[Illustration: OLD MARKET, PENZANCE.]
[Illustration: THE LAND'S END.]
This whole peninsula is filled with hut-villages, cromlechs, and other
prehistoric remains of its ancient people, but we have not the space to
devote to their description, however agreeable it might be. Hill-castles
and caves are also frequent, each with its traditions. The chief town is
Penzance, or the "Holy Headland," jutting out into Mount's Bay, where
once was a chapel dedicated to St. Anthony, who with St. Michael kept
guard over this favored region. Here is another prosperous seat of the
pilchard-fishery, and among its people the favorite toast is to the
three Cornish products, "tin, fish, and copper." Once, they tell us,
seventy-five millions of these fish were caught in a single day. They
rise in small shoals from the depths of the sea, then unite into larger
ones, and finally, about the end of July, combine in a mighty host, led
by the "Pilchard King" and most powerful of the tribe. The lookouts on
the crags give warning, and then begins the extraordinary migration that
calls out all the Cornish fishermen. Pursued by hordes of sea-birds and
predatory fish, the pilchards advance towards the land in such vast
numbers as to discolor the water and almost to impede the passage of
vessels. The enormous fish-army passes the Land's End, a grand
spectacle, moving along parallel to the shore, and then comes the
harvest. On the southward of the granite mass that forms the extremity
of the peninsula rises the Logan Rock, the entire headland being
defended by remains of ancient intrenchments. The Logan itself is a
granite block weighing sixty tons, and so nicely balanced that it will
oscillate. Near here, as we go out towards the western extremity of the
peninsula, are several old churches, many ancient remains that have
yielded up their chief curiosities for museums, and remarkable cliffs
projecting into the sea, the strangest of them being the "holed headland
of Penwith," a mass of columnar granite which the waves have shattered
into deep fissures. Then beyond is the Land's End itself, the most
westerly point in England, with the rocks of the Longships out in the
water with their guardian lighthouse. The extreme point of the Land's
End is about sixty feet high and pierced by a natural tunnel, but the
cliffs on each side rise to a greater elevation. The faint outlines of
the Scilly Islands are seen on the distant horizon, but all else is a
view over the boundless sea. The Land's End is a vast aggregation of
granite, which Sir Humphrey Davy, the Cornish chemist and poet, who was
born at Penzance, has thus depicted:
"On the sea
The sunbeams tremble, and the purple light
Illumes the dark Bolerium: seat of storms;
High are his granite rocks; his frowning brow
Hangs o'er the smiling ocean. In his caves
There sleep the haggard spirits of the storm.
Wild, dreary, are the schistine rocks around,
Encircled by the wave, where to the breeze
The haggard cormorant shrieks; and far beyond,
Where the great ocean mingles with the sky,
Are seen the cloud-like islands gray in mists."