I have ended this account at the utmost extent of the island of Great
Britain west, without visiting those excrescences of the island, as I
think I may call them--viz., the rocks of Scilly; of which what is most
famous is their infamy or reproach; namely, how many good ships are
almost continually dashed in pieces there, and how many brave lives lost,
in spite of the mariners' best skill, or the lighthouses' and other sea-
marks' best notice.
These islands lie so in the middle between the two vast openings of the
north and south narrow seas (or, as the sailors call them, the Bristol
Channel, and The Channel--so called by way of eminence) that it cannot,
or perhaps never will, be avoided but that several ships in the dark of
the night and in stress of weather, may, by being out in their
reckonings, or other unavoidable accidents, mistake; and if they do, they
are sure, as the sailors call it, to run "bump ashore" upon Scilly, where
they find no quarter among the breakers, but are beat to pieces without
any possibility of escape.
One can hardly mention the Bishop and his Clerks, as they are called, or
the rocks of Scilly, without letting fall a tear to the memory of Sir
Cloudesley Shovel and all the gallant spirits that were with him, at one
blow and without a moment's warning dashed into a state of
immortality--the admiral, with three men-of-war, and all their men
(running upon these rocks right afore the wind, and in a dark night)
being lost there, and not a man saved. But all our annals and histories
are full of this, so I need say no more.
They tell us of eleven sail of merchant-ships homeward bound, and richly
laden from the southward, who had the like fate in the same place a great
many years ago; and that some of them coming from Spain, and having a
great quantity of bullion or pieces of eight on board, the money
frequently drives on shore still, and that in good quantities, especially
after stormy weather.
This may be the reason why, as we observed during our short stay here,
several mornings after it had blown something hard in the night, the
sands were covered with country people running to and fro to see if the
sea had cast up anything of value. This the seamen call "going
a-shoring;" and it seems they do often find good purchase. Sometimes
also dead bodies are cast up here, the consequence of shipwrecks among
those fatal rocks and islands; as also broken pieces of ships, casks,
chests, and almost everything that will float or roll on shore by the
surges of the sea.
Nor is it seldom that the voracious country people scuffle and fight
about the right to what they find, and that in a desperate manner; so
that this part of Cornwall may truly be said to be inhabited by a fierce
and ravenous people. For they are so greedy, and eager for the prey,
that they are charged with strange, bloody, and cruel dealings, even
sometimes with one another; but especially with poor distressed seamen
when they come on shore by force of a tempest, and seek help for their
lives, and where they find the rooks themselves not more merciless than
the people who range about them for their prey.
Here, also, as a farther testimony of the immense riches which have been
lost at several times upon this coast, we found several engineers and
projectors--some with one sort of diving engine, and some with another;
some claiming such a wreck, and some such-and-such others; where they
alleged they were assured there were great quantities of money; and
strange unprecedented ways were used by them to come at it: some, I say,
with one kind of engine, and some another; and though we thought several
of them very strange impracticable methods, yet I was assured by the
country people that they had done wonders with them under water, and that
some of them had taken up things of great weight and in a great depth of
water. Others had split open the wrecks they had found in a manner one
would have thought not possible to be done so far under water, and had
taken out things from the very holds of the ships. But we could not
learn that they had come at any pieces of eight, which was the thing they
seemed most to aim at and depend upon; at least, they had not found any
great quantity, as they said they expected.
However, we left them as busy as we found them, and far from being
discouraged; and if half the golden mountains, or silver mountains
either, which they promise themselves should appear, they will be very
well paid for their labour.
From the tops of the hills on this extremity of the land you may see out
into that they call the Chops of the Channel, which, as it is the
greatest inlet of commerce, and the most frequented by merchant-ships of
any place in the world, so one seldom looks out to seaward but something
new presents--that is to say, of ships passing or repassing, either on
the great or lesser Channel.
Upon a former accidental journey into this part of the country, during
the war with France, it was with a mixture of pleasure and horror that we
saw from the hills at the Lizard, which is the southern-most point of
this land, an obstinate fight between three French men-of-war and two
English, with a privateer and three merchant-ships in their company. The
English had the misfortune, not only to be fewer ships of war in number,
but of less force; so that while the two biggest French ships engaged the
English, the third in the meantime took the two merchant-ships and went
off with them. As to the picaroon or privateer, she was able to do
little in the matter, not daring to come so near the men-of-war as to
take a broadside, which her thin sides would not have been able to bear,
but would have sent her to the bottom at once; so that the English men-of-
war had no assistance from her, nor could she prevent the taking the two
merchant-ships. Yet we observed that the English captains managed their
fight so well, and their seamen behaved so briskly, that in about three
hours both the Frenchmen stood off, and, being sufficiently banged, let
us see that they had no more stomach to fight; after which the
English--having damage enough, too, no doubt--stood away to the eastward,
as we supposed, to refit.
This point of the Lizard, which runs out to the southward, and the other
promontory mentioned above, make the two angles--or horns, as they are
called--from whence it is supposed this county received its first name of
Cornwall, or, as Mr. Camden says, _Cornubia_ in the Latin, and in the
British "Kernaw," as running out in two vastly extended horns. And
indeed it seems as if Nature had formed this situation for the direction
of mariners, as foreknowing of what importance it should be, and how in
future ages these seas should be thus thronged with merchant-ships, the
protection of whose wealth, and the safety of the people navigating them,
was so much her early care that she stretched out the land so very many
ways, and extended the points and promontories so far and in so many
different places into the sea, that the land might be more easily
discovered at a due distance, which way soever the ships should come.
Nor is the Lizard Point less useful (though not so far west) than the
other, which is more properly called the Land's End; but if we may credit
our mariners, it is more frequently first discovered from the sea. For
as our mariners, knowing by the soundings when they are in the mouth of
the Channel, do then most naturally stand to the southward, to avoid
mistaking the Channel, and to shun the Severn Sea or Bristol Channel, but
still more to avoid running upon Scilly and the rocks about it, as is
observed before--I say, as they carefully keep to the southward till they
think they are fair with the Channel, and then stand to the northward
again, or north-east, to make the land, this is the reason why the Lizard
is, generally speaking, the first land they make, and not the Land's End.
Then having made the Lizard, they either (first) run in for Falmouth,
which is the next port, if they are taken short with easterly winds, or
are in want of provisions and refreshment, or have anything out of order,
so that they care not to keep the sea; or (secondly) stand away for the
Ram Head and Plymouth Sound; or (thirdly) keep an offing to run up the
Channel.
So that the Lizard is the general guide, and of more use in these cases
than the other point, and is therefore the land which the ships choose to
make first; for then also they are sure that they are past Scilly and all
the dangers of that part of the island.
Nature has fortified this part of the island of Britain in a strange
manner, and so, as is worth a traveller's observation, as if she knew the
force and violence of the mighty ocean which beats upon it; and which,
indeed, if the land was not made firm in proportion, could not withstand,
but would have been washed away long ago.
First, there are the islands of Scilly and the rocks about them; these
are placed like out-works to resist the first assaults of this enemy, and
so break the force of it, as the piles (or starlings, as they are called)
are placed before the solid stonework of London Bridge to fence off the
force either of the water or ice, or anything else that might be
dangerous to the work.
Then there are a vast number of sunk rocks (so the seamen call them),
besides such as are visible and above water, which gradually lessen the
quantity of water that would otherwise lie with an infinite weight and
force upon the land. It is observed that these rocks lie under water for
a great way off into the sea on every side the said two horns or points
of land, so breaking the force of the water, and, as above, lessening the
weight of it.
But besides this the whole _terra firma_, or body of the land which makes
this part of the isle of Britain, seems to be one solid rock, as if it
was formed by Nature to resist the otherwise irresistible power of the
ocean. And, indeed, if one was to observe with what fury the sea comes
on sometimes against the shore here, especially at the Lizard Point,
where there are but few, if any, out-works, as I call them, to resist it;
how high the waves come rolling forward, storming on the neck of one
another (particularly when the wind blows off sea), one would wonder that
even the strongest rocks themselves should be able to resist and repel
them. But, as I said, the country seems to be, as it were, one great
body of stone, and prepared so on purpose.
And yet, as if all this was not enough, Nature has provided another
strong fence, and that is, that these vast rocks are, as it were,
cemented together by the solid and weighty ore of tin and copper,
especially the last, which is plentifully found upon the very outmost
edge of the land, and with which the stones may be said to be soldered
together, lest the force of the sea should separate and disjoint them,
and so break in upon these fortifications of the island to destroy its
chief security.
This is certain--that there is a more than ordinary quantity of tin,
copper, and lead also placed by the Great Director of Nature in these
very remote angles (and, as I have said above, the ore is found upon the
very surface of the rocks a good way into the sea); and that it does not
only lie, as it were, upon or between the stones among the earth (which
in that case might be washed from it by the sea), but that it is even
blended or mixed in with the stones themselves, that the stones must be
split into pieces to come at it. By this mixture the rocks are made
infinitely weighty and solid, and thereby still the more qualified to
repel the force of the sea.
Upon this remote part of the island we saw great numbers of that famous
kind of crows which is known by the name of the Cornish cough or chough
(so the country people call them). They are the same kind which are
found in Switzerland among the Alps, and which Pliny pretended were
peculiar to those mountains, and calls the _pyrrhocorax_. The body is
black; the legs, feet, and bill of a deep yellow, almost to a red. I
could not find that it was affected for any good quality it had, nor is
the flesh good to eat, for it feeds much on fish and carrion; it is
counted little better than a kite, for it is of ravenous quality, and is
very mischievous. It will steal and carry away anything it finds about
the house that is not too heavy, though not fit for its food--as knives,
forks, spoons, and linen cloths, or whatever it can fly away with;
sometimes they say it has stolen bits of firebrands, or lighted candles,
and lodged them in the stacks of corn and the thatch of barns and houses,
and set them on fire; but this I only had by oral tradition.
I might take up many sheets in describing the valuable curiosities of
this little Chersonese or Neck Land, called the Land's End, in which
there lies an immense treasure and many things worth notice (I mean,
besides those to be found upon the surface), but I am too near the end of
this letter. If I have opportunity I shall take notice of some part of
what I omit here in my return by the northern shore of the county.
TWO LETTERS
FROM THE "JOURNEY THROUGH ENGLAND BY A GENTLEMAN."
_Published in_ 1722, _but not by Defoe_.