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Rambles Beyond Railways; or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot

by Wilkie Collins · English · Gutenberg #28367 · 385,091 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Rambles Beyond Railways; or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot

Author: Wilkie Collins


        
Release date: March 20, 2009 [eBook #28367]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

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RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS.

[Illustration: LAMORNA COVE.]




  RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS;

  OR,

  Notes in Cornwall taken A-Foot.




  BY WILKIE COLLINS,

  AUTHOR OF
  "ANTONINA," "THE WOMAN IN WHITE," ETC.



  [Illustration: The Land's End, Cornwall.]



  _NEW EDITION._


  LONDON:
  RICHARD BENTLEY: NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
  Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
  1861.




  DEDICATED TO

  THE COMPANION OF MY WALK THROUGH CORNWALL,

  HENRY C. BRANDLING.




  PREFACE

  TO

  THE PRESENT EDITION.


I visited Cornwall, for the first time, in the summer and autumn of
1850; and in the winter of the same year, I wrote this book.

At that time, the title attached to these pages was strictly descriptive
of the state of the county, when my companion and I walked through it.
But when, little more than a year afterwards, a second edition of this
volume was called for, the all-conquering railway had invaded Cornwall
in the interval, and had practically contradicted me on my own
title-page.

To rechristen my work was out of the question--I should simply have
destroyed its individuality. Ladies may, and do, often change their
names for the better; but books enjoy no such privilege. In this
embarrassing position, I ended by treating the ill-timed intrusion of
the railway into my literary affairs, as a certain Abbé (who was also an
author,) once treated the overthrow of the Swedish Constitution, in the
reign of Gustavus the Third. Having written a profound work, to prove
that the Constitution, as at that time settled, was secure from all
political accidents, the Abbé was surprised in his study, one day, by
the appearance of a gentleman, who disturbed him over the correction of
his last proof-sheet. "Sir!" said the gentleman; "I have looked in to
inform you that the Constitution has just been overthrown." To which the
Abbé replied:--"Sir! they may overthrow the Constitution, but they can't
overthrow MY BOOK"--and he quietly went on with his work.

On precisely similar principles, I quietly went on with MY
TITLE-PAGE.

So much for the name of the book. For the book itself, as published in
its present form, I have a last word to say, before these prefatory
lines come to an end.

Cornwall no longer offers the same comparatively untrodden road to the
literary traveller which it presented when I went there. Many writers
have made the journey successfully, since my time. Mr. Walter White, in
his "Londoner's Walk to the Land's End," has followed me, and rivalled
me, on my own ground. Mr. Murray has published "The Handbook to Cornwall
and Devon"--and detached essays on Cornish subjects, too numerous to
reckon up, have appeared in various periodical forms. Under this change
of circumstances, it is not the least of the debts which I owe to the
encouraging kindness of my readers, that they have not forgotten
"Rambles Beyond Railways," and that the continued demand for the book is
such as to justify the appearance of the present edition. I have, as I
believe, to thank the unambitious purpose with which I originally
wrote, for thus keeping me in remembrance. All that my book attempts is
frankly to record a series of personal impressions; and, as a necessary
consequence--though my title is obsolete, and my pedestrian adventures
are old-fashioned--I have a character of my own still left, which
readers can recognise; and the homely travelling narrative which I
brought from Cornwall, eleven years since, is not laid on the shelf yet.

I have spared no pains to make these pages worthy of the approval of new
readers. The book has been carefully revised throughout; and certain
hastily-written passages, which my better experience condemns as
unsuited to the main design, have been removed altogether. Two of the
lithographic illustrations, (now no longer in existence) with which my
friend and fellow-traveller, Mr. Brandling, adorned the previous
editions, have been copied on wood, as accurately as circumstances would
permit; and a "Postscript" has been added, which now appears in
connexion with the original narrative, for the first time.

The little supplementary sketch thus presented, describes a cruise to
the Scilly Islands, (taken five years after the period of my visit to
Cornwall), and completes the round of my travelling experiences in the
far West of England. These newly-added pages are written, I am afraid,
in a tone of somewhat boisterous gaiety--which I have not, however, had
the heart to subdue, because it is after all the genuine offspring of
the "harum-scarum" high spirits of the time. The "Cruise of the Tomtit"
was, from first to last, a practical burlesque; and the good-natured
reader will, I hope, not think the worse of me, if I beg him to stand on
no ceremony and to laugh his way through it as heartily as he can.

 HARLEY STREET, LONDON,

 _March, 1861_.




CONTENTS.

                                                     PAGE

     I. A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION                        1

    II. A CORNISH FISHING TOWN                          5

   III. HOLY WELLS AND DRUID RELICS                    23

    IV. CORNISH PEOPLE                                 55

     V. LOO-POOL                                       86

    VI. THE LIZARD                                     97

   VII. THE PILCHARD FISHERY                          120

  VIII. THE LAND'S END                                139

    IX. BOTALLACK MINE                                155

     X. THE MODERN DRAMA IN CORNWALL                  180

    XI. THE ANCIENT DRAMA IN CORNWALL                 197

   XII. THE NUNS OF MAWGAN                            216

  XIII. LEGENDS OF THE NORTHERN COAST                 231


  POSTSCRIPT.

  THE CRUISE OF THE TOMTIT TO THE SCILLY ISLANDS      253




RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS.




I.

A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION.


  DEAR READER,

When any friend of yours or mine, in whose fortunes we take an interest,
is about to start on his travels, we smooth his way for him as well as
we can, by giving him a letter of introduction to such connexions of
ours as he may find on his line of route. We bespeak their favourable
consideration for him by setting forth his good qualities in the best
light possible; and then leave him to make his own way by his own
merit--satisfied that we have done enough in procuring him a welcome
under our friend's roof, and giving him at the outset a claim to our
friend's estimation.

Will you allow me, reader (if our previous acquaintance authorizes me
to take such a liberty), to follow the custom to which I have just
adverted; and to introduce to your notice this Book, as a friend of mine
setting forth on his travels, in whose well-being I feel a very lively
interest. He is neither so bulky nor so distinguished a person as some
of the predecessors of his race, who may have sought your attention in
years gone by, under the name of "Quarto," and in magnificent clothing
of Morocco and Gold. All that I can say for his outside is, that I have
made it as neat as I can--having had him properly thumped into wearing
his present coat of decent cloth, by the most competent book-tailor I
could find. As for his intrinsic claims to your kindness, he has only
two that I shall venture to advocate. In the first place he is able to
tell you something about a part of your own country which is still too
rarely visited and too little known. He will speak to you of one of the
remotest and most interesting corners of our old English soil. He will
tell you of the grand and varied scenery; the mighty Druid relics; the
quaint legends; the deep, dark mines; the venerable remains of early
Christianity; and the pleasant primitive population of the county of
CORNWALL. You will inquire, can we believe him in all that he
says? This brings me at once to his second qualification--he invariably
speaks the truth. If he describes scenery to you, it is scenery that he
saw and noted on the spot; and if he adds some little sketches of
character, I answer for him, on my own responsibility, that they are
sketches drawn from the life.

Have I said enough about my friend to interest you in his fortunes, when
you meet him wandering hither and thither over the great domain of the
Republic of Letters--or, must I plead more warmly in his behalf? I can
only urge on you that he does not present himself as fit for the top
seats at the library table,--as aspiring to the company of those above
him,--of classical, statistical, political, philosophical, historical,
or antiquarian high dignitaries of his class, of whom he is at best but
the poor relation. Treat him not, as you treat such illustrious guests
as these! Toss him about anywhere, from hand to hand, as good-naturedly
as you can; stuff him into your pocket when you get into the railway;
take him to bed with you, and poke him under the pillow; present him to
the rising generation, to try if he can amuse _them_; give him to the
young ladies, who are always predisposed to the kind side, and may make
something of him; introduce him to "my young masters" when they are
idling away a dull morning over their cigars. Nay, advance him if you
will, to the notice of the elders themselves; but take care to ascertain
first that they are people who only travel to gratify a hearty
admiration of the wonderful works of Nature, and to learn to love their
neighbour better by seeking him at his own home--regarding it, at the
same time, as a peculiar privilege, to derive their satisfaction and
gain their improvement from experiences on English ground. Take care of
this; and who knows into what high society you may not be able to
introduce the bearer of the present letter! In spite of his habit of
rambling from subject to subject in his talk, much as he rambled from
place to place in his travels, he may actually find himself, one day,
basking on Folio Classics beneath the genial approval of a Doctor of
Divinity, or trembling among Statutes and Reports under the learned
scrutiny of a Sergeant at Law!

  W. C.

  HARLEY STREET, LONDON,

  _March, 1861._




II.

A CORNISH FISHING TOWN.


The time is ten o'clock at night--the scene, a bank by the roadside,
crested with young fir-trees, and affording a temporary place of repose
to two travellers, who are enjoying the cool night air, picturesquely
extended flat on their backs--or rather, on their knapsacks, which now
form part and parcel of their backs. These two travellers are, the
writer of this book, and an artist friend who is the companion of his
rambles. They have long desired to explore Cornwall together, on foot;
and the object of their aspirations has been at last accomplished, in
the summer-time of the year eighteen hundred and fifty.

In their present position, the travellers are (to speak geographically)
bounded towards the east by a long road winding down the side of a rocky
hill; towards the west, by the broad half-dry channel of a tidal river;
towards the north, by trees, hills, and upland valleys; and towards the
south, by an old bridge and some houses near it, with lights in their
windows faintly reflected in shallow water. In plainer words, the
southern boundary of the prospect around them represents a place called
Looe--a fishing-town on the south coast of Cornwall, which is their
destination for the night.

They had, by this time, accomplished their initiation into the process
of walking under a knapsack, with the most complete and encouraging
success. You, who in these days of vehement bustle, business, and
competition, can still find time to travel for pleasure alone--you, who
have yet to become emancipated from the thraldom of railways, carriages,
and saddle-horses--patronize, I exhort you, that first and
oldest-established of all conveyances, your own legs! Think on your
tender partings nipped in the bud by the railway bell; think of crabbed
cross-roads, and broken carriage-springs; think of luggage confided to
extortionate porters, of horses casting shoes and catching colds, of
cramped legs and numbed feet, of vain longings to get down for a moment
here, and to delay for a pleasant half hour there--think of all these
manifold hardships of riding at your ease; and the next time you leave
home, strap your luggage on your shoulders, take your stick in your
hand, set forth delivered from a perfect paraphernalia of incumbrances,
to go where you will, how you will--the free citizen of the whole
travelling world! Thus independent, what may you not accomplish?--what
pleasure is there that you cannot enjoy? Are you an artist?--you can
stop to sketch every point of view that strikes your eye. Are you a
philanthropist?--you can go into every cottage and talk to every human
being you pass. Are you a botanist, or geologist?--you may pick up
leaves and chip rocks wherever you please, the live-long day. Are you a
valetudinarian?--you may physic yourself by Nature's own simple
prescription, walking in fresh air. Are you dilatory and
irresolute?--you may dawdle to your heart's content; you may change all
your plans a dozen times in a dozen hours; you may tell "Boots" at the
inn to call you at six o'clock, may fall asleep again (ecstatic
sensation!) five minutes after he has knocked at the door, and may get
up two hours later, to pursue your journey, with perfect impunity and
satisfaction. For, to you, what is a time-table but waste-paper?--and a
"booked place" but a relic of the dark ages? You dread, perhaps,
blisters on your feet--sponge your feet with cold vinegar and water,
change your socks every ten miles, and show me blisters after that, if
you can! You strap on your knapsack for the first time, and five minutes
afterwards feel an aching pain in the muscles at the back of your
neck--walk _on_, and the aching will walk _off_! How do we overcome our
first painful cuticular reminiscences of first getting on horseback?--by
riding again. Apply the same rule to carrying the knapsack, and be
assured of the same successful result. Again I say it, therefore--walk,
and be merry; walk, and be healthy; walk, and be your own master!--walk,
to enjoy, to observe, to improve, as no riders can!--walk, and you are
the best peripatetic impersonation of holiday enjoyment that is to be
met with on the surface of this work-a-day world!

How much more could I not say in praise of travelling on our own
neglected legs? But it is getting late; dark night-clouds are marching
slowly over the sky, to the whistling music of the wind; we must leave
our bank by the roadside, pass one end of the old bridge, walk along a
narrow winding street, and enter our hospitable little inn, where we are
welcomed by the kindest of landladies, and waited on by the fairest of
chambermaids. If Looe prove not to be a little sea-shore paradise
to-morrow, then is there no virtue in the good omens of to-night.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first point for which we made in the morning, was the old bridge;
and a most picturesque and singular structure we found it to be. Its
construction dates back as far as the beginning of the fifteenth
century. It is three hundred and eighty-four feet long, and has fourteen
arches, no two of which are on the same scale. The stout buttresses
built between each arch, are hollowed at the top into curious triangular
places of refuge for pedestrians, the roughly paved roadway being just
wide enough to allow the passage of one cart at a time. On some of these
buttresses, towards the middle, once stood an oratory, or chapel,
dedicated to St. Anne; but no vestiges of it now remain. The old bridge
however, still rises sturdily enough on its ancient foundations; and,
whatever the point from which its silver-grey stones and quaint arches
of all shapes and sizes may be beheld, forms no mean adjunct to the
charming landscape around it.

Looe is known to have existed as a town in the reign of Edward I.; and
it remains to this day one of the prettiest and most primitive places
in England. The river divides it into East and West Looe; and the view
from the bridge, looking towards the two little colonies of houses thus
separated, is in some respects almost unique.

At each side of you rise high ranges of beautifully wooded hills; here
and there a cottage peeps out among the trees, the winding path that
leads to it being now lost to sight in the thick foliage, now visible
again as a thin serpentine line of soft grey. Midway on the slopes
appear the gardens of Looe, built up the acclivity on stone terraces one
above another; thus displaying the veritable garden architecture of the
mountains of Palestine magically transplanted to the side of an English
hill. Here, in this soft and genial atmosphere, the hydrangea is a
common flower-bed ornament, the fuchsia grows lofty and luxuriant in the
poorest cottage garden, the myrtle flourishes close to the sea-shore,
and the tender tamarisk is the wild plant of every farmer's hedge.
Looking lower down the hills yet, you see the houses of the town
straggling out towards the sea along each bank of the river, in mazes of
little narrow streets; curious old quays project over the water at
different points; coast-trade vessels are being loaded and unloaded,
built in one place and repaired in another, all within view; while the
prospect of hills, harbour, and houses thus quaintly combined together,
is beautifully closed by the English Channel, just visible as a small
strip of blue water, pent in between the ridges of two promontories
which stretch out on either side to the beach.

Such is Looe as beheld from a distance; and it loses none of its
attractions when you look at it more closely. There is no such thing as
a straight street in the place. No martinet of an architect has been
here, to drill the old stone houses into regimental regularity.
Sometimes you go down steps into the ground floor, sometimes you mount
an outside staircase to get to the bed-rooms. Never were such places
devised for hide and seek since that exciting nursery pastime was first
invented. No house has fewer than two doors leading into two different
lanes; some have three, opening at once into a court, a street, and a
wharf, all situated at different points of the compass. The shops, too,
have their diverting irregularities, as well as the town. Here you might
call a man a Jack of all trades, as the best and truest compliment you
could pay him--for here one shop combines in itself a drug-mongering,
cheese-mongering, stationery, grocery, and oil and Italian line of
business; to say nothing of such cosmopolitan miscellanies as wrinkled
apples, dusty nuts, cracked slate pencils and fly-blown mock jewellery.
The moral good which you derive, in the first pane of a window, from the
contemplation of memoirs of murdered missionaries and serious tracts
against intemperance and tight-lacing, you lose in the second, before
such worldly temptations as gingerbread, shirt-studs, and fascinating
white hats for Sunday wear, at two and ninepence apiece. Let no man
rashly say he has seen all that British enterprise can do for the
extension of British commerce, until he has carefully studied the
shop-fronts of the tradesmen of Looe.

Then, when you have at last threaded your way successfully through the
streets, and have got out on the beach, you see a pretty miniature bay,
formed by the extremity of a green hill on the right, and by fine jagged
slate-rocks on the left. Before this seaward quarter of the town is
erected a strong bulwark of rough stones, to resist the incursion of
high tides. Here, the idlers of the place assemble to lounge and gossip,
to look out for any outward-bound ships that are to be seen in the
Channel, and to criticise the appearance and glorify the capabilities of
the little fleet of Looe fishing-boats, riding snugly at anchor before
them at the entrance of the bay.

The inhabitants number some fourteen hundred; and are as good-humoured
and unsophisticated a set of people as you will meet with anywhere. The
Fisheries and the Coast Trade form their principal means of subsistence.
The women take a very fair share of the hard work out of the men's
hands. You constantly see them carrying coals from the vessels to the
quay in curious hand-barrows: they laugh, scream, and run in each
other's way incessantly: but these little irregularities seem to assist,
rather than impede them, in the prosecution of their tasks. As to the
men, one absorbing interest appears to govern them all. The whole day
long they are mending boats, painting boats, cleaning boats, rowing
boats, or, standing with their hands in their pockets, looking at boats.
The children seem to be children in size, and children in nothing else.
They congregate together in sober little groups, and hold mysterious
conversations, in a dialect which we cannot understand. If they ever do
tumble down, soil their pinafores, throw stones, or make mud pies, they
practise these juvenile vices in a midnight secrecy which no stranger's
eye can penetrate.

In that second period of the dark ages, when there were High Tories and
rotten boroughs in the land, Looe (containing at that time nothing like
the number of inhabitants which it now possesses) sent Four Members to
Parliament! The ceremony by which two of these members were elected, as
it was described to me by a man who remembered witnessing it, must have
been an impressive sight indeed to any foreigner interested in studying
the representative system of this country. On the morning of the "Poll,"
one division of the borough sent _six_ electors, and another _four_, to
record their imposing aggregate of votes in favour of any two smiling
civil gentlemen, who came, properly recommended, to ask for them. This
done, the ten electors walked quietly home in one direction, and the two
members walked quietly off in another, to perform the fatiguing duty of
representing their constituents' interests in Imperial Parliament. The
election was quite a snug little family affair, in these "good old
times." The ten gentlemen who voted, and the other two gentlemen who
took their votes, just made up a comfortable compact dozen, all
together!

But this state of things was too harmonious to last in such a world of
discord as ours. The day of innovation came: turbulent Whigs and
Radicals laid uncivil hands on the Looe polling-booth, and politically
annihilated the pleasant party of twelve. Since that disastrous period
the town has sent no members to Parliament at all; and very little,
indeed, do the townspeople appear to care about so serious a
deprivation. In case the reader should be disposed to attribute this
indifference to municipal privileges to the supineness rather than the
philosophy of the inhabitants, I think it necessary to establish their
just claims to be considered as possessing public spirit, prompt
decision, and wise fertility of resource in cases of emergency, by
relating in this place the true story of how the people of Looe got rid
of the rats.

About a mile out at sea, to the southward of the town, rises a green
triangular shaped eminence, called Looe Island. Here, many years ago, a
ship was wrecked. Not only were the sailors saved, but several free
passengers of the rat species, who had got on board, nobody knew how,
where, or when, were also preserved by their own strenuous exertions,
and wisely took up permanent quarters for the future on the terra firma
of Looe Island. In process of time, and in obedience to the laws of
nature, these rats increased and multiplied exceedingly; and, being
confined all round within certain limits by the sea, soon became a
palpable and dangerous nuisance. Destruction was threatened to the
agricultural produce of all the small patches of cultivated land on the
island--it seemed doubtful whether any man who ventured there by
himself, might not share the fate of Bishop Hatto, and be devoured by
rats. Under these pressing circumstances, the people of Looe determined
to make one united and vehement effort to extirpate the whole colony of
invaders. Ordinary means of destruction had been tried already, and
without effect. It was said that rats left for dead on the ground had
mysteriously revived faster than they could be picked up and skinned, or
flung into the sea. Rats desperately wounded had got away into their
holes, and become convalescent, and increased and multiplied again more
productively than ever. The great problem was, not how to kill the rats,
but how to annihilate them so effectually as to place the re-appearance
even of one of them altogether out of the question. This was the
problem, and it was solved in the following manner:--

All the available inhabitants of the town were called to join in a great
hunt. The rats were caught by every conceivable artifice; and, once
taken, were instantly and ferociously _smothered in onions_; the
corpses were then decently laid out on clean china dishes, and
straightway eaten with vindictive relish by the people of Looe. Never
was any invention for destroying rats so complete and so successful as
this! Every man, woman, and child, who could eat, could swear to the
extirpation of all the rats they had eaten. The local returns of dead
rats were not made by the bills of mortality, but by the bills of fare:
it was getting rid of a nuisance by the unheard-of process of stomaching
a nuisance! Day after day passed on, and rats disappeared by hundreds,
never to return. What could all their cunning and resolution avail them
now? They had resisted before, and could have resisted still, the
ordinary force of dogs, ferrets, traps, sticks, stones, and guns,
arrayed against them; but when to these engines of assault were added,
as auxiliaries, smothering onions, scalding stew-pans, hungry mouths,
sharp teeth, good digestions, and the gastric juice, what could they do
but give in? Swift and sure was the destruction that now overwhelmed
them--everybody who wanted a dinner had a strong personal interest in
hunting them down to the very last. In a short space of time the island
was cleared of the usurpers. Cheeses remained entire: ricks rose
uninjured. And this is the true story of how the people of Looe got rid
of the rats!

It will not much surprise any reader who has been good-natured enough to
peruse the preceding pages with some attention, to hear that we idly
delayed the day of departure from the pleasant fishing-town on the south
coast, which was now the place of our sojourn. The smiles of our fair
chambermaid and the cookery of our excellent hostess, addressed us in
Siren tones of allurement which we had not the virtue to resist. Then,
it was difficult to leave unexplored any of the numerous walks in the
neighbourhood--all delightfully varied in character, and each possessing
its own attractive point of view. Even when we had made our
determination and fixed our farewell day, a great boat-race and a great
tea-drinking, which everybody declared was something that everybody else
ought to see, interfered to detain us. We delayed yet once more, to
partake in the festivities, and found that they supplied us with all the
necessary resolution to quit Looe which we had hitherto wanted. We had
remained to take part in a social failure on a very large scale.

As, in addition to the boat-race, there was to be a bazaar on the beach;
and as fine weather was therefore an essential requisite on the
occasion, it is scarcely necessary to premise that we had an unusually
large quantity of rain. In the forenoon, however, the sun shone with
treacherous brilliancy; and all the women in the neighbourhood fluttered
out in his beams, gay as butterflies. What dazzling gowns, what flaring
parasols, what joyous cavalcades on cart-horses, did we see on the road
that led to the town! What a mixture of excitement, confusion, anxiety,
and importance, possessed everybody! What frolic and felicity attended
the popular gatherings on the beach, until the fatal moment when the gun
fired for the first race! Then, as if at that signal, the clouds began
to muster in ominous blackness; the deceitful sunlight disappeared; the
rain came down for the day--a steady, noiseless, malicious rain, that at
once forbade all hope of clear weather. Dire was the discomfiture of the
poor ladies of Looe. They ran hither and thither for shelter, in lank
wet muslin and under dripping parasols, displaying, in the lamentable
emergency of the moment, all sorts of interior contrivances for
expanding around them the exterior magnificence of their gowns, which we
never ought to have seen. Deserted were the stalls of the bazaar for the
parlours of the alehouses; unapplauded and unobserved, strained at the
oar the stout rowers in the boat-race. Everybody ran to cover, except
some seafaring men who cared nothing for weather, some inveterate
loungers who would wander up and down in spite of the rain, and three
unhappy German musicians, who had been caught on their travels, and
pinned up tight against the outer wall of a house, in a sort of cage of
canvas, boards, and evergreens, which hid every part of them but their
heads and shoulders. Nobody interfered to release these unfortunates.
There they sat, hemmed in all round by dripping leaves, blowing grimly
and incessantly through instruments of brass. If the reader can imagine
the effect of three phlegmatic men with long bottle noses, looking out
of a circle of green bushes, and playing waltzes unintermittingly on
long horns, in a heavy shower--he will be able to form a tolerably
correct estimate of the large extra proportion of gloom which the German
musicians succeeded in infusing into the disastrous proceedings of the
day.

The tea-drinking was rather more successful. The room in which it was
held was filled to the corners, and exhaled such an odour of wet
garments and bread and butter (to say nothing of an incessant clatter of
china and bawling of voices) that we found ourselves, as uninitiated
strangers, unequal to the task of remaining in it to witness the
proceedings. Descending the steps which led into the street from the
door--to the great confusion of a string of smartly dressed ladies who
encountered us, rushing up with steaming teakettles and craggy lumps of
plumcake--we left the inhabitants to conclude their festivities by
themselves, and went out to take a farewell walk on the cliffs of Looe.

We ascended the heights to the westward, losing sight of the town among
the trees as we went; and then, walking in a southerly direction through
some cornfields, approached within a few hundred yards of the edge of
the cliffs, and looked out on the sea. The sky had partially cleared,
and the rain had ceased; but huge fantastic masses of cloud, tinged with
lurid copper-colour by the setting sun, still towered afar off over the
horizon, and were reflected in a deeper hue on the calm surface of the
sea, with a perfectness and grandeur that I never remember to have
witnessed before. Not a ship was in sight; but out on the extreme line
of the wilderness of grey waters there shone one red, fiery spark--the
beacon of the Eddystone Lighthouse. Before us, the green fields of Looe
Island rose high out of the ocean--here, partaking the red light on the
clouds; there, half lost in cold shadow. Closer yet, on the mainland, a
few cattle were feeding quietly on a long strip of meadow bordering the
edge of the cliff; and, now and then, a gull soared up from the sea, and
wheeled screaming over our heads. The faint sound of the small
shore-waves (invisible to us in the position we occupied) beating dull
and at long intervals on the beach, augmented the dreary solemnity of
the evening prospect. Light, shade, and colour, were all before us,
arranged in the grandest combinations, and expressed by the simplest
forms. If Michael Angelo had painted landscape, he might have
represented such a scene as we now beheld.

This was our last excursion at Looe. The next morning we were again on
the road, walking inland on our way to the town of Liskeard.




III.

HOLY WELLS AND DRUID RELICS.


Fresh from the quaint old houses, the delightfully irregular streets,
and the fragrant terrace-gardens of Looe, we found ourselves, on
entering Liskeard, suddenly introduced to that "abomination of
desolation," a large agricultural country town. Modern square houses,
barren of all outer ornament; wide, dusty, deserted streets;
misanthropical-looking shopkeepers, clad in rusty black, standing at
their doors to gaze on the solitude around them--greeted our eyes on all
sides. Such samples of the population as we accidentally encountered
were not promising. We were unlucky enough to remark, in the course of
two streets, a nonagenarian old woman with a false nose, and an idiot
shaking with the palsy.

But harder trials were in reserve for us. We missed the best of the many
inns at Liskeard, and went to the very worst. What a place was our house
of public entertainment for a great sinner to repent in, or for a
melancholy recluse to retreat to! Not a human being appeared in the
street where this tavern of despair frowned amid congenial desolation.
Nobody welcomed us at the door--the sign creaked dolefully, as the wind
swung it on its rusty hinges. We walked in, and discovered a
low-spirited little man sitting at an empty "bar," and hiding himself,
as it were, from all mortal inspection behind the full sheet of a dirty
provincial newspaper. Doleful was our petition to this secluded publican
for shelter and food; and doubly doleful was his answer to our appeal.
Beds he believed he had--food there was none in the house, saving a
piece of _corned beef_, which the family had dined on, and which he
proposed that we should partake of before it got quite cold. Having said
thus much, he suddenly retired behind his newspaper, and spoke no word
more.

In a few minutes the landlady appeared, looking very thin and care-worn,
and clad in mourning weeds. She smiled sadly upon us; and desired to
know how we liked corned beef? We acknowledged a preference for fresh
meat, especially in large market towns like Liskeard, where butchers'
shops abounded. The landlady was willing to see what she could get; and
in the meantime, begged to be allowed to show us into a private room.
She succeeded in incarcerating us in the most thoroughly private room
that could be found out of a model prison. It was situated far away at
the back of the house, and looked out upon a very small yard entirely
circumscribed by empty stables. The one little window was shut down
tight, and we were desired not to open it, for fear of a smell from
these stables. The ornaments of the place consisted of hymn-books,
spelling-books, and a china statue of Napoleon in a light green
waistcoat and a sky-blue coat. There was not even a fly in the room to
intrude on us in our privacy; there were no cocks and hens in the yard
to cackle on us in our privacy; nobody walked past the outer passage, or
made any noise in any part of the house, to startle us in our privacy;
and a steady rain was falling propitiously to keep us in our privacy. We
dined in our retired situation on some rugged lumps of broiled flesh,
which the landlady called chops, and the servant steaks. We broke out of
prison after dinner, and roamed the streets. We returned to solitary
confinement in the evening, and were instantly conducted to another
cell.

This second private apartment appeared to be about forty feet long; six
immense wooden tables, painted of a ghastly yellow colour, were ranged
down it side by side. Nothing was placed on any of them--they looked
like dissecting-tables waiting for "subjects." There was yet another and
a seventh table--a round one, half lost in a corner, to which we
retreated for refuge--it was covered with crape and bombazine, half made
up into mourning garments proper to the first and intensest stage of
grief. The servant brought us one small candle to cheer the scene; and
desired to be informed whether we wanted _two_ sheets apiece to our
beds, or whether we could do with a sheet at top and a blanket at
bottom, as other people did? This question cowed us at once into gloomy
submission to our fate. We just hinted that we had contracted bad habits
of sleeping between two sheets, and left the rest to chance; reckless
how we slept, or where we slept, whether we passed the night on the top
of one of the six dissecting-tables, or with a blanket at bottom, as
other people passed it. Soon the servant returned to tell us that we had
got our two sheets each, and to send us to bed--snatching up the
landlady's mourning garments, while she spoke, with a scared, suspicious
look, as if she thought that the next outrageous luxury we should
require would be a nightgown apiece of crape and bombazine.

Reflecting on our lamentable situation the last thing at night, we
derived some consolation from remembering that we should leave our
quarters early the next morning. It was not Liskeard that we had come to
see, but the country around Liskeard--the famous curiosities of Nature
and Art that are to be found some six or eight miles away from the town.
Accordingly, we were astir betimes on the morrow. The sky was fair; the
breeze was exhilarating. Once past the doleful doorway of the inn, we
found ourselves departing under the fairest auspices for a pilgrimage to
the ruins of St. Cleer's Well, and to the granite piles and Druid
remains, now entitled the "Cheese-Wring" and "Hurler" rocks.

On leaving the town, our way lay to the northward, up rising ground. For
the first two miles, the scenery differed little from what we had
already beheld in Cornwall. The lanes were still sunk down between high
banks, like dry ditches; all varieties of ferns grew in exquisite beauty
and luxuriance on either side of us; the trees were small in size, and
thickly clothed with leaves; and the views were generally narrowed to a
few well-cultivated fields, with sturdy little granite-built cottages
now and then rising beyond. It was only when we had reached what must
have been a considerable elevation, that any change appeared in the face
of the country. Five minutes more of walking, and a single turn in the
road, brought us suddenly to the limits of trees, meadows, and cottages;
and displayed before us, with almost startling abruptness, the
magnificent prospect of a Cornish Moor.

The expanse of open plain that we now beheld stretched away
uninterruptedly on the right hand, as far as the distant hills. Towards
the left, the view was broken and varied by some rough stone walls, a
narrow road, and a dip in the earth beyond. Wherever we looked, far or
near, we saw masses of granite of all shapes and sizes, heaped
irregularly on the ground among dark clusters of heath. An old
furze-cutter was the only human figure that appeared on the desolate
scene. Approaching him to ask our way to St. Cleer's Well--no signs of
which could be discerned on the wilderness before us--we found the old
fellow, though he was eighty years of age, working away with all the
vigour of youth. On this wild moor he had lived and laboured from
childhood; and he began to talk proudly of its great length and breadth,
and of the wonderful sights that were to be seen on different parts of
it, the moment we addressed him. He described to us, in his own homely
forcible way, the awful storms that he had beheld, the fearful rattling
and roaring of thunder over the great unsheltered plain before us--the
hail and sleet driven so fiercely before the hurricane, that a man was
half-blinded if he turned his face towards it for a moment--the forked
lightning shooting from pitch-dark clouds, leaping and running fearfully
over the level ground, blackening, splitting, tearing from their places
the stoutest rocks on the moor. Three masses of granite lay heaped
together near the spot where we had halted--the furze-cutter pointed to
them with his bill-hook, and told us that what we now looked on was once
one great rock, which he had seen riven in an instant by the lightning
into the fragmentary form that it now presented. If we mounted the
highest of these three masses, he declared that we might find out our
own way to St. Cleer's Well by merely looking around us. We followed his
directions. Towards the east, far away over the magnificent sweep of
moorland, and on the slope of the hill that bounded it, appeared the
tall chimneys and engine-houses of the Great Caraton Copper Mine--the
only objects raised by the hand of man that were to be seen on this
part of the view. Towards the west, much nearer at hand, four grey
turrets were just visible beyond some rising ground. These turrets
belonged to the tower of St. Cleer's Church, and the Well was close by
it.

Taking leave of the furze-cutter, we followed the path at once that led
to St. Cleer's. Half an hour's walking brought us to the village, a
straggling, picturesque place, hidden in so deep a hollow as to be quite
invisible from any distance. All the little cottage-girls whom we met,
carrying their jugs and pitchers of water, curtseyed and wished us good
morning with the prettiest air of bashfulness and good humour
imaginable. One of them, a rosy, beautiful child, who proudly informed
us that she was six years old, put down her jug at a cottage-gate and
ran on before to show us the way, delighted to be singled out from her
companions for so important an office. We passed the grey walls of the
old church, walked down a lane, and soon came in sight of the Well, the
position of which was marked by a ruined Oratory, situated on some open
ground close at the side of the public pathway.

St. Cleer, or--as the name is generally spelt out of Cornwall--St.
Clare, the patron saint of the Well, was born in Italy, in the twelfth
century--and born to a fair heritage of this world's honours and this
world's possessions. But she voluntarily abandoned, at an early age, all
that was alluring in the earthly career awaiting her, to devote herself
entirely to the interests of her religion and the service of Heaven. She
was the first woman who sat at the feet of St. Francis as his disciple,
who humbly practised the self-mortification, and resolutely performed
the vow of perpetual poverty, which her preceptor's harshest doctrines
imposed on his followers. She soon became Abbess of the Benedictine Nuns
with whom she was associated by the saint; and afterwards founded an
order of her own--the order of "Poor Clares." The fame of her piety and
humility, of her devotion to the cause of the sick, the afflicted, and
the poor, spread far and wide. The most illustrious of the ecclesiastics
of her time attended at her convent as at a holy shrine. Pope Innocent
the Fourth visited her, as a testimony of his respect for her virtues;
and paid homage to her memory when her blameless existence had closed,
by making one among the mourners who followed her to the grave. Her name
had been derived from the Latin word that signifies _purity_; and from
first to last, her life had kept the promise of her name.

Poor St. Clare! If she could look back, with the thoughts and interests
of the days of her mortality, to the world that she has quitted for
ever, how sadly would she now contemplate the Holy Well which was once
hallowed in her name and for her sake! But one arched wall, thickly
overgrown with ivy, still remains erect in the place that the old
Oratory occupied. Fragments of its roof, its cornices, and the mouldings
of its windows lie scattered on the ground, half hidden by the grasses
and ferns twining prettily around them. A double cross of stone stands,
sloping towards the earth, at a little distance off--soon perhaps to
share the fate of the prostrate ruins about it. How changed the scene
here, since the time when the rural christening procession left the
church, to proceed down the quiet pathway to the Holy Well--when
children were baptized in the pure spring; and vows were offered up
under the roof of the Oratory, and prayers were repeated before the
sacred cross! These were the pious usages of a past age; these were the
ceremonies of an ancient church, whose innocent and reverent custom it
was to connect closer together the beauty of Nature and the beauty of
Religion, by such means as the consecration of a spring, or the erection
of a roadside cross. There has been something of sacrifice as well as of
glory, in the effort by which we, in our time, have freed ourselves from
what was superstitious and tyrannical in the faith of the times of
old--it has cost us the loss of much of the better part of that faith
which was not superstition, and of more which was not tyranny. The
spring of St. Clare is nothing to the cottager of our day but a place to
draw water from; the village lads now lounge whistling on the fallen
stones, once the consecrated arches under which their humble ancestors
paused on the pilgrimage, or knelt in prayer. Wherever the eye turns,
all around it speaks the melancholy language of desolation and
decay--all but the water of the Holy Well. Still the little pool remains
the fitting type of its patron saint--pure and tranquil as in the bygone
days, when the name of St. Clare was something more than the title to a
village legend, and the spring of St. Clare something better than a
sight for the passing tourist among the Cornish moors.[1]

We happened to arrive at the well at the period when the villagers were
going home to dinner. After the first quarter of an hour, we were left
almost alone among the ruins. The only person who approached to speak to
us was a poor old woman, bent and tottering with age, who lived in a
little cottage hard by. She brought us a glass, thinking we might wish
to taste the water of the spring; and presented me with a rose out of
her garden. Such small scraps of information as she had gathered
together about the well, she repeated to us in low, reverential tones,
as if its former religious uses still made it an object of veneration in
her eyes. After a time, she too quitted us; and we were then left quite
alone by the side of the spring.

It was a bright, sunshiny day; a pure air was abroad; nothing sounded
audibly but the singing of birds at some distance, and the rustling of
the few leaves that clothed one or two young trees in a neighbouring
garden. Unoccupied though I was, the minutes passed away as quickly and
as unheeded with me, as with my companion who was busily engaged in
sketching. The ruins of the ancient Oratory, viewed amid the pastoral
repose of all things around them, began imperceptibly to exert over me
that mysterious power of mingling the impressions of the present with
the memories of the past, which all ruins possess. While I sat looking
idly into the water of the well, and thinking of the groups that had
gathered round it in years long gone by, recollections began to rise
vividly on my mind of other ruins that I had seen in other countries,
with friends, some scattered, some gone now--of pleasant pilgrimages, in
boyish days, along the storied shores of Baiæ, or through the desolate
streets of the Dead City under Vesuvius--of happy sketching excursions
to the aqueducts on the plains of Rome, or to the temples and villas of
Tivoli; during which, I had first learned to appreciate the beauties of
Nature under guidance which, in this world, I can never resume; and had
seen the lovely prospects of Italian landscape pictured by a hand now
powerless in death. Remembrances such as these, of pleasures which
remembrance only can recall as they were, made time fly fast for me by
the brink of the holy well. I could have sat there all day, and should
not have felt, at night, that the day had been ill spent.

But the sunlight began to warn us that noon was long past. We had some
distance yet to walk, and many things more to see. Shortly after my
friend had completed his sketch, therefore, we reluctantly left St.
Clare's Well, and went on our way briskly, up the little valley, and out
again on the wide surface of the moor.

It was now our object to steer a course over the wide plain around us,
leading directly to the "Cheese-Wring" rocks (so called from their
supposed resemblance to a Cornish cheese-press or "_wring_"). On our
road to this curiosity, about a mile and a half from St. Clare's Well,
we stopped to look at one of the most perfect and remarkable of the
ancient British monuments in Cornwall. It is called Trevethey Stone, and
consists of six large upright slabs of granite, overlaid by a seventh,
which covers them in the form of a rude, slanting roof. These slabs are
so irregular in form as to look quite unhewn. They all vary in size and
thickness. The whole structure rises to a height, probably, of fourteen
feet; and, standing as it does on elevated ground, in a barren country,
with no stones of a similar kind erected near it, presents an appearance
of rugged grandeur and aboriginal simplicity, which renders it an
impressive, almost a startling object to look on. Antiquaries have
discovered that its name signifies The Place of Graves; and have
discovered no more. No inscription appears on it; the date of its
erection is lost in the darkest of the dark periods of English history.

Our path had been gradually rising all the way from St. Clare's Well;
and, when we left Trevethey Stone, we still continued to ascend,
proceeding along the tram-way leading to the Caraton Mine. Soon the
scene presented another abrupt and extraordinary change. We had been
walking hitherto amid almost invariable silence and solitude; but now,
with each succeeding minute, strange, mingled, unintermitting noises
began to grow louder and louder around us. We followed a sharp curve in
the tram-way, and immediately found ourselves saluted by an entirely new
prospect, and surrounded by an utterly bewildering noise. All about us
monstrous wheels were turning slowly; machinery was clanking and
groaning in the hoarsest discords; invisible waters were pouring onward
with a rushing sound; high above our heads, on skeleton platforms, iron
chains clattered fast and fiercely over iron pulleys, and huge steam
pumps puffed and gasped, and slowly raised and depressed their heavy
black beams of wood. Far beneath the embankment on which we stood, men,
women, and children were breaking and washing ore in a perfect marsh of
copper-coloured mud and copper-coloured water. We had penetrated to the
very centre of the noise, the bustle, and the population on the surface
of a great mine.

When we walked forward again, we passed through a thick plantation of
young firs; and then, the sounds behind us became slowly and solemnly
deadened the further we went on. When we had arrived at the extremity of
the line of trees, they ceased softly and suddenly. It was like a change
in a dream.

We now left the tram-way, and stood again on the moor--on a wilder and
lonelier part of it than we had yet beheld. The Cheese-Wring and its
adjacent rocks were visible a mile and a half away, on the summit of a
steep hill. Wherever we looked, the horizon was bounded by the long,
dark, undulating edges of the moor. The ground rose and fell in little
hillocks and hollows, tufted with dry grass and furze, and strewn
throughout with fragments of granite. The whole plain appeared like the
site of an ancient city of palaces, overthrown and crumbled into atoms
by an earthquake. Here and there, some cows were feeding; and sometimes
a large crow winged his way lazily before us, lessening and lessening
slowly in the open distance, until he was lost to sight. No human beings
were discernible anywhere; the majestic loneliness and stillness of the
scene were almost oppressive both to eye and ear. Above us, immense
fleecy masses of brilliant white cloud, wind-driven from the Atlantic,
soared up grandly, higher and higher over the bright blue sky.
Everywhere, the view had an impressively stern, simple, aboriginal look.
Here were tracts of solitary country which had sturdily retained their
ancient character through centuries of revolution and change; plains
pathless and desolate even now, as when Druid processions passed over
them by night to the place of the secret sacrifice, and skin-clad
warriors of old Britain halted on them in council, or hurried across
them to the fight.

On we went, up and down, in a very zig-zag course, now looking forward
towards the Cheese-Wring from the top of a rock, now losing sight of it
altogether in the depths of a hollow. By the time we had advanced about
half way over the distance it was necessary for us to walk, we
observed, towards the left hand, a wide circle of detached upright
rooks. These we knew, from descriptions and engravings, to be the
"Hurlers"--so we turned aside at once to look at them from a nearer
point of view.

There are two very different histories of these rocks; the antiquarian
account of them is straightforward and practical enough, simply
asserting that they are the remains of a Druid temple, the whole region
about them having been one of the principal stations of the Druids in
Cornwall. The popular account of the Hurlers (from which their name is
derived) is very different. It is contended, on the part of the people,
that once upon a time (nobody knows how long ago), these rocks were
Cornish men, who profanely went out (nobody knows from what place), to
enjoy the national sport of hurling the ball on one fine "Sabbath
morning," and were suddenly turned into pillars of stone, as a judgment
on their own wickedness, and a warning to all their companions as well.

Having to choose between the antiquarian hypothesis and the popular
legend on the very spot to which both referred, a common susceptibility
to the charms of romance at once determined us to pin our faith on the
legend. Looking at the Hurlers, therefore, in the peculiar spirit of the
story attached to them, as really and truly petrified ball-players, we
observed, with great interest, that some of them must have been a little
above, and others a little below our own height, in their lifetime; that
some must have been very corpulent, and others very thin persons; that
one of them, having a protuberance on his head remarkably like a
night-cap in stone, was possibly a sluggard as well as a
Sabbath-breaker, and might have got out of his bed just in time to
"hurl;" that another, with some faint resemblance left of a fat grinning
human face, leaned considerably out of the perpendicular, and was, in
all probability, a hurler of intemperate habits. At some distance off we
remarked a high stone standing entirely by itself, which, in the absence
of any positive information on the subject, we presumed to consider as
the petrified effigy of a tall man who ran after the ball. In the
opposite direction other stones were dotted about irregularly, which we
could only imagine to represent certain misguided wretches who had
attended as spectators of the sports, and had therefore incurred the
same penalty as the hurlers themselves. These humble results of
observations taken on the spot, may possibly be useful, as tending to
offer some startling facts from ancient history to the next pious layman
in the legislature who gets up to propose the next series of Sabbath
prohibitions for the benefit of the profane laymen in the nation.

Abandoning any more minute observation of the Hurlers than that already
recorded, in order to husband the little time still left to us, we soon
shaped our course again in the direction of the Cheese-Wring. We arrived
at the base of the hill on which it stands, in a short time and without
any difficulty; and beheld above us a perfect chaos of rocks piled up
the entire surface of the eminence. All the granite we had seen before
was as nothing compared with the granite we now looked on. The masses
were at one place heaped up in great irregular cairns--at another,
scattered confusedly over the ground; poured all along in close, craggy
lumps; flung about hither and thither, as if in reckless sport, by the
hands of giants. Above the whole, rose the weird fantastic form of the
Cheese-Wring, the wildest and most wondrous of all the wild and wondrous
structures in the rock architecture of the scene.

If a man dreamt of a great pile of stones in a nightmare, he would dream
of such a pile as the Cheese-Wring. All the heaviest and largest of the
seven thick slabs of which it is composed are at the top; all the
lightest and smallest at the bottom. It rises perpendicularly to a
height of thirty-two feet, without lateral support of any kind. The
fifth and sixth rocks are of immense size and thickness, and overhang
fearfully, all round, the four lower rocks which support them. All are
perfectly irregular; the projections of one do not fit into the
interstices of another; they are heaped up loosely in their
extraordinary top-heavy form, on slanting ground half-way down a steep
hill. Look at them from whatever point you choose, there is still all
that is heaviest, largest, strongest, at the summit, and all that is
lightest, smallest, weakest, at the base. When you first see the
Cheese-Wring, you instinctively shrink from walking under it. Beholding
the tons on tons of stone balanced to a hair's breadth on the mere
fragments beneath, you think that with a pole in your hand, with one
push against the top rocks, you could hurl down the hill in an instant a
pile which has stood for centuries, unshaken by the fiercest hurricane
that ever blew, rushing from the great void of an ocean over the naked
surface of a moor.

Of course, theories advanced by learned men are not wanting to explain
such a phenomenon as the Cheese-Wring. Certain antiquaries have
undertaken to solve this curious problem of Nature in a very off-hand
manner, by asserting that the rocks were heaped up as they now appear,
by the Druids, with the intention of astonishing their contemporaries
and all posterity by a striking exhibition of their architectural skill.
(If any of these antiquarian gentlemen be still living, I would not
recommend them to attempt a practical illustration of their theory by
building miniature Cheese-Wrings out of the contents of their
coal-scuttles!) The second explanation of the extraordinary position of
the rocks is a geological explanation, and is apparently the true one.
It is assumed on this latter hypothesis, that the Cheese-Wring, and all
the adjacent masses of stone, were once covered, or nearly covered, by
earth, and were thus supported in an upright form; that the wear and
tear of storms gradually washed away all this earth, from between the
rocks, down the hill, and then left such heaps of stones as were
accidentally complete in their balance on each other, to stand erect,
and such as were not, to fall flat on the surface of the hill in all the
various positions in which they now appear. Accepting this theory as the
right one, it still seems strange that there should be only one
Cheese-Wring on the hill--but so it is. Plenty of rocks are to be seen
there piled one on another; but none of them are piled in the same
extraordinary manner as the Cheese-Wring, which stands alone in its
grandeur, a curiosity that even science may wonder at, a sight which is
worth a visit to Cornwall, if Cornwall presented nothing else to see.

Besides the astonishment which the rock scenery on the hill was
calculated to excite, we found in its neighbourhood an additional cause
for surprise of a very different description. Just as we were preparing
to ascend the eminence, the silence of the great waste around us was
broken by a long and hearty cheer. The Hurlers themselves, if they had
suddenly returned to a state of flesh and blood, and resumed their
interrupted game, could hardly have made more noise, or exhibited a
greater joviality of disposition, than did some three or four tradesmen
of the town of Liskeard, who had been enjoying a pic-nic under the
Cheese-Wring, had seen us approaching over the plain, and now darted out
of their ambush to welcome us, flourishing porter-bottles in their hands
as olive branches of peace, amity, and good-will. My companion skilfully
contrived to make his escape; but I was stopped and surrounded in an
instant. One benevolent stranger held a glass in a very slanting
position, while a brother philanthropist violently uncorked a bottle and
directed half of its contents in a magnificent jet of light brown froth
all over everybody, before he found the way into the tumbler. It was of
no use to decline imbibing the remainder of the light brown
froth--"_There_ was the Cheese-Wring (cried all the benevolent strangers
in chorus), and _here_ was the porter--_I_ must drink all their good
healths, and _they_ would all drink mine--this was Cornish hospitality,
and Cornish hospitality was notoriously the finest thing in the world!
As for my friend there, who was drawing, they bore him no ill-will
because he wouldn't drink--they would buy his drawing, and one of the
commercial gentlemen, who was a stationer, would publish a hundred, two
hundred, five hundred, a thousand copies of it, on sheets of
letter-paper, price one penny! What had I got to say to that?--If that
wasn't hospitality, what the devil was?"

All this might have been very amusing, and our new friends might have
proved excellent companions, under a different set of circumstances.
But, as things were, we neither of us felt at all sorry when their
manners subsequently exhibited a slight change, under the influence of
further potations of porter. Soon, they began to look stolid and
suspicious--suddenly, they discovered that we were not quite such good
company as they had thought us at first--finally, they took their
departure in solemn silence, leaving us free at last to mount the hill,
and look out uninterruptedly on the glorious view from the summit, which
extended over a circumference of a hundred miles.

Turning our faces towards the north-east, and standing now on the
topmost rock of one of the most elevated situations in Cornwall, we were
able to discern the sea on either side of us. Two faint lines of the
softest, haziest blue, indicated the Bristol Channel on the one hand,
and the English Channel on the other. Before us lay a wide region of
downs and fields, all mapped out in every variety of form by their
different divisions of wall and hedge-row--while, farther away yet,
darker and more indefinite, appeared the Dartmoor forest and the
Dartmoor hills. It was just that hour before the evening, at which the
atmosphere acquires a more mellow purity, a more perfect serenity and
warmth, than at earlier periods of the day. The shadows of great clouds
lay in vast lovely shapes of purple blue over the whole visible tract of
country, contrasting in exquisite beauty with the sunny glimpses of
landscape shining between them. Beneath us, the picturesque confusion of
rocks, topped by the quaint form of the Cheese-Wring, seemed to fade
away mysteriously into the grass of the moorland; beyond which, high up
where the hills rose again, a little lake, called Dosmery Pool, shone in
the sunlight with dazzling, diamond brightness. In the opposite
direction, towards the west, the immediate prospect was formed by the
rugged granite ridges, towering one behind the other, of Sharp Torr and
Kilmarth--the long hazy outlines of the plains and hill-tops of southern
and inland Cornwall closing grandly the distant view.

All that we had hitherto seen on and around the spot where we now stood,
had not yet exhausted its objects of attraction for strangers.
Descending the rocks in a new direction, after taking a last look at the
noble prospect visible from their summit, we proceeded to a particular
spot near the base of the hill, where the granite was scattered in
remarkable abundance. Our purpose here was to examine some stones which
are well known to all the quarrymen in the district, as associated with
an extraordinary story and an extraordinary man.

During the earlier half of the last century, there lived in one of the
villages on the outskirts of the moor on which the Cheese-Wring stands,
a stonecutter named Daniel Gumb. This man was noted among his companions
for his taciturn eccentric character, and for his attachment to
mathematical studies. Such leisure time as he had at his command he
devoted to pondering over the problems of Euclid: he was always drawing
mysterious complications of angles, triangles, and parallelograms, on
pieces of slate, and on the blank leaves of such few books as he
possessed. But he made very slow progress in his studies. Poverty and
hard work increased with the increase of his family, and obliged him to
give up his mathematics altogether. He laboured early and laboured late;
he hacked and hewed at the hard material out of which he was doomed to
cut a livelihood, with unremitting diligence; but times went so ill with
him, that in despair of ever finding them better, he took a sudden
resolution of altering his manner of living, and retreating from the
difficulties that he could not overcome. He went to the hill on which
the Cheese-Wring stands, and looked about among the rocks until he
found some that had accidentally formed themselves into a sort of rude
cavern. He widened this recess; he propped up a great wide slab, to make
its roof: he cut out in a rock that rose above this, what he called his
bed-room--a mere longitudinal slit in the stone, the length and breadth
of his body, into which he could roll himself sideways when he wanted to
enter it. After he had completed this last piece of work, he scratched
the date of the year of his extraordinary labours (1735) on the rock;
and then removed his wife and family from their cottage, and lodged them
in the cavity he had made--never to return during his lifetime to the
dwellings of men!

Here he lived and here he worked, when he could get work. He paid no
rent now: he wanted no furniture; he struggled no longer to appear to
the world as his equals appeared; he required no more money than would
procure for his family and himself the barest necessaries of life; he
suffered no interruptions from his fellow-workmen, who thought him a
madman, and kept out of his way; and--most precious privilege of his new
position--he could at last shorten his hours of labour, and lengthen his
hours of study, with impunity. Having no temptations to spend money, no
hard demands of an inexorable landlord to answer, he could now work with
his brains as well as his hands; he could toil at his problems,
scratching them upon the tops of rocks, under the open sky, amid the
silence of the great moor. Henceforth, nothing moved, nothing depressed
him. The storms of winter rushed over his unsheltered dwelling, but
failed to dislodge him. He taught his family to brave solitude and cold
in the cavern among the rocks, as _he_ braved them. In the cell that he
had scooped out for his wife (the roof of which has now fallen in) some
of his children died, and others were born. They point out the rock
where he used to sit on calm summer evenings, absorbed over his tattered
copy of Euclid. A geometrical "puzzle," traced by his hand, still
appears on the stone. When he died, what became of his family, no one
can tell. Nothing more is known of him than that he never quitted the
wild place of his exile; that he continued to the day of his death to
live contentedly with his wife and children, amid a civilized nation,
under such a shelter as would hardly serve the first savage tribes of
the most savage country--to live, starving out poverty and want on a
barren wild; forsaking all things enduring all things for the love of
Knowledge, which he could still nobly follow through trials and
extremities, without encouragement of fame or profit, without vantage
ground of station or wealth, for its own dear sake. Beyond this, nothing
but conjecture is left. The cell, the bed-place, the lines traced on the
rocks, the inscription of the year in which he hewed his habitation out
of them, are all the memorials that remain of Daniel Gumb.

We lingered about the wild habitation of the stonemason and his family,
until sunset. Long shadows of rocks lay over the moor, the breeze had
freshened and was already growing chill, when we set forth, at last, to
trace our way back to Liskeard. It was too late now to think of
proceeding on our journey, and sleeping at the next town on our line of
route.

Returning in a new direction, we found ourselves once more walking on a
high road, just as the sun had gone down, and the grey twilight was
falling softly over the landscape. Stopping near a lonely farm-house, we
went into a field to look at another old British monument to which our
attention had been directed. We saw a square stone column--now broken
into two pieces--ornamented with a curiously carved pattern, and
exhibiting an inscription cut in irregular, mysterious characters. Those
who have deciphered them, have discovered that the column is nearly a
thousand years old; that it was raised as a sepulchral monument over the
body of Dungerth King of Cornwall; and that the letters carved on it
form some Latin words, which may be thus translated:--"PRAY FOR THE
SOUL OF DUNGERTH." Seen in the dim light of the last quiet hour of
evening, there was something solemn and impressive about the appearance
of the old tombstone--simple though it was. After leaving it, we soon
entered once more into regions of fertility. Cottages, cornfields, and
trees surrounded us again. We passed through pleasant little valleys;
over brooks crossed by quaint wooden bridges; up and down long lanes,
where tall hedges and clustering trees darkened the way--where the
stag-beetle flew slowly by, winding "his small but sullen horn," and
glow-worms glimmered brightly in the long, dewy grass by the roadside.
The moon, rising at first red and dull in a misty sky, brightened as we
went on, and lighted us brilliantly along all that remained of our
night-walk back to the town.

I have only to add, that, when we arrived at Liskeard, the lachrymose
landlady of the inn benevolently offered us for supper the identical
piece of cold "_corned beef_" which she had offered us for dinner the
day before; and further proposed that we should feast at our ease in the
private dungeon dining-room at the back of the house. But one mode of
escape was left--we decamped at once to the large and comfortable hotel
of the town; and there our pleasant day's pilgrimage to the moors of
Cornwall concluded as agreeably as it had begun.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I visited St. Cleer's Well, for the second time, ten years after the
above lines were written; and I am happy to say that two gentlemen,
interested in this beautiful ruin, are about to restore it--using the
old materials for the purpose, and exactly following the original
design. (March, 1861.)




IV.

CORNISH PEOPLE.


It is my purpose, in this place, to communicate some few facts relating
to the social condition of the inhabitants of Cornwall, which were
kindly furnished to me by friends on the spot; adding to the statement
thus obtained, such anecdotes and illustrations of popular character as
I collected from my own observations in the capacity of a tourist on
foot.

If the reader desires to compare at a glance the condition of the
Cornish people with the condition of their brethren in other parts of
England, one small particle of practical information will enable him to
do so at once. In the Government Tables of Mortality for Cornwall there
are no returns of death from starvation.

Many causes combine to secure the poor of Cornwall from that last worst
consequence of poverty to which the poor in most of the other divisions
of England are more or less exposed. The number of inhabitants in the
county is stated by the last census at 341,269--the number of square
miles that they have to live on, being 1327.[2]--This will be found on
proper computation and comparison, to be considerably under the average
population of a square mile throughout the rest of England. Thus, the
supply of men for all purposes does not appear to be greater than the
demand in Cornwall. The remote situation of the county guarantees it
against any considerable influx of strangers to compete with the natives
for work on their own ground. We met a farmer there, who was so far from
being besieged in harvest time by claimants for labour on his land, that
he was obliged to go forth to seek them himself at a neighbouring town,
and was doubtful whether he should find men enough left him unemployed
at the mines and the fisheries, to gather in his crops in good time at
two shillings a day and as much "victuals and drink" as they cared to
have.

Another cause which has contributed, in some measure, to keep Cornwall
free from the burthen of a surplus population of working men must not be
overlooked. Emigration has been more largely resorted to in that county,
than perhaps in any other in England. Out of the population of the
Penzance Union alone, nearly five per cent. left their native land for
Australia, or New Zealand, in 1849. The potato-blight was, at that time,
assigned as the chief cause of the readiness to emigrate; for it damaged
seriously the growth of a vegetable, from the sale of which, at the
London markets, the Cornish agriculturalists derived large profits, and
on which (with their fish) the Cornish poor depend as a staple article
of food.

It is by the mines and fisheries (of both of which I shall speak
particularly in another place) that Cornwall is compensated for a soil,
too barren in many parts of the county, to be ever well cultivated
except at such an expenditure of capital as no mere farmer can afford.
From the inexhaustible mineral treasures in the earth, and from the
equally inexhaustible shoals of pilchards which annually visit the
coast, the working population of Cornwall derive their regular means of
support, where agriculture would fail them. At the mines, the regular
rate of wages is from forty to fifty shillings a month; but miners have
opportunities of making more than this. By what is termed "working on
tribute," that is, agreeing to excavate the mineral lodes for a per
centage on the value of the metal they raise, some of them have been
known to make as much as six and even ten pounds each, in a month. When
they are unlucky in their working speculations, or perhaps thrown out of
employment altogether by the shutting up of a mine, they still have a
fair opportunity of obtaining farm labour, which is paid for (out of
harvest time) at the rate of nine shillings a week. But this is a
resource of which they are rarely obliged to take advantage. A plot of
common ground is included with the cottages that are let to them; and
the cultivation of this, helps to keep them and their families, in bad
times, until they find an opportunity of resuming work; when they may
perhaps make as much in one month, as an agricultural labourer can in
twelve.

The fisheries not only employ all the inhabitants of the coast, but, in
the pilchard season, many of the farm work-people as well. Ten thousand
persons--men, women, and children--derive their regular support from the
fisheries; which are so amazingly productive, that the "drift," or
deep-sea fishing, in Mount's Bay alone, is calculated to realize, on the
average, 30,000_l._ per annum.

To the employment thus secured for the poor in the mines and fisheries
is to be added, as an advantage, the cheapness of rent and living in
Cornwall. Good cottages are let at from fifty shillings, to between
three and four pounds a-year--turf for firing grows in plenty on the
vast tracts of common land overspreading the country--all sorts of
vegetables are abundant and cheap, with the exception of potatoes, which
so decreased in 1849, in consequence of the disease, that the winter
stock was imported from France, Belgium, and Holland. The early
potatoes, however, grown in May and June, are cultivated in large
quantities, and realize on exportation a very high price. Corn generally
sells a little above the average. Fish is always within the reach of the
poorest people. In a good season, a dozen pilchards are sold for one
penny. Happily for themselves, the poor in Cornwall do not partake the
senseless prejudice against fish, so obstinately adhered to by the poor
in many other parts of England. A Cornishman's national pride is in his
pilchards--he likes to talk of them, and boast about them to strangers;
and with reason, for he depends for the main support of life on the
tribute of these little fish which the sea yields annually in almost
countless shoals.

The workhouse system in Cornwall is said, by those who are well
qualified to form an opinion on the subject, to be generally well
administered; the Unions in the eastern part of the county being the
least stringent in their regulations, and the most liberal in giving
out-of-door relief.

Such, briefly, but I think not incorrectly stated, is the condition of
the poor in Cornwall, in relation to their means of subsistence as a
class. Looking to the fact that the number of labourers there is not too
much for the labour; comparing the rate of wages with rent and the price
of provisions; setting the natural advantages of the county fairly
against its natural disadvantages, it is impossible not to conclude that
the Cornish poor suffer less by their poverty, and enjoy more
opportunities of improving their social position, than the majority of
their brethren in many other counties of England. The general demeanour
and language of the people themselves amply warrant this conclusion.
The Cornish are essentially a cheerful, contented race. The views of the
working men are remarkably moderate and sensible--I never met with so
few grumblers anywhere.

My opportunities of correctly estimating the state of education among
the people, were not sufficiently numerous to justify me in offering to
the reader more than a mere opinion on the subject. Such few
observations as I was able to make, inclined me to think that, in
education, the mass of the population was certainly below the average in
England, with one exception--that of the classes employed in the mines.
All of these men with whom I held any communication, would not have been
considered badly-informed persons in a higher condition of life. They
possessed much more than a common mechanical knowledge of their own
calling, and even showed a very fair share of information on the subject
of the history and antiquities of their native county. As usual, the
agricultural inhabitants appeared to rank lowest in the scale of
education and general intelligence. Among this class, and among the
fishermen, the strong superstitious feelings of the ancient days of
Cornwall still survive, and promise long to remain, handed down from
father to son as heirlooms of tradition, gathered together in a remote
period, and venerable in virtue of their antiquity. The notion, for
instance, that no wound will fester as long as the instrument by which
it was inflicted is kept bright and clean, still prevails extensively
among them. But a short time since, a boy in Cornwall was placed under
the care of a medical man (who related the anecdote to me) for a wound
in the back from a pitchfork; his relatives--cottagers of
respectability--firmly believe that his cure was accelerated by the
pains they took to keep the prongs of the pitchfork in a state of the
highest polish, night and day, throughout the whole period of his
illness, and down to the last hour of his complete restoration to
health.

Another and a more remarkable instance of the superstitions prevailing
among the least educated classes of the people, was communicated to me
by the same informant--a gentleman whose life had been passed in
Cornwall, and who was highly and deservedly respected by all those among
whom he resided.[3]

A small farmer living in one of the most western districts of the
county, died some years back of what was supposed at the time to be
"English Cholera." A few weeks after his decease, his wife married
again. This circumstance excited some attention in the neighbourhood. It
was remembered that the woman had lived on very bad terms with her late
husband, that she had on many occasions exhibited strong symptoms of
possessing a very vindictive temper, and that during the farmer's
lifetime she had openly manifested rather more than a Platonic
preference for the man whom she subsequently married. Suspicion was
generally excited: people began to doubt whether the first husband had
died fairly. At length the proper order was applied for, and his body
was disinterred. On examination, enough arsenic to have poisoned three
men was found in his stomach. The wife was accused of murdering him, was
tried, convicted on the clearest evidence, and hanged. Very shortly
after she had suffered capital punishment, horrible stories of a ghost
were widely circulated. Certain people declared that they had seen a
ghastly resemblance of the murderess, robed in her winding-sheet, with
the black mark of the rope round her swollen neck, standing on stormy
nights upon her husband's grave, and digging there with a spade in
hideous imitation of the actions of the men who had disinterred the
corpse for medical examination. This was fearful enough--nobody dared go
near the place after nightfall. But soon, another circumstance was
talked of, in connexion with the poisoner, which affected the
tranquillity of people's minds in the village where she had lived, and
where it was believed she had been born, more seriously than even the
ghost-story itself.

Near the church of this village there was a well, celebrated among the
peasantry of the district for one remarkable property--every child
baptized in its water (with which the church was duly supplied on
christening occasions) was secure from ever being hanged. No one doubted
that all the babies fortunate enough to be born and baptized in the
parish, though they might live to the age of Methuselah, and might
during that period commit all the capital crimes recorded in the
"Newgate Calendar," were still destined to keep quite clear of the
summary jurisdiction of Jack Ketch--no one doubted this, until the story
of the apparition of the murderess began to be spread abroad. Then,
awful misgivings arose in the popular mind. A woman who had been born
close by the magical well, and who had therefore in all probability been
baptized in its water like her neighbours of the parish, had
nevertheless been publicly and unquestionably hanged. However,
probability was not always truth--everybody determined that the
baptismal register of the poisoner should be sought for, and that it
should be thus officially ascertained whether she had been christened
with the well water, or not. After much trouble, the important document
was discovered--not where it was first looked after, but in a
neighbouring parish vestry. A mistake had been made about the woman's
birthplace--she had not been baptized in the local church, and had
therefore not been protected by the marvellous virtue of the local
water. Unutterable was the joy and triumph of this discovery throughout
the village--the wonderful character of the parish well was wonderfully
vindicated--its celebrity immediately spread wider than ever. The
peasantry of the neighbouring districts began to send for the renowned
water before christenings; and many of them actually continue, to this
day, to bring it corked up in bottles to their churches, and to beg
particularly that it may be used whenever they present their children
to be baptized.

Such instances of superstition as this--and others equally true might be
quoted--afford, perhaps, of themselves, the best evidence of the low
state of education among the people from whom they are produced. It is,
however, only fair to state, that children in Cornwall are now enabled
to partake of advantages which were probably not offered to their
parents. Good National Schools are in operation everywhere, and are--as
far as my own inquiries authorize me to report--well attended by pupils
recruited from the ranks of the poorest classes.

Of the social qualities of the Cornish all that can be written may be
written conscientiously in terms of the highest praise. Travelling as my
companion and I did--in a manner which (whatever it may be now) was, ten
years since, perfectly new to the majority of the people--we found
constant opportunities of studying the popular character in its every
day aspects. We perplexed some, we amused others: here, we were welcomed
familiarly by the people, as travelling pedlars with our packs on our
backs; there, we were curiously regarded at an awful distance, and
respectfully questioned in circumlocutory phrases as to our secret
designs in walking through the country. Thus, viewing us sometimes as
their equals, sometimes as mysteriously superior to them, the peasantry
unconsciously exhibited many of their most characteristic peculiarities
without reserve. We looked at the spectacle of their social life from
the most searching point of view, for we looked at it from behind the
scenes.

The manners of the Cornish of all ranks, down to the lowest, are
remarkably distinguished by courtesy--a courtesy of that kind which is
quite independent of artificial breeding, and which proceeds solely from
natural motives of kindness and from an innate anxiety to please. Few of
the people pass you without a salutation. Civil questions are always
answered civilly. No propensity to jeer at strangers is exhibited--on
the contrary, great solicitude is displayed to afford them any
assistance that they may require; and displayed, moreover, without the
slightest appearance of a mercenary motive. Thus, if you stop to ask
your way, you are not merely directed for a mile or two on, and then
told to ask again; but directed straight to the end of your destination,
no matter how far off. Turnings to the right, and turnings to the left,
short cuts across moors five miles away, churches that you must keep on
this hand, and rocks that you must keep on that, are impressed upon
your memory with the most laborious minuteness, and shouted after you
over and over again as long as you are within hearing. If the utmost
anxiety to give the utmost quantity of good advice could always avail
against accident or forgetfulness, no traveller in Cornwall who asks his
way as he goes, need ever lose himself.

When people possess the virtue of natural courtesy they are seldom found
wanting in other higher virtues that are akin to it. Household
affection, ready hospitality, and great gratitude for small rewards of
services rendered, are all to be found among the Cornish peasantry.
Their fondness for their children is very pleasant to see. A word of
inquiry or praise addressed to the mother makes her face glow with
delight, and sends her away at once in search of the missing members of
her little family, who are ranged before you triumphantly, with smoothed
hair and carefully wiped faces, ready to be reviewed in a row. Both
father and mother often wish you, at parting, a good wife and a large
family (if you are not married already), just as they wish you a
pleasant journey and a prosperous return home again.

Of Cornish hospitality we experienced many proofs, one of which may be
related as a sample. Arriving late at a village, in the far west of the
county, we found some difficulty in arousing the people of the inn.
While we were waiting at the door, we heard a man who lived in a cottage
near at hand, and of whom we had asked our way on the road, inquiring of
some female member of his family, whether she could make up a spare bed.
We had met this man proceeding in our direction, and had so far
outstripped him in walking, that we had been waiting outside the inn
about a quarter of an hour before he got home. When the woman answered
his question in the negative, he directed her to put clean sheets on his
own bed, and then came out to tell us that if we failed to obtain
admission at the public-house, a lodging for the night was ready for us
under his own roof. We found on inquiry, afterwards, that he had looked
out of window, after getting home, while we were still disturbing the
village by a continuous series of assaults on the inn door; had
recognised us in the moonlight; and had thereupon not only offered us
his bed, but had got out of it himself to do so. When we finally
succeeded in gaining admittance to the inn, he declined an invitation to
sup with us, and wishing us a good night's rest, returned to his home. I
should mention, at the same time, that another bed was offered to us at
the vicarage, by the clergyman of the parish; and that after this
gentleman had himself seen that we were properly accommodated by our
landlady, he left us with an invitation to breakfast with him the next
morning. Thus is hospitality practised in Cornwall--a county where, it
must be remembered, a stranger is doubly a stranger, in relation to
provincial sympathies; where the national feeling is almost entirely
merged in the local feeling; where a man speaks of himself as _Cornish_
in much the same spirit as a Welshman speaks of himself as Welsh.

In like manner, another instance drawn from my own experience, will best
display the anxiety which we found generally testified by the Cornish
poor to make the best and most grateful return in their power for
anything which they considered as a favour kindly bestowed. Such little
anecdotes as I here relate in illustration of popular character, cannot,
I think, be considered trifling; for it is by trifles, after all, that
we gain our truest appreciation of the marking signs of good or evil in
the dispositions of our fellow-beings; just as in the beating of a
single artery under the touch, we discover an indication of the strength
or weakness of the whole vital frame.

On the granite cliffs at the Land's End I met with an old man,
seventy-two years of age, of whom I asked some questions relative to the
extraordinary rocks scattered about this part of the coast. He
immediately opened his whole budget of local anecdotes, telling them in
a quavering high-treble voice, which was barely audible above the dash
of the breakers beneath, and the fierce whistling of the wind among the
rocks around us. However, the old fellow went on talking incessantly,
hobbling along before me, up and down steep paths and along the very
brink of a fearful precipice, with as much coolness as if his sight was
as clear and his step as firm as in his youth. When he had shown me all
that he could show, and had thoroughly exhausted himself with talking, I
gave him a shilling at parting. He appeared to be perfectly astonished
by a remuneration which the reader will doubtless consider the reverse
of excessive; thanked me at the top of his voice; and then led me, in a
great hurry, and with many mysterious nods and gestures, to a hollow in
the grass, where he had spread on a clean pocket-handkerchief a little
stock-in-trade of his own, consisting of barnacles, bits of rock and
ore, and specimens of dried seaweed. Pointing to these, he told me to
take anything I liked, as a present in return for what I had given him.
He would not hear of my buying anything; he was not, he said, a regular
guide, and I had paid him more already than such an old man was
worth--what I took out of his handkerchief I must take as a present
only. I saw by his manner that he would be really mortified if I
contested the matter with him, so as a present I received one of his
pieces of rock--I had no right to deny him the pleasure of doing a kind
action, because there happened to be a few more shillings in my pocket
than in his.

Nothing can be much better adapted to show how simple and
unsophisticated the Cornish character still remains in many respects,
than Cornish notions of organizing a public festival, and Cornish
enjoyment of that festival when it is organized. We had already seen how
they managed a public boat-race at Looe, and we saw again how they
conducted the preparations for the same popular festival, on a larger
scale, at the coast town of Fowey.

In the first place, the dormant public enthusiasm was stimulated by
music at an uncomfortably early hour in the morning. Two horn players
and a clarionet player; a fat musician who blew through a very small
fife and kept time with his head; and a withered little man who beat
furiously on a mighty drum--drew up in martial array, one behind the
other, before the principal inn. Two boys, staring about them in a
stolidly important manner, and carrying flags which bore a suspicious
resemblance to India pocket handkerchiefs sewn together, formed in front
of the musicians. Two corpulent, solemn, elderly gentlemen in black
(belonging, apparently, to the churchwarden-type of the human species),
formed in their turn on each side of the boys--and then the procession
started; walking briskly up and down, and in and out, and round and
round the same streets, over and over again; the musicians playing on
all their instruments at once (drum included), without a moment's
intermission on the part of any one of them. Nothing could exceed the
gravity and silence of the popular concourse which followed this
grotesque procession. The solemn composure on the countenances of the
two corpulent civil officers who went before it, was reflected on the
features of the smallest boy who followed humbly behind. Profound
musical amateurs in attendance at a classical quartet concert, could
have exhibited no graver or more breathless attention than that
displayed by the inhabitants of Fowey, as they marched at the heels of
the peripatetic town band.

But, while the music was proceeding, another adjunct to the dignity of
the festival was in course of preparation, which appealed more strongly
to popular sympathy even than the band and procession. A quantity of
young trees--miserable little saplings cut short in their early
infancy--were brought into the town, curiously sharpened at the stems.
Holes were rapidly drilled in the ground, here, there, and everywhere,
for their reception, at corners of house walls. While men outside set
them up, women in a high state of excitement appeared at first-floor
windows with long pieces of string, which they fastened to the branches
to steady the trees at the top, hauling them about this way and that
most unmercifully during the operation, and then vanishing to tie the
loose ends of the lines to bars of grates and legs of tables. Mazes of
long tight strings ran all across our room at the inn; broken twigs and
drooping leaves peered in sadly at us through the three windows that
lighted it. We were driven about from corner to corner out of the way of
this rigging by an imperious old woman, who fastened and fettered the
wretched trees with as fierce an air as if they were criminals whom she
was handcuffing, and who at last fairly told us that she thought we had
better leave the room, and see how beautiful things looked from the
outside. On obeying this intimation, we found that the trees had
absorbed the whole public attention to themselves. The band marched by,
playing furiously; but the boys deserted it. The people from the
country, hastening into the town, hot and eager, paused, reckless of the
music, reckless of the flags, reckless of the procession, to look forth
upon the streets "with verdure clad." The popularity of the Sons of
Apollo was a thing of the past already! Nothing can well be imagined
more miserably ugly than the appearance of the trees, standing strung
into unnatural positions, and looking half dead already; but they
evidently inspired the liveliest public satisfaction. Women returned to
the windows to give a last perfecting tug to their branches; men patted
approvingly with spades the loose earth round their stems. Spectators,
one by one, took a near view and a distant view, and then walked gently
by and took an occasional view, and lastly gathered together in little
groups and took a general view. As connoisseurs look at their pictures,
as mothers look at their children, as lovers look at their
mistresses--so did the people of Fowey assemble with one accord and look
at their trees.

After all, however, I shall perhaps best illustrate the simplicity of
character displayed by the Cornish country-people, if I leave the less
amusing preparations for inaugurating the Fowey boat-race untold, and
describe some of the peculiarities of behaviour and remark which the
appearance of my companion and myself called forth in all parts of
Cornwall. The mere sight of two strangers walking with such appendages
as knapsacks strapped on their shoulders, seemed of itself to provoke
the most unbounded wonder. We were stared at with almost incredible
pertinacity and good humour. People hard at work, left off to look at
us; while groups congregated at cottage doors, walked into the middle of
the road when they saw us approach, looked at us in front from that
commanding point of view until we passed them, and then wheeled round
with one accord and gazed at us behind as long as we were within sight.
Little children ran in-doors to bring out large children, as we drew
near. Farmers, overtaking us on horseback, pulled in, and passed at a
walk, to examine us at their ease. With the exception of bedridden
people and people in prison, I believe that the whole population of
Cornwall looked at us all over--back view and front view--from head to
foot!

This staring was nowhere accompanied, either on the part of young or
old, by a jeering word or an impertinent look. We evidently astonished
the people, but we never tempted them to forget their natural
good-nature, forbearance, and self-restraint. On our side, the attentive
scrutiny to which we were subjected, was at first not a little
perplexing. It was difficult not to doubt occasionally whether some
unpleasantly remarkable change had not suddenly taken place in our
personal appearance--whether we might not have turned green or blue on
our travels, or have got noses as long as the preposterous nose of the
traveller through Strasburgh, in the tale of Slawkenbergius. It was not
until we had been some days in the county that we began to discover, by
some such indications as the following, that we owed the public
attention to our knapsacks, and not to ourselves.

We enter a small public-house by the roadside to get a draught of beer.
In the kitchen, we behold the landlord and a tall man who is a customer.
Both stare as a matter of course; the tall man especially, after taking
one look at our knapsacks, fixes his eyes firmly on us and sits bolt
upright on the bench without saying a word--he is evidently prepared for
the worst we can do. We get into conversation with the landlord, a
jovial, talkative fellow, who desires greatly to know what we are, if we
have no objection. We ask him, what he thinks we are?--"Well," says the
landlord, pointing to my friend's knapsack, which has a square ruler
strapped to it, for architectural drawing--"well, I think you are both
of you _mappers_--mappers who come here to make new roads--you may be
coming to make a railroad, I dare say--we've had mappers in the country
before this--I know a mapper myself--here's both your good healths!" We
drink the landlord's good health in return, and disclaim the honour of
being "mappers;" we walk through the country (we tell him) for pleasure
alone, and take any roads we can get, without wanting to make new ones.
The landlord would like to know, if that is the case, why we carry those
weights at our backs?--Because we want to take our luggage about with
us. Couldn't we pay to ride?--Yes, we could. And yet we like walking
better?--Yes we do. This last answer utterly confounds the tall
customer, who has been hitherto listening intently to the dialogue. It
is evidently too much for his credulity--he pays his reckoning, and
walks out in a hurry without uttering a word. The landlord appears to be
convinced, but it is only in appearance. We leave him standing at his
door, keeping his eye on us as long as we are in sight, still evidently
persuaded that we are "mappers," but "mappers" of a bad order whose
presence is fraught with some unknown peril to the security of the
Queen's highway.

We get on into another district. Here, public opinion is not flattering.
Some of the groups, gathered together in the road to observe us, begin
to speculate on our characters before we are quite out of hearing. Then,
this sort of dialogue, spoken in serious, subdued tones, just reaches
us: Question--What can they be? Answer--"_Trodgers!_"

This is particularly humiliating, because it happens to be true. We
certainly do trudge, and are therefore properly, though rather
unceremoniously, called trudgers, or "trodgers." But we sink to a lower
depth yet, a little further on. We are viewed as objects for pity. It is
a fine evening; we stop and lean against a bank by the roadside to look
at the sunset. An old woman comes tottering by on high pattens, very
comfortably and nicely clad. She sees our knapsacks, and instantly stops
in front of us, and begins to moan lamentably. Not understanding at
first what this means, we ask respectfully if she feels at all ill?
"Ah, poor fellows! poor fellows!" she sighs in answer, "obliged to carry
all your baggage on your own backs!--very hard! poor lads! very hard,
indeed!" And the good old soul goes away groaning over our evil plight,
and mumbling something which sounds very like an assurance that she has
got no money to give us.

In another part of the county we rise again gloriously in worldly
consideration. We pass a cottage; a woman looks out after us, over the
low garden wall, and rather hesitatingly calls us back. I approach her
first, and am thus saluted: "If you please, sir, what have you got to
sell?" Again, an old man meets us on the road, stops, cheerfully taps
our knapsacks with his stick, and says: "Aha! you're tradesmen, eh?
things to sell? I say, have you got any tea" (pronounced _tay_); "I'll
buy some _tay_!" Further on, we approach a group of miners breaking ore.
As we pass by, we hear one asking amazedly, "What have they got to sell
in those things on their backs?" and another answering, in the prompt
tones of a guesser who is convinced that he guesses right,
"Guinea-pigs!"

It is unfortunately impossible to convey to the reader an adequate idea,
by mere description, of the extraordinary gravity of manner, the looks
of surprise and the tones of conviction which accompanied these various
popular conjectures as to our calling and station in life, and which
added immeasurably at the time to their comic effect. Curiously enough,
whenever they took the form of questions, any jesting in returning an
answer never seemed either to be appreciated or understood by the
country people. Serious replies shared much the same fate as jokes.
Everybody asked whether we could pay for riding, and nobody believed
that we preferred walking, if we could. So we soon gave up the idea of
affording any information at all; and walked through the country
comfortably as mappers, trodgers, tradesmen, guinea-pig-mongers, and
poor back-burdened vagabond lads, altogether, or one at a time, just as
the peasantry pleased.

I have not communicated to the reader all the conjectures formed about
us, for the simple reason that many of them, when they ran to any
length, were by no means so intelligible as could be desired. It will
readily be imagined, that in a county which had a language of its own
(something similar to the Welsh) down to the time of Edward VI., if not
later--in a county where this language continued to be spoken among the
humbler classes until nearly the end of the seventeenth century, and
where it still gives their names to men, places, and implements--some
remnants of it must attach themselves to the dialect of English now
spoken by the lower orders. This is enough of itself to render Cornish
talk not very easy to be understood by ordinary strangers; but the
difficulty of comprehending it is still further increased by the manner
in which the people speak. They pronounce rapidly and indistinctly,
often running separate syllables into one another through a sentence,
until the whole sounds like one long fragmentary word. To the student in
philology a series of conversations with the Cornish poor would, I
imagine, afford ample matter for observation of the most interesting
kind. Some of their expressions have a character that is quite
patriarchal. Young men, for instance, are addressed by their elders as,
"my son"--everything eatable, either for man or beast, is commonly
denominated, "meat."

It may be expected, before I close this hasty sketch of the Cornish
people, that I should touch on the dark side of the picture--unfinished
though it is--which I have endeavoured to draw. But I have nothing to
communicate on the subject of offences in Cornwall, beyond a few words
about "wrecking" and smuggling.

Opinions have been divided among well-informed persons, as to the truth
or falsehood of those statements of travellers and historians, which
impute the habitual commission of outrages and robberies on sufferers by
shipwreck to the Cornish of former generations. Without entering into
this question of the past, which can only be treated as a matter for
discussion, I am happy, in proceeding at once to the present, to be able
to state, as a matter of fact, that "wrecking" is a crime unknown in the
Cornwall of our day. So far from maltreating shipwrecked persons, the
inhabitants of the sea-shore risk their lives to save them. I make this
assertion, on the authority of a gentleman whose life has been passed in
the West of Cornwall; whose avocations take him much among the poor of
all ranks and characters; and who has himself seen wrecked sailors
rescued from death by the courage and humanity of the population of the
coast.

In reference to smuggling, many years have passed without one of those
fatal encounters between smugglers and revenue officers which, in other
days, gave a dark and fearful character to the contraband trade in
Cornwall. So well is the coast watched, that no smuggling of any
consequence can now take place. It is only the oldest Cornish men who
can give you any account, from personal experience, of adventures in
"running a cargo;" and those that I heard described were by no means of
the romantic or interesting order.

Beyond this, I have nothing further to relate regarding criminal
matters. It may not unreasonably be doubted whether a subject so serious
and so extensive as the Statistics of Crime, is not out of the scope of
a book like the present, whose only object is to tell a simple fireside
story which may amuse an idle, or solace a mournful hour. Moreover,
remembering the assistance and the kindness that my companion and I met
with throughout Cornwall--and those only who have travelled on foot can
appreciate how much the enjoyment of exploring a country may be
heightened or decreased, according to the welcome given to the stranger
by the inhabitants--remembering, too, that we walked late at night,
through districts inhabited only by the roughest and poorest classes,
entirely unmolested; and that we trusted much on many occasions to the
honesty of the people, and never found cause to repent our trust--I
cannot but feel that it would be an ungracious act to ransack newspapers
and Reports to furnish materials for recording in detail, the vices of a
population whom I have only personally known by their virtues. Let you
and I, reader, leave off with the same pleasant impressions of the
Cornish people--you, whose only object is to hear, and I whose only
object is to tell, the story of a holiday walk. There is enough to be
found in them that is good, amply to justify a little inattention to
whatever we may discover that is bad.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] It may be necessary to remind the reader that this statement
respecting the population of Cornwall was written in the year 1850. I
have no means at my disposal of ascertaining what the increase in
numbers may have been during the last ten years.--(March, 1861.)

[3] The gentleman here referred to--whose kind assistance while I was
writing these pages I can never forget--was Mr. Richard Moyle, long
resident as a medical man at Penzance. Since my first visit to Cornwall,
death has removed Mr. Moyle from the scene of his labours, to the
lasting and sincere regret of all who knew him.--(March, 1861.)




V.

LOO-POOL


"Now, I think it very much amiss," remarks Sterne, in 'Tristram Shandy,'
"that a man cannot go quietly through a town and let it alone, when it
does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about, and drawing
his pen at every kennel he crosses over, merely, o' my conscience, for
the sake of drawing it." I quote this wise and witty observation on a
bad practice of some travel-writers, as containing the best reason that
I can give the reader for transporting him at once over some sixty miles
of Cornish high-roads and footpaths, without stopping to drop one word
of description by the way. Having left off the record of our travels at
Liskeard, and taking it up again--as I mean to do here--at Helston, I
skip over five intermediate market-towns and two large villages, with a
mere dash of the pen. Lostwithiel, Fowey, St. Austell, Grampound,
Probus, Truro, Falmouth, are all places of mark and note, and have all
certain curiosities and sights of their own to interest the inquisitive
tourist; but, nevertheless, not one of them "meddled" with me in the
course of my rambles, and acting on Sterne's excellent principle, I
purpose "letting them alone" now. In other words, the several towns and
villages that I have enumerated, though presenting much that was
generally picturesque and attractive in the way of old buildings and
pretty scenery, exhibited little that was distinctive or original in
character; produced therefore rather pleasant than vivid impressions;
and would by no means suggest any very original series of descriptions
to fill the pages of a book which is confined to such subjects only as
are most exclusively and strikingly Cornish.

The town of Helston, where we now halt for the first time since we left
the Cheese-Wring and St. Cleer's Well, might, if tested by its own
merits alone, be passed over as unceremoniously as the towns already
passed over before it. Its principal recommendation, in the opinion of
the inhabitants, appeared to be that it was the residence of several
very "genteel families," who have certainly not communicated much of
their gentility to the lower orders of the population--a riotous and
drunken set, the only bad specimens of Cornish people that I met with in
Cornwall. The streets of Helston are a trifle larger and a trifle duller
than the streets of Liskeard; the church is comparatively modern in
date, and superlatively ugly in design. A miserable altar-piece, daubed
in gaudy colours on the window above the communion-table, is the only
approach to any attempt at embellishment in the interior. In short, the
town has nothing to offer to attract the stranger, but a public
festival--a sort of barbarous carnival--held there annually on the 8th
of May. This festival is said to be of very ancient origin, and is
called "The Furry"--an old Cornish word, signifying a gathering; and, at
Helston particularly, a gathering in celebration of the return of
spring. The Furry begins early in the morning with singing, to an
accompaniment of drums and kettles. All the people in the town
immediately leave off work and scamper into the country; having reached
which, they scamper back again, garlanded with leaves and flowers, and
caper about hand-in-hand through the streets, and in and out of all the
houses, without let or hindrance. Even the "genteel" resident families
allow themselves to be infected with the general madness, and wind up
the day's capering consistently enough by a night's capering at a grand
ball. A full account of these extraordinary absurdities may be found in
Polwhele's "History of Cornwall."

But, though thus uninteresting in itself, Helston must be visited by
every tourist in Cornwall for the sake of the grand, the almost
unrivalled scenery to be met with near it. The town is not only the best
starting-point from which to explore the noble line of coast rocks which
ends at the Lizard Head; but possesses the further recommendation of
lying in the immediate vicinity of the largest lake in Cornwall--Loo
Pool.

The banks of Loo Pool stretch on either side to the length of two miles;
the lake, which in summer occupies little more than half the space that
it covers in winter, is formed by the flow of two or three small
streams. You first reach it from Helston, after a walk of half a mile;
and then see before you, on either hand, long ranges of hills rising
gently from the water's edge, covered with clustering trees, or occupied
by wide cornfields and sloping tracts of common land. So far, the
scenery around Loo Pool resembles the scenery around other lakes; but as
you proceed, the view changes in the most striking and extraordinary
manner. Walking on along the winding banks of the pool, you taste the
water and find it soft and fresh, you see ducks swimming about in it
from the neighbouring farm-houses, you watch the rising of the fine
trout for which it is celebrated--every object tends to convince you
that you are wandering by the shores of an inland lake--when suddenly at
a turn in the hill slope, you are startled by the shrill cry of the
gull, and the fierce roar of breakers thunders on your ear--you look
over the light grey waters of the lake, and behold, stretching
immediately above and beyond them, the expanse of the deep blue ocean,
from which they are only separated by a strip of smooth white sand!

You hurry on, and reach this bar of sand which parts the great English
Channel and the little Loo Pool--a child might run across it in a
minute! You stand in the centre. On one side, close at hand, water is
dancing beneath the breeze in glassy, tiny ripples; on the other,
equally close, water rolls in mighty waves, precipitated on the ground
in dashing, hissing, writhing floods of the whitest foam--here,
children are floating mimic boats on a mimic sea; there, the stateliest
ships of England are sailing over the great deep--both scenes visible in
one view. Rocky cliffs and arid sands appear in close combination with
rounded fertile hills, and long grassy slopes; salt spray leaping over
the first, spring-water lying calm beneath the last! No fairy vision of
Nature that ever was imagined is more fantastic, or more lovely than
this glorious reality, which brings all the most widely contrasted
characteristics of a sea view and an inland view into the closest
contact, and presents them in one harmonious picture to the eye.

The ridge of sand between Loo Pool and the sea, which, by impeding the
flow of the inland streams spreads them in the form of a lake over the
valley-ground between two hills, is formed by the action of storms from
the south-west. Such, at least, is the modern explanation of the manner
in which Loo Bar has been heaped up. But there is an ancient legend in
connexion with it, which, tells a widely different story.

It is said that the terrible Cornish giant, or ogre, Tregeagle, was
trudging homewards one day, carrying a huge sack of sand on his back,
which--being a giant of neat and cleanly habits--he designed should
serve him for sprinkling his parlour floor. As he was passing along the
top of the hills which now overlook Loo Pool, he heard a sound of
scampering footsteps behind him; and, turning round, saw that he was
hotly pursued by no less a person than the devil himself. Big as he was,
Tregeagle lost heart and ignominiously took to his heels: but the devil
ran nimbly, ran steadily, ran without losing breath--ran, in short,
_like_ the devil. Tregeagle was fat, short-winded, had a load on his
back, and lost ground at every step. At last, just as he reached the
seaward extremity of the hills, he determined in despair to lighten
himself of his burden, and thus to seize the only chance of escaping his
enemy by superior fleetness of foot. Accordingly, he opened his huge
sack in a great hurry, shook out all his sand over the precipice,
between the sea and the river which then ran into it, and so formed in a
moment the Bar of Loo Pool.

In the winter time, the lake is the cause and the scene of an
extraordinary ceremony. The heavy incessant rains which then fall (ice
is almost unknown in the moist climate of Cornwall), increase day by day
the waters of the Pool, until they encroach over the whole of the low
flat valley between Helston and the sea. Then, the smooth paths of
turf, the little streams that run by their side--so pleasant to look on
in the summer time--are hidden by the great overflow. Mill-wheels are
stopped; cottages built on the declivities of the hill are threatened
with inundation. Out on the bar, at high tide, but two or three feet of
sand appear between the stormy sea on the one hand, and the stagnant
swollen lake on the other. If Loo Pool were measured now, it would be
found to extend to a circumference of seven miles.

When the flooding of the lake has reached its climax, the millers, who
are the principal sufferers by the overflow, prepare to cut a passage
through the Bar for the superabundant waters of the Pool. Before they
can do this, however, they must conform to a curious old custom which
has been practised for centuries, and is retained down to the present
day. Procuring two stout leathern purses, they tie up three halfpence in
each, and then set off with them in a body to the Lord of the Manor.
Presenting him with their purses, they state their case with all due
formality, and request permission to cut their trench through the sand.
In consideration of the threepenny recognition of his rights, the Lord
of the Manor graciously accedes to the petition; and the millers, armed
with their spades and shovels, start for the Bar.

Their projected labour is of the slightest kind. A mere ditch suffices
to establish the desired communication: and the water does the rest for
itself. On one occasion, so high was the tide on one side, and so full
the lake on the other, that a man actually scraped away sand enough with
his stick, to give vent to the waters of the Pool. Thus, after no very
hard work, the millers achieve their object; and the spectators watching
on the hill, behold a startling and magnificent scene.

Tearing away the sand on either side, floods of fresh water rush out
furiously against floods of salt water leaping in, upheaved into mighty
waves by the winter gale. A foaming roaring battle between two opposing
forces of the same element takes place. The noise is terrific--it is
heard like thunder, at great distances off. At last, the heavy, smooth,
continuous flow of the fresh water prevails even over the power of the
ocean. Farther and farther out, rushing through a wider and wider
channel every minute, pour the great floods from the land, until the
salt water is stained with an ochre colour, over a surface of twenty
miles. But their force is soon spent: soon, the lake sinks lower and
lower away from the slope of the hills. Then, with the high tide, the
sea reappears triumphantly, dashing and leaping, in clouds of spray,
through the channel in the sand--making the waters of the Pool
brackish--now, threatening to swell them anew to overflowing--and now,
at the ebb, leaving them to empty themselves again, in the manner of a
great tidal river. No new change takes place, until a storm from the
south-west comes on; and then, fresh masses of sand and shingle are
forced up--the channel is refilled--the bar is reconstructed as if by a
miracle. Again, the scene resumes its old features--again, there is a
sea on one side, and a lake on the other. But now, the Pool occupies
only its ordinary limits--now, the mill-wheels turn busily once more,
and the smooth paths and gliding streams reappear in their former
beauty, until the next winter rains shall come round, and the next
winter floods shall submerge them again.

At the time when I visited the lake, its waters were unusually low.
Here, they ran calm and shallow, into little, glassy, flowery creeks,
that looked like fairies' bathing places. There, out in the middle, they
hardly afforded depth enough for a duck to swim in. Near to the Bar,
however, they spread forth wider and deeper; finely contrasted, in
their dun colour and perfect repose, with the flashing foaming breakers
on the other side. The surf forbade all hope of swimming; but, standing
where the spent waves ran up deepest, and where the spray flew highest
before the wind, I could take a natural shower-bath from the sea, in one
direction; and the next moment, turning round in the other, could wash
the sand off my feet luxuriously in the soft, fresh waters of Loo Pool.




VI.

THE LIZARD.


We had waited throughout one long rainy day at Helston--"remote,
unfriended, melancholy, slow"--for a chance of finer weather before we
started to explore the Lizard promontory. But our patience availed us
little. The next morning, there was the soft, thick, misty Cornish rain
still falling, just as it had already fallen without cessation for
twenty-four hours. To wait longer, in perfect inactivity, and in the
dullest of towns--doubtful whether the sky would clear even in a week's
time--was beyond mortal endurance. We shouldered our knapsacks, and
started for the Lizard in defiance of rain, and in defiance of our
landlady's reiterated assertions that we should lose our way in the
mist, when we walked inland; and should slip into invisible holes, and
fall over fog-veiled precipices among the rocks, if we ventured to
approach the coast.

What sort of scenery we walked through, I am unable to say. The rain was
above--the mud was below--the mist was all around us. The few objects,
near at hand, that we did now and then see, dripped with wet, and had a
shadowy visionary look. Sometimes, we met a forlorn cow steaming
composedly by the roadside--or an old horse, standing up to his fetlocks
in mire, and sneezing vociferously--or a good-humoured peasant, who
directed us on our road, and informed us with a grin, that this sort of
"fine rain" often lasted for a fortnight. Sometimes we passed little
villages built in damp holes, where trees, cottages, women scampering
backwards and forwards peevishly on domestic errands, big boys with
empty sacks over their heads and shoulders, gossiping gloomily against
barn walls, and ill-conditioned pigs grunting for admission at closed
kitchen doors, all looked soaked through and through together. Nothing,
in short, could be more dreary and comfortless than our walk for the
first two hours. But, after that, as we approached "Lizard Town," the
clouds began to part to seaward; layer after layer of mist drove past
us, rolling before the wind; peeps of faint greenish-blue sky appeared
and enlarged apace. By the time we had arrived at our destination, a
white, watery sunlight was falling over the wet landscape. The
prognostications of our Cornish friends were pleasantly falsified. A
fine day was in store for us after all.

The man who first distinguished the little group of cottages that we now
looked on, by the denomination of Lizard _Town_, must have possessed
magnificent ideas indeed on the subject of nomenclature. If the place
looked like anything in the world, it looked like a large collection of
farm out-buildings without a farm-house. Muddy little lanes intersecting
each other at every possible angle; rickety little cottages turned about
to all the points of the compass; ducks, geese, cocks, hens, pigs, cows,
horses, dunghills, puddles, sheds, peat-stacks, timber, nets, seemed to
be all indiscriminately huddled together where there was little or no
room for them. To find the inn amid this confusion of animate and
inanimate objects, was no easy matter; and when we at length discovered
it, pushed our way through the live stock in the garden, and opened the
kitchen door, this was the scene which burst instantaneously on our
view:--

We beheld a small room literally full of babies, and babies' mothers.
Interesting infants of the tenderest possible age, draped in long
clothes and short clothes, and shawls and blankets, met the eye
wherever it turned. We saw babies propped up uncomfortably on the
dresser, babies rocking snugly in wicker cradles, babies stretched out
flat on their backs on women's knees, babies prone on the floor toasting
before a slow fire. Every one of these Cornish cherubs was crying in
every variety of vocal key. Every one of their affectionate parents was
talking at the top of her voice. Every one of their little elder
brothers was screaming, squabbling, and tumbling down in the passage
with prodigious energy and spirit. The mothers of England--and they
only--can imagine the deafening and composite character of the noise
which this large family party produced. To describe it is impossible.

Ere long, while we looked on it, the domestic scene began to change.
Even as porters, policemen, and workmen of all sorts, gathered together
on the line of rails at a station, move aside quickly and with one
accord out of the way of the heavy engine slowly starting on its
journey--so did the congregated mothers in the inn kitchen now move back
on either hand with their babies, and clear a path for the great bulk of
the hostess leisurely advancing from the fireside, to greet us at the
door. From this most corpulent and complaisant of women, we received a
hearty welcome, and a full explanation of the family orgies that were
taking place under her roof. The great public meeting of all the babies
in Lizard Town and the neighbouring villages, on which we had intruded,
had been convened by the local doctor, who had got down from London,
what the landlady termed a "lot of fine fresh matter," and was now about
to strike a decisive blow at the small-pox, by vaccinating all the
babies he could lay his hands on at "one fell swoop." The surgical
ceremonies were expected to begin in a few minutes.

This last piece of information sent us out of the house without a
moment's delay. The sunlight had brightened gloriously since we had last
beheld it--the rain was over--the mist was gone. But a short distance
before us, rose the cliffs at the Lizard Head--the southernmost land in
England--and to this point we now hastened, as the fittest spot from
which to start on our rambles along the coast.

On our way thither, short as it was, we observed a novelty. In the South
and West of Cornwall, the footpaths, instead of leading through or round
the fields, are all on the top of the thick stone walls--some four feet
high--which divide them. This curious arrangement for walking gives a
startling and picturesque character to the figures of the country
people, when you see them at a distance, striding along, not on the
earth but above it, and often relieved throughout the whole length of
their bodies against the sky. Preserving our equilibrium, on these
elevated pathways, with some difficulty against the strong south-west
wind that was now blowing in our faces, we soon reached the topmost
rocks that crown the Lizard Head: and then, the whole noble line of
coast and the wild stormy ocean opened grandly into view.

On each side of us, precipice over precipice, cavern within cavern, rose
the great cliffs protecting the land against the raging sea. Three
hundred feet beneath, the foam was boiling far out over a reef of black
rocks. Above and around, flocks of sea-birds flew in ever lengthening
circles, or perched flapping their wings and sunning their plumage, on
ledges of riven stone below us. Every object forming the wide sweep of
the view was on the vastest and most majestic scale. The wild varieties
of form in the jagged line of rocks stretched away eastward and
westward, as far as the eye could reach; black shapeless masses of mist
scowled over the whole landward horizon; the bright blue sky at the
opposite point was covered with towering white clouds which moved and
changed magnificently; the tossing and raging of the great bright sea
was sublimely contrasted by the solitude and tranquillity of the desert,
overshadowed land--while ever and ever, sounding as they first sounded
when the morning stars sang together, the rolling waves and the rushing
wind pealed out their primeval music over the whole scene!

And now, when we began to examine the coast more in detail, inquiring
the names of remarkable objects as we proceeded, we found ourselves in a
country where each succeeding spot that the traveller visited, was
memorable for some mighty convulsion of Nature, or tragically associated
with some gloomy story of shipwreck and death. Turning from the Lizard
Head towards a cliff at some little distance, we passed through a field
on our way, overgrown with sweet-smelling wild flowers, and broken up
into low grassy mounds. This place is called "Pistol Meadow," and is
connected with a terrible event which is still spoken of by the country
people with superstitious awe.

Some hundred years since, a transport-ship, filled with troops, was
wrecked on the reef off the Lizard Head. Two men only were washed ashore
alive. Out of the fearful number that perished, two hundred corpses
were driven up on the beach below Pistol Meadow; and there they were
buried by tens and twenties together in great pits, the position of
which is still revealed by the low irregular mounds that chequer the
surface of the field. The place was named, in remembrance of the
quantity of fire-arms,--especially pistols--found about the wreck of the
ill-fated ship, at low tide, on the reef below the cliffs. To this day,
the peasantry continue to regard Pistol Meadow with feelings of awe and
horror, and fear to walk near the graves of the drowned men at night.
Nor have many of the inhabitants yet forgotten a revolting circumstance
connected by traditional report with the burial of the corpses after the
shipwreck. It is said, that when dead bodies were first washed ashore,
troops of ferocious, half-starved dogs suddenly appeared from the
surrounding country, and could with difficulty be driven from preying on
the mangled remains that were cast up on the beach. Ever since that
period, the peasantry have been reported as holding the dog in
abhorrence. Whether this be true or not, it is certainly a rare
adventure to meet with a dog in the Lizard district. You may walk
through farm-yard after farm-yard, you may enter cottage after cottage,
and never hear any barking at your heels;--you may pass, on the road,
labourer after labourer, and yet never find one of them accompanied, as
in other parts of the country, by his favourite attendant cur.

Leaving Pistol Meadow, after gathering a few of the wild herbs growing
fragrant and plentiful over the graves of the dead, we turned our steps
towards the Lizard Lighthouse. As we passed before the front of the
large and massive building, our progress was suddenly and startlingly
checked by a hideous chasm in the cliff, sunk to a perpendicular depth
of seventy feet, and measuring more than a hundred in circumference.
Nothing prepares the stranger for this great gulf; no railing is placed
about it; it lies hidden by rising land, and the earth all around is
treacherously smooth. The first moment when you see it, is the moment
when you start back instinctively from its edge, doubtful whether the
hole has not yawned open in that very instant before your feet.

This chasm--melodramatically entitled by the people, "The Lion's
Den"--was formed in an extraordinary manner, not many years since. In
the evening the whole surface of the down above the cliff was smooth to
the eye, and firm to the foot--in the morning it had opened into an
enormous hole. The men who kept watch at the Lighthouse, heard no sounds
beyond the moaning of the sea--felt no shock--looked out on the night,
and saw that all was apparently still and quiet. Nature suffered her
convulsion and effected her change in silence. Hundreds on hundreds of
tons of soil had sunk down into depths beneath them, none knew in how
long, or how short a time; but there the Lion's Den was in the morning,
where the firm earth had been the evening before.

The explanation of the manner in which this curious landslip occurred,
is to be found by descending the face of the cliff, beyond the Lion's
Den, and entering a cavern in the rocks, called "Daw's Hugo" (or Cave).
The place is only accessible at low water. Passing from the beach
through the opening of the cavern, you find yourself in a lofty,
tortuous recess, into the farthest extremity of which, a stream of light
pours down from some eighty or a hundred feet above. This light is
admitted through the Lion's Den, and thus explains by itself the nature
of the accident by which that chasm was formed. Here, the weight of the
upper soil broke through the roof of the cave; and the earth which then
fell into it, was subsequently washed away by the sea, which fills Daw's
Hugo at every flow of the tide. It has lately been noticed that the
loose particles of ground at the bottom of the Lion's Den, still
continue to sink gradually through the narrow, slanting passage into the
cave already formed; and it is expected that in no very long time the
lower extremity of the chasm will widen so far, as to make the sea
plainly visible through it from above. At present, the effect of the two
streams of light pouring into Daw's Hugo from two opposite
directions--one from the Lion's Den, the other from the seaward opening
in the rocks--and falling together, in cross directions on the black
rugged walls of the cave and the beautiful marine ferns growing from
them, is supernaturally striking and grand. Here, Rembrandt would have
loved to study; for here, even _his_ sublime perception of the poetry of
light and shade might have received a new impulse, and learned from the
teaching of Nature one immortal lesson more.

Daw's Hugo and the Lion's Den may be fairly taken as characteristic
types of the whole coast scenery about the Lizard Head, in its general
aspects. Great caves and greater landslips are to be seen both eastward
and westward. In calm weather you may behold the long prospects of riven
rock, in their finest combination, from a boat. At such times, you may
row into vast caverns, always filled by the sea, and only to be
approached when the waves ripple as calmly as the waters of a lake.
Then, you may see the naturally arched roof high above you, adorned in
the loveliest manner by marine plants waving to and fro gently in the
wind. Rocky walls are at each side of you, variegated in dark red and
dark green colours--now advancing, now receding, now winding in and out,
now rising straight and lofty, until their termination is hid in a
pitch-dark obscurity which no man has ever ventured to fathom to its
end. Beneath, is the emerald-green sea, so still and clear that you can
behold the white sand far below, and can watch the fish gliding swiftly
and stealthily out and in: while, all around, thin drops of moisture are
dripping from above, like rain, into the deep quiet water below, with a
monotonous echoing sound which half oppresses and half soothes the ear,
at the same time.

On stormy days your course is different. Then, you wander along the
summits of the cliffs; and looking down, through the hedges of tamarisk
and myrtle that skirt the ends of the fields, see the rocks suddenly
broken away beneath you into an immense shelving amphitheatre, on the
floor of which the sea boils in fury, rushing through natural archways
and narrow rifts. Beyond them, at intervals as the waves fall, you catch
glimpses of the brilliant blue main ocean, and the outer reefs
stretching into it. Often, such wild views as these are relieved from
monotony by the prospect of smooth cornfields and pasture-lands, or by
pretty little fishing villages perched among the rocks--each with its
small group of boats drawn up on a slip of sandy beach, and its modest,
tiny gardens rising one above another, wherever the slope is gentle, and
the cliff beyond rises high to shelter them from the winter winds.

But the place at which the coast scenery of the Lizard district arrives
at its climax of grandeur is Kynance Cove. Here, such gigantic specimens
are to be seen of the most beautiful of all varieties of rock--the
"serpentine"--as are unrivalled in Cornwall; perhaps, unrivalled
anywhere. A walk of two miles along the westward cliffs from Lizard
Town, brought us to the top of a precipice of three hundred feet.
Looking forward from this, we saw the white sand of Kynance Cove
stretching out in a half circle into the sea.

What a scene was now presented to us! It was a perfect palace of rocks!
Some rose perpendicularly and separate from each other, in the shapes of
pyramids and steeples--some were overhanging at the top and pierced with
dark caverns at the bottom--some were stretched horizontally on the
sand, here studded with pools of water, there broken into natural
archways. No one of these rocks resembled another in shape, size, or
position--and all, at the moment when we looked on them, were wrapped in
the solemn obscurity of a deep mist; a mist which shadowed without
concealing them, which exaggerated their size, and, hiding all the
cliffs beyond, presented them sublimely as separate and solitary objects
in the sea-view.

It was now necessary, however, to occupy as little time as possible in
contemplating Kynance Cove from a distance; for if we desired to explore
it, immediate advantage was to be taken of the state of the tide, which
was already rapidly ebbing. Hurriedly descending the cliffs, therefore,
we soon reached the sand: and here, leaving my companion to sketch, I
set forth to wander among the rocks, doubtful whither to turn my steps
first. While still hesitating, I was fortunate enough to meet with a
guide, whose intelligence and skill well deserve such record as I can
give of them here; for, to the former I was indebted for much local
information and anecdote, and to the latter, for quitting Kynance Cove
with all my limbs in as sound a condition as when I first approached it.

The guide introduced himself to me by propounding a sort of stranger's
catechism. 1st. "Did I want to see everything?"--"Certainly." 2nd. "Was
I giddy on the tops of high places?"--"No." 3rd. "Would I be so good, if
I got into a difficulty anywhere, as to take it easy, and catch hold of
him tight?"--"Yes, very tight!" With these answers the guide appeared to
be satisfied. He gave his hat a smart knock with one hand, to fix it on
his head; and pointing upwards with the other, said, "We'll try that
rock first, to look into the gulls' nests, and get some wild asparagus."
And away we went accordingly.

       *       *       *       *       *

We mount the side of an immense rock which projects far out into the
sea, and is the largest of the surrounding group. It is called Asparagus
Island, from the quantity of wild asparagus growing among the long grass
on its summit. Half way up, we cross an ugly chasm. The guide points to
a small chink or crevice, barely discernible in one side of it, and says
"Devil's Bellows!" Then, first courteously putting my toes for me into a
comfortable little hole in the perpendicular rock side, which just fits
them, he proceeds to explain himself. Through the base of the opposite
extremity of the island there is a natural channel, into which the sea
rushes furiously at high tide: and finding no other vent but the little
crevice we now look down on, is expelled through it in long, thin jets
of spray, with a roaring noise resembling the sound of a gigantic
bellows at work. But the sea is not yet high enough to exhibit this
phenomenon, so the guide takes my toes out of the hole again for me,
just as politely as he put them in; and forthwith leads the way up
higher still--expounding as he goes, the whole art and mystery of
climbing, which he condenses into this axiom:--"Never loose one hand,
till you've got a grip with the other; and never scramble your toes
about, where toes have no business to be."

At last we reach the topmost ridge of the island, and look down upon the
white restless water far beneath, and peep into one or two deserted
gulls' nests, and gather wild asparagus--which I can only describe as
bearing no resemblance at all, that I could discover, to the garden
species. Then, the guide points to another perpendicular rock, farther
out at sea, looming dark and phantom-like in the mist, and tells me that
he was the man who built the cairn of stones on its top: and then he
proposes that we shall go to the opposite extremity of the ridge on
which we stand, and look down into "The Devil's Throat."

This desirable journey is accomplished with the greatest ease on his
part, and with considerable difficulty and delay on mine--for the wind
blows fiercely over us on the height; our rock track is narrow, rugged,
and slippery; the sea roars bewilderingly below; and a single false step
would not be attended with agreeable consequences. Soon, however, we
begin to descend a little from our "bad eminence," and come to a halt
before a wide, tunnelled opening, slanting sharply downwards in the very
middle of the island--a black, gaping hole, into the bottom of which the
sea is driven through some unknown subterranean channel, roaring and
thundering with a fearful noise, which rises in hollow echoes through
the aptly-named "Devil's Throat." About this hole no grass grew: the
rocks rose wild, jagged, and precipitous, all around it. If ever the
ghastly imagery of Dante's terrible "Vision" was realized on earth, it
was realized here.

At this place, close to the mouth of the hole, the guide suggests that
we shall sit down and have a little talk!--and very impressive talk it
is, when he begins the conversation by bawling into my ear (and down the
Devil's Throat at the same time) to make himself heard above the fierce
roaring beneath us. Now, his tale is of tremendous jets of water which
he has seen, during the storms of winter, shot out of the hole before
which we sit, into the creek of the sea below--now, he tells me of a
shipwreck off Asparagus Island, of half-drowned sailors floating ashore
on pieces of timber, and dashed out to sea again just as they touched
the strand, by a jet from the Devil's Throat--now, he points away in the
opposite direction, under one of the steeple-shaped rocks, and speaks of
a chase after smugglers that began from this place; a desperate chase,
in which some of the smugglers' cargo, but not one of the smugglers
themselves, was seized--now, he talks of another great hole in the
landward rocks, where the sea may be seen boiling within: a hole into
which a man who was fishing for fragments of a wreck fell and was
drowned; his body being sucked away through some invisible channel,
never to be seen again by mortal eyes.

Anon, the guide's talk changes from tragedy to comedy. He begins to
recount odd adventures of his own with strangers. He tells me of a huge
fat woman who was got up to the top of Asparagus Island, by the easiest
path, and by the exertions of several guides; who, left to herself,
gasped, reeled, and fell down immediately; and was just rolling off,
with all the momentum of sixteen stone, over the precipice below her,
when she was adroitly caught, and anchored fast to the ground, by the
ankle of one leg and the calf of the other. Then he speaks of an elderly
gentleman, who, while descending the rocks with him, suddenly stopped
short at the most dangerous point, giddy and panic-stricken, pouring
forth death-bed confessions of all his sins, and wildly refusing to move
another inch in any direction. Even this man the guide got down in
safety at last, by making stepping places of his hands, on which the
elderly gentleman lowered himself as on a ladder, ejaculating
incoherently all the way, and trembling in great agony long after he had
been safely landed on the sands.

This last story ended, it is settled that we shall descend again to the
beach. Stimulated by the ease with which my worthy leader goes down
beneath me, I get over-confident in my dexterity, and begin to slip
here, and slide there, and come to awkward pauses at precipitous
places, in what would be rather an alarming manner, but for the potent
presence of the guide, who is always beneath me, ready to be fallen
upon. Sometimes, when I am holding on with all the necessary tenacity of
grip, as regards my hands, but, "scrambling my toes about" in a very
disorderly and unworkmanlike fashion, he pops his head up from below for
me to sit on; and puts my feet into crevices for me, with many apologies
for taking the liberty! Sometimes, I fancy myself treading on what feels
like soft turf; I look down, and find that I am standing like an acrobat
on his shoulders, and hear him civilly entreating me to take hold of his
jacket next, and let myself down over his body to the ledge where he is
waiting for me. He never makes a false step, never stumbles, scrambles,
hesitates, or fails to have a hand always at my service. The nautical
metaphor of "holding on by your eyelids" becomes a fact in his case. He
really views his employer, as porters are expected to view a package
labelled "_glass with care_." I am firmly persuaded that he could take a
drunken man up and down Asparagus Island, without the slightest risk
either to himself or his charge; and I hold him in no small admiration,
when, after landing on the sand with something between a tumble and a
jump, I find him raising me to my perpendicular almost before I have
touched the ground, and politely hoping that I feel quite satisfied,
hitherto, with his conduct as a guide.

We now go across the beach to explore some caves--dry at low water--on
the opposite side. Some of these are wide, lofty, and well-lighted from
without. We walk in and out and around them, as if in great, irregular,
Gothic halls. Some are narrow and dark. Now, we crawl into them on hands
and knees; now, we wriggle onward a few feet, serpent-like, flat on our
bellies; now, we are suddenly able to stand upright in pitch darkness,
hearing faint moaning sounds of pent-up winds, when we are silent, and
long reverberations of our own voices, when we speak. Then, as we turn
and crawl out again, we soon see before us one bright speck of light
that may be fancied miles and miles away--a star shining in the earth--a
diamond sparkling in the bosom of the rock. This guides us out again
pleasantly; and, on gaining the open air, we find that while we have
been groping in the darkness, a change has been taking place in the
regions of light, which has altered and is still altering the aspect of
the whole scene.

It is now two o'clock. The tide is rising fast; the sea dashes, in
higher and higher waves, on the narrowing beach. Rain and mist are both
gone. Overhead, the clouds are falling asunder in every direction,
assuming strange momentary shapes, quaint airy resemblances of the forms
of the great rocks among which we stand. Height after height along the
distant cliffs dawns on us gently; great golden rays shoot down over
them; far out on the ocean, the waters flash into a streak of fire; the
sails of ships passing there, glitter bright; yet a moment more, and the
glorious sunlight bursts out over the whole view. The sea changes soon
from dull grey to bright blue, embroidered thickly with golden specks,
as it rolls and rushes and dances in the wind. The sand at our feet
grows brighter and purer to the eye; the sea-birds flying and swooping
above us, look like flashes of white light against the blue firmament;
and, most beautiful of all, the wet serpentine rocks now shine forth in
full splendour beneath the sun; every one of their exquisite varieties
of colour becomes plainly visible--silver grey and bright yellow, dark
red, deep brown, and malachite green appear, here combined in thin
intertwined streaks, there outspread in separate irregular
patches--glorious ornaments of the sea-shore, fashioned by no human
art!--Nature's own home-made jewellery, which the wear of centuries has
failed to tarnish, and the rage of tempests has been powerless to
destroy!

But the hour wanes while we stand and admire; the surf dashes nearer and
nearer to our feet; soon, the sea will cover the sand, and rush swiftly
into the caves where we have slowly crawled. Already the Devil's Bellows
is at work--the jets of spray spout forth from it with a roar. The sea
thunders louder and louder in the Devil's Throat--we must gain the
cliffs while we have yet time. The guide takes his leave; my companion
unwillingly closes his sketch-book; and we slowly ascend on our inland
way together--looking back often and often, with no feigned regret, on
all that we are leaving behind us at KYNANCE COVE.




VII.

THE PILCHARD FISHERY.


If it so happened that a stranger in Cornwall went out to take his first
walk along the cliffs towards the south of the county, in the month of
August, that stranger could not advance far in any direction without
witnessing what would strike him as a very singular and alarming
phenomenon.

He would see a man standing on the extreme edge of a precipice, just
over the sea, gesticulating in a very remarkable manner, with a bush in
his hand; waving it to the right and the left, brandishing it over his
head, sweeping it past his feet--in short, apparently acting the part of
a maniac of the most dangerous character. It would add considerably to
the startling effect of this sight on the stranger, if he were told,
while beholding it, that the insane individual before him was paid for
flourishing the bush at the rate of a guinea a week. And if he,
thereupon, advanced a little to obtain a nearer view of the madman, and
then observed on the sea below (as he certainly might) a well-manned
boat, turning carefully to right and left exactly as the bush turned
right and left, his mystification would probably be complete, and the
right time would arrive to come to his rescue with a few charitable
explanatory words. He would then learn that the man with the bush was an
important agent in the Pilchard Fishery of Cornwall; that he had just
discovered a shoal of pilchards swimming towards the land; and that the
men in the boat were guided by his gesticulations alone, in securing the
fish on which they and all their countrymen on the coast depend for a
livelihood.

To begin, however, with the pilchards themselves, as forming one of the
staple commercial commodities of Cornwall. They may be, perhaps, best
described as bearing a very close resemblance to the herring, but as
being rather smaller in size and having larger scales. Where they come
from before they visit the Cornish coast--where those that escape the
fishermen go to when they quit it, is unknown; or, at best, only vaguely
conjectured. All that is certain about them is, that they are met with,
swimming past the Scilly Isles, as early as July (when they are caught
with a drift-net). They then advance inland in August, during which
month the principal, or "in-shore," fishing begins; visit different
parts of the coast until October or November; and after that disappear
until the next year. They may be sometimes caught off the south-west
part of Devonshire, and are occasionally to be met with near the
southernmost coast of Ireland; but beyond these two points they are
never seen on any other portion of the shores of Great Britain, either
before they approach Cornwall, or after they have left it.

The first sight from the cliffs of a shoal of pilchards advancing
towards the land, is not a little interesting. They produce on the sea
the appearance of the shadow of a dark cloud. This shadow comes on and
on, until you can see the fish leaping and playing on the surface by
thousands at a time, all huddled close together, and all approaching so
near to the shore, that they can be always caught in some fifty or sixty
feet of water. Indeed, on certain occasions, when the shoals are of
considerable magnitude, the fish behind have been known to force the
fish before, literally up to the beach, so that they could be taken in
buckets, or even in the hand with the greatest ease. It is said that
they are thus impelled to approach the land by precisely the same
necessity which impels the fishermen to catch them as they appear--the
necessity of getting food.

With the discovery of the first shoal, the active duties of the
"look-out" on the cliffs begin. Each fishing-village places one or more
of these men on the watch all round the coast. They are called "huers,"
a word said to be derived from the old French verb, _huer_, to call out,
to give an alarm. On the vigilance and skill of the "huer" much depends.
He is, therefore, not only paid his guinea a week while he is on the
watch, but receives, besides, a perquisite in the shape of a per-centage
on the produce of all the fish taken under his auspices. He is placed at
his post, where he can command an uninterrupted view of the sea, some
days before the pilchards are expected to appear; and, at the same time,
boats, nets, and men are all ready for action at a moment's notice.

The principal boat used is at least fifteen tons in burden, and carries
a large net called the "seine," which measures a hundred and ninety
fathoms in length, and costs a hundred and seventy pounds--sometimes
more. It is simply one long strip, from eleven to thirteen fathoms in
breadth, composed of very small meshes, and furnished, all along its
length, with lead at one side and corks at the other. The men who cast
this net are called the "shooters," and receive eleven shillings and
sixpence a week, and a perquisite of one basket of fish each out of
every haul.

As soon as the "huer" discerns the first appearance of a shoal, he waves
his bush. The signal is conveyed to the beach immediately by men and
boys watching near him. The "seine" boat (accompanied by another small
boat, to assist in casting the net) is rowed out where he can see it.
Then there is a pause, a hush of great expectation on all sides.
Meanwhile, the devoted pilchards press on--a compact mass of thousands
on thousands of fish, swimming to meet their doom. All eyes are fixed on
the "huer;" he stands watchful and still, until the shoal is thoroughly
embayed, in water which he knows to be within the depth of the "seine"
net. Then, as the fish begin to pause in their progress, and gradually
crowd closer and closer together, he gives the signal; the boats come
up, and the "seine" net is cast, or, in the technical phrase "shot,"
overboard.

The grand object is now to enclose the entire shoal. The leads sink one
end of the net perpendicularly to the ground; the corks buoy up the
other to the surface of the water. When it has been taken all round the
fish, the two extremities are made fast, and the shoal is then
imprisoned within an oblong barrier of network surrounding it on all
sides. The great art is to let as few of the pilchards escape as
possible, while this process is being completed. Whenever the "huer"
observes from above that they are startled, and are separating at any
particular point, to that point he waves his bush, thither the boats are
steered, and there the net is "shot" at once. In whatever direction the
fish attempt to get out to sea again, they are thus immediately met and
thwarted with extraordinary readiness and skill. This labour completed,
the silence of intense expectation that has hitherto prevailed among the
spectators on the cliff, is broken. There is a great shout of joy on all
sides--the shoal is secured!

The "seine'" is now regarded as a great reservoir of fish. It may remain
in the water a week or more. To secure it against being moved from its
position in case a gale should come on, it is warped by two or three
ropes to points of land in the cliff, and is, at the same time,
contracted in circuit, by its opposite ends being brought together, and
fastened tight over a length of several feet. While these operations are
in course of performance, another boat, another set of men, and another
net (different in form from the "seine") are approaching the scene of
action.

This new net is called the "tuck;" it is smaller than the "seine,"
inside which it is now to be let down for the purpose of bringing the
fish closely collected to the surface. The men who manage this net are
termed "regular seiners." They receive ten shillings a week, and the
same perquisite as the "shooters." Their boat is first of all rowed
inside the seine-net, and laid close to the seine-boat, which remains
stationary outside, and to the bows of which one rope at one end of the
"tuck-net" is fastened. The "tuck" boat then slowly makes the inner
circuit of the "seine," the smaller net being dropped overboard as she
goes, and attached at intervals to the larger. To prevent the fish from
getting between the two nets during this operation, they are frightened
into the middle of the enclosure by beating the water, at proper places,
with oars, and heavy stones fastened to ropes. When the "tuck" net has
at length travelled round the whole circle of the "seine," and is
securely fastened to the "seine" boat, at the end as it was at the
beginning, everything is ready for the great event of the day, the
hauling of the fish to the surface.

Now, the scene on shore and sea rises to a prodigious pitch of
excitement. The merchants, to whom the boats and nets belong, and by
whom the men are employed, join the "huer" on the cliff; all their
friends follow them; boys shout, dogs bark madly; every little boat in
the place puts off, crammed with idle spectators; old men and women
hobble down to the beach to wait for the news. The noise, the bustle,
and the agitation, increase every moment. Soon the shrill cheering of
the boys is joined by the deep voices of the "seiners." There they
stand, six or eight stalwart sunburnt fellows, ranged in a row in the
"seine" boat, hauling with all their might at the "tuck" net, and
roaring the regular nautical "Yo-heave-ho!" in chorus! Higher and higher
rises the net, louder and louder shout the boys and the idlers. The
merchant forgets his dignity, and joins them; the "huer," so calm and
collected hitherto, loses his self-possession and waves his cap
triumphantly; even you and I, reader, uninitiated spectators though we
are, catch the infection, and cheer away with the rest, as if our bread
depended on the event of the next few minutes. "Hooray! hooray! Yo-hoy,
hoy, hoy! Pull away, boys! Up she comes! Here they are! Here they are!"
The water boils and eddies; the "tuck" net rises to the surface, and one
teeming, convulsed mass of shining, glancing, silvery scales; one
compact crowd of tens of thousands of fish, each one of which is madly
endeavouring to escape, appears in an instant!

The noise before was as nothing compared with the noise now. Boats as
large as barges are pulled up in hot haste all round the net; baskets
are produced by dozens: the fish are dipped up in them, and shot out,
like coals out of a sack, into the boats. Ere long, the men are up to
their ankles in pilchards; they jump upon the rowing benches and work
on, until the boats are filled with fish as full as they can hold, and
the gunwales are within two or three inches of the water. Even yet, the
shoal is not exhausted; the "tuck" net must be let down again and left
ready for a fresh haul, while the boats are slowly propelled to the
shore, where we must join them without delay.

As soon as the fish are brought to land, one set of men, bearing
capacious wooden shovels, jump in among them; and another set bring
large hand-barrows close to the side of the boat, into which the
pilchards are thrown with amazing rapidity. This operation proceeds
without ceasing for a moment. As soon as one barrow is ready to be
carried to the salting-house, another is waiting to be filled. When this
labour is performed by night, which is often the case, the scene becomes
doubly picturesque. The men with the shovels, standing up to their knees
in pilchards, working energetically; the crowd stretching down from the
salting-house, across the beach, and hemming in the boat all round; the
uninterrupted succession of men hurrying backwards and forwards with
their barrows, through a narrow way kept clear for them in the throng;
the glare of the lanterns giving light to the workmen, and throwing red
flashes on the fish as they fly incessantly from the shovels over the
side of the boat--all combine together to produce such a series of
striking contrasts, such a moving picture of bustle and animation, as
not even the most careless of spectators could ever forget.

Having watched the progress of affairs on the shore, we next proceed to
the salting-house, a quadrangular structure of granite, well-roofed in
all round the sides, but open to the sky in the middle. Here, we must
prepare ourselves to be bewildered by incessant confusion and noise; for
here are assembled all the women and girls in the district, piling up
the pilchards on layers of salt, at three-pence an hour; to which
remuneration, a glass of brandy and a piece of bread and cheese are
hospitably added at every sixth hour, by way of refreshment. It is a
service of some little hazard to enter this place at all. There are men
rushing out with empty barrows, and men rushing in with full barrows, in
almost perpetual succession. However, while we are waiting for an
opportunity to slip through the doorway, we may amuse ourselves by
watching a very curious ceremony which is constantly in course of
performance outside it.

As the filled barrows are going into the salting-house, we observe a
little urchin running by the side of them, and hitting their edges with
a long cane, in a constant succession of smart strokes, until they are
fairly carried through the gate, when he quickly returns to perform the
same office for the next series that arrive. The object of this
apparently unaccountable proceeding is soon practically illustrated by a
group of children, hovering about the entrance of the salting-house, who
every now and then dash resolutely up to the barrows, and endeavour to
seize on as many fish as they can take away at one snatch. It is
understood to be their privilege to keep as many pilchards as they can
get in this way by their dexterity, in spite of a liberal allowance of
strokes aimed at their hands; and their adroitness richly deserves its
reward. Vainly does the boy officially entrusted with the administration
of the cane, strike the sides of the barrow with malignant smartness and
perseverance--fish are snatched away with lightning rapidity and
pickpocket neatness of hand. The hardest rap over the knuckles fails to
daunt the sturdy little assailants. Howling with pain, they dash up to
the next barrow that passes them, with unimpaired resolution; and often
collect their ten or a dozen fish a piece, in an hour or two. No
description can do justice to the "Jack-in-Office" importance of the boy
with the cane, as he flourishes it about ferociously in the full
enjoyment of his vested right to castigate his companions as often as he
can. As an instance of the early development of the tyrannic tendencies
of human nature, it is, in a philosophical point of view, quite unique.

But now, while we have a chance, while the doorway is accidentally clear
for a few moments, let us enter the salting-house, and approach the
noisiest and most amusing of all the scenes which the pilchard fishery
presents. First of all we pass a great heap of fish lying in one recess
inside the door, and an equally great heap of coarse, brownish salt
lying in another. Then we advance farther, get out of the way of
everybody, behind a pillar, and see a whole congregation of the fair sex
screaming, talking, and--to their honour be it spoken--working at the
same time, round a compact mass of pilchards which their nimble hands
have already built up to a height of three feet, a breadth of more than
four, and a length of twenty. Here we have every variety of the "fairer
half of creation" displayed before us, ranged round an odoriferous heap
of salted fish. Here we see crones of sixty and girls of sixteen; the
ugly and the lean, the comely and the plump; the sour-tempered and the
sweet--all squabbling, singing, jesting, lamenting, and shrieking at the
very top of their very shrill voices for "more fish," and "more salt;"
both of which are brought from the stores, in small buckets, by a long
train of children running backwards and forwards with unceasing activity
and in bewildering confusion. But, universal as the uproar is, the work
never flags; the hands move as fast as the tongues; there may be no
silence and no discipline, but there is also no idleness and no delay.
Never was three-pence an hour more joyously or more fairly earned than
it is here!

The labour is thus performed. After the stone floor has been swept
clean, a thin layer of salt is spread on it, and covered with pilchards
laid partly edgewise, and close together. Then another layer of salt,
smoothed fine with the palm of the hand, is laid over the pilchards; and
then more pilchards are placed upon that; and so on until the heap rises
to four feet or more. Nothing can exceed the ease, quickness, and
regularity with which this is done. Each woman works on her own small
area, without reference to her neighbour; a bucketful of salt and a
bucketful of fish being shot out in two little piles under her hands,
for her own especial use. All proceed in their labour, however, with
such equal diligence and equal skill, that no irregularities appear in
the various layers when they are finished--they run as straight and
smooth from one end to the other, as if they were constructed by
machinery. The heap, when completed, looks like a long, solid,
neatly-made mass of dirty salt; nothing being now seen of the pilchards
but the extreme tips of their noses or tails, just peeping out in rows,
up the sides of the pile.

Having now inspected the progress of the pilchard fishery, from the
catching to the curing, we have seen all that we can personally observe
of its different processes, at one opportunity. What more remains to be
done, will not be completed until after an interval of several weeks. We
must be content to hear about this from information given to us by
others. Yonder, sitting against the outside wall of the salting-house,
is an intelligent old man, too infirm now to do more than take care of
the baby that he holds in his arms, while the baby's mother is earning
her three-pence an hour inside. To this ancient we will address all our
inquiries; and he is well qualified to answer us, for the poor old
fellow has worked away all the pith and marrow of his life in the
pilchard fishery.

The fish--as we learn from our old friend, who is mightily pleased to be
asked for information--will remain in salt, or, as the technical
expression is, "in bulk," for five or six weeks. During this period, a
quantity of oil, salt, and water drips from them into wells cut in the
centre of the stone floor on which they are placed. After the oil has
been collected and clarified, it will sell for enough to pay off the
whole expense of the wages, food, and drink given to the
"seiners"--perhaps defraying other incidental charges besides. The salt
and water left behind, and offal of all sorts found with it, furnish a
valuable manure. Nothing in the pilchard itself, or in connexion with
the pilchard, runs to waste--the precious little fish is a treasure in
every part of him.

After the pilchards have been taken out of "bulk," they are washed clean
in salt water, and packed in hogsheads, which are then sent for
exportation to some large sea-port--Penzance for instance--in coast
traders. The fish reserved for use in Cornwall, are generally cured by
those who purchase them. The export trade is confined to the shores of
the Mediterranean--Italy and Spain providing the two great foreign
markets for pilchards. The home consumption, as regards Great Britain,
is nothing, or next to nothing. Some variation takes place in the prices
realized by the foreign trade--their average, wholesale, is stated to be
about fifty shillings per hogshead.

As an investment for money, on a small scale, the pilchard fishery
offers the first great advantage of security. The only outlay necessary,
is that for providing boats and nets, and for building salting-houses--an
outlay which, it is calculated, may be covered by a thousand pounds. The
profits resulting from the speculation are immediate and large.
Transactions are managed on the ready money principle, and the markets of
Italy and Spain (where pilchards are considered a great delicacy) are
always open to any supply. The fluctuation between a good season's
fishing and a bad season's fishing is rarely, if ever, seriously great.
Accidents happen but seldom; the casualty most dreaded, being the
enclosure of a large fish along with a shoal of pilchards. A "ling," for
instance, if unfortunately imprisoned in the seine, often bursts through
its thin meshes, after luxuriously gorging himself with prey, and is of
course at once followed out of the breach by all the pilchards. Then, not
only is the shoal lost, but the net is seriously damaged, and must be
tediously and expensively repaired. Such an accident as this, however,
very seldom happens; and when it does, the loss occasioned falls on those
best able to bear it, the merchant speculators. The work and wages of the
fishermen go on as usual.

Some idea of the almost incalculable multitude of pilchards caught on
the shores of Cornwall, may be formed from the following _data_. At the
small fishing cove of Trereen, 600 hogsheads were taken in little more
than one week, during August, 1850. Allowing 2,400 fish only to each
hogshead--3,000 would be the highest calculation--we have a result of
1,440,000 pilchards, caught by the inhabitants of one little village
alone, on the Cornish coast, at the commencement of the season's
fishing.

At considerable sea-port towns, where there is an unusually large supply
of men, boats, and nets, such figures as those quoted above, are far
below the mark. At St. Ives, for example, 1,000 hogsheads were taken in
the first three seine nets cast into the water. The number of hogsheads
exported annually, averages 22,000. In 1850, 27,000 were secured for the
foreign markets. Incredible as these numbers may appear to some readers,
they may nevertheless be relied on; for they are derived from
trustworthy sources--partly from local returns furnished to me; partly
from the very men who filled the baskets from the boat-side, and who
afterwards verified their calculations by frequent visits to the
salting-houses.

Such is the pilchard fishery of Cornwall--a small unit, indeed, in the
vast aggregate of England's internal sources of wealth: but yet neither
unimportant nor uninteresting, if it be regarded as giving active
employment to a hardy and honest race who would starve without it; as
impartially extending the advantages of commerce to one of the remotest
corners of our island; and, more than all, as displaying a wise and
beautiful provision of Nature, by which the rich tribute of the great
deep is most generously lavished on the land most in need of a
compensation for its own sterility.




VIII.

THE LAND'S END.


Something like what Jerusalem was to the pilgrim in the Holy Land, the
Land's End is--comparing great things with small--to the tourist in
Cornwall. It is the Ultima Thule where his progress stops--the shrine
towards which his face has been set, from the first day when he started
on his travels--the main vent, through which all the pent-up enthusiasm
accumulated along the line of route is to burst its way out, in one long
flow of admiration and delight.

The Land's End! There is something in the very words that stirs us all.
It was the name that struck us most, and was best remembered by us, as
children, when we learnt our geography. It fills the minds of
imaginative people with visions of barrenness and solitude, with dreams
of some lonely promontory, far away by itself out in the sea--the sort
of place where the last man in England would be most likely to be found
waiting for death, at the end of the world! It suggests even to the most
prosaically constituted people, ideas of tremendous storms, of flakes of
foam flying over the land before the wind, of billows in convulsion, of
rocks shaken to their centre, of caves where smugglers lurk in ambush,
of wrecks and hurricanes, desolation, danger, and death. It awakens
curiosity in the most careless--once hear of it, and you long to see
it--tell your friends that you have travelled in Cornwall, and ten
thousand chances to one, the first question they ask is:--"Have you been
to the Land's End?"

And yet, strange to say, this spot so singled out and set apart by our
imaginations as something remarkable and even unique of its kind, is as
a matter of fact, not distinguishable from any part of the coast on
either side of it, by any local peculiarity whatever. If you desire
really and truly to stand on the Land's End itself, you must ask your
way to it, or you are in danger of mistaking any one of the numerous
promontories on the right hand and the left, for your actual place of
destination. But I am anticipating. Before I say more about the Land's
End, it is necessary to relate how my companion and I got there, and
what we saw that was interesting and characteristic on our road.

The reader may perhaps remember that he last left us scrambling out of
reach of the tide, up the cliffs overlooking Kynance Cove. From that
place we got back to Helston in mist and rain, just as we had left it.
From Helston we proceeded to Marazion,--stopping there to visit St.
Michael's Mount, so well known to readers of all classes by innumerable
pictures and drawings, and by descriptions scarcely less plentiful, that
they will surely be relieved rather than disappointed, if these pages
exhibit the distinguished negative merit of passing the Mount without
notice. From Marazion we walked to Penzance, from Penzance to the
beautiful coast scenery at Lamorna Cove, and thence to Trereen,
celebrated as the halting place for a visit to one of Cornwall's
greatest curiosities--the Loggan Stone.

This far-famed rock rises on the top of a bold promontory of granite,
jutting far out into the sea, split into the wildest forms, and towering
precipitously to a height of a hundred feet. When you reach the Loggan
Stone, after some little climbing up perilous-looking places, you see a
solid, irregular mass of granite, which is computed to weigh eighty
five tons, supported by its centre only, on a flat, broad rock, which,
in its turn, rests on several others stretching out around it on all
sides. You are told by the guide to turn your back to the uppermost
stone; to place your shoulders under one particular part of its lower
edge, which is entirely disconnected, all round, with the supporting
rock below; and in this position to push upwards slowly and steadily,
then to leave off again for an instant, then to push once more, and so
on, until after a few moments of exertion, you feel the whole immense
mass above you moving as you press against it. You redouble your
efforts--then turn round--and see the massy Loggan Stone, set in motion
by nothing but your own pair of shoulders, slowly rocking backwards and
forwards with an alternate ascension and declension, at the outer edges,
of at least three inches. You have treated eighty-five tons of granite
like a child's cradle; and, like a child's cradle, those eighty-five
tons have rocked at your will!

The pivot on which the Loggan Stone is thus easily moved, is a small
protrusion in its base, on all sides of which the whole surrounding
weight of rock is, by an accident of Nature, so exactly equalized, as
to keep it poised in the nicest balance on the one little point in its
lower surface which rests on the flat granite slab beneath. But perfect
as this balance appears at present, it has lost something, the merest
hair's-breadth, of its original faultlessness of adjustment. The rock is
not to be moved now, either so easily or to so great an extent, as it
could once be moved. Six-and-twenty years since, it was overthrown by
artificial means; and was then lifted again into its former position.
This is the story of the affair, as it was related to me by a man who
was an eyewitness of the process of restoring the stone to its proper
place.

In the year 1824, a certain Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, then in
command of a cutter stationed off the southern coast of Cornwall, was
told of an ancient Cornish prophecy, that no human power should ever
succeed in overturning the Loggan Stone. No sooner was the prediction
communicated to him, than he conceived a mischievous ambition to falsify
practically an assertion which the commonest common sense might have
informed him had sprung from nothing but popular error and popular
superstition. Accompanied by a body of picked men from his crew, he
ascended to the Loggan Stone, ordered several levers to be placed under
it at one point, gave the word to "heave"--and the next moment had the
miserable satisfaction of seeing one of the most remarkable natural
curiosities in the world utterly destroyed, for aught he could foresee
to the contrary, under his own directions!

But Fortune befriended the Loggan Stone. One edge of it, as it rolled
over, became fixed by a lucky chance in a crevice in the rocks
immediately below the granite slab from which it had been started. Had
this not happened, it must have fallen over a sheer precipice, and been
lost in the sea. By another accident, equally fortunate, two labouring
men at work in the neighbourhood, were led by curiosity secretly to
follow the Lieutenant and his myrmidons up to the Stone. Having
witnessed, from a secure hiding-place, all that occurred, the two
workmen, with great propriety, immediately hurried off to inform the
lord of the manor of the wanton act of destruction which they had seen
perpetrated.

The news was soon communicated throughout the district, and thence,
throughout all Cornwall. The indignation of the whole county was
aroused. Antiquaries, who believed the Loggan Stone to have been
balanced by the Druids; philosophers who held that it was produced by
an eccentricity of natural formation; ignorant people, who cared nothing
about Druids, or natural formations, but who liked to climb up and rock
the stone whenever they passed near it; tribes of guides who lived by
showing it; innkeepers in the neighbourhood, to whom it had brought
customers by hundreds; tourists of every degree who were on their way to
see it--all joined in one general clamour of execration against the
overthrower of the rock. A full report of the affair was forwarded to
the Admiralty; and the Admiralty, for once, acted vigorously for the
public advantage, and mercifully spared the public purse.

The Lieutenant was officially informed that his commission was in
danger, unless he set up the Loggan Stone again in its proper place. The
materials for compassing this achievement were offered to him, _gratis_,
from the Dock Yards; but he was left to his own resources to defray the
expense of employing workmen to help him. Being by this time awakened to
a proper sense of the mischief he had done, and to a tolerably strong
conviction of the disagreeable position in which he was placed with the
Admiralty, he addressed himself vigorously to the task of repairing his
fault. Strong beams were planted about the Loggan Stone, chains were
passed round it, pulleys were rigged, and capstans were manned. After a
week's hard work and brave perseverance on the part of every one
employed in the labour, the rock was pulled back into its former
position, but not into its former perfection of balance: it has never
moved since as freely as it moved before.

It is only fair to the Lieutenant to add to this narrative of his
mischievous frolic the fact, that he defrayed, though a poor man, all
the heavy expenses of replacing the rock. Just before his death, he paid
the last remaining debt, and paid it with interest.

       *       *       *       *       *

Leaving the Loggan Stone, we next shaped our course for the Land's End.
We stopped on our way, to admire the desolate pile of rocks and caverns
which form the towering promontory, called "Tol-Peden-Penwith," or, "The
Holed Headland on the Left." Thence, turning a little inland--passing
over wild, pathless moors; occasionally catching distant glimpses of the
sea, with the mist sometimes falling thick down to the very edges of the
waves, sometimes parting mysteriously and discovering distant crags of
granite rising shadowy out of the foaming waters,--we reached, at last,
the limits of our outward journey, and saw the Atlantic before us,
rolling against the westernmost extremity of the shores of England.

I have already said, that the stranger must ask his way before he can
find out the particular mass of rocks, geographically entitled to the
appellation of the "Land's End." He may, however, easily discover when
he has reached the _district_ of the "Land's End," by two rather
remarkable indications that he will meet with on his road. He will
observe, at some distance from the coast, an old milestone marked "I,"
and will be informed that this is the real original first mile in
England; as if all measurement of distances began strictly from the
West! A little further on he will come to a house, on one wall of which
he will see written in large letters, "This is the first Inn in
England," and on the other: "This is the last Inn in England;" as if the
recognised beginning, and end too, of the Island of Britain were here,
and here only! Having pondered a little on the slightly exclusive view
of the attributes of their locality, taken by the inhabitants, he will
then be led forward, about half a mile, by his guide, will descend some
cliffs, will walk out on a ridge of rocks till he can go no
farther--and will then be told that he is standing on the Land's End!

Here, as elsewhere, there are certain "sights" which a stranger is
required to examine assiduously, as a duty if not as a pleasure, by
guide-book law, rigidly administered by guides. There is, first of all,
the mark of a horse's hoof, which is with great care kept _sharply
modelled_ (to borrow the painter's phrase), in the thin grass at the
edge of a precipice. This mark commemorates the narrow escape from death
of a military man who, for a wager, rode a horse down the cliff to the
extreme verge of the Land's End; where the poor animal, seeing its
danger, turned in affright, reared, and fell back into the sea raging
over the rocks beneath. The foolhardy rider had just sense enough left
to throw himself off in time--he tumbled on the ground, within a few
inches of the precipice, and so barely saved the life which he had
richly deserved to lose.

After the mark of the hoof, the traveller is next desired to look at a
natural tunnel in the outer cliff, which pierces it through from one end
to the other. Then his attention is directed to a lighthouse built on a
reef of rocks detached from the land; and he is told of the great waves
which break over the top of the building during the winter storms.
Lastly, he is requested to inspect a quaint protuberance in a pile of
granite at a little distance off, which bears a remote resemblance to a
gigantic human face, adorned with a short beard; and which, he is
informed, is considered quite a portrait (of all the people in the world
to liken it to!) of Dr. Johnson! It is, therefore, publicly known as
"Johnson's Head." If it can fairly be compared with any of the
countenances of any remarkable characters that ever existed, it may be
said to exhibit, in violent exaggeration, the worst physiognomical
peculiarities of Nero and Henry the Eighth, combined in one face!

These several local curiosities duly examined, you are at last left free
to look at the Land's End in your own way. Before you, stretches the
wide, wild ocean; the largest of the Scilly Islands being barely
discernible on the extreme horizon, on clear days. Tracts of heath;
fields where corn is blown by the wind into mimic waves; downs, valleys,
and crags, mingle together picturesquely and confusedly, until they are
lost in the distance, on your left. On your right is a magnificent bay,
bounded at either extremity by far-stretching promontories rising from a
beach of the purest white sand, on which the yet whiter foam of the
surf is ever seething, as waves on waves break one behind the other. The
whole bold view possesses all the sublimity that vastness and space can
bestow; but it is that sublimity which is to be seen, not described,
which the heart may acknowledge and the mind contain, but which no mere
words may delineate--which even painting itself may but faintly reflect.

However, it is, after all, the walk to the Land's End along the southern
coast, rather than the Land's End itself, which displays the grandest
combinations of scenery in which this grandest part of Cornwall abounds.
There, Nature appears in her most triumphant glory and beauty--there,
every mile as you proceed, offers some new prospect, or awakens some
fresh impression. All objects that you meet with, great and small,
moving and motionless, seem united in perfect harmony to form a scene
where original images might still be found by the poet; and where
original pictures are waiting, ready composed, for the painter's eye.

On approaching the wondrous landscapes between Trereen and the Land's
End, the first characteristic that strikes you, is the change that has
taken place in the forms of the cliffs since you left the Lizard Head.
You no longer look on variously shaped and variously coloured
"serpentine" rocks; it is granite, and granite alone, that appears
everywhere--granite, less lofty and less eccentric in form than the
"serpentine" cliffs and crags; but presenting an appearance of
adamantine solidity and strength, a mighty breadth of outline and an
unbroken vastness of extent, nobly adapted to the purpose of protecting
the shores of Cornwall, where they are most exposed to the fury of the
Atlantic waves. In these wild districts, the sea rolls and roars in
fiercer agitation, and the mists fall thicker, and at the same time fade
and change faster, than elsewhere. Vessels pitching heavily in the
waves, are seen to dawn, at one moment, in the clearing atmosphere--and
then, at another, to fade again mysteriously, as it abruptly thickens,
like phantom ships. Up on the top of the cliffs, furze and heath in
brilliant clothing of purple and yellow, cluster close round great
white, weird masses of rock, dotted fantastically with patches of
grey-green moss. The solitude on these heights is unbroken--no houses
are to be seen--often, no pathway is to be found. You go on, guided by
the _sight_ of the sea, when the sky brightens fitfully: and by the
_sound_ of the sea, when you stray instinctively from the edge of the
cliff, as mist and darkness gather once more densely and solemnly all
around you.

Then, when the path appears again--a winding path, that descends
rapidly--you gradually enter on a new scene. Old horses startle you,
scrambling into perilous situations, to pick dainty bits by the
hillside; sheep, fettered by the fore and hind leg, hobble away
desperately as you advance. Suddenly, you discern a small strip of beach
shut in snugly between protecting rocks. A spring bubbles down from an
inland valley; while not far off, an old stone well collects the water
into a calm, clear pool. Sturdy little cottages, built of rough granite,
and thickly thatched, stand near you, with gulls' and cormorants' eggs
set in their loop-holed windows for ornament; great white sections of
fish hang thickly together on their walls to dry, looking more like many
legs of many dirty duck trousers, than anything else; pigsties are
hard-by the cottages, either formed by the Cromlech stones of the
Druids, or excavated like caves in the side of the hill. Down on the
beach, where the rough old fishing-boats lie, the sand is entirely
formed by countless multitudes of the tiniest, fairy-like shells, often
as small as a pin's head, and all exquisitely tender in colour and
wonderfully varied in form. Up the lower and flatter parts of the hills
above, fishing nets are stretched to dry. While you stop to look forth
over the quiet, simple scene, wild little children peep out at you in
astonishment; and hard-working men and women greet you with a hearty
Cornish salutation, as you pass near their cottage doors.

You walk a few hundred yards inland, up the valley, and discover in a
retired, sheltered situation, the ancient village church, with its
square grey tower surmounted by moss-grown turrets, with its venerable
Saxon stone cross in the churchyard--where the turf graves rise humbly
by twos and threes, and where the old coffin-shaped stone stands midway
at the entrance gates, still used, as in former times, by the bearers of
a rustic funeral. Appearing thus amid the noblest scenery, as the simple
altar of the prayers of a simple race, this is a church which speaks of
religion in no formal or sectarian tone. Appealing to the heart of every
traveller be his creed what it may, in loving and solemn accents, it
sends him on his way again, up the mighty cliffs and through the mist
driving cloud-like over them, the better fitted for his journey forward
here; the better fitted, it may be, even for that other dread journey
of one irrevocable moment--the last he shall ever take--to his
abiding-place among the spirits of the dead!

       *       *       *       *       *

These are some of the attractions which home rambles can offer to tempt
the home traveller; for these are the impressions produced, and the
incidents presented during a walk to the Land's End.




IX.

BOTALLACK MINE.


I have little doubt that the less patient among the readers of this
narrative have already, while perusing it, asked themselves some such
questions as these:--"Is not Cornwall a celebrated mineral country? Why
has the author not taken us below the surface yet? Why have we heard
nothing all this time about the mines?"

Readers who have questioned thus, may be assured that their impatience
to go down a mine, in this book, was fully equalled by our impatience to
go down a mine, in the county of which this book treats. Our anxiety,
however, when we mentioned it to Cornish friends, was invariably met by
the same answer. "Wait"--they all said--"until you have turned your
backs on the Land's End; and then go to Botallack. The mine there is the
most extraordinary mine in Cornwall; go down that, and you will not
want to go down another--wait for Botallack." And we did wait for
Botallack, just as the reader has waited for it in these pages. May he
derive as much satisfaction from the present description of the mine, as
we did from visiting the mine itself!

We left the Land's End, feeling that our homeward journey had now begun
from that point; and walking northward, about five miles along the
coast, arrived at Botallack. Having heard that there was some
disinclination in Cornwall to allow strangers to go down the mines, we
had provided ourselves--through the kindness of a friend--with a proper
letter of introduction, in case of emergency. We were told to go to the
counting-house to present our credentials; and on our road thither, we
beheld the buildings and machinery of the mine, literally stretching
down the precipitous face of the cliff, from the land at the top, to the
sea at the bottom.

This sight was, in its way, as striking and extraordinary as the first
view of the Cheese-Wring itself. Here, we beheld a scaffolding perched
on a rock that rose out of the waves--there, a steam-pump was at work
raising gallons of water from the mine every minute, on a mere ledge of
land half way down the steep cliff side. Chains, pipes, conduits,
protruded in all directions from the precipice; rotten-looking wooden
platforms, running over deep chasms, supported great beams of timber and
heavy coils of cable; crazy little boarded houses were built, where
gulls' nests might have been found in other places. There did not appear
to be a foot of level space anywhere, for any part of the works of the
mine to stand upon; and yet, there they were, fulfilling all the
purposes for which they had been constructed, as safely and completely
on rocks in the sea, and down precipices in the land, as if they had
been cautiously founded on the tracts of smooth solid ground above!

The counting-house was built on a projection of earth about midway
between the top of the cliff and the sea. When we got there, the agent,
to whom our letter was addressed, was absent; but his place was supplied
by two miners who came out to receive us; and to one of them we
mentioned our recommendation, and modestly hinted a wish to go down the
mine forthwith.

But our new friend was not a person who did anything in a hurry. He was
a grave, courteous, and rather melancholy man, of great stature and
strength. He looked on us with a benevolent, paternal expression, and
appeared to think that we were nothing like strong enough, or cautious
enough to be trusted down the mine. "Did we know," he urged, "that it
was dangerous work?" "Yes; but we didn't mind danger!"--"Perhaps we were
not aware that we should perspire profusely, and be dead tired getting
up and down the ladders?" "Very likely; but we didn't mind that,
either!"--"Surely we shouldn't like to strip and put on miners'
clothes?" "Yes, we should, of all things!" and pulling off coat and
waistcoat, on the spot, we stood half-undressed already, just as the big
miner was proposing another objection, which, under existing
circumstances, he good-naturedly changed into a speech of acquiescence.
"Very well, gentlemen," he said, taking up two suits of miners' clothes,
"I see you are determined to go down; and so you shall! You'll be wet
through with the heat and the work before you come up again; so just put
on these things, and keep your own clothes dry."

The clothing consisted of a flannel shirt, flannel drawers, canvas
trousers, and a canvas jacket--all stained of a tawny copper colour; but
all quite clean. A white night-cap and a round hat, composed of some
iron-hard substance, well calculated to protect the head from any loose
stones that might fall on it, completed the equipment; to which, three
tallow-candles were afterwards added, two to hang at the buttonhole, one
to carry in the hand.

My friend was dressed first. He had got a suit which fitted him
tolerably, and which, as far as appearances went, made a miner of him at
once. Far different was my case.

The same mysterious dispensation of fate, which always awards tall wives
to short men, decreed that a suit of the big miner's should be reserved
for me. He stood six feet two inches--I stand five feet six inches. I
put on his flannel shirt--it fell down to my toes, like a bedgown; his
drawers--and they flowed in Turkish luxuriance over my feet. At his
trousers I helplessly stopped short, lost in the voluminous recesses of
each leg. The big miner, like a good Samaritan as he was, came to my
assistance. He put the pocket button through the waist buttonhole, to
keep the trousers up in the first instance; then, he pulled steadily at
the braces until my waistband was under my armpits; and then he
pronounced that I and my trousers fitted each other in great perfection.
The cuffs of the jacket were next turned up to my elbows--the white
night-cap was dragged over my ears--the round hat was jammed down over
my eyes. When I add to all this, that I am so nearsighted as to be
obliged to wear spectacles, and that I finished my toilet by putting my
spectacles on (knowing that I should see little or nothing without
them), nobody, I think, will be astonished to hear that my companion
seized his sketch-book, and caricatured me on the spot; and that the
grave miner, polite as he was, shook with internal laughter, when I took
up my tallow-candles and reported myself ready for a descent into the
mine.

We left the counting-house, and ascended the face of the cliff--then,
walked a short distance along the edge, descended a little again, and
stopped at a wooden platform built across a deep gully. Here, the miner
pulled up a trap-door, and disclosed a perpendicular ladder leading down
to a black hole, like the opening of a chimney. "This is the shaft; I
will go down first, to catch you in case you tumble; follow me and hold
tight;" saying this, our friend squeezed himself through the trap-door,
and we went after him as we had been bidden.

The black hole, when we entered it, proved to be not quite so dark as it
had appeared from above. Rays of light occasionally penetrated it
through chinks in the outer rock. But by the time we had got some little
way farther down, these rays began to fade. Then, just as we seemed to
be lowering ourselves into total darkness, we were desired to stand on a
narrow landing-place opposite the ladder, and wait there while the miner
went below for a light. He soon reascended to us, bringing, not only the
light he had promised, but a large lump of damp clay with it. Having
lighted our candles he stuck them against the front of our hats with the
clay--in order, as he said, to leave both our hands free to us to use as
we liked. Thus strangely accoutred, like Solomon Eagles in the Great
Plague, with flame on our heads, we resumed the descent of the shaft;
and now at last began to penetrate beneath the surface of the earth in
good earnest.

The process of getting down the ladders was not very pleasant. They were
all quite perpendicular, the rounds were placed at irregular distances,
were many of them much worn away, and were slippery with water and
copper-ooze. Add to this, the narrowness of the shaft, the dripping wet
rock shutting you in, as it were, all round your back and sides against
the ladder--the fathomless darkness beneath--the light flaring
immediately above you, as if your head was on fire--the voice of the
miner below, rumbling away in dull echoes lower and lower into the
bowels of the earth--the consciousness that if the rounds of the ladder
broke, you might fall down a thousand feet or so of narrow tunnel in a
moment--imagine all this, and you may easily realize what are the first
impressions produced by a descent into a Cornish mine.

By the time we had got down seventy fathoms, or four hundred and twenty
feet of perpendicular ladders, we stopped at another landing-place, just
broad enough to afford standing room fo

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