant green of the grass, as well as

the masses of long hart's-tongue ferns falling abundantly from the

churchyard wall, all tell of perpetual moisture. Passing beyond the

church, we come to a few thatched cottages placed anglewise to the

steeply falling road, and near them see an immense hedge of veronica

covered with big, furry, heliotrope-coloured blossoms, affording shelter

to the straggling blue periwinkles below. Every niche and crevice of the

wall shows small, green, flat leaves crawling out to the sun and light.

Only a short way below, the cove comes to an abrupt end, and there is a

steep drop made smooth for the boats, which have to be hauled up by

pulleys, while the sea below for ever beats on the huge black stones.

The marvel is how the boats are ever got up and down such a place, and

that marvel confronts one everywhere in Cornwall. This cove is typical

of hundreds,--vegetation down almost to the water's edge, a haunt of

singing-birds, a tiny steep cove very inconvenient and dangerous for

landing, and mighty cliffs rising at each side.

III

THE "TOE" OF CORNWALL

Penzance is strongly reminiscent of the Channel Isles to those who know

both. There is the same odd mixture of sternness in the bare outlines of

the stone houses--as bare as those on the Cumbrian Fells--and the

unexpected luxuriance of growth, the flourishing tree-shrubs such as

hydrangeas and fuchsias, in backyards and odd corners. When one gets a

vista down the Morab Gardens in the midst of the town, with the steep

green depths framed by the bushy-topped palms falling away to the

brilliant blue sea, one might almost be having a peep in the Riviera, if

we accept the lack of orange-trees, with their golden lamps, so

beautiful to the sight, so disappointing to the taste! It is surprising

to those coming from harsher parts of England to see the deprecating

droop of the blue-grey tongues of the eucalyptus, the feathery grace of

clumps of bamboo, and the glossy-leaved bushes of camellia. At any rate,

whatever one compares the place with, one is conscious of an odd

surprise at its un-English characteristics.

[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT]

The "front" is not the great attraction at Penzance. No doubt the

wonderful bay, with its priceless jewel of St. Michael's Mount, does at

all times satisfy the imagination; but the flat esplanade, the

singularly ineffective strip for sea-bathing, and the rather dull style

in which most of the houses are built, are not in themselves attractive.

The bay can be seen better elsewhere, from the heights of the very ample

churchyard of St. Mary's for instance, overlooking the grey slate roofs,

or from Newlyn Hill, when at sunset time all the colours of the spectrum

may be reflected on the Mount, and the only thing one can say with

perfect certainty is that it is never twice exactly alike. One of the

most lovely visions is when the sun catches it through a rift in sombre

clouds, bathing it in a kind of unearthly radiance or dawning light,

while Penzance, with its tall-pinnacled church tower, is all mouse-grey.

And when a rainbow arches over one side of the steep slope, as I have

seen it, it is almost unearthly.

Sometimes the Mount disappears entirely, melting into its background, or

only the castle is left visible, apparently unsupported except by a

filmy mist. There is no end to the vagaries played by the lights and

shadows and sea-colours on this wonderful instrument. Indeed the Mount

is chiefly valuable for this reason, because, owing to the fact that it

is private property, and that access to it is much restricted, it is not

nearly so much an object of intrinsic interest as its grand counterpart

in Brittany.

It must be a strange place to live on. When the St. Levan family arrive

they have to go over by launch from Penzance, probably after a long

journey by rail; and the weather, if tempestuous, must make even such a

short crossing unpleasant. Once there, there is the stupendous steep to

climb--no trifle, even though the roads are graded. Dining out with

county neighbours must be an almost impossible feat, and grand as the

surroundings are, they must pall very soon because of their limitations.

Tradition says that the men-folk of the family are not supposed to be

able to swim properly until they can swim all round the Mount, a fine

undertaking in view of the rocks and shoals!

The Mount in Brittany is only 57 feet higher, but looks much larger,

which is curious, as it stands considerably farther out to sea, being

11/4 miles away; the Cornish one is only about 1,200 feet from the

mainland. Perhaps the reason is the greater variety and grandeur of the

buildings on St. Michel.

The old name of Marazion was Market-jew, and the two together certainly

make most people imagine there is some Israelitish association; but this

is unfounded. Marazion is "the market by the seaside," and Market-jew

"the market on the side of the hill." Some have supposed the Mount to

have been the Ictis of the ancient tin trade, where the merchants from

far met the inhabitants to barter for tin. "When they have cast it [the

tin] into the form of cubes, they carry it to a certain island adjoining

Britain called Ictis. During the recess of the tide the intervening

space is left dry, and they carry over abundance of tin in carts"

(Diodorus Siculus). Many other islands have been suggested to fit this

account, even the Isle of Wight; but the bed of the sea must have

changed very quickly if people could in historic times pass over to it

on foot at low tide!

The legend of the fair land of Lyonnesse is supported by the evidence of

a submarine forest in Mount's Bay, noted by Borlase in 1757. This seems

to have been a wood chiefly of hazel, but with alders, oaks, and other

trees, and is by no means the only case of a submerged forest being

found around the shores of Cornwall. Great trunks have been disclosed,

and even hazel-nuts and twigs; but it is a big step from the subsidence

of some parts of the shore and the consequent submergence of forest

land, to the story of the overwhelming of such a land as Lyonnesse,

reaching out as far as Scilly and containing many villages and churches.

To return to Penzance. The town is very irregular, its meandering

streets meet at all angles, and here and there are linked by narrow,

passage-like cross-cuts, ofttimes as steep as wynds. There is a very

noticeable prevalence of Nonconformist places of worship, and these

show, as most of their kind do, a hideous lack of architectural beauty,

a sort of defiance of the pride of the eye. The Cornishmen since

Wesley's crusade have been strongly Nonconformist, notwithstanding the

fact that Wesley himself was a son of the Church. They probably find the

rigidity of the Established Church too formal for their fervent souls.

Nonconformity appeals to them as it does to their cousins the Welsh, and

it is a curious thing that St. Mary's, the most ancient of the churches,

should be the opposite of this, with ritualistic services, whence the

smell of incense is wafted into the uncompromising streets.

[Illustration: NEWLYN]

The greatest son of Penzance is Sir Humphry Davy, who was born here in

1778. He belonged to an old Cornish family. His statue stands at the

head of the sloping Market-jew Street.

Though Penzance has not in itself anything very remarkable to show in

the way of beauty, it is certainly a good centre for excursions, being

at the very joint of the swollen and deformed "toe" of the county. Roads

start from it in all directions over this much-sought peninsula, and it

would be easy to spend not one, but many weeks hunting out all the

quaint and interesting things, both natural and artificial, to be seen

within reasonable distance.

Newlyn, home of the painting colony known all the world over, is close

to Penzance, and straggles up the side of a terrific hill. Rows of

stereotyped villas in terraces now overlook the bay, and are eagerly

taken as they are built. But round the harbour linger still the odours

of the typical old fishing village, and there are few sights more

suggestive to the imagination than the scattering of the red-sailed

fishing-boats as one by one they pass at evening time out between the

narrow horns of the harbour to their rough, wet nights of toil in the

clammy sea air. Newlyn is famous for its apple-blossom, and the vision

of the bay between masses of apple-blossom in springtime is one never to

be forgotten. Newlyn itself is easily accessible compared with

Mousehole, right round the corner, tucked away under the cliff. Here a

name for once is thoroughly suitable, for the little place is hemmed in

by the towering hills, and the principal ways on foot out of it are by

tiny overgrown lanes, so narrow that two people can hardly pass, so

steep that in places they are veritable staircases, with rotten wooden

steps, or those made from hollowed mud worn by many feet. Yet whether

the name really does mean what it appears to, or is only a corruption of

some other word with a totally different significance, is not known. R.

Edmonds (_Land's End District_) suggests "Mozhel" or "Mouzhel," meaning

maids' brook or river, as a stream used for washing by the women runs

through the town.

The constant steep places in Cornwall are a great puzzle to many people

who come with an idea that the Duchy is neatly and evenly sloped, rising

in the middle and falling down to the sea on each side. As has been

explained, this is very far from the truth. A pilgrimage round the

county is like climbing a succession of ridges. The steeps are so steep

that they demand real physical effort, and even the drops put a strain

on unaccustomed leg-muscles. Newlyn Hill taxes the strength of those

coming from normally level districts. It is to be hoped that only horses

born and bred in Cornwall are used for the charabancs and other public

vehicles; it would be sheer cruelty to bring horses from flat-lands

here.

If we scrambled along the coast beyond Mousehole we should come to

Lamorna Cove, a deep indentation filled with scrub-bush and small trees.

Wherever it is possible trees grow in Cornwall; they take advantage of

every atom of shelter, and every cleft in the ground out of the raging

wind is filled with them.

The soil is wonderfully fertile, and the constant wet--not even its most

ardent admirer denies that Cornwall gets rather more than its share of

rain--develops a prodigal amount of growth in the way of ferns and

creepers and other plants that like warm moisture. At Lamorna is a

colony of artists; they have settled here as an outpost from Newlyn, for

the natural beauty and remoteness of the place suit them. They have

their picturesque houses within friendly reach all up and down the

little glen, and take pride in their gardens, with wonderful rockeries

and babbling streams, and all the rich growth that the soil and climate

bring forth. They drop in on one another at all hours, and know all

about each other's concerns. They are a friendly, kindly,

generous-hearted clan. Here, where the woods are white with hawthorn in

the spring, the stream gushes down in endless waterfalls, and the waves

burst and break on the rocks in the cove below, every one of them can

find endless scenes for his or her brush.

Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick's book, _In Other Days_, gives a picture of Lamorna

Valley in the guise of fiction: "It was a brilliant March day, warm in

the sun, cold in the wind. The gorse and the blackthorn were both out,

spreading the wild copse and common of the valley with a shimmer of

white and gold. The old bracken still lay in patches of ruddy brown,

primroses were just beginning shyly, and the short grass of the open

places had not put on its summer hues yet. The sky was clear and deep,

with little white clouds scudding across it; larks were singing, and in

the distance sounds of men at work in the fields were heard. The air was

scented with herbs and fresh from the sea, but sheltered by the lie

of the low hills, and by old, long-neglected trees. In some places the

trees were of a great height and girth, making a gloom over the huge

moss-grown granite rocks strewing the earth and edging the little

stream.... A small swamp full of peppermint scented the air."

[Illustration: LAMORNA COVE]

That is the work of a close observer.

In this neighbourhood there are many of those curious relics of bygone

times, which are bestrewn about Cornwall more thickly than any other

part of England. The Fougou Hole in one of the gardens is a weird place,

and its meaning and use is even yet little understood. It is a tiny,

damp vault, made of great, unhewn stones, and reached by a hole in the

ground. Here it is said harried cavaliers took shelter in the Civil

Wars, but the Hole is much older than that; it dates back to those

strange times beyond the dawn of history of which we only get vague

glimpses.

In the fields above, gaunt stones rise like pointing fingers to the sky.

These are called "The Pipers," and mark the scene of Athelstan's defeat

of the British in 936; it is the "place of blood." But if they were

really erected by Athelstan in the tenth century, and are not, as is

possible, relics of Druid worship, they are modern compared with the

Fougou Hole. Not far from them, in the midst of a grass-field, are the

"Merry Maidens," a circle of grey stones about 24 yards in diameter;

there are nineteen of them altogether, none quite the height of a man,

and some much smaller. They convey an impression of immovable solemnity,

as such age-old things always do, for they are planted so securely, and

look so indomitable with their grey, lichen-covered sides four-square to

the winds. Local tradition tells how the Merry Maidens were caught

dancing on the Sabbath to the music of the pipers, and turned to stone,

but history is silent as to their origin. There is indeed all over

Cornwall many a reminder of the ancient world now lost to all record. In

various other places are to be found other circles of Merry Maidens just

as much of a problem as these, but none so perfect or so impressive.

The long, narrow, rectangular tower of St. Buryan, crowned with

pinnacles, dominates all the landscape; exactly of this pattern are most

of the Cornish church towers. They are generally as much alike as if

they had been turned out of a mould. This is one of the most interesting

of the many interesting churches in Cornwall. After Athelstan's

triumphant victory near Lamorna, he vowed he would establish here a

large religious foundation if he were successful in his further

expedition to the Scilly Isles; and when he returned a conqueror he

carried out his vow. This was about 930. Of course, there is nothing

remaining of that church, but the present building contains much

grotesque carving of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the

greater part of the building must have stood from the fifteenth or

sixteenth. There is a peacefulness about the ancient church, set in the

long, billowing fields bordered by rugged hedges, gorse and ivy-grown,

that appeals peculiarly to some natures. It is all very quiet.

Down on the shore, not many miles away, is a great pile of splintered

rocks jutting out into the sea, to be reached by a narrow neck. This is

Treryn Dinas or Castle, where is the famous Logan stone. The striking

thing about the rocks is that so many take the form of cubes, some of

the most astounding being almost exactly the shape of the ancient

Egyptian obelisks. There are so many shattered, square-edged lumps,

resting on small bases, that the difficulty to the stranger is to

discover the real Logan Rock, which brings hundreds of visitors to the

place in summer. This headland has evidently been at one time a

fortified cliff-castle, and in passing over to the peninsula visitors

cross the first line of defence or earthworks, though few would notice

it.

From Penzance we might run out by any one of the diverging roads across

the peninsula, and be sure of coming upon some relic of the most ancient

race inhabiting these islands.

By way of Madron we should pass the Lanyon Quoit or Cromlech, a great

slab of rock 18 feet long, supported on three other slabs which are just

a little too low to allow a man to stand upright beneath it. In 1816 it

fell or was blown down; before this a mounted man could sit under it.

When Lieutenant Goldsmith in 1824 committed the silly trick of upsetting

the Logan Rock, and was condemned by the Admiralty to rebalance it at

his own expense, the apparatus brought down to the duchy for the purpose

was also used to replace the cap of the Cromlech, though why it should

be of less height now than before is not known.

Amid the bleak hills around are to be found constant remains of ancient

British villages, rather in the manner of the Picts' houses of Scotland.

That the strange people who lived in them thrashed corn for food and

kept cattle, there is plenty of evidence. They lived in these little

beehive huts, which were sometimes placed singly, sometimes two or

three together, often with an embankment round, or a good cave near for

retreat if necessary. The huts are circular and built without cement or

mortar. Fragments of pottery have been found in and around. Some of them

are near Chun Castle, that ancient earthwork, one of the half-dozen or

so in the "toe" of Cornwall. This district was the last stronghold of

the British race, who had retreated before the Western invaders to the

very extremity of the land.

By any one of these roads we should come at last out on to the coast

road--rather grandiloquently called "The Atlantic Drive"--running from

Land's End to St. Ives. This has been compared with the famous Corniche

drives of the Riviera. But beware! Don't expect too much, or you will be

terribly disappointed. Yet if you go with an open mind, expecting

nothing, you will see something of very real interest and carry away new

knowledge.

The fields are in many places simply covered with stones. How the corn

finds room to grow is a miracle. The constant winds try everything

growing very severely, and there is a look of bare poverty about the

land. It is often compared with Ireland, and called the Connemara of

England; but in some ways, especially in the amount of stones, it is

more like bits of Galloway. Stone is employed for objects which

elsewhere are usually made of wood. The stiles are broad slabs of

granite, the gate-posts are granite blocks, and as we have seen, the

very "hedges" are stone. The name Zennor suggests gauntness of a Puritan

kind. The whole of the great hill above Zennor is covered with immense

and, if one may use such an expression, dignified stones. Away up among

them is another huge quoit or cromlech, probably marking the

burial-place of some chieftain long before Arthur's date. It is a grand

place for burial too, austere and solemn, overlooking the ocean, and

with a limitless horizon. The man who was buried here must have had

imagination if he chose the spot for himself beforehand. The tearing

winds shriek over the ragged furze and mighty stones, and howl in the

crevices of the monument above him; the great black clouds roll in, and

the whole country is drowned in a blinding squall of hail; the sky

clears, patches of brilliant blue appear, and the sun strikes down on

the dripping stones, while all the little rills and streams race down

the soaking ground and over the roads in the wayward manner of Cornish

streams; and still the old chieftain sleeps on, lulled by all the music

of Nature in this wild outpost which England thrusts into the sea.

The road surface round here is tolerably good. Much of it is granite,

and the tiny crystals glitter in the sun like diamonds, and quickly dry

up after the whirlwinds of rain that pitilessly descend in winter time.

The road winds along around the desolate hills, keeping mostly rather

far inland, and it passes by acres of rough land covered with the

wayward gorse, where small, fox-red cows take an interest in the

stranger. In spring primroses grow to enormous sizes, with leaves as

large as those of foxgloves; and the foxgloves in their turn decorate

the hedges, rearing their tall spikes of magenta-coloured bells in

profusion. Pigs abound, and great grey sheep-dogs, of the Old English

bobtail breed, come shyly to make friends. And everywhere in

irrepressible masses is the furze, the quick-burning fuel of the poor, a

godsend here where wood is so precious.

Almost due west of Penzance is the mining region, where until lately

there was great activity, now comparatively still. St. Just is the

centre of this district; but it is not what one would expect in a

mining town. Right in the heart of it, where now the children make their

playground, is a great amphitheatre, one of the best known and preserved

of the many like it that at one time held hundreds of Cornish folk to

watch the open-air plays that delighted their hearts until Wesley's

teaching made them think them wrong. After that they served as

meeting-places for Wesley himself in many instances. The church, with

some peculiarly quaint frescoes, and the Plan-an-guare, the plane as it

is called locally, give St. Just a character of its own. Down one

terrific hill, falling at an angle that no one unless he lived in

Cornwall would dare to make a road, and up another, is Botallack, with

its well-known mine, now stilled, and the taint of the red tin is felt

in earth and air for many a mile beyond.

IV

FURTHEST WEST AND FURTHEST SOUTH

It has been the invariable creed of every writer on Cornwall that

visitors seeing the Land's End for the first time must be disappointed

with it. Disappointment there may be after a very cursory inspection,

but it is evanescent. It only lasts as one approaches across the flat

ugly ground where sodden patches of raw earth lie in ridges, and the dun

walls of the unsightly hotel present their dreariest side to the

newcomers. Particularly is this so in the height of the season, when

public vehicles of every variety and degree of manginess decorate the

landscape and the picture-postcard craze is at its strongest.

But those who stay long enough to see the place quietly or those who

visit it in the winter when there are few disturbers of the peace, tell

another story.

The reef of broken and pinkish tinged granite, decorated by weird

streaks of brilliant yellow lichen, is frequented by "guides" who point

out fancy resemblances to faces in the weather carven rocks. The reef is

small; there is not much that is grand about it; but if one sits there

while the sun sinks, a glowing ball, into the sea exactly opposite, and

the ruby and diamond points of the lighthouses flash out far and wide,

and perhaps a clear pale sickle moon begins to sharpen in outline in the

fading sky, there is plenty on which to exercise the imagination. The

granite, being split by the action of the weather into long columns, and

divided again horizontally into blocks, gives the impression of a series

of obelisks built up of separate stones. The general effect is rather

like the famous cavern at Staffa. In places however the rocks are split

into such massive and even-edged blocks that it is very difficult to

disentangle the natural from the artificial, and one often imagines

oneself to be gazing at the ruins of a castle which is really only some

cloven cliff hammered by natural elements and not by tools of man's

making.

On the seaward side the hotel lounge has been carried out in a great

bay, and from the sweep of windows there are no less than four

lighthouses to be seen, with their varying flashes. The bright ruby

spot is the Longships Light on a grisly reef so near that it looks as if

you could throw a stone upon it, though really two miles away. It is

only red on the landward side. Ships usually pass outside this reef

unless the sea is very calm, for it is a dangerous coast. It seems

hardly believable that at times the men in the lighthouse are held up

for two months by the swell which prevents their relief arriving, but so

it is, and even on the calmest days it is no easy matter to land. The

Longships is a reef composed of several rocky islets, some of which are

connected by bridges and in fine weather the men can walk about and even

fish, but in rough weather the great doors in the tower are closed for

days together. When the swell comes, rolling from out the profoundly

disturbed depths of the Atlantic and heralding a storm, the sheeted foam

flies high above the lantern and often the last vision one has before

night drops like a black curtain is that white froth of breaking foam

around the glowing red eye in the tower. Further out to the south is the

well-known Wolf Lighthouse, and far to the west that on the Scilly

Isles.

Even in the depth of winter, on clear white frosty moonlight nights,

there are those who motor down to see the Land's End by moonlight, but

usually the "trip" element occupies a very small part of the day and of

the year; and for the greater part of the time the place is strangely

solitary. When the storms beat on the coast, driven by the wild west

winds, the boom and clangour is heard as far inland as Lamorna Cove.

The chief characteristic of the weather is its uncertainty; there are

clear bright intervals when the sea and sky are of electric blue and the

headlands are etched out on them in black, and then all in a moment the

lowering wall of storm comes up visibly; the outlines of everything are

obliterated in one sweep, and a squall of hail as big as peas shrieks

around, whitening the ground, then flies on in its mad course, to be

succeeded by the joyous freshness of the clean-washed air and the glory

of the vivifying sun. In winter time it is not safe to go two hundred

yards from the hotel without a mackintosh, and yet just across the waste

of heather along the little sheep tracks on the slopes, what wonderful

views are to be seen in the steep-sided bays filled with a smother of

foam, where the stones being driven irresistibly against one another

grind off their harshnesses.

It is a terrible coast, and nearly always, even on the calmest day,

when the wolves might be supposed to be sleeping, the sudden baring of a

fang in the whitening of some jagged rock, a moment before invisible,

shows the lurking danger.

But what perhaps catches the imagination most sharply at that "raw edge"

is the tradition of the Land of Lyonnesse, lying between here and the

Scilly Isles.

There seems very little foundation for this poetic fable and though, as

already said, the roots and trunks of trees have been found in Penzance

Bay and it is possible there may have been some landslip on a large

scale in prehistoric times, there seems geologically nothing to point to

a complete submergence of miles of land at the extremity of Cornwall.

Tradition speaks of a land covered with villages and churches--indeed,

no less than a hundred and forty churches--all buried in the shifting

water by reason of one great convulsion, and Tennyson has placed here

the scene of Arthur's rule and his last battle:

"For Arthur, when none knew from whence he came,

Long ere the people chose him for their King,

Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,

Had found a glen, grey boulder and black tarn."

And again:

"So all day long the noise of battle roll'd

Among the mountains by the winter sea;

Until King Arthur's Table, man by man,

Had fall'n in Lyonnesse about their lord."

The Scilly Isles are supposed to be the tops of the hills belonging to

the lost land and so are the Seven Stones, a jagged ridge midway between

them and Land's End, whence in fine weather the isles can be seen as

faint cirrus clouds lying along the horizon. But though this is the

nearest point to the islands, they can only be reached by steamer from

Penzance, the _Lyonnesse_ going and returning alternate days. There is

no harbour at Land's End and the cruel fanged rocks would make the

direct voyage very dangerous, so the journey has to be lengthened out

from Penzance.

As for the islands themselves, those who brave the crossing come away

with strangely mixed feelings according to their temperament. If they go

bathed in the glamour of _Armorel of Lyonnesse_, by far the best of

Besant's books, they will see the romance and charm of these windswept

bits of rock. If they are there in the spring they will visit with

delight the acres of carefully tended flowers guarded by high thick

walls and hedges from the ever sweeping western winds; if a little

later in the nesting time of gull and guillemot, razor-bill, puffin and

cormorant, say the first week in June, then the sights of bird-life will

well repay them. They may even find the nesting-places of the tern,

shearwater, or such voracious pirates as the kestrel and peregrine, or

the stormy petrel; but this will be in the outlying islets, as the

greater traffic and population of late years has driven many of the shy

birds away. The halcyon days when sea and sky are one soft blue dome and

the water washes and laps around the rocky shores give a glimpse of

peace and remoteness such as one might imagine form part of heaven. The

masses of cloud piled up in towering grandeur, the vast horizons and

even the beat of the sudden squalls will find response in some people.

But there are few save islanders born and bred who can revel in the lash

and struggle and constant menace of the black winter days.

Surrounded by water on all sides the temperature is kept equable, hence

it is that narcissus, violets, anemones, daffodils and other of the

earliest spring flowers can be grown in the open and sent to be

delivered in London weeks before the home counties can produce them.

It is rather curious that the name by which the whole group is known

should not be that of the largest, or even of one of the largest,

islands. Scilly is a mere rock rising from the sea to the west of

Bryher, it is flat and cleft in two by a deep chasm through which the

water runs. The currents are very strong and it is not often a landing

is possible here. St. Mary's, the principal island, is the one where the

steamers arrive, at Hugh Town. This name has not any authentic

derivation, though it has been suggested it may be connected with the

word "huer," to call or cry out. Tresco is next in size, and in summer a

steam launch runs across to it from St. Mary's. Here lives the

proprietor of the Scillies, Mr. Dorrien-Smith, in a comfortable house

amid a perfectly glorious garden, in which are the ruins of an old Abbey

built in the time of Henry I. There is some fine rock-scenery to be

found in the outlying islets, if one takes the trouble to look for it in

a boat, and some of the views of the scattered islands seen from a

height on a clear day can never be forgotten.

To the north of Land's End is the sweeping curve of Whitesand Bay

leading up to Cape Cornwall. It is possible to bathe off the shore with

certain precautions. Directly inland is the little village of Sennen,

which for many years boasted "The First and Last" house in England; and

down on the shore Sennen Cove, where the families of the lighthouse men

live, and the Atlantic cable comes ashore.

Whitesand Bay has historical memories; Athelstan sailed from here to

conquer the Scilly Isles after his sanguinary victory at St. Buryan. It

was a bold undertaking considering the means at his disposal. The shore

of Whitesand, which is low-lying on an otherwise iron-bound coast, has

naturally been the landing-place for those who arrived at this extremity

of England. Stephen disembarked here when he first came to the country

from France and so did Perkin Warbeck. In the centre of the bay the

granite and slate meet and mingle.

No other place can vie with the Cornish coast for curious and suggestive

names. We have here Vell-an-Dreath meaning "The Mill on the Sand." All

traces of the mill have disappeared, but the tradition of it lingers. It

was kept by a father and son, it is said, who found themselves attacked

by a roving gang of Spaniards who had landed to harry the country. The

native Cornishmen made a stout resistance, and finally escaped the back

way under protection of a cloud of smoke, carrying stout sacks of flour

on their backs to protect them from bullets. The Spaniards destroyed the

mill, which was never rebuilt.

Close to the southern end of the bay is a detached rock called The Irish

Lady, which with some imagination may be likened to a mincing dame

flouncing out to sea. Such rocks are not at all uncommon in Cornwall,

one, very well known, is Queen Bess at Bedruthan Steps. Towering above

the lady on the mainland is Pedn Men Dhu, Black Rock Headland, a pile of

massive granite. Further along we find Carn Barges, the Kites' Rock;

Carn Towan, the Rock on the Sandhills; Polpry Cove, the Clay-Pit; Carn

Leskez, the Rock of Light, said to be where the Druids kindled their

sacred fires, but much more likely the place where faked beacon fires

were lit to lure ships to destruction in the bad old days! Close off

Cape Cornwall are the Brisons, two fearful shattering piles, and near

them Priests' Cove, right under the headland.

The coast to the south of Land's End is even more interesting, and if

any of those who say they are "disappointed" with Land's End could walk

round here they would soon recover. The coast-line is serrated by

innumerable small bays like deep bites and in each one some wild and

strange rock-forms imitating natural objects can be seen. We pass at

first by Carn Greab, Cock's Comb Rock, where a conspicuous group

includes the Armed Knight, and then we come to a tiny island called Enys

Dodman, which has a great archway scored through it by the action of the

waves. Pardenick Point rises perpendicularly about two hundred feet from

the sea; the curious "pillar" appearance of the rocks is very striking,

and not less so the reddish veins which run like streams sheer down the

granite in places. Anyone lingering here, as the sun sets and the

shadows grow long, can make out all sorts of weird shapes and haunting

faces in the cliffs, as odd as any mediaeval artist's conceptions

embodied in gargoyles. We pass Mozrang Pool, the Maid's Pool, and then

the Red Rock, and the Chilly Carn; next a chasm called by the poetical

name of "The Song of the Sea," and so to the "Cove under the Vale." All

along the coast, those who have time to explore it will find strange

sea-caverns, logan-stones, natural arches and other fantastic forms.

Then we reach Tol Pedn, where is quite the grandest scenery in the

whole district. Approaching from the landward side on an autumn or late

summer day the heights are seen covered by a wonderful carpet of purple

or crimson and gold. It is made by the intermingling of the dwarf gorse

and the heather, which are so interwoven they could not be separated. As

the result of this close embrace these two plants, both small, form a

gorgeous tapestry of colour, and the vast heights and sounding hollows

of the headland are glorified by them. Tol Pedn means Holed Headland and

evidently refers to the Funnel, a great chasm a hundred feet in depth

and eight feet in diameter, cut out as if by a giant cheese-scoop down

to the roaring sea. Below, the tide scours the bottom at every return,

and at low tide it is possible to enter from the beach. In early spring

the close sward on the higher reaches is starred with little blue

squills. Great care must be taken not to slip and lose one's balance on

this short turf, because in Cornwall one is never fenced in by puny

supports. The Chair Ladder usually attracts much wonder, it is an

immense pile of upright blocks. The whole scarping and shaping of the

cliff is vigorous and original, and looking down from above into one

gully after another you can see the gulls float in effortless dignity

over the measureless gulfs below.

Just round the corner from Tol Pedn is to be found one of the quaintest

little fishing villages, Porthgwarra, where a tunnel has been cut

through the solid rock to allow the fishermen to get down to their

boats. The rocks are fine red granite, and with the brilliant blue of

the sea on a sunny day and the yellow ochres of sand and sail there are

"ready-made" pictures at every turn. Looking out from the darkness of

the tunnel the colours are enhanced. One of the most attractive points

about the many mighty caverns along the coast are the clean-cut,

brilliantly clear pictures to be seen from their dark interiors.

All these and many other curious and fantastic things may be found by

those sure of eye and foot. For one of the greatest charms of Cornwall

is its variety and unexpectedness, at all events as regards the coast.

For a hundred people who go to Land's End it is safe to say only one

visits the Lizard. Though the usual run of tourist conveyances have

found it out, it is more difficult to get to than the western extremity,

and is a little out of the way. Yet in the opinion of those who have

seen both the Lizard beats even the fantastic scenery to the southward

of Land's End.

The approach is nothing short of lamentable in its dulness. Except for

an oasis about half-way across Goonhilly Downs, the wide, flat,

dead-alive plateau occupying the heel of Cornwall, there is nothing to

note. Even right on to the end the feeling of dismay grows. The meek

green fields carry one down almost to the shore, for though we have come

across a bit of heath _en route_ which recalls how repeatedly we have

been told that the _Erica vagans_ grows here and nowhere else, we leave

this behind and wind once more between grass fields toward the dreary

little cluster of houses called Lizard-town, which looks not unlike a

forsaken coast-guard station from the distance. To reach the famous

Housel Bay Hotel we must branch off before getting to the town, and

following a lane which looks as if it led merely to a lighthouse, we

come quite suddenly on the building, facing due south in the centre of a

little bay. Not until we have passed the hotel and got out to the cliff

paths does the surprising interest of the scenery begin to unveil

itself, and the orderly sanity of the fields, which vexed our eager

souls, is forgotten. On the two horns of the bay stand the flashing

lighthouse and Lloyds' signal station. We are here at the most

southerly, as we have just been at the most westerly, point of our

country.

The cliffs are carved into many fantastic and bewildering shapes. Before

we have got very far we are brought up short by an immense hole or

funnel, cut clean-lipped from the short turf, and just the shape of one

of those paper twists shop-keepers make for sweets. It is much larger in

circumference than the Funnel at Tol Pedn. No railing protects the edge;

people at the Lizard are supposed to have their wits about them. By

lying down flat and approaching cautiously, we can peer over and see

that here also the sea runs in on the floor. This is one of the cliff

vagaries made within the memory of man. On the night of February 19,

1847, the hole appeared suddenly, yet so quietly that no one knew of it

until it was seen. There had apparently been a shell or roof which had

given way as the sea scooped out the earth from below. Yet that such a

sudden catastrophe is possible shows how little we know about what goes

on under our feet.

A little further on a column of spray shoots in fluffy steam from a

blow-hole every few seconds after the last billow has fallen away. Near

it a huge boulder perched on a great plinth balances at an uncertain

angle. How did it get there? At every turn "chairs" of stone extend a

silent invitation to us to seat ourselves and gaze at the ships passing

and repassing in a silent and endless procession.

The Serpentine rock streaked with hornblende, felspar, slate and

green-stone, shows changing colours like a pigeon's breast. It weathers

into columns and pillars and arches and caverns, as if on purpose to

delight the hearts of children of a larger growth, too old for spades

and pails. Only a mile or two away at Kynance Cove these wonders come to

perfection in the torn and twisted rocks lying in masses on the shore,

which is covered with shining sand in summer but scoured black and stony

by the rough seas in winter. By Caerthillian Cove we may pass to

Pentreath beach and Yellow Carn and thus to Kynance. At places the

cliffs have broken away forming a natural quarry and here come the

people from the little town above, and search for well-coloured

fragments of serpentine to fashion into candlesticks, and brooches, and

ash-trays to sell to tourists. Dark red is a rare and popular colour

and dark green also; chocolate with splashes of green, like variegated

marble, is often seen. There is little fishing to be done on this wild

rigid coast, and beyond some rough farming and their "serpentine" shops,

it is hard to see what the population live upon. The rocks at the Lizard

are split more often horizontally than vertically, and instead of being

sharp upright columns as the granite fragments are at Land's End, these

are broad lumps giving a curious sense of steady untiring watching with

uplifted heads.

[Illustration: CAERTHILIAN COVE]

One interesting point about rock scenery is that it changes so little in

the course of years that the impressions of those who saw it long ago

are still not out of date. There are two very simple little books, two

generations old now, but full of charm when read on the spot, Mrs.

Craik's _An Unsentimental Journey in Cornwall_ and the Rev. C. A.

Johns's _A Week at the Lizard_, 1848. Mrs. Craik, who wrote _John

Halifax, Gentleman_, came here with two nieces near the end of her life,

and gives a picture of Lizard-town which might stand to-day. With a

horse and "shay" they visited the various points of interest along the

coast, climbed into the dank caves and mounted the slippery weed-strewn

rocks. It was a bold journey to make at the time, and their taste was in

advance of most of their contemporaries who had not learnt to delight in

the grand and desolate places of the earth. The Rev. C. A. Johns is well

known as the author of _Wild Flowers of the Field_, which ran through

numerous editions and is the most popular of his many natural-history

books.

Not many days after reading Mrs. Craik's book at the Lizard, I was in

the light railway running to Newquay in the north of the county and saw

a girl of about sixteen, deeply absorbed in a book, opposite to me. It

was bound in the dingy maroon cloth so beloved by the librarians of Free

Libraries, and peeping over I saw it was _John Halifax_, thus nearly

sixty years after publication giving as much pleasure as when it was

new! If the good lady could have known it, how pleased she would have

been!

When the sun falls over the shoulder of the cliff in the west, the

revolving light from the lighthouse begins to flash out with a regular

monotonous beat on its long night vigil. At any time after dark one can

see the huge pencil of light darting round, striking the white signal

station opposite, losing itself in the sea and so returning. There is

something awe-inspiring in that regular sweep of pulsing light every

three minutes, hour after hour, carrying its silent sure message to

those at sea. If anything happened to the Lizard light what terrible

wrecks there would be on this jagged coast!

Nearly as impressive is it to catch by night the glimmer of the Morse

code flashing from ships which are revealing their names and journeys to

those ever-vigilant watchers in the signal station as they pass. What

stories that signal station might tell of the journeyings to and fro, of

the ships conveying food and clothes and necessaries from port to port!

Here is a vessel bound from Galveston to Havre with cotton, she is

British; about every second or third that come by is laden with coals

from Cardiff; here is another from the other direction, bringing fruit

from the Mediterranean to Liverpool, with all the beating up the Irish

Channel yet to face; passing it, and doubtless hailing it in transit, is

another Liverpool ship carrying a general cargo to Italy, and when times

are peaceful and there are no scares from submarines, the great American

liners from Plymouth swell the number with their enormous bulk. It is a

regular, and, if one may use the expression, a well-beaten track around

this great blunt headland, and it is small wonder the enemy submarines

haunted it to find their prey, as men wait hidden beside the tracks of

wild animals in the jungle.

V

KING ARTHUR'S LAND

Tintagel can never disappoint anyone. The very spirit of romance is in

the place. If you have climbed across the narrow neck that links the

"island" to the main, and passing through the low doorway of the ruined

castle, have crossed the space surrounded by the broken wall, and so

gone out again to the plateau above, you will find yourself among the

sheep and cut off from the world, apparently swinging in space. There

are great mounds all around, in shape like graves, covered with coarse

tufty grass munched by the ragged sheep whose hair is blown into knots

by the ceaseless wind. It takes very little imagination to picture that

around lie the bodies of a mighty host of warriors, at peace at last in

sound of the booming sea which clashes in its mad rush through the

caverns deep beneath, with the wind whistling over them boisterously, or

crooning low even on the mildest summer day.

It is quite likely, as experts say, that the present ruins date only

from the twelfth or thirteenth century. Arthur may never have set foot

on the tufty grass of the cube-shaped island; there may never, for that

matter, have been an Arthur at all, but lying in the grass above the

slaty ruins and looking through the serrated arch to the onyx-green sea,

fretting the black rock, all these doubts seem simply silly and fly away

light as the spume flying inland in great balls.

The spirit of Arthur and his fighting men lives here still. It may

possibly have been summoned up by the thoughts of the countless host of

pilgrims who have come expectantly to the most beloved of all the

shrines of British history. For thoughts if repeated may conjure up

visions.

And the vision of Tintagel, that needs no seeking, but comes pressing on

you as insistently as the sea-laden air, is one of old-time warriors

impregnably ensconced. With their castle standing on the very edge of

the gulf--narrower then than now--which separated them from the

mainland. Guarded by a drawbridge crossing that sharp space so that

three men could well hold back an host. Protected on all other sides by

the sheer cliff, with a fortification at one point where it was just

possible to land. Having above a wide plateau from which to gaze seaward

and landward far over the rolling slopes of the country, along the

deeply broken coast with its sugar-loaves of detached rock, or else out

to the shifting ocean, they were in an enviable situation. They had a

well of water on the very summit of their stronghold, and pasture for

sheep by the dozen to insure plenty of mutton. They could laugh to scorn

any such enemies as that age could bring against them.

There are several such striking vantage points along the Cornish coast,

one at Tol Pedn, another at Treryn Dinas where is the Logan Rock, and

there are signs they have all been utilized, but none of them had the

superb advantages of Tintagel with its wide level of turfy heights, and

the living water flowing from the heart of the rock.

There is no doubt that some such man as Arthur existed, though it is

hardly likely he was the model of refined sensitiveness and perfect

chivalry romancers have made him out to be. At any rate he was a gallant

warrior if the old chroniclers are to be believed, and it is probable

that his standard of conduct was high above his age, or the legend of

his virtue would not have clung to him so persistently. The notion that

such a king in Cornwall would neglect such a position may be dismissed

as absurd, and so we may take it that Arthur fortified himself here on

the heights, from whence he ranged far and wide, even so far as

Scotland, to win his victorious battles. And all proof seems to point to

it that he met his death in Scotland far from the beating of his beloved

savage waves in Cornwall.

All this coast is slaty shale; there is a miniature quarry just away to

the west round the next headland, and the materials lying to hand were

not likely to be neglected in days when transport was more of a

consideration than now. So the crumbling walls which cling to the cliff

are of slate, sharp and jagged, and inside the arches present a serrated

edge like a crocodile's teeth. These arches are pointed which shows they

were of later date than Arthur, and the rest of the masonry can hardly

be said to have any style. The first mention of Tintagel in public

records is in 1305, and in 1337 the castle was fairly habitable, at any

rate that part of it standing on the mainland. We can imagine the

original castle, which this one superseded, to have been much the same

only with heavy round arches. So we can picture the past without great

difficulty. And lying in peace we can repeople the place with the

gorgeous figures of Tennyson's Idylls, much better known to most people

than _La Mort d'Arthur_. The constant splash of the waves and the steady

cropping of the sheep are broken now and again by a Woof! exactly like

the growl of an angry beast. This is caused by a blow-hole in the cliff

from which, when the wind is strong and onshore, the spout of water is

sent out forty feet or more.

Right beneath us is a cavern cut through the solid rock from side to

side, and into this the sea scours at its height, the breakers from each

end meeting with a shock in the middle. The rocks, which are so black

and frigid outside, are rounded within, and coloured a strange

sea-green, with almost a wan look, while the floor is composed of

myriads of flat stones, round and oval, all sizes, from a sixpence to a

soup-plate, making a natural pavement easy to the tread. The beach at

the mouth of the cave is the same, armoured by myriads and myriads of

flat smooth rounded stones lying so closely together as to give the

appearance of a dragon's scales; it would not be hard to conjure up

imaginary dragons here for the cave is by tradition "Merlin's Cave," and

magicians and dragons are always regarded as contemporaneous. These

plates of slate, for they are nothing else, have had all the angles

scoured off them by the scourging surge. The village people collect

them, picking out all that are of one size, to form neat pavements. You

also see them set like some strange mosaic on the fronts of the houses,

stuck in mortar, and making a deep frieze; the effect is not beautiful.

But the ruined castle on the island is not all that remains of man's

handiwork here, for high on the mainland, on the great boss of earth

fronting the island, are the remains of another castle, now falling

piecemeal into the gulf below as the cliff crumbles. Some hold that the

"island" was originally an island in reality, and that the slender neck

of rock now linking it to the mainland is the result of cliff-falls and

debris. But whether that was so or not the purpose of the landward

castle can only be guessed. It may have been an outwork, though that

seems rather unnecessary. Over it hover screaming jacks, who love the

sheltering crevices of artificial walls, and occasionally may be seen a

red-legged and beaked Cornish chough which here alone on the Cornish

coast is not extinct, and is supposed by the children to re-embody the

spirit of King Arthur.

Arthur lived about A.D. 500. His story is so overlaid with legend that

it is difficult to find any grains of truth concerning him. Tennyson

makes him of miraculous birth, cast upon the shore by a wave at

Tintagel, of which the earlier name was Dundagil, but even amid the

romantic surroundings of Tintagel we cannot swallow that bit of poetic

licence.

Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, went to pay homage to the King of Britain,

Uther Pendragon of glorious name, at the noble city of Winchester, and,

like a foolish man, took his beautiful wife Igerna with him. Uther kept

his eye on the lady and presently the unhappy husband, having returned

to his domain of Cornwall, was besieged in the strong castle of

Damelioc, not far from Tintagel. Damelioc, represented to this day by an

earthwork, is on the road running through Delabole to Padstow, or more

correctly Rock, and is about eight miles from Tintagel. Meantime,

Gorlois had left his wife in Tintagel, probably thinking his own life

would be safer if he were apart from her, for he must have been well

aware of all the consequences his foolish indiscretion had brought

about. This did not save him; he was slain, and meantime the British

King obtained access to Tintagel and wooed the lady.

In due time Arthur was born, and succeeded to the chieftainship or

Dukedom of Cornwall, apparently without question, and proved himself one

of the strongest and bravest rulers that ever held high position. His

arms were everywhere triumphant, and about a dozen victories are placed

to his credit, but he fell at last, fighting his traitorous nephew

Mordred somewhere about the year 542, when Mordred was slain and Arthur,

mortally wounded, carried from the battlefield to die. This was the

Battle of Camulodunum and it was for long supposed to have been fought

quite near Tintagel, close by the present town of Camelford, the

similarity of names giving colour to the error. Besides there was a very

fierce battle fought near Camelford in some remote time, and the

tradition of it is strong to this day. The place is marked by Slaughter

Bridge, to be found by going half a mile down a side road from the

station. It is a small bridge over a tiny stream, and it is supported by

great blocks of stone instead of piers. If you linger there a girl comes

from a rough shanty near and says she will show you King Arthur's tomb.

A short scramble takes you down steep banks where tree-trunks grow out

horizontally turning up at an angle to reach the light, and brambles

and creepers cling thickly, while the long hart's-tongue ferns dip in

the running water, floating down stream like strange seaweed; then you

see a great monolith with a Latin inscription, of which the only word

still decipherable is "filius." You point out to the little guide that

in all probability King Arthur was not buried here at all but in

Scotland where the evidence shows that the Battle of Camulodunum was

fought, and she makes no objection provided the fee is forthcoming.

No doubt some great chieftain was laid here after the battle, where

thousands were killed, so that a thousand years later the bridge retains

the name of Slaughter Bridge, but it is likely the event took place long

after Arthur's death. For its date is generally now acknowledged to be

the year 823 in the time of King Egbert. It was between the Britons and

Saxons, and history does not say which was victorious. It may have been

a drawn fight, in which case the ground was strewn with bodies and the

waters of the stream dyed crimson all for nothing.

It is in later times that the dignity of King has been conferred on

Arthur, and some suppose he was King of Britain; but it seems more

likely that he gained slices of territory spasmodically as the result

of fighting, and was really only ruler in his own corner of the country

continuously, though his battles spread his name far and wide. There

were so many rulers in those days and the country was so cut up that it

is not likely he was able to assert himself supremely, and the conquests

of Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Gaul and Spain attributed to him are pure

legends. In a very interesting little book called _King Arthur in

Cornwall_ by W. Howship Dickinson, the case is put clearly:--

"The evidence which is wanting with regard to Arthur's battle on the

Camel comes to light on the Firth of Forth. There is reason to suppose

that tradition did not err in the fatal association of Arthur and

Mordred, though the place of the last scene was not Cornwall but

Scotland. The name Camlan which has been freely given by later writers

to the supposed battle on the Camel, is not to be found there, nor, so

far as I can ascertain, in Cornwall.

"Skene and Stuart Glennie maintain with much converging evidence that

Camlan is Camelon on the river Carron in the valley of the Forth, where

it is said are the remains of a Roman town. Here, according to Scotch

tradition Arthur and Mordred met. We have evidence which appears to be

sufficient that Mordred was King of the Picts, or, as he is sometimes

termed, King of Scotland, and the head of a confederacy of Picts, Scots

and Saxons, or, as some authorities have it of Picts, Scots and renegade

Britons. With this composite army he gave battle to Arthur and his

faithful British force, in which the latter were defeated and Arthur

slain.

"It is worth noting as in favour of the Scottish location of the battle

that Geoffrey [of Monmouth] who places it on the Camel states Mordred's

force to have consisted of Picts and Scots. It is surely improbable that

Arthur could have been confronted in Cornwall by a great army of these

northern savages.... It may be added that an earthwork with double lines

of circumvallation in the neighbouring valley of the Tay now known as

Barry Hill, is designated by tradition as Mordred's castle."