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 almostlike 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 herecrowded 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, whosprings 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 anglewiseto 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.
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.
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 filmymist. 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 1¼ miles away; the Cornish one is only about 1,200 feetfrom 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 meansthe 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.
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 hornsof 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 thetruth. 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 houseswithin 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."
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 theFougou 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, hevowed 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 weresometimes 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 withIreland, 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 waywardmanner 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 expectin 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-guaré, 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.
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 yellowlichen, 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 brightruby 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, butusually 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, evenon 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."
"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'dAmong the mountains by the winter sea;Until King Arthur's Table, man by man,Had fall'n in Lyonnesse about their lord."
"So all day long the noise of battle roll'dAmong 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, theLyonnessegoing 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 ofArmorel 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 andhedges 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 shorewith 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 madea 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 walkround 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 mediæval 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 thegrandest 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 floatin 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 Lizardbeats 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 heathen routewhich recalls how repeatedly we have been told that theErica vagansgrows 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 ofthe 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 shootsin 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.