Chapter VIII (12)

When pictured in Christian art this saint is dressed in the robe of a bishop, with three purses, or three golden balls, or three children. The three purses represent those given by him to three sisters to enable them to marry; but we did not know the meaning of the three golden balls, unless it was that they represented the money the purses contained. My brother suggested they might have some connection with the three golden balls hanging outside the pawnbrokers' shops. Afterwards we found St. Nicholas was the patron saint of that body. But the three children were all boys, who once lived in the East, and being sent to a school at Athens, were told to call on St. Nicholas on their way for his benediction. They stopped for the night at a place called Myra, where the innkeeper murdered them for their money and baggage, and placed their mangled bodies in a pickling-tub, intending to sell them as pork. St. Nicholas, however, saw the tragedy in a vision, and went to the inn, where the man confessed the crime, whilst St. Nicholas, by a miracle, raised the murdered boys to life again!

Sometimes he had been nicknamed "Nick," or "Old Nick," and then he became a demon, or the Devil, or the "Evil spirit of the North." In Scandinavia he was always associated with water either in sea or lake, river or waterfall, his picture being changed to that of a horrid-looking creature, half-child and half-horse, the horse's feet being shown the wrong way about. Sometimes, again, he was shown as an old black man like an imp, sitting on a rock and wringing the dripping water from his long black hair!

On our way towards St. Austell we passed some very interesting places to the right and left of our road, and had some fine views of the sea. Presently we arrived at a considerable village inhabited by miners, the name of which we did not know until my brother, who was walking with a miner in the rear, suddenly called to me, and pointing to a name on a board, said: "See where we've got to!" When my brother called out the name of the place, I heard a man shout from across the road in a triumphant tone of voice, "Yes, you're in it now, sir!" and sure enough we had arrived at St. Blazey, a rather queer name, we thought, for a place called after a saint! But, unlike the people of Fowey, the inhabitants seemed quite satisfied with their saint, and indeed rather proud of him than otherwise. Asked where we could get some coffee and something to eat, the quarryman to whom my brother had been talking directed us to a temperance house near at hand, where we were well served. We were rather surprised at the number of people who came in after us at intervals, but it appeared afterwards that my brother had incidentally told the man with whom he was walking about our long journey, and that we had walked about 1,300 miles. The news had circulated rapidly about the village, and we eventually found ourselves the centre of a crowd anxious to see us, and ask questions. They seemed quite a homely, steady class of men, and gave us a Cornish welcome and a Cornish cheer as we left the village.

Just before reaching St. Blazey, however, we walked a short distance up a very charming little valley, which has been described as a paradise of ferns, wooden glades, and granite boulders, and possesses some of the finest landscapes in the district, with the ground in springtime azure with wild hyacinths. Some of the finest ferns grew in profusion in this glen, including the "Osmunda regalis" and the graceful lady fern; but, fortunately for the ferns, much of the valley passed through private grounds, and the pretty Carmears waterfall could only be seen on certain days.

The parish church of Luxulyan, after which village the valley was named, stood at the head of the glen, and as the people of Cornwall had so many saints, they had been able to spare two of them for Luxulyan, so that the church was dedicated conjointly to St. Cyricus and St. Julitta, while the name of a third was said to be concealed in the modern name of the village, St. Suhan, a saint who also appeared in Wales and Brittany. The name of the village well was St. Cyricus, which probably accounted for the name appearing the first in the dedication of the church. The church tower at one time contained the Cornish Stannary Records, but in the time of the Civil War they had been removed for greater safety to Lostwithiel, where they were unfortunately destroyed. There were many ancient and disused tin workings in the parish of Luxulyan, but a particularly fine kind of granite was quarried there, for use in buildings where durability was necessary--the lighthouse and beacon on Plymouth Breakwater having both been built with granite obtained from these quarries. There was also a very hard variety of granite much used by sculptors called porphyry, a very hard and variegated rock of a mixed purple-and-white colour. When the Duke of Wellington died, the Continent was searched for the most durable stone for his sepulchre, sufficiently grand and durable to cover his remains, but none could be found to excel that at Luxulyan. A huge boulder of porphyry, nearly all of it above ground, lying in a field where it had lain from time immemorial, was selected. It was estimated to weigh over seventy tons, and was wrought and polished near the spot where it was found. When complete it was conveyed thence to St. Paul's Cathedral, and now forms the sarcophagus of the famous Iron Duke. The total cost was about £1,100.

We had now to walk all the way to Land's End through a tin-mining country, which really extended farther than that, as some of the mines were under the sea. But the industry was showing signs of decay, for Cornwall had no coal and very little peat, and the native-grown timber had been practically exhausted. She had therefore to depend on the coal from South Wales to smelt the ore, and it was becoming a question whether it was cheaper to take the ore to the coal or the coal to the ore, the cost being about equal in either case. Meantime many miners had left the country, and others were thinking of following them to Africa and America, while many of the more expensive mines to work had been closed down. The origin of tin mining in Cornwall was of remote antiquity, and the earliest method of raising the metal was that practiced in the time of Diodorus by streaming--a method more like modern gold-digging, since the ore in the bed of the streams, having been already washed there for centuries, was much purer than that found in the lodes. Diodorus Siculus, about the beginning of the Christian Era, mentioned the inhabitants of Belerium as miners and smelters of tin, and wrote: "After beating it up into knucklebone shapes, they carry it to a certain island lying off Britain named Ictis (probably the Isle of Wight), and thence the merchants buy it from the inhabitants and carry it over to Gaul, and lastly, travelling by land through Gaul about thirty days, they bring down the loads on horses to the mouth of the Rhine."

There was no doubt in our own minds that the mining of tin in Cornwall was the most ancient industry known in Britain, and had existed there in the time of prehistoric man. We often found ourselves speculating about the age, and the ages of man. The age of man was said to be seventy, and might be divided thus:

At ten a child, at twenty wild,
At thirty strong, if ever!
At forty wise, at fifty rich,
At sixty good, or never!

There were some curious Celtic lines which described the age of animals compared with that of man:

Thrice the age of a dog is that of a horse;
Thrice the age of a horse is that of a man;
Thrice the age of a man is that of a deer;
Thrice the age of a deer is that of an eagle.

The ages of man were divided into three by Lucretius as:

(1) "The Stone Age," when celts or implements of stone were employed.
(2) "The Bronze Age," when implements were made of copper and brass.
(3) "The Iron Age," when implements were made of iron, as in the present
day.

This being the order of antiquity and materials employed in making the implements, it was therefore safe to conclude that the mining of tin must have dated back as far as the Bronze Age, for there could have been no bronze made without tin, since bronze is produced by the mixing of copper and tin.

Appliances for crushing and smelting the ore were already in existence in very early times, as well as blowing-houses and moulds in which to run the molten metal. The ingots of tin were in the form of an astragal, and an ancient ingot of large size dredged up in Falmouth Harbour, weighing 150 lbs., resembled the letter H in form. This was the most convenient shape for carriage, either in a boat or slung across the back of a horse, and horses were employed in that way to convey the tin along the steep and narrow roads from the mines to the sea-coast.

The Romans made use of the Cornish mines, for an ingot of tin bearing a Roman stamp and inscription was preserved in the Truro Museum, and Roman coins had been found in the mines.

With St. Austell's Bay to our left, we soon came in sight of the town of St. Austell, behind which were the Hensbarrow Downs, rising over 1,000 feet above sea-level. From the beacon on the top the whole of Cornwall can be seen on a clear day, bounded by the Bristol Channel on one side and the English Channel on the other; on the lower reaches, and quite near St. Austell, were the great tin mines of Carclaze, some of the largest and most ancient in Cornwall.

Another great industry was also being carried on, as in the year 1768 W. Cookworthy, a Plymouth Quaker, had discovered an enormous bed of white clay, which had since been so extensively excavated that the workings now resembled the crater of an extinct volcano. This clay, of the finest quality, was named China clay, because it was exactly similar to that used in China, where porcelain was made many centuries before it was made in England, the process of its manufacture being kept a profound secret by the Chinese, whose country was closed to Europeans.

A story, however, was told of an Englishman who succeeded in entering China and obtaining employment at one of the potteries, where he eventually became acquainted with the secrets of the whole business. The difficulties he experienced in getting out of the country again, and his adventures and hairbreadth escapes from death, were thrilling to listen to. The pattern on the famous Willow plates, which he was afterwards able to produce in England, was commonly supposed to represent some of his own adventures, and he was thought to be the man pictured as being pursued across a bridge and escaping in a boat. This, however, was not correct, as all the views had been copied from the original Chinese willow pattern, the interpretation of which was as follows:

To the right is a lordly Mandarin's country-seat, which is two
storeys high to show the rank and wealth of the possessor. In the
foreground is a pavilion, and in the background an orange-tree, while
to the right of the pavilion is a peach-tree in full bearing. The
estate is enclosed by an elegant wooden fence, and at one end of the
bridge stands the famous willow-tree and at the other is the
gardener's cottage, one storey high, and so humble that the grounds
are uncultivated, the only green thing being a small fir-tree at the
back.

At the top of the pattern on the left-hand side is an island with a
cottage; the grounds are highly cultivated and much of the land has
been reclaimed from the water. The two birds are turtle-doves, and
the three figures on the bridge are the Mandarin's daughter with a
distaff, nearest the cottage, the lover with a box is shown in the
middle, and nearest the willow-tree is the Mandarin with a whip.

The written history of China goes back for 4,000 years, a period more than twice that over which English history can be traced; and it is about 2,600 years since Confucius wrote his wonderful laws. Since that time his teachings have been followed by countless millions of his countrymen, and temples have been erected to him all over that great country, whose population numbers more than 300 millions.

The origin of the legend represented on the willow pattern must therefore have been of remote antiquity, and the following is the record of the tradition:

The Mandarin had an only daughter named Li-chi, who fell in love with
Chang, a young man who lived in the island home represented at the
top of the pattern, and who had been her father's secretary. The
father overheard them one day making vows of love under the
orange-tree, and sternly forbade the unequal match; but the lovers
contrived to elope. They lay concealed for a while in the gardener's
cottage, and thence made their escape in a boat to the island-home
of the young lover. The enraged Mandarin pursued them with a whip,
and would have beaten them to death had not the gods rewarded their
fidelity by changing them into turtle-doves.

The picture is called the willow pattern not only because it is a
tale of disastrous love, but because the elopement occurred when the
willow begins to shed its leaves.

Much of the clay at Carclaze was being sent to the Staffordshire potteries, to be used in the production of the finest porcelain. It was loaded in ships and taken round the coast via Liverpool to Runcorn, a port on the River Mersey and the terminus of the Duke of Bridgewater's Canal, where it was transhipped into small boats, which conveyed it to the potteries in Staffordshire, involving a carriage of about fifty miles, After being manufactured into porcelain, it was packed into crates and again consigned by canal to many places inland and to Liverpool for shipment abroad, the carriage being cheaper and safer than if consigned by rail, owing to the fragile nature of the goods. Some of the earthenware had of course to be sent by rail, but the breakages in shunting operations and the subsequent claims on the railway companies caused the rate of carriage to be very high.

In later years the pottery trade became rather depressed owing to competition from abroad, and a story was told of a traveller from the Staffordshire Potteries who called at a wholesale house in London where he invariably got some orders, but on this occasion was unsuccessful. When he inquired the reason, he was taken to the warehouse and shown a small china tea service. "Do you know that?" asked the manager. "Yes!" quickly replied the traveller; "that comes from so-and-so in the Potteries, and is their favourite pattern and design!" "And what did I pay for it?" "Twelve and six," promptly replied the traveller. "Ah," said his customer, "you are wrong this time; that set cost us 10s. 6d., and came from Germany!" The traveller reported the matter to his firm, who on inquiry discovered that the Germans had erected a pottery on their sea-coast and, by taking advantage of sea carriage both ways, were able to undersell the British manufacturer with pottery for which the clay had been found in his own country.

Arriving at St. Austell, we had a look round the town, and visited the church, which was dedicated to St. Austell. But in the previous year it had undergone a restoration, and there appeared to be some doubt whether the figure on the tower was that of the patron saint or not. There were other figures, but the gargoyles were as usual the ugliest of the lot.

There was formerly a curious clock there which was mentioned in an old deed of the time of Edward VI recording that St. Austell's tower had "four bells and a clok," but the bells had been increased to eight and a new clock placed in the tower, though the face of the old one, representing the twenty-four hours in as many circles, could still be seen. When the old clock had been made, it was evident there was no repetition in the afternoon of the morning's numerals, as the hours after twelve noon were the thirteenth and fourteenth, and so on up to twenty-four. The church porch was quite a fine erection, with a chamber built over it, at one time used as a sleeping-room by travelling monks, and, like the nave, with a battlement along the top, an old inscription over the porch, "Ry du," having been interpreted as meaning "Give to God." The carving over the doorway represented a pelican feeding its young with blood from its own breast, and a sundial bore the very significant motto:

Every hour shortens man's life.

Inside the church there was a curiosity in the shape of a wooden tablet, on which was painted a copy of a letter of thanks from King Charles I to the county of Cornwall for its assistance during his conflict with the Roundheads, It was written from his camp at Sudeley Castle on September 10th, 1643, and was one of several similar tablets to be found in various churches in Cornwall.

The Wesleyan chapel at St. Austell, with accommodation for a congregation of 1,000 persons, also attracted our attention, as it had a frontage like that of a mansion, with columns supporting the front entrance, and was situated in a very pleasant part of the town. John Wesley laboured hard in Cornwall, and we were pleased to see evidences of his great work there as we travelled through the Duchy; and as Cornishmen must surround the memory of their saints with legends, it did not surprise us that they had one about Mr. Wesley. He was travelling late one night over a wild part of Cornwall when a terrific storm came on, and the only shelter at hand was a mansion that had the reputation of being haunted. He found his way into the hall and lay down on a bench listening to the raging elements outside until he fell fast asleep. About midnight he awoke and was surprised to find the table in the hall laid out for a banquet, and a gaily dressed company, including a gentleman with a red feather in his cap, already assembled. This person offered Wesley a vacant chair and invited him to join them, an invitation which he accepted; but before he took a bite or a sup he rose from his chair, and said, "Gentlemen! it is my custom to ask a blessing on these occasions," and added, "Stand all!" The company rose, but as he pronounced the sacred invocation the room grew dark and the ghostly guests vanished.

We should have liked to hear what followed, but this was left to our imagination, which became more active as the darkness of night came on. As we walked we saw some beautiful spar stones used to repair the roads, which would have done finely for our rockeries.

Late that night we entered Truro, destined to become years afterwards a cathedral town.

(_Distance walked thirty-three miles_.)

_Friday, November 17th._

Truro formerly possessed a castle, but, as in the case of Liskeard, not a vestige now remained, and even Leland, who traced the site, described the castle as being "clene down." He also described the position of the town itself, and wrote, "The creke of Truro afore the very towne is divided into two parts, and eche of them has a brook cumming down and a bridge, and this towne of Truro betwixt them both." These two brooks were the Allen, a rivulet only, and the Kenwyn, a larger stream, while the "creke of Truro" was a branch of the Falmouth Harbour, and quite a fine sheet of water at high tide. Truro was one of the Stannary Towns as a matter of course, for according to tradition it was near here that tin was first discovered.

The discoverer of this valuable metal was said to have been St. Piran, or St. Perran--as the Roman Catholic Church in Truro was dedicated to St. Piran we agreed to record that as the correct name. The legend stated that he was an Irish saint who in his own country had been able by his prayers to sustain the Irish kings and their armies for ten days on three cows! But in spite of his great services to his country, because of his belief in Christ his countrymen condemned him to die, by being thrown over a precipice into the sea, with a millstone hung about his neck. The day appointed for his execution was very stormy, but a great crowd of "wild Irish" assembled, and St. Piran was thrown over the rocks. At that very moment the storm ceased and there was a great calm. They looked over the cliffs to see what had become of him, and to their intense astonishment saw the saint calmly sitting upon the millstone and being carried out to sea. They watched him until he disappeared from their sight, and all who saw this great miracle were of course immediately converted to Christianity. St. Piran floated safely across the sea and landed on the coast of Cornwall, not at Truro, but on a sandy beach about ten miles away from that town, the place where he landed being named after him at the present day. When the natives saw him approaching their coasts, they thought he was sailing on wood, and when they found it was stone they also were converted to Christianity. St. Piran built an oratory and lived a lonely and godly life, ornamenting his cell with all kinds of crystals and stones gathered from the beach and the rocks, and adorning his altar with the choicest flowers. On one occasion, when about to prepare a frugal meal, he collected some stones in a circle and made a fire from some fuel close to hand. Fanned by the wind, the heat was intensified more than usual, with the result that he noticed a stream of beautiful white metal flowing out of the fire. "Great was the joy of the saint when he perceived that God in His goodness had discovered to him something that would be useful to man." Such was the origin of tin smelting in Cornwall. St. Piran revealed the secret to St. Chiwidden, who, being learned in many sciences, at once recognised the value of the metal. The news gradually spread to distant lands, and eventually reached Tyre, the ancient city of the Phoenicians, so that their merchants came to Cornwall to buy tin in the days of King Solomon. The Britons then, fearing an invasion, built castles on their coast, including that on St. Michael's Mount, while St. Piran became the most popular saint in Cornwall and eventually the patron saint of the miners of tin. His name was associated with many places besides the sands he landed upon, including several villages, as well as a cross, a chapel, a bay, a well, and a coombe. But perhaps the strangest of all was St. Piran's Round, near Perranzabuloe Village. This, considered one of the most remarkable earthworks in the kingdom, and of remote antiquity, was a remarkable amphitheatre 130 feet in diameter, with traces of seven tiers of seats; it has been used in modern times for the performance of miracle-plays.

One of the "brooks" at Truro mentioned by Leland was the River Kenwyn, which joined the River Allen to form the Truro River; but before doing so the Kenwyn, or some portion of its overflow, had been so diverted that the water ran down the gutters of the principal streets. It was a novelty to us to see the water so fresh and clean running down each side of the street--not slowly, but as if at a gallop.

In the time of the Civil War Truro was garrisoned for the King, but in 1646, after a fierce engagement between the Royalists under Sir Ralph Hopton and Cromwell's forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax, a treaty was signed at Tresillian River Bridge (a pretty place which we had passed last night, about three miles outside the town on the St. Austell road), by which Truro was surrendered quietly to the Parliament.

The Grammar School, where many eminent men had been educated, was founded in 1549. Among its old pupils was included Sir Humphry Davy, born in 1778, the eminent chemist who was the first to employ the electric current in chemical decomposition and to discover nitric oxide or "laughing gas." He was also the inventor of the famous safety-lamp which bears his name, and which has been the means of saving the lives of thousands of miners.

Truro was the birthplace of several men of note: Samuel Foote, Richard Lander, and Henry Martyn, two of them having been born in public-houses in the town.

Samuel Foote, a famous dramatist and comedian, was born at the "Old King's Head Inn" in 1720, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in 1777. He was a clever actor and mimic, "and kept London in a good humour"; he wrote the _Mayor of Garrett_ and many other comedies.

Richard Lander, born at the "Fighting Cocks Inn" in 1804, became famous as an African explorer. He took part in the expedition to Africa which was the first to discover and trace the Niger. He was injured by savages and died at Fernando Po in 1834.

Henry Martyn, born in 1781, the son of a miner, was a noble and devoted missionary. He left home when twenty-four years of age to labour amongst the Hindus and Mahometans at Cawnpore in India, and travelled in Persia and Armenia. He translated portions of the Bible and Prayer Book into the Persian and Hindustani languages, and at last, weary and worn out in his Master's service, died of fever at Tokat in 1812.

St. Mary's Church was built in 1518, and was remarkable for its two east windows and some fine carving on the walls outside. It was surrounded by narrow streets and ancient buildings. We had no time to explore the interior, so contented ourselves with a visit to an old stone preserved by the Corporation and inscribed:

DANIEL JENKIN, MAIOR,
WHO SEEKS TO FIND ETERNAL TREASVRE
MVST VSE NO GVILE IN WEIGHT AND MEASVRE.
1618.

We now considered that we had arrived at the beginning of the end of our journey, and left Truro with the determination to reach Land's End on the morrow, Saturday. We continued our walk as near the sea as the rivers or inlets would admit, for we were anxious to see as much as possible of the fine rock scenery of the Cornish coast. We were in the best of health and spirits, and a thirty-mile walk seemed to have no effect upon us whatever, beyond causing a feeling of drowsiness when entering our hotel for the night.

We soon arrived at the quaint little village with a name, as my brother said, almost as long as itself, Perranarworthal, connected with Falmouth by a creek, which seemed to have made an effort to cross Cornwall from one side to the other, or from one Channel to the other. It was at Falmouth that on one dark stormy night some years previously the ship my brother was travelling by called for cargo, and the shelter of the harbour was much appreciated after passing through the stormy sea outside. Perran in the name of the village meant the same as Piran, and the small church there was dedicated to that saint, who deserved to be called the St. Patrick of Cornwall, for he occupied the same position in the popular imagination here as that saint did in Ireland. It was in this parish that St. Piran had his Holy Well, but that had now disappeared, for accidentally it had been drained off by mining operations.

Gwennap was only about three miles away--formerly the centre of the richest mining district in Cornwall, the mines there being nearly six hundred yards deep, and the total length of the roads or workings in them about sixty miles. No similar space in the Old World contained so much mineral wealth, for the value of the tin mined during one century was estimated at ten million pounds sterling. After the mines were abandoned the neighbourhood presented a desolate and ruined appearance.

Many human remains belonging to past ages had been found buried in the sands in this neighbourhood; but Gwennap had one glorious memory of the departed dead, for John Wesley visited the village several times to preach to the miners, and on one occasion (1762), on a very windy day, when the sound of his voice was being carried away by the wind, he tried the experiment--which proved a great success--of preaching in the bottom of a wide dry pit, the miners standing round him on the sloping sides and round the top. The pit was supposed to have been formed by subsidences resulting from the mining operations below, and as he used it on subsequent occasions when preaching to immense congregations, it became known as "Wesley's Preaching Pit." It must have been a pathetic sight when, in his eighty-fifth year, he preached his last sermon there. "His open-air preaching was powerful in the extreme, his energy and depth of purpose inspiring, and his organising ability exceptional; and as an evangelist of the highest character, with the world as his parish, he was the founder of the great religious communion of 'the people called Methodists.'" It was therefore scarcely to be wondered at that the Gwennap pit should be considered as holy ground, and that it should become the Mecca of the Cornish Methodists and of others from all over the world. Wesley died in 1791, and in 1803 the pit was brought to its present condition--a circular pit formed into steps or seats rising one above another from the bottom to the top, and used now for the great annual gathering of the Methodists held during Whitsuntide. The idea was probably copied from St. Piran's Round, a similar but much older formation a few miles distant.

Penryn was the next place we visited, and a very pretty place too! It was situated on the slope of a picturesque hill surrounded by orchards and gardens, and luxuriant woodlands adorned its short but beautiful river. The sea view was of almost unequalled beauty, and included the magnificent harbour of Falmouth, of which an old writer said that "a hundred vessels may anchor in it, and not one see the mast of another"--of course when ships were smaller.

The old church at Penryn was that of St. Gluvias, near which were a few remains of Glassiney College, formerly the chief centre from which the vernacular literature of Cornwall was issued and whence our knowledge of the old legends and mysteries of Cornwall was derived. The town was said to have had a court-leet about the time of the Conquest, but the borough was first incorporated in the seventeenth century by James I. The Corporation possessed a silver cup and cover, presented to them by the notorious Lady Jane Killigrew, and inscribed--"To the town of Penmarin when they received me that was in great misery. J.K. 1633." Lady Jane's trouble arose through her ladyship and her men boarding some Dutch vessels that lay off Falmouth, stealing their treasure, and causing the death of some of their crews.

In the time of James I. a Spanish man-of-war came unseen through the mist of the harbour, and despatched a well-armed crew with muffled oars to plunder and burn the town of Penryn. They managed to land in the darkness, and were about to begin their depredations when suddenly they heard a great sound of drums and trumpets and the noise of many people. This so alarmed them that they beat a rapid retreat, thinking the militia had been called out by some spy who had known of their arrival. But the Penryn people were in happy ignorance of their danger. It happened that some strolling actors were performing a tragedy, and the battle scene was just due as the Spaniards came creeping up in the darkness; hence the noise. When the Penryn folk heard the following morning what had happened, it was said they had to thank Shakespeare for their lucky escape.

No one passing through the smiling and picturesque town of Penryn would dream that that beautiful place could ever have been associated with such a fearful and horrid event as that known to history as the "Penryn Tragedy," which happened during the reign of James I.

At that time there lived at the Bohechland Farm in the parish of St. Gluvias a well-to-do farmer and his wife and family. Their youngest son was learning surgery, but, not caring for that profession, and being of a wild and roving disposition, he ran away to sea, and eventually became a pirate and the captain of a privateer. He was very successful in his evil business, amassing great wealth, and he habitually carried his most valuable jewels in a belt round his waist. At length he ventured into the Mediterranean, and attacked a Turkish ship, but, owing to an accident, his powder magazine exploded, and he and his men were blown into the air, some of them being killed and others injured. The captain escaped, however, and fell into the sea. He was an expert swimmer, and reached the Island of Rhodes, where he had to make use of his stolen jewels to maintain himself. He was trying to sell one of them to a Jew when it was recognised as belonging to the Dey of Algiers. He was arrested, and sentenced to the galleys as a pirate, but soon gained great influence over the other galley slaves, whom he persuaded to murder their officers and escape. The plan succeeded, and the ringleader managed to get on a Cornish boat bound for London. Here he obtained a position as assistant to a surgeon, who took him to the East Indies, where his early training came in useful, and after a while the Cornishman began to practise for himself. Fortunately for him, he was able to cure a rajah of his disease, which restored his fortune, and he decided to return to Cornwall. The ship was wrecked on the Cornish coast, and again his skill in swimming saved him. He had been away for fifteen years, and now found his sister married to a mercer in Penryn; she, however, did not know him until he bared his arm and showed her a mark which had been there in infancy. She was pleased to see him, and told him that their parents had lost nearly all their money. Then he showed her his possessions, gold and jewels, and arranged to go that night as a stranger to his parents' home and ask for lodgings, while she was to follow in the morning, when he would tell them who he was. When he knocked, his father opened the door, and saw a ragged and weather-beaten man who asked for food and an hour's shelter. Taking him to be a sea-faring man, he willingly gave him some food, and afterwards asked him to stay the night. After supper they sat by the fire talking until the farmer retired to rest. Then his wife told the sailor how unfortunate they had been and how poor they were, and that they would soon have to be sold up and perhaps finish their life in a workhouse. He took a piece of gold out of his belt and told her there was enough in it to pay all their debts, and after that there would be some left for himself. The sight of the gold and jewels excited the woman's cupidity, and when the sailor was fast asleep she woke her husband, told him what had happened, and suggested that they should murder the sailor and bury his body next day in the garden. The farmer was very unwilling, but his wife at length persuaded him to go with her. Finding the sailor still fast asleep, they cut his throat and killed him, and covered him up with the bedclothes till they should have an opportunity of burying him. In the morning their daughter came and asked where the sailor was who called on them the previous night, but they said no sailor had been there. "But," she said, "he must be here, for he is my brother, and your long-lost son; I saw the scar on his arm." The mother turning deadly pale sank in a chair, while with an oath the father ran upstairs, saw the scar, and then killed himself with the knife with which he had killed his son. The mother followed, and, finding her husband dead, plunged the knife in her own breast. The daughter, wondering why they were away so long, went upstairs, and was so overcome with horror at seeing the awful sight that she fell down on the floor in a fit from which she never recovered!

The first difficulty we had to contend with on continuing our journey was the inlet of the River Helford, but after a rough walk through a rather lonely country we found a crossing-place at a place named Gweek, at the head of the river, which we afterwards learned was the scene of Hereward's Cornish adventures, described by Charles Kingsley in _Hereward the last of the English_, published in 1866.

Here we again turned towards the sea, and presently arrived at Helston, an ancient and decaying town supposed to have received its name from a huge boulder which once formed the gate to the infernal regions, and was dropped by Lucifer after a terrible conflict with the Archangel St. Michael, in which the fiend was worsted by the saint. This stone was still supposed to be seen by credulous visitors at the "Angel Inn," but as we were not particularly interested in that angel, who, we inferred, might have been an angel of darkness, or in a stone of such a doubtful character, we did not go to the inn.

Helston was one of the Stannary Towns, and it was said that vessels could at one time come quite near it. Daniel Defoe has described it as being "large and populous, with four spacious streets, a handsome church, and a good trade." The good trade was, however, disappearing, owing to the discovery of tin in foreign countries, notably in the Straits Settlements and Bolivia; the church which Defoe saw had disappeared, having since been destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1763. We did not go inside, but in walking through the churchyard we casually came upon an ordinary headstone on which was an inscription to the effect that the stone marked the resting-place of Henry Trengrouse (1772-1854), who, being "profoundly impressed by the great loss of life by shipwreck, had devoted the greater portion of his life and means to the invention and design of the rocket apparatus for connecting stranded ships to the shore, whereby many thousands of lives have been saved."

We had seen many fine monuments to men who had been instrumental in killing thousands of their fellow creatures, but here was Trengrouse who had been the humble instrument in saving thousands of lives, and (though a suitable monument has since been erected to his memory) only the commonest stone as yet recorded his memory and the inestimable services he had rendered to humanity: the only redeeming feature, perhaps, being the very appropriate quotation on the stone:

They rest from their labours and their works do follow them.

Helston was another town where a lovely double stream of water ran down the main street, rendering the town by its rapid and perpetual running both musical and clean. The water probably came from the River Cober, and afterwards found its way into the Looe Pool at the foot of the town. This pool was the great attraction of Helston and district, as it formed a beautiful fresh-water lake about seven miles in circumference and two miles long, winding like a river through a forked valley, with woods that in the springtime were filled with lovely wild flowers, reaching to the water's edge. It must have been a paradise for one fisherman at any rate, as he held his tenure on condition that he provided a boat and net in case the Duke of Cornwall, its owner, should ever come to fish there; so we concluded that if the Duke never came, the tenant would have all the fish at his own disposal. The curious feature about the lake was that, owing to a great bank of sand and pebbles that reached across the mouth, it had no visible outlet where it reached the sea, the water having to percolate as best it could through the barrier. When heavy rain came on and the River Cober delivered a greater volume of water than usual into the lake, the land adjoining was flooded, and it became necessary to ask permission of the lord of the manor to cut a breach through the pebbles in order to allow the surplus water to pass through into the sea, which was quite near. The charge for this privilege was one penny and one halfpenny, which had to be presented in a leather purse; but this ancient ceremony was afterwards done away with and a culvert constructed. On this pebble bank one of the King's frigates was lost in 1807.

There is a passage in the book of Genesis which states that "there were giants in the earth in those days"--a passage which we had often heard read in the days of our youth, when we wished it had gone further and told us something about them; but Cornwall had been a veritable land of giants. The stories of Jack the Giant-Killer were said to have emanated from this county, and we now heard of the Giant Tregeagle, whose spirit appeared to pervade the whole district through which we were passing.

He was supposed to be the Giant of Dosmary Pool, on the Bodmin Downs, which was believed at one time to be a bottomless pit. When the wind howls there the people say it is the Giant roaring, and "to roar like Tregeagle" was quite a common saying in those parts. "His spirit haunts all the west of Cornwall, and he haunts equally the moor, the rocky coasts, and the blown sandhills; from north to south, from east to west, this doomed spirit was heard of, and to the Day of Judgment he was doomed to wander pursued by avenging fiends. Who has not heard the howling of Tregeagle? When the storms come with all their strength from the Atlantic, and hurl themselves upon the rocks about the Land's End, the howls of this spirit are louder than the roaring of the wind."

In this land of legends, therefore, it is not surprising that the raising of that extraordinary bank which blocks the end of the River Cober, at what should be its outlet into the sea, should be ascribed to Tregeagle. It appeared that he was an extremely wicked steward, who by robbery and other worse crimes became very wealthy. In the first place he was said to have murdered his sister, and to have been so cruel to his wife and children that one by one they perished. But at length his end came, and as he lay on his death-bed the thoughts of the people he had murdered, starved, and plundered, and his remorseful conscience, so haunted him, that he sent for the monks from a neighbouring monastery and offered them all his wealth if they would save his soul from the fiends. They accepted his offer, and both then and after he had been buried in St. Breock's Church they sang chants and recited prayers perpetually over his grave, by which means they kept back the demons from his departing soul. But a dispute arose between two wealthy families concerning the ownership of some land near Bodmin. It appeared that Tregeagle, as steward to one of the claimants, had destroyed ancient deeds, forged others, and made it appear that the property was his own. The defendant in the trial by some means or other succeeded in breaking the bonds of death, and the spirit of Tregeagle was summoned to attend the court as witness.

When his ghostly form appeared, the court was filled with horror. In answer to counsel's questions he had to acknowledge his frauds, and the jury returned a verdict for the defendants. The judge then ordered counsel to remove his witness, but, alas! it was easier to raise evil spirits than to lay them, and they could not get rid of Tregeagle. The monks were then sent for, and said that by long trials he might repent and his sins be expiated in that way. They would not or could not hand him over to the fiends, but they would give him tasks to do that would be endless. First of all they gave him the task of emptying Dosmary Pool, supposed to be bottomless, with a small perforated limpet shell. Here, however, he narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the demons, and only saved himself by running and dashing his head through the window of Roach Rock Church. His terrible cries drove away the congregation, and the monks and priests met together to decide what could be done with him, as no service could be held in the church.

They decided that Tregeagle, accompanied by two saints to guard him, should be taken to the coast at Padstow, and compelled to stay on the sandy shore making trusses of sand and ropes of sand to bind them, while the mighty sea rose continually and washed them away. The people at Padstow could get no rest day or night on account of his awful cries of fear and despair, and they sought the aid of the great Cornish Saint Petrox. The saint subdued Tregeagle, and chained him with bonds, every link of which he welded with a prayer. St. Petrox placed him at Bareppa, and condemned him to carry sacks of sand across the estuary of St. Looe and empty them at Porthleven until the beach was clean to the rocks. He laboured a long time at that work, but in vain, for the tide round Treawavas Head always carried the sand back again. His cries and wails disturbed the families of the fishermen, but a mischievous demon came along, and, seeing him carrying an enormous sack full of sand and pebbles, tripped him up. Tregeagle fell, and the sack upset and formed the bar that ruined the harbour of Helston, which up to that time had been a prosperous port, the merchant vessels landing cargoes and taking back tin in exchange. The townspeople, naturally very wroth, sought the aid of the priests, and once more bonds were placed upon Tregeagle. This time he was sent to the Land's End, where he would find very few people to hear his awful cries. There his task was to sweep the sands from Porthcurnow Cove, round the headland called Tol-Peden-Penwith, into Nanjisal Cove. At this task, it is said, Tregeagle is still labouring, his wails and moans being still borne on the breeze that sweeps over the Land's End; so as this was our destination, we had rather a queer prospect before us!

Between Gweek and Helston we crossed the famous promontory known as the Lizard, which in length and breadth extends about nine miles in each direction, although the point itself is only two miles broad. The rocks at this extremity rise about 250 feet above the stormy sea below, and are surmounted by a modern lighthouse.

Originally there was only a beacon light with a coal fire fanned with bellows, but oil was afterwards substituted. The Lizard Point in those days, with the neighbouring rocks, both when submerged and otherwise, formed a most dangerous place for mariners, especially when false lights were displayed by those robbers and murderers, the Cornish wreckers.

The Lizard, the Corinum of the ancients, is the most southerly point in England, and the fine rock scenery on the coast continues from there all the way to the Land's End, while isolated rocks in many forms and smugglers' caves of all sizes are to be seen. Weird legends connected with these and the Cornish coast generally had been handed down from father to son from remote antiquity, and the wild and lonely Goonhilly Downs, that formed the centre of the promontory, as dreary a spot as could well be imagined, had a legend of a phantom ship that glided over them in the dusk or moonlight, and woe betide the mariners who happened to see it, for it was a certain omen of evil!

The finest sight that we saw here was in broad daylight, and consisted of an immense number of sailing-ships, more in number than we could count, congregated together on one side of the Lizard. On inquiring the reason, we were told that they were wind-bound vessels waiting for a change in the wind to enable them to round the point, and that they had been known to wait there a fortnight when unfavourable winds prevailed. This we considered one of the most wonderful sights we had seen on our journey.

As we left Helston on our way to Penzance we had the agreeable company as far as St. Breage of a young Cornishman, who told us we ought to have come to Helston in May instead of November, for then we should have seen the town at its best, especially if we had come on the "Flurry" day. This he said was the name of their local yearly festival, held on or near May 8th, and he gave us quite a full account of what generally happened on that occasion. We could easily understand, from what he told us, that he had enjoyed himself immensely on the day of the last festival, which seemed to be quite fresh in his mind, although now more than six months had passed since it happened. In fact he made us wish that we had been there ourselves, as his story awoke some memories in our minds of--

The days we went a-gipsying a long time ago
When lads and lasses in their best were dressed from top to toe,
When hearts were light and faces bright, nor thought of care or woe,
In the days we went a-gipsying a long time ago!