With the World's Great Travellers Volume Iii Part 5

"Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,"

was but a creature of the poet's own brain, we fancy Dozmere Pool must have been the spot intended, the laureate being, we believe, better acquainted with northern than with western Cornwall. But if Tennyson founded his descriptions of the pa.s.sing away of Arthur on old chronicles or romances partly handed down by tradition, we give our vote in favor of the Looe, which, like the lake in the idyll, has on its bank the remains of an ancient chapel, and in which the poet's description of

"The long wave lapping on the shingly beach,"

is completely realized.

It is also comparatively near to Land's End; and "the land of Lyonnesse," so often alluded to in the legends of King Arthur, is said to be a district now submerged by the sea, but formerly lying between Land's End and Scilly. All these are but conjectures, however. More reliable records of the past are to be found in the traces of charcoal-burning in the woods round the Looe, which bear evidence of the sacrifice of their trees made by the then owners of the property to the royal cause during the civil wars. The Cornishmen were mostly Royalists.

Though the Looe is always spoken of as a _lake_, it is, in fact, only divided from the sea by a narrow neck of land called the Bar, which once in about every three years is cut through with a great amount of ceremony, the mayor of Helstone asking permission of the lord of the manor, and presenting him, as immemorial custom enjoins, with three half-pence.

Porthleven, the little port or watering-place of Helstone, may be interesting to Londoners as the shipping-place of much of the granite used in building the Thames embankment.

Between the Lizard and Mount's Bay is a fine rugged piece of scenery, the grandest headland of which is called Trewarvas Point. From it can be seen the three n.o.ble capes of Mullion, Helzephron, and the Lizard; and at Trewarvas itself are some romantic fantastic-shaped rocks, one of which, from some fancied resemblance to an ecclesiastic in his robes, has obtained the name of the "Bishop."

From Helstone we went to Falmouth, the enchanting beauty of the scenery round which place is little known to those who have merely paid a flying visit to that dirty seaport, and perhaps inspected the harbor. Falmouth itself, as we suppose most persons know, is not a particularly ancient town. Sir Walter Raleigh was the first to discover its great advantages of situation, and it was at his recommendation that Queen Elizabeth had the town and harbor built. But, comparatively modern as is Falmouth itself, its neighborhood abounds in the a.s.sociations of antiquity. A gentleman's seat on the sh.o.r.e of the beautiful creek known as Helford River still bears the name of Gyllindune,--_i.e._, "William's grave,"

from being a traditional burial-place of Prince William, son of Henry I., and lost in the wreck of "The White Ship." This tradition goes far to contradict a statement we met with in a number of a popular magazine, to the effect that while the French popular mind retains many legends of the highest antiquity, in England popular tradition does not stretch back to a period more remote than the civil wars of the seventeenth century....

The scenery in the neighborhood of Falmouth, especially on the banks of Helford River, is beautiful in the extreme. Rugged wildness contrasted with fertility, tropical foliage, and an endless succession of romantic creeks and headlands, combine to form an earthly paradise. After several delightful weeks in this picturesque region, we proceeded northwards to the little town of Liskeard, in East Cornwall, in which we had been recommended to pa.s.s a couple of days, on account of its extreme quietude and seclusion. Our surprise may be easily imagined, therefore, when we found, on reaching this tranquil spot, that we were in the midst of Vanity Fair. We had not known, previously to our arrival, that the second and third of October were the grand saturnalia of the inhabitants of Liskeard and neighborhood, the annual honey fair, or St. Matthew's Fair.

St. Matthew's Day, indeed, takes place a fortnight previously, but doubtless the fair dates from a period antecedent to the alteration of the style. The sale of honey, cattle, etc., only occupies the morning of the first day; the afternoon, and, indeed, the night until a late hour, and the whole of the second day, being devoted to pleasuring. Sweetmeats of various kinds, particularly a sticky-looking kind of taffy, called, we believe, "clidgy," seem the staple commodity of the pleasure fair.

Some of the little baskets and other ornaments made out of these appetizing comestibles are really very elegant. Another great feature is the "Cheap Jack," or rather "Cheap Jill," a young lady who, with untiring lungs, sells by auction the whole day long fancy articles, of which bead fly-traps seem by far the most numerous. Could not this branch of female employment be suggested to those interested in enlarging the sphere of women's occupations, as one especially appropriate to the fair s.e.x? The two qualifications most necessary for a "Cheap Jack," volubility and mercantile smartness, are usually considered, even by her detractors, as especial _fortes_ of woman.

From the windows of our hotel we saw, as from a stage-box, the humors of the fair, and especially did we obtain an excellent view of "The Enchanted Temple of Science and Mystery," and similar enlivening exhibitions. The wrestling booth was, as might be expected in this muscularly Christian country, a favorite resort. A peep within this gladiatorial arena, however, only revealed very mild-looking athletes, and spectators as grave as judges, looking much more as if they were at meeting than at a fair. It must be stated, to the credit of the Liskeard revellers, that everything went on with the utmost decorum and order. It shows the primitive simplicity of these west country folks that they can still find so much pleasure in these unsophisticated amus.e.m.e.nts, but it must be borne in mind that Liskeard is a town usually so quiet, not to say sleepy, that it has been declared by a resident that he could fire a gun down the street without hitting any one!...

The Cornish folk are, as a rule, earnest in their religious convictions, though, like other Kelts, occasionally inclined to fanaticism. All traces of the savagery which distinguished them in the rough days of the wreckers, have, of course, entirely pa.s.sed away under the light of advancing civilization. The Cornishmen are extremely hospitable, and the county dainties of cider, clotted cream, potato cake, griddle or girdle cakes (baked upon the hearth), and fish or squab pies, are luxuries not to be despised any more than the _figgadowdy_ (Anglice, plum-puddings). Like all the inhabitants of remote districts, the Cornish folk are extremely clannish, and think much of the ties of kindred, the proverbial expression "A Cornish Jack" showing how every individual endeavors to prove himself everybody else's "Cousin John."

They are very superst.i.tious, though whether they yet retain the old beliefs mentioned by Polwhele, such as that of the ghost of a ship-wrecked mariner announcing his fate by calling his own name on the rock, and that when the wind roars boisterously it is the wicked giant Tregeagle roaring, we cannot, of course, say.

Many names of places bear witness to the widely scattered traditions connected with King Arthur. One group of rocks of various sizes goes by the name of "King Arthur's cups and saucers," a name involving a bold anachronism, for one hardly imagines saucers to have been much used before the introduction of tea and coffee, beverages, as every one knows, not brought into use in this country for more than a thousand years after the supposed period of King Arthur.

The belief in fairies has not yet gone out in this remote shire, and we have been in an old house said to be haunted by the ghost of a cow.

The fauna and flora of Cornwall are much the same as in other parts of Western England, except, of course, that some shrubs and other plants usually found only in warm climates or in greenhouses grow here freely out of doors. The Cornish chough among birds, and among plants the Cornish heath, are, as the names show, indigenous here. It is strange that the little harebell, so universal in Scotland and in most parts of England, should be here a great rarity. We recollect how, on our excursion to the Lizard, a lady of the neighborhood of Helstone had been entreated by a friend unable to accompany her to bring home a harebell, if she found any, as none grew near her own residence.

Those travelling in a country new to them are often more struck by some feature of the landscape different to what they have been accustomed to, than by the grander outlines of the scenery. Who, for instance, that has ever travelled in Western Cornwall, can fail to recollect the milestones in the shapes of obelisks, or the subst.i.tutes for stiles formed by narrow openings in the hedges with stepping-stones placed at equal distances, like the ploughshares in the ordeal by fire, for foot pa.s.sengers to pa.s.s across? The little cabbage-plantation or mound of _debris_ in the centre of a field is another characteristically Cornish inst.i.tution. Any account of Cornwall would be incomplete without some allusion to the pilchard fishery, next to mining, the great industry of the county. Innumerable quant.i.ties of this fish are annually salted and exported to the Roman Catholic countries of Southern Europe to be eaten during Lent. The popular Cornish name of the pilchard, "Fair Maid," is said to be from the Spanish _fumado,--i.e._, "smoked fish."

THE ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT.

AMELIA BARR.

[The lakes of c.u.mberland and Westmoreland, England, possess a double attraction to the tourist, the one being for their intrinsic beauty and charm, the other for their fame as the loved haunts of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and other famed writers. They have become a place of pilgrimage to the devotees of poetry, and we give their story in the words of one who saw in them this double charm.]

While dinner was being prepared, we strolled to the bridge which spans the Leven,--at this point a swift, shallow stream, with an inconceivable sparkle, scarcely deep enough to float the light skiff in whose shadow a great trout was posing himself against the crystal water. In half an hour we had a couple of his fellows in a napkin, deliciously browned.

It is worth while mentioning that Loch Lomond in Scotland and Lake Windermere in England discharge by rivers of the same length and name; but the Scotch Leven pa.s.ses through a bleak, uninteresting country, while the English Leven ripples and dances through a vale of sylvan beauty, full of the music of many cascades.

We hired a row-boat to take us up Windermere to the Ferry Inn; and here, as an old Laker, I may say, have nothing to do with a _sail_; take a row-boat, and you are safe; but all these mountain-locked waters are subject to what is known in the district as a "bottom-wind;" and the sail-boat caught in that pa.s.sionate gust will need the most skilful handling.

As we neared Storrs Hall, all the bright loveliness of the lake broke upon us, as it did upon Scott in 1825, on that memorable day when Southey, Wilson, Wordsworth, and Canning met him here, and Windermere glittered with all her sails in honor of the great Northern minstrel.

The Bailie had the whole pa.s.sage from Lockhart's Life of Scott by heart,--the brilliant cavalcades through the woods, the boatings on the lake by moonlight, the music and sunshine, the flags and streamers, the gay dresses and beautiful women, the hum of voices, the cheers of the mult.i.tude, and the splash of innumerable oars: he recalled for us the whole scene of the flotilla, as it wound among the beautiful isles of the loveliest lake in the world, half a century ago.

We had sent our luggage on to the Salutation Inn at Ambleside, for we had determined to stay one night at the Ferry Inn, nearly opposite Bowness, and about half-way up the lake. I had wonderful memories of this charming old hostelry, and many a time, when thousands of miles away, I had heard the pleasure-skiffs fret their cut-waters against the pebbly sh.o.r.e, many a time in dreams dripped silver from my oars in the moonlight, or wandered in the groves of laurel and lilacs and laburnums behind it.

Then it was a perfect old English inn, with a kitchen whose Homeric breadth and bright cheerfulness made it a constant picture. Then there was on one side of it a curiously carved and twisted oaken dresser, extending from the floor to the ceiling, black with age and bright with labor. Mugs and tankards of bright pewter stood out against this dark background; huge hams and sad-colored herbs descended from the rafters.

A great wood-fire always blazed on the hearth. La.s.ses in snow-white jackets and linsey-woolsey petticoats went in and out about their duties. The handsome, motherly landlady looked after every guest; and Arnold, the jolliest landlord that ever lived, sat smoking in the ingle, chatting with some traveller, or listening to the yarn of a lake fisherman.

As we approached the little bay, I saw that the Ferry Inn had gone; a grand modern hotel stood upon its site. I refused to be disenchanted.

Perhaps Arnold was dead also. Nothing could be as it had been, and I asked to cross over at once to Bowness. But, while I am speaking of Arnold, I may tell again a story he was very fond of telling about Wordsworth.

"Knaw'd Wadswuth?" he would say, with a merry twinkle. "I did, a few.

This wuz the way I comed to knaw him, so as I shan't forget 'n again in a hurry. When I wuz guard of the Whitehaven mail, as we wuz a-slapping along, and just coming to a sharpish turn,--the carner near the bridge, this side Keswick,--what should we see but sumthin' uncommon tall and grand, tooling along a little pony-shay!

"'Oh, Lord! here's a smash,' said I, and afore the words wuz out of my mouth, crash went the shay all to smitherins, and slap went the driver over a wall into a plantation, arms out and great-coat a-flying. We thought fur sure 'twas all over with 'n; but presently he picked hisself up uncommon tall again, and sez he, 'I'll have this matter thoroughly investigated.' With that he walked off towards the public.

"'Bill,' said coachee to I, very down like, 'who de think that is?'

"'Well, who be 't, Jem?' sez I.

"'Why, who but the powit Wadswuth.'"

Then he would add, "If you goes to Keswick, just by the bridge you'll see the place _where we spilt the powit_! Ay, often and often since that, when I've a-seen the grand fowks draw up to the Mount, I've a-said sly like to myself, 'Ah, gentlemen, you be going to see the powit, but you never had him to call upon you, unexpected like, on a flying visit over a wall.'"

Windermere at Bowness is like what the Thames is at Richmond. Bowness is the pleasure-village of the lake country. There yachtsmen flourish and beauties linger. The band makes music in the grounds of the Royal Hotel, and the crowds promenade or float gracefully past in the dreamy waltz.

Every window is open, the balconies are full of life and color, lovely faces peep out from among the cl.u.s.tering clematis, twinkling lights and soft strains are on the lake until midnight, and flowers, flowers, flowers touch you everywhere.

Two men, as dissimilar as possible, I can always see in the streets of Bowness--the handsome Professor Wilson, poet and athlete, whom the Westmoreland people so aptly described as "strang as a lion, lish as a trout, _wi' sich antics as niver_," and the little, plain-faced, serious Wilberforce,--Wilson joyous and strong, and settling all things "wi' the waff o' his hand," Wilberforce sauntering along, as he tells us in his diary, comforting himself by repeating the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm. Wilson lived at Elleray, now close to Windermere railway-station, and Wilberforce had a residence among the stately woods of Rayrigg, just outside Bowness.

The next morning we started for Ambleside, taking on the way the village of Troutbeck. Troutbeck is a funny misnomer for the rivulet so named, for not a trout has ever been found in it. But for a typically exquisite village, no dream of painter or poet can rival it. The cottages, with their numerous gables, seem to have been built on some model conceived by the rarest poetical genius. They are of the stone and slate of the country; age has given them "a green radiance" and bathed them in the l.u.s.tre of lichens. The porches are of meeting tree-stems or reclining cliffs, and are dripping with roses and matted with virgin bower.

Nowhere else in the world is there "a mile-long congregation of such rural dwellings, dropped down just where a painter or poet would wish them, and bound together by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamores, by flower-gardens and fruit-orchards rich as those of the Hesperides."...

There are places we visit and forget, but this is never the case with Ambleside; walk through its streets, and they become forever a part of the spirit's still domains. John Ruskin, in his "Characteristics of Nature," has referred to the peculiar influence which is exerted upon people who live in a neighborhood where granite is abundant; and Wordsworth tells us that

"One impulse from a vernal wood May teach us more of man, Of moral evil, and of good, Than all the sages can."

If this be true, then what influence must be morally exerted over those who dwell in such a bower of Paradise as Ambleside!

The vale of Windermere is watered by two little rivers, the Rothay and Brathay. They unite a few yards above the head of the lake, and enter it together. In the sp.a.w.ning season a singular sight may be witnessed at this spot: the trout and char, for which Windermere is famous, separate where the rivers meet; the char go up Brathay to sp.a.w.n, the trout all go up Rothay.

The most charming way to see the vale of Ambleside is to saunter about it; to walk to Stock Ghyll Force and look at the old mill made famous by the painting of Birket Foster; to lean over Rothay Bridge and Pelter Bridge and dream away the hours on the sh.o.r.es of the wildly-sylvan Rydalmere; or to go into Rydal Park and lose ourselves among the cooing of cushats and the shrill cries of blackbirds. Stock Ghyll Force is worth seeing. The word "force" is one of the few words of the past still lingering in secluded places: it signifies to "rush thoroughly:"

the waters fall from a height of seventy feet, and make a terrific noise as they rush in two channels down the rocky gorge.

The slopes are covered with the rarest ferns, probably most of them indigenous to the soil, for we were told that few of them lived if transplanted from it. The path leading to the falls now belongs to the town of Ambleside, but a year or two ago it was in the possession of a gentleman who purchased the property at an auction. It had always been free and open to the public, but this speculative individual bought up the waterfall and hemmed it in with a fence. He then made a charge for admission. The townspeople were indignant; a sum of a thousand pounds was raised, and the man bought out at double the amount. The toll for the present is charged, but it will be abolished as soon as the other thousand has been collected,--a consummation fully expected during the present year.

The spirits of the great and good walk the lovely lanes and climb the hills with us, for all around Ambleside is haunted ground. Just outside is the ivy-covered house so long the home of Harriet Martineau, one of the bravest and hardest-working women that ever lived.

"Day by day our memory fades From out the circle of the hills,"