Yet, fortunately, Dr. Davy has given us a graphic description of the
town and country as it existed about the year 1780. “Cornwall,” the
doctor observes, “was then without roads. Those which traversed the
country were rather bridle-paths than carriage roads; carriages were
almost unknown, and even carts were very little used. I have heard my
mother relate that when she was a girl there was only one cart in the
town of Penzance, and, if a carriage occasionally appeared in the
streets, it attracted universal attention. Pack-horses were then in
general use for conveying merchandise, and the prevailing manner of
travelling was on horseback at that period, the luxuries of furniture
and living now enjoyed by people of the middle class were confined
almost entirely to the great and wealthy, and in Penzance, where the
population was about two thousand persons, there was only one carpet.
The floors of the rooms were sprinkled over with sea-sand, and there
was not a single silver fork. The only newspaper which then circulated
in the West of England was the ‘Sherbourne Mercury,’ and it was carried
through the country, not by the post but by a man on horseback
specially employed in distributing it. In the year 1761, the turnpike
road only reached as far as Falmouth. At that period the Land’s End
district must have been a sort of unknown land.”