Cornwall Part 2

Wherever it is possible trees grow in Cornwall; they take advantage of every atom of shelter, and every cleft in the ground out of the raging wind is filled with them.

The soil is wonderfully fertile, and the constant wet--not even its most ardent admirer denies that Cornwall gets rather more than its share of rain--develops a prodigal amount of growth in the way of ferns and creepers and other plants that like warm moisture. At Lamorna is a colony of artists; they have settled here as an outpost from Newlyn, for the natural beauty and remoteness of the place suit them. They have their picturesque houses within friendly reach all up and down the little glen, and take pride in their gardens, with wonderful rockeries and babbling streams, and all the rich growth that the soil and climate bring forth. They drop in on one another at all hours, and know all about each other's concerns. They are a friendly, kindly, generous-hearted clan. Here, where the woods are white with hawthorn in the spring, the stream gushes down in endless waterfalls, and the waves burst and break on the rocks in the cove below, every one of them can find endless scenes for his or her brush.

Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick's book, _In Other Days_, gives a picture of Lamorna Valley in the guise of fiction: "It was a brilliant March day, warm in the sun, cold in the wind. The gorse and the blackthorn were both out, spreading the wild copse and common of the valley with a shimmer of white and gold. The old bracken still lay in patches of ruddy brown, primroses were just beginning shyly, and the short gra.s.s 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAMORNA COVE]

That is the work of a close observer.

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

In the fields above, gaunt stones rise like pointing fingers to the sky.

These are called "The Pipers," and mark the scene of Athelstan's defeat of the British in 936; it is the "place of blood." But if they were really erected by Athelstan in the tenth century, and are not, as is possible, relics of Druid worship, they are modern compared with the Fougou Hole. Not far from them, in the midst of a gra.s.s-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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses is the furze, the quick-burning fuel of the poor, a G.o.dsend 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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.es give a glimpse of peace and remoteness such as one might imagine form part of heaven. The ma.s.ses 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 princ.i.p.al 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e Sennen Cove, where the families of the lighthouse men live, and the Atlantic cable comes ash.o.r.e.

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 sh.o.r.e 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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.s at first by Carn Greab, c.o.c.k'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 pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 gra.s.s fields toward the dreary little cl.u.s.ter 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mference 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 sh.e.l.l 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.