said that this bay was the landing-place of Athelstan after his conquest
of Scilly, of King Stephen in 1135, and of King John when he returned
from Ireland. In Sennen Cove is a cluster of fishermen's cottages.
Land's End is the end of Penwith, the "chief headland," and the Bolerium
of the ancients. It commands a magnificent view, extending to Cape
Cornwall over Whitesand Bay, of the Longships rocks with their
lighthouse, and in clear weather of the Scilly Isles. The Wolf
lighthouse is planted on a dangerous rock of felspathic porphyry some
eight miles S.W. from the shore. The Land's End bristles with sharp
fangs of rock, and somewhat resembles the back of an alligator.
[Illustration: Land's End]
=9. Around the Coast. From Land's End to Rame Head.=
The south coast-line of Cornwall presents a great contrast to that of
the north, except for the portion from the Land's End to Mounts Bay and
the Lizard. We have no more the wind-swept background of heights,
barren and often tortured by miners, turned into a waste of heaps of
rubble and studded with ruined engine-houses. We find instead a gentler
sea-board, pierced by long estuaries, and with valleys of rich
vegetation running down to the sea. We speedily leave the granite and
the culm measures, and are among the rocks of the Devonian series, less
stern and forbidding in colour. In St Levan parish at Trereen Point is
the Logan Rock, a block of granite weighing over 65 tons, once so nicely
balanced that it could be made to rock by the finger of a child. In 1874
a young naval officer, with the assistance of a boat's crew, upset it.
This raised a storm of indignation in Cornwall, and the Admiralty
ordered him to replace it, which he did, at great expense.
[Illustration: Newlyn Pier]
Mousehole is a village of fishermen and boatmen, and was the residence
of Dolly Pentreath, the last person in Cornwall who spoke the Cornish
language, as also of some of the unfortunate sailors who joined Captain
Allan Gardner in 1850 in his ill-fated missionary expedition to South
America. All the members of the mission died of starvation in Tierra del
Fuego.
[Illustration: St Michael's Mount]
Newlyn has become noted as a place of residence of a school of artists.
It is on the wide and beautiful Mounts Bay over against St Michael's
Mount.
[Illustration: Kynance Cove and the Lizard]
Penzance ("the Holy Head") has become a great resort of residents for
the winter, owing to the mildness of the climate. Marazion or Market Jew
does not derive its name from "the Bitter Waters of Zion" as has been
absurdly asserted; Marazion has the same significance as Market Jeu
(i.e. Jeudi), Thursday Market. Here is a submerged forest. St Michael's
Mount is a rock that rises out of the sands and can be reached, when the
tide falls, by a causeway. It is incomparably inferior both in elevation
and in the dignity of the buildings that crown it to the Mont St Michel
in Normandy, but is nevertheless a picturesque adjunct to the scene.
Some writers suppose that it is the Ictis to which the natives conveyed
the tin and trafficked with the Phoenicians, but it is totally unsuited
by nature to serve as a market-site, and there is no certain evidence
that the Phoenicians ever came to Cornwall. About Marazion daffodils,
narcissus, and violets are cultivated largely for the London market. At
Perran Uthnoe the cliffs again appear, and we reach Prussia Cove, once
the haunt of smugglers. Inland, Godolphin and Tregonning's granite hills
are conspicuous, and near the coast is Pergersick Castle, a picturesque
ruin of which strange legends are told. Porthleven is a small fishing
village, where the people live on the annual arrival of the pilchards.
Loe Pool is a beautiful sheet of water cut off from the sea by a bar of
sand. It was when standing on this bar, and watching the wreck of a
vessel close in shore when those on the land were unable to communicate
with it, that Henry Trengrouse conceived the idea of a rocket apparatus,
to be not only employed on land, but also to be carried by every ship.
He, of course, met with opposition from the Board of Trade and the
Government, and he spent his life and his fortune in experiments, and in
endeavours to push his apparatus.
[Illustration: Mullion Cove]
We now reach the superb serpentine cliffs of the Lizard with the
beautiful coves of Polurrian, Mullion, and Kynance. At Lizard Point is
one of the most famous of all lighthouses, the departure-point or
landfall of thousands of ships in the course of the year. The peninsula
of the Lizard is interesting, though the land does not rise much above
300 ft., and is monotonous moorland. All its charm is in its coast-line.
The terrible Manacles rocks have been the scene of many a wreck. Helford
river is a creek running up to Gweek in one arm and nearly to
Constantine in another. We now reach Falmouth Bay, into which opens the
Carrick Road. A curious peninsula, Roseland, runs to Zoze Point, where
there is a lighthouse. Portscatho is a small place at the opening of
Gerrans Bay, of which the eastern horn is Nare Point. Carn Beacon is
traditionally held to have been the burial-place of Geraint, King of
Devon and Cornwall. There were more than one of this name. The cairn has
been opened and was found to contain a stone cist of the bronze period,
and not, as tradition said, his golden boat with silver oars. Veryan Bay
between Nare Point and the Dodman has in it no good harbour. Dodman
stands nearly 380 ft. above the sea.
[Illustration: Falmouth, from Flushing]
Mevagissey Bay is a shallow hollow between Chapel Point and Black Head,
the latter crowned by one of the cliff castles found on almost every
headland. Then comes St Austell Bay with that of Tywardreath opening out
of it. Charlestown has latterly become of importance, as from thence
much china-clay is shipped.
We reach now the narrow estuary of the Fowey river, with Fowey town
consisting of one narrow street beside the tidal creek, and with Polruan
on the further shore. The coast now becomes very bold, and Polperro,
five miles beyond, was once a notorious haunt of smugglers.
[Illustration: Polperro]
At Looe, the two rivers bearing the same name fall into a bay, and
seaward stands up Looe Island, crowned by the ruins of a chapel. This
island was also a haunt of smugglers, and it was found necessary to
establish a coastguard station on it to keep them in control. East Looe
and West Looe each sent two members to Parliament before the passing of
the Reform Bill.
[Illustration: Looe]
Between Looe and Rame Head is Whitesand Bay, so called from the
whiteness of the sand. The quicksands have made it dangerous for
bathers, but the cliff scenery is beautiful and romantic. There is a
tiny watering-place at its western end, Downderry. At Tregantle is the
most important of the western defences of Plymouth. A peninsula is
formed by the Lynher river which discharges into the Hamoaze, and the
neck of land between it and the sea is about two miles in breadth.
Tregantle stands 400 ft. above the sea and commands every approach to
Plymouth Sound.
Rame Head projects into the sea from Maker Heights and is the
termination of a range of cliffs from Looe, and from hence a fine view
can be had of the Cornish coast as far as the Lizard.
On the east of Penlee Point is Cawsand Bay, once infested with
smugglers, sheltered by Rame Head from westerly gales. A rock with a
cave in it and a white incrustation is regarded here with some
superstitious reverence, and fishermen throw a few pilchards or herrings
to it as an oblation when returning from fishing.
=10. The Coast--Gains and Losses.=
At a vastly remote period a valley lay between Britain and Gaul--before
ever they were Britain and Gaul--and through this well-wooded valley
flowed a river. The coast-line of Britain then lay from one to two
hundred miles to the west, where is now the great drop in the ocean
depths from 100 fathoms to 300 or 400. Cornwall was a Mesopotamia, a
land between two almost parallel rivers, one occupying the bottom of
what is now the English Channel, the other being the Severn. At that
time the Bristol Channel was another great valley. From Brown Willy to
the Scilly Isles ran a lofty mountain range, towering into the sky, of
which the present Bodmin moors, Carn Brea, Carn Marth, Tregonning Hill,
etc., are but the abraded stumps. Not only were they much higher, but
their present roots stood 300 ft. higher than at present.
Then ensued a sinking of the land, and the Atlantic flowed into the
valley to the south and joined the North Sea; and at the same time the
Bristol Channel was formed. Thus the present coast was approximately
outlined.
At some period shortly after, a vast inundation swept over the land from
the north, and carried down the degraded granite, depositing the tin
beds in the hollows. As early as 1830, Mr Carne noted: "The peculiar
situation in which nearly all the stream tin of Cornwall is found is
highly illustrative of the direction in which the current of the deluge
swept over the surface. All the productive streams are in the valleys
which open to the sea on the southern side of the Cornish peninsula;
whilst most of the richest veins are situated near the northern coast."
The deposit of tin stone, or tin ground, lies directly on the _shelf_,
or primitive surface of rock, and is carried far out in the estuaries,
and overlaid by marine deposits.
In 1828, in Carnon Creek, a cairn was discovered 16 to 18 ft. below the
surface, and that surface 4 to 5 ft. below low water mark. In it was a
crouched skeleton. This shows that there must have been a subsidence of
the land of something like 30 ft. at least since the period when man in
the late stone or early bronze age inhabited Cornwall.
The submarine forests grew on the top of the tin ground. Of these many
have been noted and recorded, not only on the south coast, but on the
north as well. The trees were oak and hazel, alder and elm, but they
never reached a large size.
Above this bed lie the raised beaches, some 40 or 50 ft. above high
water mark. The tin-beds in the Cornish valleys towards the sea do not
exhibit such an upheaval. Generally the raised beach rests on the
original rock, and consists of rolled stones, frequently of large size,
mixed with smaller gravel and sand. The "Head of Rubble," with some
intervening perplexing beds of sand, may be noticed on the coast. This
Head is from 40 to 50 ft. in depth. It is composed of angular fragments
of rock, often large, many of quartz, with no signs of stratification.
The Rubble bed in Cornwall has yielded no organic remains, but elsewhere
in it have been found the bones of the mammoth, elephant, woolly
rhinoceros, reindeer, etc. It was not formed by the disintegration of
the subjacent rocks, but by aqueous transport. It owes its origin to a
powerful force of water, acting violently and rapidly. It caps the
heights, and is not in the valleys where the tin ground has been
deposited. It has not therefore been found to overlie it. It was due to
a sudden and brief overrush of water, and the fragments of stone carried
before the flood did not travel sufficiently far to have their angles
rubbed down.
[Illustration: Perranporth Rocks]
As may well be supposed, the action of the sea on the coast-line has been
affected largely by the character of the rocks against which the waves
have lashed themselves to foam. Where the rocks are of granite or slate,
the tide and the waves have very little effect upon the outline of the
coast; it is in those places where the softer rocks prevail, and where
exposure to the prevalent wind induces breakers of great volume, that
the loss of land by the action of the sea is greatest. In fact, the
tides rarely run beyond one or two miles per hour, except round
headlands, and it is where the rocks are of a yielding character that
the coves and bays are formed. This is not always the case. Where the
sea has found a fault in the rock it will burrow incessantly till it has
bored out for itself a cavern, and the head of this falling in produces
a tiny cove. The hard quartzose and trap rocks of Trevose Head, the
greenstone rocks of Pentire, near Padstow, the hard slates of St Agnes,
the greenstone and hardened schist of the Gurnard's Head, and the
granite of the Land's End, defy the action of wave and tide. But it is
otherwise where, for instance, the Head of Rubble occurs. "In Gerrans
Bay it is plain that the cliffs of Head were at one time much further
out than they are now. The tops of the earthy cliffs are split with
cracks and miniature chasms, showing that great masses are constantly
being detached by atmospheric causes, while the great heaps of earth at
the foot of the cliffs show how for centuries masses of earth have
rolled down from their tops on to the beach below[1]." As to the kingdom
of Lyonesse, which was supposed to extend from the Land's End to beyond
Scilly, it never existed in the historic or prehistoric period. Another
fable that may be dismissed, is that St Michael's Mount was surrounded
by a vast tract of woodland, in which were villages, and where settled
hermits. It did rise above a forest, but that was in a prehistoric
period. But if the sea gains on the land but imperceptibly in one way,
it gains in another on the north coast, by the action of the wind
carrying the sand inland, and overwhelming field after field. It is not
a little curious to mark, nevertheless, how a small dribble of a stream
will arrest the onward march of the sand-dunes.
[1] D.C. Whitley, "The Head of Rubble," in _Journal of the R.
Inst. of Cornwall_, XVII. p. 67.
At Constantine by Padstow as already said the old church is enveloped in
sand-hills, so is that of St Enodoc. The Perran Sands have so encroached
that they extend over a mile and a half inland and have in process of
time swallowed up two churches and a village. The Gear Sands have even
climbed a hill to the height of 300 ft. The Godrevy, Upton and Phillack
towans have moved inland from St Ives' Bay and engulfed the residence of
the ancient kings of Cornwall at Riviere.
The same phenomenon has not taken place in the south, but there the
estuaries have been silted up by the wash from the stream tin works.
Formerly boats could come up to Tregony. Now the Fal is choked with
detritus for miles down. Restronguet creek bore vessels to
Perranarworthal. Now it is completely silted up, only a trickle of water
running down through desolate morasses and flats resulting from the
workings of the miners.
=11. The Coast--Tides, Islands, and Lighthouses.=
Off the mouth of the English Channel the tidal-stream is materially
influenced by the indraft and outset of the channel, and is found to run
northward and eastward with a falling tide at Dover, and southward and
westward with a rising tide at that place. At spring tides the tide
rises in Padstow Bay 22 ft., at Bude a foot higher, at the Lizard only
14-1/2 ft., at Scilly 16 ft. Nowhere on the Cornish coast is there the
enormous rise seen at St Malo, where ordinary tides rise from 23 to 26
ft., and spring tides 48 ft. above low-water mark.
On account of the varying force with which the channel and spring tides
blend south of the Scilly group the stream is incessantly altering, but
north of this towards the Bristol Channel, the stream becomes more
regular, and while the water is ebbing at Dover, it sets northward
turning sharply round Trevose Head into the Bristol Channel, and so when
the tide is flowing at Dover, it is running with equal speed in ebb out
of the channel and along the coast towards Scilly.
[Illustration: Round Island, Scilly]
The Scilly Isles are the sole group of any importance around the coast.
They are situated 40 miles due west from the Lizard Point and 25
west-south-west from the Land's End, and are reached by steamers from
Penzance. There are now but five of the isles inhabited, St Mary's,
Tresco, St Agnes, St Martin's, and Bryher. Formerly Sampson was also
inhabited, but the inhabitants were removed to St Mary's. The total
acreage of the islands is 3560; and the formation is granite. This group
is in fact the rubbed-down stump of the last great peak of the chain
running south-west from Bodmin moors. The heights in the islands are
inconsiderable, but very bold and picturesque scenery is obtained among
the many islets, each of which has its special character. At St Mary's
is a pier built in 1835-8; and a harbour called the Pool for small
craft, while further out between the islands is a good roadstead for
large vessels. The Scilly Isles were noted as a resting-place for
innumerable birds, some very rare, in their annual migrations, but of
late years gun-practice at sea marks has scared a good many away, and
they visit the islands in far fewer numbers than formerly.
[Illustration: The Longships Lighthouse]
The coast of Cornwall is remarkably free of shoals. The only dangerous
sandbank is the Doom Bar at the mouth of the Bay of Padstow; but there
are shallows in Mounts Bay and other places.
[Illustration: Eddystone Lighthouse]
Trinity House, the first general lighthouse and pilotage authority in
the kingdom, was composed of a body of merchants and seamen founded in
1519 by Sir Thomas Speet, controller of the navy, when it was granted a
charter by Henry VIII. Since that period the duty of erecting and
maintaining lighthouses and other sea-marks has been entrusted to the
Corporation by Royal Charter and Acts of Parliament. Trinity House
maintains ten lighthouses about the coast of Cornwall, of which the most
important, besides those of the Scilly Isles, are the Longships, white
and red occulting; the Wolf rock, white and red group flash; the Lizard,
white flash; the Eddystone, white flash.
=12. Climate--Rainfall.=
The climate of a country or district is, briefly, the average weather of
that country or district, and it depends upon various factors, all
mutually interacting--upon the latitude, the temperature, the direction
and strength of the winds, the rainfall, the character of the soil, and
the proximity of the district to the sea.
The differences in the climates of the world depend mainly upon
latitude, but a scarcely less important factor is this proximity to the
sea. Along any great climatic zone there will be found variations in
proportion to this proximity, the extremes being "continental" climates
in the centres of continents far from the oceans, and "insular" climates
in small tracts surrounded by sea. Continental climates show great
differences in seasonal temperatures, the winters tending to be
unusually cold and the summers unusually warm, while the climate of
insular tracts is characterised by equableness and also by greater
dampness. Great Britain possesses, by reason of its position, a
temperate insular climate, but its average annual temperature is much
higher than could be expected from its latitude. The prevalent
south-westerly winds cause a drift of the surface-waters of the Atlantic
towards our shores, and this warm water current, which we know as the
Gulf Stream, is the chief cause of the mildness of our winters.
Most of our weather comes to us from the Atlantic. It would be
impossible here within the limits of a short chapter to discuss fully
the causes which affect or control weather changes. It must suffice to
say that the conditions are in the main either cyclonic or anticyclonic,
which terms may be best explained, perhaps, by comparing the air
currents to a stream of water. In a stream a chain of eddies may often
be seen fringing the more steadily-moving central water. Regarding the
general northeasterly moving air from the Atlantic as such a stream, a
chain of eddies may be developed in a belt parallel with its general
direction. This belt of eddies or cyclones, as they are termed, tends to
shift its position, sometimes passing over our islands, sometimes to the
north or south of them, and it is to this shifting that most of our
weather changes are due. Cyclonic conditions are associated with a
greater or less amount of atmospheric disturbance; anticyclonic with
calms.
The prevalent Atlantic winds largely affect our island in another way,
namely in its rainfall. The air, heavily laden with moisture from its
passage over the ocean, meets with elevated land-tracts directly it
reaches our shores--the moorland of Devon and Cornwall, the Welsh
mountains, or the fells of Cumberland and Westmorland--and blowing up
the rising land-surface, parts with this moisture as rain. To how great
an extent this occurs is best seen by reference to the accompanying map
of the annual rainfall of England, where it will at once be noticed that
the heaviest fall is in the west, and that it decreases with remarkable
regularity until the least fall is reached on our eastern shores. Thus
in 1906, the maximum rainfall for the year occurred at Glaslyn in the
Snowdon district, where 205 inches of rain fell; and the lowest was at
Boyton in Suffolk, with a record of just under 20 inches. These western
highlands, therefore, may not inaptly be compared to an umbrella,
sheltering the country further eastward from the rain.
[Illustration: ENGLAND & WALES ANNUAL RAINFALL]
The above causes, then, are those mainly concerned in influencing the
weather, but there are other and more local factors which often affect
greatly the climate of a place, such, for example, as configuration,
position, and soil. The shelter of a range of hills, a southern aspect,
a sandy soil, will thus produce conditions which may differ greatly from
those of a place--perhaps at no great distance--situated on a wind-swept
northern slope with a cold clay soil.
The character of the climate of a country or district influences, as
everyone knows, both the cultivation of the soil and the products which
it yields, and thus indirectly as well as directly exercises a profound
effect upon Man. The banana-nourished dweller in a tropical island who
has but to tickle the earth with a hoe for it to laugh a harvest is of
different fibre morally and physically from the inhabitant of northern
climes who wins a scanty subsistence from the land at the expense of
unremitting toil. These are extremes; but even within the limits of a
county, perhaps, similar if smaller differences may be noted, and the
man of the plain or the valley is often distinct in type from his fellow
of the hills.
Very minute records of the climate of our island are kept at numerous
stations throughout the country, relating to the temperature, rainfall,
force and direction of the wind, hours of sunshine, cloud conditions,
and so forth, and are duly collected, tabulated, and averaged by the
Meteorological Society. From these we are able to compare and contrast
the climatic conditions in various parts.