Chapter VII: London, South-West to Land's End (3)

The port of Plymouth comprises what are called the "Three Towns"--Plymouth proper, covering about a square mile, Stonehouse, and Devonport, where the great naval dockyard is located. Plymouth Sound is an estuary of the English Channel, and receives the Plym at its north-eastern border and the Tamar at its north-western, the sound being about three miles square and protected by the great breakwater a mile long, with a lighthouse, and defended by forts. The Plym broadens into the Catwater, used as a haven for merchant-vessels and transports and capable of furnishing anchorage to a thousand ships at one time. The Tamar broadens into the Hamoaze, which is the naval harbor, and is four miles long, with sufficient anchorage-ground for the entire British navy. Sutton Pool is a tidal harbor now used by merchant-vessels. The coasts of Plymouth Sound are rocky and abrupt, and strong fortresses frown at every entrance. It is the naval dockyard that gives Plymouth its chief importance: this is at Devonport, which is strongly fortified by breastworks, ditches, embankments, and heavy batteries. The great dockyard encloses an area of ninety-six acres and has thirty-five hundred feet of water-frontage. There are here five docks and also building-slips, where the great British war-ships are constructed. Another enclosure of seventy-two acres at Point Keyham is used for repairing ships, and a canal seventy feet wide runs through the yards to facilitate the movement of materials. Immense roofs cover the docks. East of Devonport, divided from it by a creek, and adjoining Plymouth, is Stonehouse. Here are the great victualling yard, marine barracks, and naval hospital. The Royal William Victualling Yard occupies fourteen acres on a tongue of land at the mouth of the Tamar, and cost $7,500,000 to build. Here the stores are kept and naval supplies furnished, its great features being the vast government bakehouse, the cooperage, and the storehouses. Its front is protected by a redoubt, and to the eastward are the tasteful grounds of the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe's winter villa. The marine barracks, which have the finest mess-room in England, will accommodate fifteen hundred men; the naval hospital, northward of Stonehouse, will furnish beds for twelve hundred. There are three thousand men employed about these great docks and stores, and they form the most extensive naval establishment in the world. Near Mount Wise are the Raglan Barracks, where there is a display of cannon taken from the Turks.

In Plymouth Sound is a bold pyramidal rock, the Isle of St. Nicholas, which is a formidable fortress. Mount Edgcumbe is on the western shore, and on the eastern side is Plymouth's pretty park, known as the Hoe, where the old Eddystone Lighthouse will be set up. Having come down the Plym, we will now ascend the Tamar, past the huge docks and stores, and about five miles above see the great Albert Bridge, which carries a railway, at a height of one hundred feet, from the hills of Devon over to those of Cornwall on the western shore. It is built on nineteen arches, two broad ones of four hundred and fifty-five feet span each bridging the river, the entire structure being two thousand two hundred and forty feet long. Out in the English Channel, fourteen miles from Plymouth, is its famous beacon--the Eddystone Lighthouse. Here Winstanley perished in the earlier lighthouse that was swept away by the terrible storm of 1703, and here Smeaton built his great lighthouse in 1759, one hundred feet high, which has recently been superseded by the new lighthouse. The Eddystone Rocks consist of twenty-two gneiss reefs extending about six hundred and fifty feet, in front of the entrance to Plymouth Sound. Smeaton's lighthouse, modelled after the trunk of a sturdy oak in Windsor Park, became the model for all subsequent lighthouses. It is as firm to-day as when originally built, but the reef on which it rests has been undermined and shattered by the joint action of the waves and the leverage of the tall stone column, against which the seas strike with prodigious force, causing it to vibrate like the trunk of a tree in a storm. The foundation-stone of the new lighthouse was laid on a reef one hundred and twenty-seven feet south of the old one in 1878. It is built of granite and rises one hundred and thirty-eight feet above the rock, its light being visible seventeen miles: it was first lighted May 18, 1882.

TAVISTOCK.

A short distance up the Tamar it receives its little tributary the Tavy, running through a deep ravine, and on its banks are the ruins of Tavistock Abbey, founded in the tenth century and dedicated to St. Mary. Orgarius, the Earl of Devonshire, was admonished in a dream to build it, but his son Ordulph finished it. He was of great strength and gigantic stature, could break down gates and stride across a stream ten feet wide. They still preserve, we are told, some of Ordulph's huge bones in Tavistock Church. The Danes plundered and burned the abbey, but it was rebuilt in greater splendor, and its abbot sat in the House of Peers. When it was disestablished, like Woburn it fell to Lord Russell, and it is now owned by the Duke of Bedford. The remains of the grand establishment, however, are but scanty, and its best memory is that of the printing-press set up by the monks, which was the second press established in England. The Duke of Bedford's attractive villa of Endsleigh is near Tavistock, and a short distance south of the town is Buckland Abbey, built on the river-bank by the Countess of Devon in the thirteenth century. This was the home of Sir Francis Drake, and is still held by his descendants. Drake was born in a modest cottage on the banks of the Tavy about the year 1539. North of Tavistock, on the little river Lyd, are the ruins of Lydford Castle, surrounded by a village of rude cottages. Here originated the "law of Lydford," a proverb expressive of hasty judgment:

"First hang and draw,
Then hear the cause by Lydford law."

One chronicler accounts for this proverb by the wretched state of the castle jail, in which imprisonment was worse than death. At Lydford is a remarkable chasm where a rude arch is thrown across an abyss, at the bottom of which, eighty feet below, the Lyd rattles along in its contracted bed. This is a favorite place for suicides, and the tale is still told of a benighted horseman, caught in a heavy storm, who spurred his horse along the road at headlong speed to seek shelter in the village. Next day it was found that the storm had swept the bridge away, and the rider shuddered to think how his horse on that headlong ride through the tempest had leaped over the abyss without his knowing it.

THE NORTHERN COAST OF DEVON.

Exmoor is a broad strip of almost mountainous moorland extending through the northern borders of Somerset and Devon and down to the coast of Bristol Channel. Its hills descend precipitously to the sea, so that only small brooks flow northward from them, excepting the Lyn, which manages to attain the dignity of a river by flowing for some distance among the hills parallel to the coast. It was but recently that good roads were constructed across this lonely moor, and on its northern edge, where the craggy headland of Greenaleigh is thrust out into the sea, is the harbor of Minehead, with a little fishing-village skirting its shores. A short distance inland, and seated at the bases of the steep Brendon Hills, which rise in sharp wooded slopes above its houses, is the little market-town of Dunster. On an outlying hill, projecting from the mass, the original lord of Dunster built his castle, perching it upon a rocky crag that Nature herself designed for a fortress. The Saxons called it their "Hill-tower." Its picturesque mass of buildings is of various dates, but much more modern than their early day, most of the present structure having been built in Queen Elizabeth's reign. The castle was held for King Charles in the Civil War, and besieged by the Parliamentary troops, whose commander sent this bloodthirsty message to its governor: "If you will deliver up the castle, you shall have fair quarter: if not, expect no mercy: your mother shall be in front to receive the first fury of your cannon." The governor promptly and bravely replied, "If you do what you threaten, you do the most barbarous and villainous act that was ever done. My mother I honor, but the cause I fight for and the masters I serve are God and the king.--Mother, do you forgive me, and give me your blessing, and let the rebels answer for spilling that blood of yours, which I would save with the loss of mine own if I had enough for both my master and yourself." The mother also without hesitation answered him: "Son, I forgive thee, and pray God to bless thee, for this brave resolution. If I live I shall love thee the better for it: God's will be done!" Whether the atrocious threat would have been put into execution was never decided, for a strong Royalist force soon appeared, routing the besiegers, capturing a thousand of them, and releasing the lady. But the castle was soon afterwards taken for the Parliament by Colonel Blake, subsequently the admiral. It was then demolished, and now the summit of the flat-topped hill, where formerly was the keep, is devoted to the peaceful amusement of a bowling-green, from which there are exquisite views of the Brendon Hills and far away over the Bristol Channel to the distant coast of Wales. It was at Dunster Castle that William Prynne was shut up a prisoner by Cromwell. Prynne had been pilloried, shorn of his ears, and imprisoned by King Charles I. for his denunciations of the court, and then indulging in the same criticism of the Protector, he was confined at Dunster. It is now the head-quarters for those who love the exciting pleasures of stag-hunting on Exmoor.

Journeying westward over the hills from Minehead, which is just now endeavoring, though with only partial success, to convert itself into a fashionable watering-place, Dunkery Beacon is seen raising its head inland--a brown, heathy moorland elevated seventeen hundred feet above the sea. There is a grand panorama disclosed from its summit, though it is a toilsome ascent to get up there and overlook the fifteen counties it can display. Far below is the level shore of Porlock Bay, with the little village set in at the base of the cliffs. Here Southey was sheltered at its inn, and wrote a sonnet while he was "by the unwelcome summer rain detained;" and here the village has slept ever since the Danes harried and Harold burned it. Then the road climbs laboriously up the hill again to Porlock Moor, and as the top is reached, far away is seen a little grassy basin running like a streak off towards the north-west, and enclosed by steep hills, in which it is ultimately lost. This is the valley of the Lyn, and joining it is another little glen, with a hamlet of white cottages at the junction: this is the Oare valley, the centre of some of the most stirring traditions of Exmoor, embodied in Blackmore's novel of _Lorna Doone_. Two centuries ago a lawless clan established themselves in this lonely glen, from which issues the Bagworthy Water not far away from the little village of Oare. Here was Jan Ridd's farm, and near it the cataract of the Bagworthy Water-slide, while above this cataract, in the recesses of Doone Glen, was the robbers' home, whence they issued to plunder the neighboring country. The novel tells how Jan Ridd, who was of herculean strength, was standing with his bride Lorna at the altar of the little church in Oare when a bullet wounded her. Out rushed Jan from the presence of his wife, dead as he thought, to pursue the murderer. He was unarmed, and rode after him over the moorland, tearing from an oak a mighty bough as he passed under it. To this day the rent in "Jan Ridd's tree" is shown. Then came the struggle, and an Exmoor bog swallowed up the murderer, who was the last of the robber chieftains; and afterwards the bride recovered and the happy pair were united. Exmoor is the only place remaining in the kingdom where the wild stag is still hunted with hounds, the season being in the early autumn, when all the inns are crowded, and on the day of a "meet" all the country seems alive.

LYNTON AND LYNMOUTH.

From Oare the valley of the Lyn can be followed down to the sea, flowing through its wooded gorge and disclosing many pretty views. It runs rapidly over the rocks, and, when at last seeking the sea, the little stream manages to escape out of the hills that have so long encompassed it, we again find coupled together an upper and a lower town--Lynton, perched hundreds of feet above on the crags, and Lynmouth, down by the water's edge, both in grandly picturesque locations. Crowded between the bases of the crags and the pebbly beach is the irregular line of old cottages beside the bubbling stream, with creeping vines climbing over their walls and thatched roofs, while beyond is thrust out the ancient pier that made the port of Lynmouth. Up on the crags, with houses nestling here in nooks and perched there upon cliffs, Lynton mounts by zigzag paths, until, on a rocky terrace above, it gets room to spread into a straggling street. The two streams called the East and West Lyn unite here before seeking the sea, and join their currents at the edge of the town. Here they leap over the boulders:

"Cool and clear, cool and clear,
By shining shingle and foaming weir,
Under the crag where the ouzel sings,
And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings."

Southey rapturously described the East Lyn Vale as the "finest spot, except Cintra and Arrabida, that I ever saw." It is like a miniature glen in the Alps or the Pyrenees, and every turn in the road up to the Waters-meet, where the Brendon joins the Lyn, discloses new beauties. It is an exquisite combination of wood, rock, and stream that baffles all description. Gentle flowers grow here to luxuriant perfection, protected from all chilling blasts and with ample moisture to assist the sunshine in their cultivation. But barely a mile east of Lynton on the coast there is told a different story: there is a valley of rocks, where between two ridges of hills the vale is covered with stones and almost completely laid bare, a terrific mass of boulders, the very skeleton of the earth. Overhanging the sea is the gigantic "Castle Rock," while facing it from the inland side, at an elbow of the valley, is a queer pile of crags known as the "Devil's Cheese-Ring." From the castle is a view over the sea and of the romantic towns, with the little river flowing alongside and the tower on Lynmouth beach, while far westward the moorland spreads away towards those other romantic spots, Ilfracombe and Clovelly.

COMBE MARTIN AND ILFRACOMBE.

Let us skirt along the precipitous Devonshire coast westward from the Lyn, where the cliffs rise high and abruptly from the water, with foliage on the hills above them and sheep browsing like little white specks beyond. Thus Exmoor is prolonged westward in a broad and lofty ridge of undulating hills, through which a stream occasionally carves its devious course in a deep and sheltered valley that comes out to the sea between bold, rocky headlands. Far out over the sea loom up the coasts of Wales in purple clouds. Soon in a breach in the wall of crags we find Combe Martin, its houses dotted among the gardens and orchards clustering thickly around the red stone church. Here were silver-mines long ago, and here lived Martin of Tours, to whom William the Conqueror granted the manor which to this day bears his name. The neighboring hills grow the best hemp in Devon, and the crags guarding the harbor are known as the Great and Little Hangman, the former, which is the higher, standing behind the other. The local tradition says that once a fellow who had stolen a sheep was carrying the carcase home on his back, having tied the hind legs together around his neck. He paused for breath at the top of the hill, and, resting against a projecting slab, poised the carcase on the top, when it suddenly slipped over and garroted him. He was afterwards found dead, and thus named the hills. Near here was born, in 1522, Bishop Jewel of Salisbury, of whom it is recorded by that faithful biographer Fuller that he "wrote learnedly, preached painfully, lived piously, died peacefully." To the westward are Watersmouth, with its natural arch in the slaty rocks bordering the sea, and Hillsborough rising boldly to guard a tiny cove. Upon this precipitous headland is an ancient camp, and it overlooks Ilfracombe, the chief watering-place of the northern Devonshire coast. Here a smart new town has rapidly developed, with paths cut upon the cliffs and encroachments made along the shore. High upon a pyramidal headland stands the ancient chapel where in the olden time the forefathers of the village prayed to St. Nicholas for deliverance from shipwreck. Now a lighthouse is relied on for this service. The promontory is connected with a still bolder and loftier headland, the Capstone Rock. The town is built on the slope of the hills overlooking these huge round-topped crags, but its streets do not run down to sand-beaches. There is little but rocks on the shore and reefs in the water, worn into ridges of picturesque outline, over which the surf breaks grandly in time of storm. We are told that in a cave near by, Sir William Tracy, one of the murderers of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, concealed himself while waiting to escape from England. He and his accomplices were ordered to purge themselves by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but Tracy was not able to accomplish it. The winds of heaven always drove him back whenever he tried to embark, for he had struck the first blow at Becket. He was buried in Morthoe Church beyond Ilfracombe.

MORTE POINT AND BIDEFORD.

A few miles westward the coast-line suddenly bends to the southward, the angle being marked by a wild, rocky headland known as Morte Point, which the Devonshire proverb describes as "the place on earth which Heaven made last and the devil will take first." It is a chaos of rock-ridges, the sea washing against it on three sides, and is a noted place for wrecks. Far out at sea can be seen a half-submerged black rock which the Normans christened the Morte Stone, or "Death Rock." To the southward sweeps a fringe of yellow sand around Morte Bay, and behind the headland is the little village of Morthoe, where Tracy is buried. Beyond the boundary of the bay, at Baggy Point, is another and broader bay, whose shores make a grand sweep to the westward again. This is Barnstaple Bay, into which flows a wide estuary forming the outlet of two rivers: the northernmost is the Taw, and at the head of its estuary is Barnstaple. The other is the Torridge, and upon it, at about nine miles distance from Barnstaple, is the small but prettier town of Bideford. This is described by Kingsley as a little white town, sloping upward from its broad tidal river, paved with yellow sands, and having a many-arched old bridge towards the uplands to the westward. The wooded hills close in above the town, but in front, where the rivers join, they sink into a hazy level of marsh and low undulations of sand. The town has stood almost as it is now since Grenvil, the cousin of William the Conqueror, founded it. It formerly enjoyed great commercial prosperity under the patronage of the Grenvilles, reaching its height in the seventeenth century. The old quay remains. The ancient bridge, which is a remarkable one, was built five hundred years ago, and is constructed on twenty-four piers, firmly founded, yet shaking under the footstep. The superstitious say it is of miraculous origin, for when they began to build it some distance farther up the river, each night invisible hands removed the stones to their present position. It is also a wealthy bridge and of noble rank, having its heraldic coat-of-arms (a ship and a bridge proper on a plain field) and owning broad estates, with the income of which "the said miraculous bridge has from time to time founded chantries, built schools, waged suits-at-law, and, finally, given yearly dinners, and kept for that purpose the best-stocked cellar of wines in all Devon."

CLOVELLY.

The coast of Barnstaple Bay sweeps around to the westward again, and here, under the precipitous crags, nestling in one of the most picturesque nooks in all England, is Clovelly. From an inland plateau of considerable elevation the land falls steeply to the sea, with a narrow strip of sand or shingle sometimes interposed, whereon the surf dashes before it reaches the rocks. Dense foliage, with here and there a protruding crag, overhangs the cliffs. Ravines occasionally furrow the rocky wall, and in one of these Clovelly is situated, beginning with some scattered houses on the margin of the plateau above, descending the cliff in one steep street, and spreading out about a miniature harbor on the edge of the sea. There are few such streets to be seen elsewhere--not made for wheeled vehicles, but paved in a series of broad steps, over which the donkeys and the population plod with the produce of the fleet of fishing-boats the village owns. It is narrow, with strangely-shaped houses jumbled together alongside, and balconies and bay-windows, chimneys and gables--all mixed up together. Here Kingsley spent most of his boyhood, and hither flock the artists to paint odd pictures for almost every British art-exhibition. Its little pier was built in Richard II.'s time, when as now it was a landing-place for the mackerel-and herring-boats. This quay has recently been somewhat enlarged. Clovelly Court, the home of the Careys, is near by, with its beautiful park extending out to the tall cliffs overhanging the sea. On one craggy point, known as Gallantry Bower, and five hundred feet above the waves, was an old watch-tower of the Normans, now reduced to a mere ring of stones; and to the westward a few miles the bold rocks of Hartland Point mark another angle in the coast as it bends southward towards Cornwall. Eleven miles out to sea, rising four hundred feet and guarded all around by grim precipices, is Lundy Island. Here in a little cove are some fishermen's huts, while up on the top is a lighthouse, and near it the ruins of the old Moresco Castle. We have already referred to Sir Walter Raleigh's judicial murder: it was accomplished mainly through the treachery of his near kinsman, Sir Lewis Stukely, then vice-admiral of Devon. This and other actions caused Stukely to be almost universally despised, and he was finally insulted by Lord Howard of Effingham, when he complained to the king. "What should I do with him?" asked James. "Hang him? On my sawl, mon, if I hung all that spoke ill of thee, all the trees in the island were too few." Being soon afterwards detected in the royal palace debasing the coin, he fled to Devon, a ruined man. But he found no friends, and, every door being closed against him, he sailed out to Lundy Island, and died alone in a chamber of the ruined castle.

CORNWALL.

Pursuing the bold shores of Cornwall southward, we pass many crags and headlands, notably the Duke of Cornwall Harbor, protected by high projecting cliffs, and just below find the ruins of King Arthur's castle of Tintagel, located amid some of the most romantic scenery of this grand line of coast. Here King Arthur is supposed to have been born, and the fortress, built on a high rock almost surrounded by the sea, was evidently of great strength. Here on the shore are King Arthur's Cliffs, and their attractions, with the little church of Tintagel and the partly-ruined fishing-town of Bossiney, make the place a popular resort for poets and painters. Not far away in the interior, and standing near the Tamar River on the top of a steep hill, is Launceston Castle, with the town built on the adjacent slopes. The ruins, which are of great antiquity, cover considerable surface, the walls being ten or twelve feet thick, and the keep rising high upon the top of the hill, nearly one hundred feet in diameter. This keep is said to have been an ancient British structure. Old Roman and also leather coins have been found in it, and it was a renowned stronghold when William the Norman came to England and gave it to Robert, Earl of Moreton. It now belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall. It was garrisoned for King Charles in the Civil War, and was one of his last supports. Westward in Cornwall is Camelford, over which frown the two Cornish mountains, Rowtor and Brown Willy, a short distance to the southward, rising respectively thirteen hundred and thirteen hundred and eighty feet. The Cornish range forms the backbone of the narrow peninsula which now juts out to the south-westward, marking the extreme point of England, and down which we will gradually journey. Crossing the mountains, we come to Liskeard, in a beautiful country filled with ancient Roman remains. Going down to the southern coast, we reach Fowey with its picturesque harbor and pier, with the Sharpitor and Kilmarth Mountains beyond, twelve hundred and twelve hundred and seventy-seven feet high respectively. Fowey harbor, sheltered by high hills richly clothed with green, is the "haven under the hill" of which the balladist sings, and near its quaint old pier, almost covered with houses, is Fowey Church, recently effectually restored.

THE LIZARD PENINSULA.

The Cornish peninsula upon approaching its termination divides into two, with the semicircular sweep of Mount's Bay between them. To the southward juts out the Lizard, and to the westward Land's End. While the latter is the westernmost extremity of England, the Lizard is usually the earliest headland that greets the mariner. The Lizard peninsula is practically almost an island, the broad estuary of the Helford River on one side and a strange inlet called Loo Pool on the other narrowing its connecting isthmus to barely two miles width. To the northward of the Helford River is the well-known port of Falmouth. Inland are the great Cornwall tin-and copper-mines, the former having been worked for centuries, while the latter are now probably of the greater importance. Competition and the costlier working of the tin-mines have caused many of them to be abandoned. These metals are mostly mined on the black moorlands, which offer little attraction to the tourist, who gladly avoids them for the picturesque shores of Falmouth harbor. A broad estuary guarded by bold headlands forms Carrick Roads, and the western one of these also guards the entrance to Falmouth harbor, which Leland describes as being in his day "the principal haven of all Britain." Though long frequented, however, no town stood on its shores until the seventeenth century. When Raleigh came back from his voyage to Guiana there was but a single house on the shore, where his crew were lodged, and he, being impressed with the advantages of the location for a port, laid before Queen Elizabeth a plan for the foundation of a town. But it was a long while before anything came of it, and the place was not named Falmouth or incorporated until the reign of Charles II. It became a post-office packet-station for the Atlantic ports in the last century, and Byron in his day described it as containing "many Quakers and much salt fish." Its Cornish name is Pen-combick, meaning "the village in the hollow of the headland," which has been corrupted by the mariner into "Penny-come-quick," because on one occasion the landlady of the solitary inn sold the liquor engaged for a party of visitors to a parcel of thirsty Dutch sailors who had just landed, and, being taken to task for it explained that the "penny come so quick" she could not deny them. Pendennis Castle guards the entrance to Carrick Roads, and was built by Henry VIII., being enlarged by Elizabeth. It and Raglan were the last castles holding out for King Charles. Lightning greatly injured Pendennis in the last century. On the opposite portal of the harbor stands St. Mawe's Castle. The ramparts of Pendennis afford a view of extreme beauty.

On the narrow neck of land uniting the Lizard peninsula to the mainland stands Helston, formerly guarded by a castle that has long since disappeared, and named, we are told, from the great block of granite that once formed the portal of the infernal regions. The master of those dominions once, when he went abroad, carried his front door with him, and was met in this neighborhood by St. Michael, whereupon there was a "bit of a fight" between the two adversaries. His Satanic Majesty was defeated, and, dropping his front door, fled. The great boulder, which thus named the town, is built into a wall back of the Angel Inn, and they hold an annual festival on May 8th to commemorate the event. Loo Pool cuts deeply into the land to the westward of Helston, and the district south of it is an elevated plateau, bare and treeless generally, but containing many pretty glens, while the shore is lined with sequestered coves. Here grow the Cornish heath-flowers, which are most beautiful in the early autumn, while the serpentine rocks of its grand sea-cliffs, relieved by sparkling golden crystals and veins of green, red, and white, make fine ornaments. Upon the coast, southward from Helston, is Mullyon Cove, a characteristic specimen of the Lizard scenery. A glen winds down to the sea, displacing the crags to get an outlet, and disclosing their beautiful serpentine veins. A pyramidal rock rises on one hand, a range of serpentine cliffs on the other, and a flat-topped island in front. In the serpentine cliffs is the portal of a cave that can be penetrated for over two hundred feet, and was a haunt of the smugglers in former days, the revenue officers generally winking at them for a share of the spoils. We are told that in the last century the smugglers here had six vessels, manned by two hundred and thirty-four men and mounting fifty-six cannon--a formidable fleet--and when Falmouth got a collector sufficiently resolute to try to break them up, they actually posted handbills offering rewards for his assassination. At one place on shore they had a battery of six-pounders, which did not hesitate to fire on the king's ships when they became too inquisitive. The coast is full of places about which tales are told of the exploits of the smugglers, but the crime has long since become extinct there because it no longer pays. South of Mullyon are the bold headlands of Pradanack Point and Vellan Head, while beyond we come to the most noted spot on the Lizard peninsular coast.

KYNANCE COVE AND LIZARD HEAD.

Kynance Cove is the opening of one of the many shallow valleys indenting the inland plateau, with crags and skerries thrown over the sea, showing that the cliffs on the shore have not, as usual, maintained an unbroken front to the waves, but have been knocked about in wild confusion. Groups of islands dot the cove; Steeple Rock rears its solitary pinnacle aloft; the Lion Rock crouches near the southern verge. It is as wild a place as can well be imagined, and at low water strips of sand connect these rocks with the mainland, though the quickly-rising waters often compel the visitor to run for it. At the water's edge, when the tide is low, little wave-worn caverns are disclosed in the cliffs which are known as the "Drawing-Room," the "Parlor," etc. On the smooth face of the landward slope of one of the larger islands there are two orifices looking like the slit of a letter-box. The upper is called the "Post-Office," and the lower one the "Bellows." If you hold a sheet of paper in the former a gust of air will suddenly suck it into the aperture. Then if you look into the "Post-Office" to investigate its secrets, a column of spray will as suddenly deluge you with a first-class shower-bath. This is on Asparagus Island, and by climbing to the top of the rock the mystery is solved. The rock is almost severed by a fissure opening towards the sea: a wave surges in and spurts from the orifices on the landward side, then recedes and sucks the air back through them. From the cove at Kynance down to the extremity of the Lizard the scenery is everywhere fine. Here is the southernmost extremity of England, there being three headlands jutting into the sea near one another, the westernmost being the Old Lizard Head. Upon the middle one are the lighthouses that warn the mariner. Black cliffs above, and a sea studded with reefs below, give this place a forbidding aspect. One of the reefs is known as "Man-of-War Rock," from the wreck of a vessel there, and the weapons cast upon the neighboring shore gave it the name of the "Pistol Meadow." The other headland supports a telegraph-station, and a submarine cable goes down into the sea, to reappear again upon the distant shores of Portugal. From here the signals are sent that give notice of arriving ships. Beneath the cliffs rises out of the sea that strange black crag, looking like a projecting pulpit, which is known as the Bumble Rock. In the green sward above the cliffs a yawning gulf opens its rocky mouth, and is called the Lion's Den. It terminates in a rocky tunnel which communicates with the sea through a natural archway. This was a cavern, the rocky roof of which fell in about thirty-five years ago. Nestling under the middle headland is the tiny port of Polpeor, the little harbor of the Lizard, a fishermen's paradise in a small way. Around on the eastern coast of the peninsula the rocks are also fine, and here are the fishing-villages of Lizard Town and Landewednack, the latter having a strange old church, reputed to be the last in which a sermon was preached in the Cornish tongue. The grave of one of the rectors tells that he lived to be one hundred and twenty years old, for people live long in this delicious climate. These villages are devoted to the pilchard-fishery, and during the season the lookout-men can be seen perched on the cliffs watching for the approach of a shoal, to warn the fishing-boats that are ready to put to sea from the sheltered coves below. Great crags are tumbled into the ocean, and the coast abounds in caves, with occasionally a quarry for the serpentine. Beyond can be traced the dim outline of the headlands guarding Falmouth entrance. This is a unique district, whose rock-bound coast is a terror to the mariner, but a delight to the geologist and artist, and whose recesses, where the Cornish dialect still flourishes among the old folk, are about the only places in England not yet penetrated by the railway, which has gridironed the British kingdom everywhere else.

ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.

The western peninsula of Cornwall juts far out beyond Mount's Bay, which acquires its name from what is probably the most remarkable crag in all this wonderful region. This was the Iktis of the ancient geographers, an object so conspicuous as to attract attention in all ages. It is a mass of granite rising from the sands, covering about twenty-five acres, and the top of the church which crowns it is elevated two hundred and thirty-eight feet. It is impossible by either pen or pencil to give an adequate idea of St. Michael's Mount--of the shattered masses of the rock itself, its watch-turrets and batteries, the turf and sea-plants niched in its recesses, and the gray, lichen-covered towers that rise from the summit. Cornish tradition says that the giant Cormoran built the first fortress here; and he is one of those unfortunate giants whose fate is told under the name of Corincus in the veritable history of Jack the Giant-killer. The archangel St. Michael afterwards appeared to some hermits on its rocks, and this gave the mount its religious character and name. Milton has written of it in _Lycidas_:

"Or whether thou to our moist views denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold."

It was always a strongly-defended place, and became a Benedictine monastery--at first as an offshoot of the greater abbey of St. Michael in Normandy, which in situation it resembles, and afterwards as an independent establishment. It was a stronghold as well as a religious house, however, and was notorious as the "back-door of rebellion," frequently besieged. The crowning square tower is that of the monastic church, and St. Michael's Chair is on the battlements--a stone beacon which is of great importance to all newly-married couples in that region, for it bestows the ascendency on the husband or wife who first sits in it. It is of this chair Southey's ballad about the adventurous Rebecca was written; and he tells that just as she was installed.

"Merrily, merrily rang the bells,
And out Rebecca was thrown."

The family of St. Aubyn hold the mount, and they have recently thoroughly restored the buildings, adding some fine apartments. It is accessible only when the receding tide leaves bare the natural causeway that connects the island with the shore.

PENZANCE AND THE LAND'S END.

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

"On the sea
The sunbeams tremble, and the purple light
Illumes the dark Bolerium: seat of storms;
High are his granite rocks; his frowning brow
Hangs o'er the smiling ocean. In his caves
There sleep the haggard spirits of the storm.
Wild, dreary, are the schistine rocks around,
Encircled by the wave, where to the breeze
The haggard cormorant shrieks; and far beyond,
Where the great ocean mingles with the sky,
Are seen the cloud-like islands gray in mists."