Chapter II: Part 2

Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick's book, _In Other Days_, gives a picture of Lamorna Valley in the guise of fiction: "It was a brilliant March day, warm in the sun, cold in the wind. The gorse and the blackthorn were both out, spreading the wild copse and common of the valley with a shimmer of white and gold. The old bracken still lay in patches of ruddy brown, primroses were just beginning shyly, and the short grass of the open places had not put on its summer hues yet. The sky was clear and deep, with little white clouds scudding across it; larks were singing, and in the distance sounds of men at work in the fields were heard. The air was scented with herbs and fresh from the sea, but sheltered by the lie of the low hills, and by old, long-neglected trees. In some places the trees were of a great height and girth, making a gloom over the huge moss-grown granite rocks strewing the earth and edging the little stream.... A small swamp full of peppermint scented the air."

That is the work of a close observer.

In this neighbourhood there are many of those curious relics of bygone times, which are bestrewn about Cornwall more thickly than any other part of England. The Fougou Hole in one of the gardens is a weird place, and its meaning and use is even yet little understood. It is a tiny, damp vault, made of great, unhewn stones, and reached by a hole in the ground. Here it is said harried cavaliers took shelter in the Civil Wars, but the Hole is much older than that; it dates back to those strange times beyond the dawn of history of which we only get vague glimpses.

In the fields above, gaunt stones rise like pointing fingers to the sky. These are called "The Pipers," and mark the scene of Athelstan's defeat of the British in 936; it is the "place of blood." But if they were really erected by Athelstan in the tenth century, and are not, as is possible, relics of Druid worship, they are modern compared with the Fougou Hole. Not far from them, in the midst of a grass-field, are the "Merry Maidens," a circle of grey stones about 24 yards in diameter; there are nineteen of them altogether, none quite the height of a man, and some much smaller. They convey an impression of immovable solemnity, as such age-old things always do, for they are planted so securely, and look so indomitable with their grey, lichen-covered sides four-square to the winds. Local tradition tells how the Merry Maidens were caught dancing on the Sabbath to the music of the pipers, and turned to stone, but history is silent as to their origin. There is indeed all over Cornwall many a reminder of the ancient world now lost to all record. In various other places are to be found other circles of Merry Maidens just as much of a problem as these, but none so perfect or so impressive.

The long, narrow, rectangular tower of St. Buryan, crowned with pinnacles, dominates all the landscape; exactly of this pattern are most of the Cornish church towers. They are generally as much alike as if they had been turned out of a mould. This is one of the most interesting of the many interesting churches in Cornwall. After Athelstan's triumphant victory near Lamorna, he vowed he would establish here a large religious foundation if he were successful in his further expedition to the Scilly Isles; and when he returned a conqueror he carried out his vow. This was about 930. Of course, there is nothing remaining of that church, but the present building contains much grotesque carving of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the greater part of the building must have stood from the fifteenth or sixteenth. There is a peacefulness about the ancient church, set in the long, billowing fields bordered by rugged hedges, gorse and ivy-grown, that appeals peculiarly to some natures. It is all very quiet.

Down on the shore, not many miles away, is a great pile of splintered rocks jutting out into the sea, to be reached by a narrow neck. This is Treryn Dinas or Castle, where is the famous Logan stone. The striking thing about the rocks is that so many take the form of cubes, some of the most astounding being almost exactly the shape of the ancient Egyptian obelisks. There are so many shattered, square-edged lumps, resting on small bases, that the difficulty to the stranger is to discover the real Logan Rock, which brings hundreds of visitors to the place in summer. This headland has evidently been at one time a fortified cliff-castle, and in passing over to the peninsula visitors cross the first line of defence or earthworks, though few would notice it.

From Penzance we might run out by any one of the diverging roads across the peninsula, and be sure of coming upon some relic of the most ancient race inhabiting these islands.

By way of Madron we should pass the Lanyon Quoit or Cromlech, a great slab of rock 18 feet long, supported on three other slabs which are just a little too low to allow a man to stand upright beneath it. In 1816 it fell or was blown down; before this a mounted man could sit under it. When Lieutenant Goldsmith in 1824 committed the silly trick of upsetting the Logan Rock, and was condemned by the Admiralty to rebalance it at his own expense, the apparatus brought down to the duchy for the purpose was also used to replace the cap of the Cromlech, though why it should be of less height now than before is not known.

Amid the bleak hills around are to be found constant remains of ancient British villages, rather in the manner of the Picts' houses of Scotland. That the strange people who lived in them thrashed corn for food and kept cattle, there is plenty of evidence. They lived in these little beehive huts, which were sometimes placed singly, sometimes two or three together, often with an embankment round, or a good cave near for retreat if necessary. The huts are circular and built without cement or mortar. Fragments of pottery have been found in and around. Some of them are near Chun Castle, that ancient earthwork, one of the half-dozen or so in the "toe" of Cornwall. This district was the last stronghold of the British race, who had retreated before the Western invaders to the very extremity of the land.

By any one of these roads we should come at last out on to the coast road--rather grandiloquently called "The Atlantic Drive"--running from Land's End to St. Ives. This has been compared with the famous Corniche drives of the Riviera. But beware! Don't expect too much, or you will be terribly disappointed. Yet if you go with an open mind, expecting nothing, you will see something of very real interest and carry away new knowledge.

The fields are in many places simply covered with stones. How the corn finds room to grow is a miracle. The constant winds try everything growing very severely, and there is a look of bare poverty about the land. It is often compared with Ireland, and called the Connemara of England; but in some ways, especially in the amount of stones, it is more like bits of Galloway. Stone is employed for objects which elsewhere are usually made of wood. The stiles are broad slabs of granite, the gate-posts are granite blocks, and as we have seen, the very "hedges" are stone. The name Zennor suggests gauntness of a Puritan kind. The whole of the great hill above Zennor is covered with immense and, if one may use such an expression, dignified stones. Away up among them is another huge quoit or cromlech, probably marking the burial-place of some chieftain long before Arthur's date. It is a grand place for burial too, austere and solemn, overlooking the ocean, and with a limitless horizon. The man who was buried here must have had imagination if he chose the spot for himself beforehand. The tearing winds shriek over the ragged furze and mighty stones, and howl in the crevices of the monument above him; the great black clouds roll in, and the whole country is drowned in a blinding squall of hail; the sky clears, patches of brilliant blue appear, and the sun strikes down on the dripping stones, while all the little rills and streams race down the soaking ground and over the roads in the wayward manner of Cornish streams; and still the old chieftain sleeps on, lulled by all the music of Nature in this wild outpost which England thrusts into the sea.

The road surface round here is tolerably good. Much of it is granite, and the tiny crystals glitter in the sun like diamonds, and quickly dry up after the whirlwinds of rain that pitilessly descend in winter time. The road winds along around the desolate hills, keeping mostly rather far inland, and it passes by acres of rough land covered with the wayward gorse, where small, fox-red cows take an interest in the stranger. In spring primroses grow to enormous sizes, with leaves as large as those of foxgloves; and the foxgloves in their turn decorate the hedges, rearing their tall spikes of magenta-coloured bells in profusion. Pigs abound, and great grey sheep-dogs, of the Old English bobtail breed, come shyly to make friends. And everywhere in irrepressible masses is the furze, the quick-burning fuel of the poor, a godsend here where wood is so precious.

Almost due west of Penzance is the mining region, where until lately there was great activity, now comparatively still. St. Just is the centre of this district; but it is not what one would expect in a mining town. Right in the heart of it, where now the children make their playground, is a great amphitheatre, one of the best known and preserved of the many like it that at one time held hundreds of Cornish folk to watch the open-air plays that delighted their hearts until Wesley's teaching made them think them wrong. After that they served as meeting-places for Wesley himself in many instances. The church, with some peculiarly quaint frescoes, and the Plan-an-guare, the plane as it is called locally, give St. Just a character of its own. Down one terrific hill, falling at an angle that no one unless he lived in Cornwall would dare to make a road, and up another, is Botallack, with its well-known mine, now stilled, and the taint of the red tin is felt in earth and air for many a mile beyond.

IV

FURTHEST WEST AND FURTHEST SOUTH

It has been the invariable creed of every writer on Cornwall that visitors seeing the Land's End for the first time must be disappointed with it. Disappointment there may be after a very cursory inspection, but it is evanescent. It only lasts as one approaches across the flat ugly ground where sodden patches of raw earth lie in ridges, and the dun walls of the unsightly hotel present their dreariest side to the newcomers. Particularly is this so in the height of the season, when public vehicles of every variety and degree of manginess decorate the landscape and the picture-postcard craze is at its strongest.

But those who stay long enough to see the place quietly or those who visit it in the winter when there are few disturbers of the peace, tell another story.

The reef of broken and pinkish tinged granite, decorated by weird streaks of brilliant yellow lichen, is frequented by "guides" who point out fancy resemblances to faces in the weather carven rocks. The reef is small; there is not much that is grand about it; but if one sits there while the sun sinks, a glowing ball, into the sea exactly opposite, and the ruby and diamond points of the lighthouses flash out far and wide, and perhaps a clear pale sickle moon begins to sharpen in outline in the fading sky, there is plenty on which to exercise the imagination. The granite, being split by the action of the weather into long columns, and divided again horizontally into blocks, gives the impression of a series of obelisks built up of separate stones. The general effect is rather like the famous cavern at Staffa. In places however the rocks are split into such massive and even-edged blocks that it is very difficult to disentangle the natural from the artificial, and one often imagines oneself to be gazing at the ruins of a castle which is really only some cloven cliff hammered by natural elements and not by tools of man's making.

On the seaward side the hotel lounge has been carried out in a great bay, and from the sweep of windows there are no less than four lighthouses to be seen, with their varying flashes. The bright ruby spot is the Longships Light on a grisly reef so near that it looks as if you could throw a stone upon it, though really two miles away. It is only red on the landward side. Ships usually pass outside this reef unless the sea is very calm, for it is a dangerous coast. It seems hardly believable that at times the men in the lighthouse are held up for two months by the swell which prevents their relief arriving, but so it is, and even on the calmest days it is no easy matter to land. The Longships is a reef composed of several rocky islets, some of which are connected by bridges and in fine weather the men can walk about and even fish, but in rough weather the great doors in the tower are closed for days together. When the swell comes, rolling from out the profoundly disturbed depths of the Atlantic and heralding a storm, the sheeted foam flies high above the lantern and often the last vision one has before night drops like a black curtain is that white froth of breaking foam around the glowing red eye in the tower. Further out to the south is the well-known Wolf Lighthouse, and far to the west that on the Scilly Isles.

Even in the depth of winter, on clear white frosty moonlight nights, there are those who motor down to see the Land's End by moonlight, but usually the "trip" element occupies a very small part of the day and of the year; and for the greater part of the time the place is strangely solitary. When the storms beat on the coast, driven by the wild west winds, the boom and clangour is heard as far inland as Lamorna Cove.

The chief characteristic of the weather is its uncertainty; there are clear bright intervals when the sea and sky are of electric blue and the headlands are etched out on them in black, and then all in a moment the lowering wall of storm comes up visibly; the outlines of everything are obliterated in one sweep, and a squall of hail as big as peas shrieks around, whitening the ground, then flies on in its mad course, to be succeeded by the joyous freshness of the clean-washed air and the glory of the vivifying sun. In winter time it is not safe to go two hundred yards from the hotel without a mackintosh, and yet just across the waste of heather along the little sheep tracks on the slopes, what wonderful views are to be seen in the steep-sided bays filled with a smother of foam, where the stones being driven irresistibly against one another grind off their harshnesses.

It is a terrible coast, and nearly always, even on the calmest day, when the wolves might be supposed to be sleeping, the sudden baring of a fang in the whitening of some jagged rock, a moment before invisible, shows the lurking danger.

But what perhaps catches the imagination most sharply at that "raw edge" is the tradition of the Land of Lyonnesse, lying between here and the Scilly Isles.

There seems very little foundation for this poetic fable and though, as already said, the roots and trunks of trees have been found in Penzance Bay and it is possible there may have been some landslip on a large scale in prehistoric times, there seems geologically nothing to point to a complete submergence of miles of land at the extremity of Cornwall. Tradition speaks of a land covered with villages and churches--indeed, no less than a hundred and forty churches--all buried in the shifting water by reason of one great convulsion, and Tennyson has placed here the scene of Arthur's rule and his last battle:

"For Arthur, when none knew from whence he came,
Long ere the people chose him for their King,
Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,
Had found a glen, grey boulder and black tarn."

And again:

"So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's Table, man by man,
Had fall'n in Lyonnesse about their lord."

The Scilly Isles are supposed to be the tops of the hills belonging to the lost land and so are the Seven Stones, a jagged ridge midway between them and Land's End, whence in fine weather the isles can be seen as faint cirrus clouds lying along the horizon. But though this is the nearest point to the islands, they can only be reached by steamer from Penzance, the _Lyonnesse_ going and returning alternate days. There is no harbour at Land's End and the cruel fanged rocks would make the direct voyage very dangerous, so the journey has to be lengthened out from Penzance.

As for the islands themselves, those who brave the crossing come away with strangely mixed feelings according to their temperament. If they go bathed in the glamour of _Armorel of Lyonnesse_, by far the best of Besant's books, they will see the romance and charm of these windswept bits of rock. If they are there in the spring they will visit with delight the acres of carefully tended flowers guarded by high thick walls and hedges from the ever sweeping western winds; if a little later in the nesting time of gull and guillemot, razor-bill, puffin and cormorant, say the first week in June, then the sights of bird-life will well repay them. They may even find the nesting-places of the tern, shearwater, or such voracious pirates as the kestrel and peregrine, or the stormy petrel; but this will be in the outlying islets, as the greater traffic and population of late years has driven many of the shy birds away. The halcyon days when sea and sky are one soft blue dome and the water washes and laps around the rocky shores give a glimpse of peace and remoteness such as one might imagine form part of heaven. The masses of cloud piled up in towering grandeur, the vast horizons and even the beat of the sudden squalls will find response in some people. But there are few save islanders born and bred who can revel in the lash and struggle and constant menace of the black winter days.

Surrounded by water on all sides the temperature is kept equable, hence it is that narcissus, violets, anemones, daffodils and other of the earliest spring flowers can be grown in the open and sent to be delivered in London weeks before the home counties can produce them.

It is rather curious that the name by which the whole group is known should not be that of the largest, or even of one of the largest, islands. Scilly is a mere rock rising from the sea to the west of Bryher, it is flat and cleft in two by a deep chasm through which the water runs. The currents are very strong and it is not often a landing is possible here. St. Mary's, the principal island, is the one where the steamers arrive, at Hugh Town. This name has not any authentic derivation, though it has been suggested it may be connected with the word "huer," to call or cry out. Tresco is next in size, and in summer a steam launch runs across to it from St. Mary's. Here lives the proprietor of the Scillies, Mr. Dorrien-Smith, in a comfortable house amid a perfectly glorious garden, in which are the ruins of an old Abbey built in the time of Henry I. There is some fine rock-scenery to be found in the outlying islets, if one takes the trouble to look for it in a boat, and some of the views of the scattered islands seen from a height on a clear day can never be forgotten.

To the north of Land's End is the sweeping curve of Whitesand Bay leading up to Cape Cornwall. It is possible to bathe off the shore with certain precautions. Directly inland is the little village of Sennen, which for many years boasted "The First and Last" house in England; and down on the shore Sennen Cove, where the families of the lighthouse men live, and the Atlantic cable comes ashore.

Whitesand Bay has historical memories; Athelstan sailed from here to conquer the Scilly Isles after his sanguinary victory at St. Buryan. It was a bold undertaking considering the means at his disposal. The shore of Whitesand, which is low-lying on an otherwise iron-bound coast, has naturally been the landing-place for those who arrived at this extremity of England. Stephen disembarked here when he first came to the country from France and so did Perkin Warbeck. In the centre of the bay the granite and slate meet and mingle.

No other place can vie with the Cornish coast for curious and suggestive names. We have here Vell-an-Dreath meaning "The Mill on the Sand." All traces of the mill have disappeared, but the tradition of it lingers. It was kept by a father and son, it is said, who found themselves attacked by a roving gang of Spaniards who had landed to harry the country. The native Cornishmen made a stout resistance, and finally escaped the back way under protection of a cloud of smoke, carrying stout sacks of flour on their backs to protect them from bullets. The Spaniards destroyed the mill, which was never rebuilt.

Close to the southern end of the bay is a detached rock called The Irish Lady, which with some imagination may be likened to a mincing dame flouncing out to sea. Such rocks are not at all uncommon in Cornwall, one, very well known, is Queen Bess at Bedruthan Steps. Towering above the lady on the mainland is Pedn Men Dhu, Black Rock Headland, a pile of massive granite. Further along we find Carn Barges, the Kites' Rock; Carn Towan, the Rock on the Sandhills; Polpry Cove, the Clay-Pit; Carn Leskez, the Rock of Light, said to be where the Druids kindled their sacred fires, but much more likely the place where faked beacon fires were lit to lure ships to destruction in the bad old days! Close off Cape Cornwall are the Brisons, two fearful shattering piles, and near them Priests' Cove, right under the headland.

The coast to the south of Land's End is even more interesting, and if any of those who say they are "disappointed" with Land's End could walk round here they would soon recover. The coast-line is serrated by innumerable small bays like deep bites and in each one some wild and strange rock-forms imitating natural objects can be seen. We pass at first by Carn Greab, Cock's Comb Rock, where a conspicuous group includes the Armed Knight, and then we come to a tiny island called Enys Dodman, which has a great archway scored through it by the action of the waves. Pardenick Point rises perpendicularly about two hundred feet from the sea; the curious "pillar" appearance of the rocks is very striking, and not less so the reddish veins which run like streams sheer down the granite in places. Anyone lingering here, as the sun sets and the shadows grow long, can make out all sorts of weird shapes and haunting faces in the cliffs, as odd as any mediaeval artist's conceptions embodied in gargoyles. We pass Mozrang Pool, the Maid's Pool, and then the Red Rock, and the Chilly Carn; next a chasm called by the poetical name of "The Song of the Sea," and so to the "Cove under the Vale." All along the coast, those who have time to explore it will find strange sea-caverns, logan-stones, natural arches and other fantastic forms.

Then we reach Tol Pedn, where is quite the grandest scenery in the whole district. Approaching from the landward side on an autumn or late summer day the heights are seen covered by a wonderful carpet of purple or crimson and gold. It is made by the intermingling of the dwarf gorse and the heather, which are so interwoven they could not be separated. As the result of this close embrace these two plants, both small, form a gorgeous tapestry of colour, and the vast heights and sounding hollows of the headland are glorified by them. Tol Pedn means Holed Headland and evidently refers to the Funnel, a great chasm a hundred feet in depth and eight feet in diameter, cut out as if by a giant cheese-scoop down to the roaring sea. Below, the tide scours the bottom at every return, and at low tide it is possible to enter from the beach. In early spring the close sward on the higher reaches is starred with little blue squills. Great care must be taken not to slip and lose one's balance on this short turf, because in Cornwall one is never fenced in by puny supports. The Chair Ladder usually attracts much wonder, it is an immense pile of upright blocks. The whole scarping and shaping of the cliff is vigorous and original, and looking down from above into one gully after another you can see the gulls float in effortless dignity over the measureless gulfs below.

Just round the corner from Tol Pedn is to be found one of the quaintest little fishing villages, Porthgwarra, where a tunnel has been cut through the solid rock to allow the fishermen to get down to their boats. The rocks are fine red granite, and with the brilliant blue of the sea on a sunny day and the yellow ochres of sand and sail there are "ready-made" pictures at every turn. Looking out from the darkness of the tunnel the colours are enhanced. One of the most attractive points about the many mighty caverns along the coast are the clean-cut, brilliantly clear pictures to be seen from their dark interiors.

All these and many other curious and fantastic things may be found by those sure of eye and foot. For one of the greatest charms of Cornwall is its variety and unexpectedness, at all events as regards the coast.

For a hundred people who go to Land's End it is safe to say only one visits the Lizard. Though the usual run of tourist conveyances have found it out, it is more difficult to get to than the western extremity, and is a little out of the way. Yet in the opinion of those who have seen both the Lizard beats even the fantastic scenery to the southward of Land's End.

The approach is nothing short of lamentable in its dulness. Except for an oasis about half-way across Goonhilly Downs, the wide, flat, dead-alive plateau occupying the heel of Cornwall, there is nothing to note. Even right on to the end the feeling of dismay grows. The meek green fields carry one down almost to the shore, for though we have come across a bit of heath _en route_ which recalls how repeatedly we have been told that the _Erica vagans_ grows here and nowhere else, we leave this behind and wind once more between grass fields toward the dreary little cluster of houses called Lizard-town, which looks not unlike a forsaken coast-guard station from the distance. To reach the famous Housel Bay Hotel we must branch off before getting to the town, and following a lane which looks as if it led merely to a lighthouse, we come quite suddenly on the building, facing due south in the centre of a little bay. Not until we have passed the hotel and got out to the cliff paths does the surprising interest of the scenery begin to unveil itself, and the orderly sanity of the fields, which vexed our eager souls, is forgotten. On the two horns of the bay stand the flashing lighthouse and Lloyds' signal station. We are here at the most southerly, as we have just been at the most westerly, point of our country.

The cliffs are carved into many fantastic and bewildering shapes. Before we have got very far we are brought up short by an immense hole or funnel, cut clean-lipped from the short turf, and just the shape of one of those paper twists shop-keepers make for sweets. It is much larger in circumference than the Funnel at Tol Pedn. No railing protects the edge; people at the Lizard are supposed to have their wits about them. By lying down flat and approaching cautiously, we can peer over and see that here also the sea runs in on the floor. This is one of the cliff vagaries made within the memory of man. On the night of February 19, 1847, the hole appeared suddenly, yet so quietly that no one knew of it until it was seen. There had apparently been a shell or roof which had given way as the sea scooped out the earth from below. Yet that such a sudden catastrophe is possible shows how little we know about what goes on under our feet.

A little further on a column of spray shoots in fluffy steam from a blow-hole every few seconds after the last billow has fallen away. Near it a huge boulder perched on a great plinth balances at an uncertain angle. How did it get there? At every turn "chairs" of stone extend a silent invitation to us to seat ourselves and gaze at the ships passing and repassing in a silent and endless procession.

The Serpentine rock streaked with hornblende, felspar, slate and green-stone, shows changing colours like a pigeon's breast. It weathers into columns and pillars and arches and caverns, as if on purpose to delight the hearts of children of a larger growth, too old for spades and pails. Only a mile or two away at Kynance Cove these wonders come to perfection in the torn and twisted rocks lying in masses on the shore, which is covered with shining sand in summer but scoured black and stony by the rough seas in winter. By Caerthillian Cove we may pass to Pentreath beach and Yellow Carn and thus to Kynance. At places the cliffs have broken away forming a natural quarry and here come the people from the little town above, and search for well-coloured fragments of serpentine to fashion into candlesticks, and brooches, and ash-trays to sell to tourists. Dark red is a rare and popular colour and dark green also; chocolate with splashes of green, like variegated marble, is often seen. There is little fishing to be done on this wild rigid coast, and beyond some rough farming and their "serpentine" shops, it is hard to see what the population live upon. The rocks at the Lizard are split more often horizontally than vertically, and instead of being sharp upright columns as the granite fragments are at Land's End, these are broad lumps giving a curious sense of steady untiring watching with uplifted heads.

One interesting point about rock scenery is that it changes so little in the course of years that the impressions of those who saw it long ago are still not out of date. There are two very simple little books, two generations old now, but full of charm when read on the spot, Mrs. Craik's _An Unsentimental Journey in Cornwall_ and the Rev. C. A. Johns's _A Week at the Lizard_, 1848. Mrs. Craik, who wrote _John Halifax, Gentleman_, came here with two nieces near the end of her life, and gives a picture of Lizard-town which might stand to-day. With a horse and "shay" they visited the various points of interest along the coast, climbed into the dank caves and mounted the slippery weed-strewn rocks. It was a bold journey to make at the time, and their taste was in advance of most of their contemporaries who had not learnt to delight in the grand and desolate places of the earth. The Rev. C. A. Johns is well known as the author of _Wild Flowers of the Field_, which ran through numerous editions and is the most popular of his many natural-history books.

Not many days after reading Mrs. Craik's book at the Lizard, I was in the light railway running to Newquay in the north of the county and saw a girl of about sixteen, deeply absorbed in a book, opposite to me. It was bound in the dingy maroon cloth so beloved by the librarians of Free Libraries, and peeping over I saw it was _John Halifax_, thus nearly sixty years after publication giving as much pleasure as when it was new! If the good lady could have known it, how pleased she would have been!

When the sun falls over the shoulder of the cliff in the west, the revolving light from the lighthouse begins to flash out with a regular monotonous beat on its long night vigil. At any time after dark one can see the huge pencil of light darting round, striking the white signal station opposite, losing itself in the sea and so returning. There is something awe-inspiring in that regular sweep of pulsing light every three minutes, hour after hour, carrying its silent sure message to those at sea. If anything happened to the Lizard light what terrible wrecks there would be on this jagged coast!

Nearly as impressive is it to catch by night the glimmer of the Morse code flashing from ships which are revealing their names and journeys to those ever-vigilant watchers in the signal station as they pass. What stories that signal station might tell of the journeyings to and fro, of the ships conveying food and clothes and necessaries from port to port! Here is a vessel bound from Galveston to Havre with cotton, she is British; about every second or third that come by is laden with coals from Cardiff; here is another from the other direction, bringing fruit from the Mediterranean to Liverpool, with all the beating up the Irish Channel yet to face; passing it, and doubtless hailing it in transit, is another Liverpool ship carrying a general cargo to Italy, and when times are peaceful and there are no scares from submarines, the great American liners from Plymouth swell the number with their enormous bulk. It is a regular, and, if one may use the expression, a well-beaten track around this great blunt headland, and it is small wonder the enemy submarines haunted it to find their prey, as men wait hidden beside the tracks of wild animals in the jungle.

V

KING ARTHUR'S LAND

Tintagel can never disappoint anyone. The very spirit of romance is in the place. If you have climbed across the narrow neck that links the "island" to the main, and passing through the low doorway of the ruined castle, have crossed the space surrounded by the broken wall, and so gone out again to the plateau above, you will find yourself among the sheep and cut off from the world, apparently swinging in space. There are great mounds all around, in shape like graves, covered with coarse tufty grass munched by the ragged sheep whose hair is blown into knots by the ceaseless wind. It takes very little imagination to picture that around lie the bodies of a mighty host of warriors, at peace at last in sound of the booming sea which clashes in its mad rush through the caverns deep beneath, with the wind whistling over them boisterously, or crooning low even on the mildest summer day.

It is quite likely, as experts say, that the present ruins date only from the twelfth or thirteenth century. Arthur may never have set foot on the tufty grass of the cube-shaped island; there may never, for that matter, have been an Arthur at all, but lying in the grass above the slaty ruins and looking through the serrated arch to the onyx-green sea, fretting the black rock, all these doubts seem simply silly and fly away light as the spume flying inland in great balls.

The spirit of Arthur and his fighting men lives here still. It may possibly have been summoned up by the thoughts of the countless host of pilgrims who have come expectantly to the most beloved of all the shrines of British history. For thoughts if repeated may conjure up visions.

And the vision of Tintagel, that needs no seeking, but comes pressing on you as insistently as the sea-laden air, is one of old-time warriors impregnably ensconced. With their castle standing on the very edge of the gulf--narrower then than now--which separated them from the mainland. Guarded by a drawbridge crossing that sharp space so that three men could well hold back an host. Protected on all other sides by the sheer cliff, with a fortification at one point where it was just possible to land. Having above a wide plateau from which to gaze seaward and landward far over the rolling slopes of the country, along the deeply broken coast with its sugar-loaves of detached rock, or else out to the shifting ocean, they were in an enviable situation. They had a well of water on the very summit of their stronghold, and pasture for sheep by the dozen to insure plenty of mutton. They could laugh to scorn any such enemies as that age could bring against them.

There are several such striking vantage points along the Cornish coast, one at Tol Pedn, another at Treryn Dinas where is the Logan Rock, and there are signs they have all been utilized, but none of them had the superb advantages of Tintagel with its wide level of turfy heights, and the living water flowing from the heart of the rock.

There is no doubt that some such man as Arthur existed, though it is hardly likely he was the model of refined sensitiveness and perfect chivalry romancers have made him out to be. At any rate he was a gallant warrior if the old chroniclers are to be believed, and it is probable that his standard of conduct was high above his age, or the legend of his virtue would not have clung to him so persistently. The notion that such a king in Cornwall would neglect such a position may be dismissed as absurd, and so we may take it that Arthur fortified himself here on the heights, from whence he ranged far and wide, even so far as Scotland, to win his victorious battles. And all proof seems to point to it that he met his death in Scotland far from the beating of his beloved savage waves in Cornwall.

All this coast is slaty shale; there is a miniature quarry just away to the west round the next headland, and the materials lying to hand were not likely to be neglected in days when transport was more of a consideration than now. So the crumbling walls which cling to the cliff are of slate, sharp and jagged, and inside the arches present a serrated edge like a crocodile's teeth. These arches are pointed which shows they were of later date than Arthur, and the rest of the masonry can hardly be said to have any style. The first mention of Tintagel in public records is in 1305, and in 1337 the castle was fairly habitable, at any rate that part of it standing on the mainland. We can imagine the original castle, which this one superseded, to have been much the same only with heavy round arches. So we can picture the past without great difficulty. And lying in peace we can repeople the place with the gorgeous figures of Tennyson's Idylls, much better known to most people than _La Mort d'Arthur_. The constant splash of the waves and the steady cropping of the sheep are broken now and again by a Woof! exactly like the growl of an angry beast. This is caused by a blow-hole in the cliff from which, when the wind is strong and onshore, the spout of water is sent out forty feet or more.

Right beneath us is a cavern cut through the solid rock from side to side, and into this the sea scours at its height, the breakers from each end meeting with a shock in the middle. The rocks, which are so black and frigid outside, are rounded within, and coloured a strange sea-green, with almost a wan look, while the floor is composed of myriads of flat stones, round and oval, all sizes, from a sixpence to a soup-plate, making a natural pavement easy to the tread. The beach at the mouth of the cave is the same, armoured by myriads and myriads of flat smooth rounded stones lying so closely together as to give the appearance of a dragon's scales; it would not be hard to conjure up imaginary dragons here for the cave is by tradition "Merlin's Cave," and magicians and dragons are always regarded as contemporaneous. These plates of slate, for they are nothing else, have had all the angles scoured off them by the scourging surge. The village people collect them, picking out all that are of one size, to form neat pavements. You also see them set like some strange mosaic on the fronts of the houses, stuck in mortar, and making a deep frieze; the effect is not beautiful.

But the ruined castle on the island is not all that remains of man's handiwork here, for high on the mainland, on the great boss of earth fronting the island, are the remains of another castle, now falling piecemeal into the gulf below as the cliff crumbles. Some hold that the "island" was originally an island in reality, and that the slender neck of rock now linking it to the mainland is the result of cliff-falls and debris. But whether that was so or not the purpose of the landward castle can only be guessed. It may have been an outwork, though that seems rather unnecessary. Over it hover screaming jacks, who love the sheltering crevices of artificial walls, and occasionally may be seen a red-legged and beaked Cornish chough which here alone on the Cornish coast is not extinct, and is supposed by the children to re-embody the spirit of King Arthur.

Arthur lived about A.D. 500. His story is so overlaid with legend that it is difficult to find any grains of truth concerning him. Tennyson makes him of miraculous birth, cast upon the shore by a wave at Tintagel, of which the earlier name was Dundagil, but even amid the romantic surroundings of Tintagel we cannot swallow that bit of poetic licence.

Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, went to pay homage to the King of Britain, Uther Pendragon of glorious name, at the noble city of Winchester, and, like a foolish man, took his beautiful wife Igerna with him. Uther kept his eye on the lady and presently the unhappy husband, having returned to his domain of Cornwall, was besieged in the strong castle of Damelioc, not far from Tintagel. Damelioc, represented to this day by an earthwork, is on the road running through Delabole to Padstow, or more correctly Rock, and is about eight miles from Tintagel. Meantime, Gorlois had left his wife in Tintagel, probably thinking his own life would be safer if he were apart from her, for he must have been well aware of all the consequences his foolish indiscretion had brought about. This did not save him; he was slain, and meantime the British King obtained access to Tintagel and wooed the lady.

In due time Arthur was born, and succeeded to the chieftainship or Dukedom of Cornwall, apparently without question, and proved himself one of the strongest and bravest rulers that ever held high position. His arms were everywhere triumphant, and about a dozen victories are placed to his credit, but he fell at last, fighting his traitorous nephew Mordred somewhere about the year 542, when Mordred was slain and Arthur, mortally wounded, carried from the battlefield to die. This was the Battle of Camulodunum and it was for long supposed to have been fought quite near Tintagel, close by the present town of Camelford, the similarity of names giving colour to the error. Besides there was a very fierce battle fought near Camelford in some remote time, and the tradition of it is strong to this day. The place is marked by Slaughter Bridge, to be found by going half a mile down a side road from the station. It is a small bridge over a tiny stream, and it is supported by great blocks of stone instead of piers. If you linger there a girl comes from a rough shanty near and says she will show you King Arthur's tomb. A short scramble takes you down steep banks where tree-trunks grow out horizontally turning up at an angle to reach the light, and brambles and creepers cling thickly, while the long hart's-tongue ferns dip in the running water, floating down stream like strange seaweed; then you see a great monolith with a Latin inscription, of which the only word still decipherable is "filius." You point out to the little guide that in all probability King Arthur was not buried here at all but in Scotland where the evidence shows that the Battle of Camulodunum was fought, and she makes no objection provided the fee is forthcoming.

No doubt some great chieftain was laid here after the battle, where thousands were killed, so that a thousand years later the bridge retains the name of Slaughter Bridge, but it is likely the event took place long after Arthur's death. For its date is generally now acknowledged to be the year 823 in the time of King Egbert. It was between the Britons and Saxons, and history does not say which was victorious. It may have been a drawn fight, in which case the ground was strewn with bodies and the waters of the stream dyed crimson all for nothing.

It is in later times that the dignity of King has been conferred on Arthur, and some suppose he was King of Britain; but it seems more likely that he gained slices of territory spasmodically as the result of fighting, and was really only ruler in his own corner of the country continuously, though his battles spread his name far and wide. There were so many rulers in those days and the country was so cut up that it is not likely he was able to assert himself supremely, and the conquests of Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Gaul and Spain attributed to him are pure legends. In a very interesting little book called _King Arthur in Cornwall_ by W. Howship Dickinson, the case is put clearly:--

"The evidence which is wanting with regard to Arthur's battle on the Camel comes to light on the Firth of Forth. There is reason to suppose that tradition did not err in the fatal association of Arthur and Mordred, though the place of the last scene was not Cornwall but Scotland. The name Camlan which has been freely given by later writers to the supposed battle on the Camel, is not to be found there, nor, so far as I can ascertain, in Cornwall.

"Skene and Stuart Glennie maintain with much converging evidence that Camlan is Camelon on the river Carron in the valley of the Forth, where it is said are the remains of a Roman town. Here, according to Scotch tradition Arthur and Mordred met. We have evidence which appears to be sufficient that Mordred was King of the Picts, or, as he is sometimes termed, King of Scotland, and the head of a confederacy of Picts, Scots and Saxons, or, as some authorities have it of Picts, Scots and renegade Britons. With this composite army he gave battle to Arthur and his faithful British force, in which the latter were defeated and Arthur slain.

"It is worth noting as in favour of the Scottish location of the battle that Geoffrey [of Monmouth] who places it on the Camel states Mordred's force to have consisted of Picts and Scots. It is surely improbable that Arthur could have been confronted in Cornwall by a great army of these northern savages.... It may be added that an earthwork with double lines of circumvallation in the neighbouring valley of the Tay now known as Barry Hill, is designated by tradition as Mordred's castle."

Where Arthur was buried will ever remain an open question; Glastonbury long claimed the honour but that has for some time been discredited by those who have gone into the evidence. The romantic account of his "passing," as given by Malory and Tennyson is very fine. It tells how Arthur, wounded to death, is carried down to the waterside and gives his sword, Excalibur, to Sir Bedivere to throw into the water, and how the knight, after some hesitation, does as he wishes, when a hand and arm arise out of the surface of the lake, brandish the sword three times and disappear. Then a little barge appears and carries the dying King off to the Vale of Avallon from whence he will one day return. The grand myth about Excalibur is generally said locally to have taken place at a dreary little pool known as Dozmare, a lonely tarn, flat and bleak, fringed by reeds, on a tableland several hundred feet above the sea near Brown Willy, and on this assumption many a persevering tourist has paid it a visit. But Tennyson in describing the scene took a much more beautiful place as his model, for he describes Looe Pool which could by no possibility be associated with the tragedy. This is close to Helston at the entrance to the Lizard Peninsula. It is two or three miles long, and formed by the widening out of the little river Cober. The water formerly escaped into the sea but gradually a bar was built up, and there was an old custom by which the Corporation of Helston had to present the lord of the manor with two leather purses, each containing three halfpence, in consideration of which they were then allowed to cut through the bar, but that has long been discontinued. The bar is now a mighty thing where great stones are hurled by powerful waves and even on a calm day the thunder of the surf breaking on it is heard for miles. The water of the lake is otherwise drained. Its banks are well wooded.

In Tennyson's _Mort d'Arthur_ when Sir Bedivere, last survivor of the Knights of the Round Table, carried his mortally wounded ruler from the stricken field--

"On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full."

And when Sir Bedivere, charged with the mission of throwing the magic sword Excalibur into the water, left the dying King:--

"From the ruin'd shrine he stept
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old Knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He stepping down
By zigzag paths and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake."

Thence twice he returned faithless, his mission unperformed, to report:--

"I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag."

All around Tintagel there are innumerable references to King Arthur. In fact it might be said that only the devil is more popular in this respect than Arthur, for his name occurs perhaps a little more frequently. Mr. Dickinson says: "We have King Arthur's Hall, Hunting Seat, Bed, Quoit, Cups and Saucers, Tomb and Grave." The cups and saucers are the round holes weathered in the stones on the summit of Tintagel island. The grave is a sepulchral mound lying within Warbstowe Bury, one of the largest British camps in Cornwall. This is not very far north of Boscastle. It is a vast circular mound with a sort of crater on the top, and in the middle of this is another mound, which has been called a Viking's grave and the Giant's grave as well as King Arthur's.

Another place much associated with King Arthur, which cannot be passed over, is the earthwork known as Cardinham Castle about four miles east of Bodmin. This has been identified by good authorities with Caradigan where Arthur held his court, to which there are many references in Arthurian legends.

On the other side of Tintagel, on the road between Camelford and Wadebridge, and not four miles from the latter place, is Killibury Castle identified with Kelliwic. Arthur was "lord of Kelliwic," and these associations all taken together carry a fair amount of evidence as to the presence of the chivalrous ruler in this district.