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 Another Random Document on
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 We run down a long hill into Lostwithiel. This is a place that has
seen better days; for Henry III.’s brother, the Earl of Cornwall and
King of the Romans, made it his headquarters in the rare moments
when he was not trying to make up the quarrels of others nor
fighting in his own, and even in the sixteenth century it was the
“shyre towne.” Of the “ruines of auncyent buyldinges” that Leland
saw there are only slight traces; but, if we cross the pretty old
bridge that spans the Fowey and turn to the right at once, we may
see “the little rownd castel of Restormel.” It is reached by a steep
lane, and there is no turning-room at the top except in a private
field.
 RESTORMEL CASTLE.

“Only there remaineth,” says Carew, “an utter defacement.” But

indeed there is something more. This straight avenue of pine-trees
with its carpet of turf, the double entrance across the moat, the
heavy, gloomy ivy, give to Restormel that air of mystery and
romance that seizes the imagination. Like its founder—the prince
whose strange exotic name haunts Cornwall far more persistently
than he ever did himself—like Richard, King of the Romans, this
castle was more warlike than domestic. Only the “fair large
dungeon,” or keep, and the “onrofid” chapel are left standing now on
the mound that overlooks the valley so commandingly. It is a fine
position; yet, though it was hastily strengthened for the Parliament,
Sir Richard Grenville[7] took it for the King.
The road from Lostwithiel to Fowey is for the most part winding
and stony, and extremely narrow. In places it is also very steep; and
the hedges are high and comparatively uninteresting. But a road
that leads ultimately to Fowey is entitled to do as it pleases on the
way. The last part of it is quite good.
On a very steep hill we creep slowly into “Troy Town.” We look
out, over the sloping streets and the roofs of the houses and the
church, at the blue harbour and the hill beyond it and all the busy
traffic of the port. Over this hill, hundreds of years ago, the men of
Normandy crept into Fowey in the night and fell to fighting in the
streets, with a whole century of wrongs to avenge—a century of
raids and robberies on the part of the truculent Gallants of Fowey.
The spoils of French harbours had made the townsmen here
“unspeakably rich and proud and mischievous.” So the Frenchmen
came to Fowey “without the Foymen’s knowledge or notice,” and
killed everyone they met, and burnt the town. Thomas Treffry—Hals
calls him John—gathered some of the “stoutest men” round him in
his new house of Place, and defended it; while his wife Elizabeth,
like a true help-meet, mounted to the roof and poured molten lead
upon the besiegers, with excellent effect. Place stands there still,
below us on the left; yet not the same that was besieged, since the
tall tower is plainly of Victorian date, and the very beautiful bays that
appear above the wall are Tudor. It was after this exciting experience
that Thomas Treffry—or John—“builded a right fair and stronge
embatelid towr in his house: and embateling al the waulles of the
house in a maner made it a castelle: and onto this day”—and unto
this—“it is the glorie of the town building in Faweye.”
If we stand close below the church tower, and look carefully at the
stones above us, we shall see the familiar badge of the ragged staff,
the cognisance of the Kingmaker. The Foyens, when Warwick
allowed them to go on with their piracies, naïvely put his badge
upon their new church in acknowledgment of his kindness, and
persevered in their filibustering ways. Edward IV., however, subdued
them by a most unkingly trick. His first messenger they returned to
him shorn of his ears, “at which affront the King was so distasted”
that he sent a body of men to Lostwithiel, the shire town, ostensibly
to enlist volunteers. The Gallants, who never asked for anything
better than to fight the French, trooped to Lostwithiel at the
summons of their King. They were all arrested; and the chain that
guarded their harbour was given to Dartmouth. I believe there are
two links of the chain still to be seen at Menabilly, behind the hill.
From the windows of the Fowey Hotel we can see, at Polruan, one
of the square grey forts to which the ends of this chain were
fastened. The ruins of the other are opposite to it. These valiant little
forts have seen a good deal of service, and defended their port long
after their chain was forfeited. There was a Dutch ship that came to
this harbour-mouth one day in pursuit of an English fleet, and defied
the forts in the insolence of her seventy guns—“to the great hurt,”
says Hals, “of the Dutch ship … and the no small credit and
reputation of Foy’s little castles.”
 BODINNICK FERRY.

Fowey’s fighting reputation has always been great, since the day
when she owned “sixty tall ships” and sent forty-seven of them to
the siege of Calais. To see the harbour that has done so much for
England we must loiter in a boat beside the jetties and among the
creeks; we must pass the dripping walls of gardens, and the flights
of steps where the seaweed clings, and the houses whose back-
doors open on the water; we must watch the lading of the ships
with china-clay—ships from Sweden and Russia and France—and
pause before the picture that Bodinnick makes on the hillside. It was
to this hillside, says the story, that Sir Reynold de Mohun came to
fetch his hawk, when it killed its quarry in the Fitzwilliams’ garden up
there at Hall. Walking in the garden was the fair Elizabeth
Fitzwilliam, and on the moment he lost his heart to her, and as she
thought him “a very handsome personable young gentleman,” they
became the first Mohuns of Hall. Whether they were really
introduced by the hawk is doubtful, but they were certainly married
—and that not merely once but twice: for the bishop divorced them
against their will, and it was only by appealing to the Pope that they
won leave to live happily ever after.[8]
Even if we cannot see all the bends and creeks of the river from
Fowey to Lostwithiel, we must at least take our boat between the
woods and slopes of Pont Pill, where it is only at the water’s very
edge that the ferns and heather yield to rocks and crimson weed.
Landing at Pont, we may climb the steep hillside to Lanteglos Church
among the orchards, and see the old stone cross beside the porch,
and the wonderful bench-ends within, and the elaborately painted
shields that bear so many famous arms. On this little lonely church,
buried among the trees, things of beauty have been lavished, not
only long ago but lately; carvings both old and new, and magnificent
embroideries, and pavings of marble. There is no other church like
this, I think: none, so small and simple and lonely, that has been so
generously treated.

PONT PILL, FOWEY.

 Fowey town is a maze of little streets; but when we have climbed
out of them—with heavier hearts than seems reasonable—we drive
away past the lodge of Menabilly on a very fair road. It will add little
to the journey if we go round by Tywardraeth and see the old
church, and the tombstone of the prior whose monastery has so
strangely vanished. A few carved stones in the churchyard are all
that remains of the priory that was founded by William de Mortain,
“a person of a malicious and arrogant spirit from his childhood.” It
was well named Tywardraeth, the house on the sand, for great was
the fall thereof; but why it has disappeared so utterly, and how, is
curiously obscure. Gilbert tells the story of the last prior’s resignation
—an edifying tale. Thomas Cromwell wrote to him a letter full of
compliments, praising his virtues as a man and a prior, and telling
him how deeply the King appreciated his services. These had been
so unremitting, added Cromwell, that his Grace, being mindful of his
age, would allow him to resign his post. To this Prior Collyns
answered briskly that he was most grateful for the King’s kind
thought, but as a matter of fact his health was excellent. So my Lord
Privy Seal tried again. This time the astonished prior was informed
that “the savour of his sins, crimes, and iniquities had ascended
before the Lord, and that unless he immediately relinquished an
office he had most grossly abused a commission would inquire into
his misdeeds and punish him accordingly.” This, Collyns understood.
Here is his gravestone in the church, in the wall of the north
transept; a slab of slate with a cross incised on it. Some old bench-
ends have been made into a pulpit, and others inserted in new seats
of pitch-pine; but these are not relics of the priory.
Leaving St. Blazey on the right, we run on through some lovely
scenery to St. Austell, where a church-tower of wonderful splendour
and richness rises from the dull streets of stuccoed and slated
houses. Our road to Truro is wide and has an excellent surface, but
one hill succeeds another with exasperating regularity and
promptitude. The scenery varies from dulness to beauty: the villages
seem, to eyes that have lately looked upon those of Devon, a little
uninteresting, for we are in the land of the Celt. Thatched cottages
are rare, but in Probus there are several of them clustered round the
churchyard very prettily. This tower of Probus is the highest in
Cornwall, and very rich in sculptured stones: within the building are
the granite pillars that are common to nearly all Cornish churches,
and a screen whose Latin legend alludes to the two patron-saints St.
Probus and St. Grace.
It is only a little way beyond Probus that we cross the head of the
Falmouth estuary. By the rushy banks of this calm stream a little
band of horsemen once settled weighty matters; for it was here, at
Tresilian Bridge, that the royalist general, driven into a cul-de-sac by
Fairfax, made his final surrender by the mouth of his commissioners.
They met Ireton and Lambert at this spot, and the end of their
meeting was the disbandment of the royal troops. The generals of
the Parliament rode back to Fairfax by this road of ours, beside the
banks of grass and rushes, and the mud-flats and the woods, and
down the hill to Truro.
Except the cathedral there is little to see in Truro, and even the
cathedral lacks the glamour of age, for, of the masonry, only the
south aisle is part of the old church of St. Mary: the rest is new. The
general effect of the inside of the building is fine, if a little severe.
There is, however, a very gorgeous baptistery in the south transept,
whose coloured pavements and crimson font are in rather startling
contrast to the prevailing austerity. The roof, I believe, came from
the old church, with a few of the monuments. The tomb on which
John Robarts and his wife are lying in such obvious discomfort must
be the one, I think, that was repaired in the eighteenth century by a
mason whose bill included these items: “To putting one new foot to
Mr. John Robarts, mending the other, putting seven new buttons to
his coat, and a new string to his breeches knees. To two new feet to
his wife Phillipa, and mending her eyes.”
Those of us who are intending presently to drive through the
country of the Grenvilles may be glad, when they come to Stratton
and Kilkhampton, to have seen Kneller’s picture of Anthony Payne. It
is here in Truro, on the staircase of the museum in Pydar Street: a
burly figure in scarlet, with a face that tries to be fierce but cannot
hide its tenderness and humour. This is Sir Bevill Grenville’s giant
henchman, who fought at his master’s side at Stratton and
Lansdowne, and taught the children to ride and shoot.
A fine road leads from Truro to Falmouth, through hilly but
beautiful country; by pine-woods, and distant views, and the green
flats of the estuary, and a valley full of trees. Near pretty
Perranarworthal we see, crossing a little gorge upon our right, one
of the old wooden viaducts that have so nearly disappeared. In
Penryn we cling closely to the estuary, following it to Falmouth
Harbour. A hundred years ago the main road to Falmouth from
London, as it passed through Penryn, “ran up and then down
through streets so steep and narrow,” says a writer of that time, “as
to make the safe passage of the mail-coach a wonder.” To-day,
however, Penryn is one of the few towns in the West Country out of
which we can drive on level ground.
When Sir Walter Raleigh came to stay with the Killigrews in their
fine new house at Arwenack, he suggested to his host that he
should make a town here, on the shore of this splendid harbour. The
Killigrews were men of action, and the town was built; to the acute
annoyance of Penryn, which petitioned in vain against its upstart
rival. We make our slow way through the narrow, crowded streets of
the Killigrews’ town, and find the last remaining fragment of their
house still “standing on the brimme within Falemuth Haven.” Only a
crumbling wall is there, and a window, and on the hill the avenue by
which the vanished Killigrews went in and out; nothing to show that
Arwenack was the very source of Falmouth’s existence and the very
core of her history. For with every concern of Smith-ike and Pen-y-
cwm-wick and Falmouth a Killigrew was connected, from the day
when they settled here in the fourteenth century till the day when
the last of the name set up this pyramid that is beside us—not with
the justifiable object of honouring the Killigrews, but for the
astonishing reason that he thought it beautiful. He called it a darling
thing. “Hoping it may remain,” he wrote, “a beautiful Imbellishment
to the Harbour, Long, Long, after my desireing to be forgott.”[9]

ARWENACK AVENUE, FALMOUTH.

No Killigrew is likely to be forgot. It was a Killigrew who gave the

land on which Henry VIII.’s castle of Pendennis still stands out there
upon the point; a Killigrew who helped to build it and became its
first governor; a Killigrew who made Falmouth and fostered it; and
the eagle of the Killigrews is borne to this day on the shield of the
town. The Killigrews are not forgotten.
 It was the round tower of Pendennis that brought Arwenack low.
It is used as barracks now, and to see the old building we must have
an order; but from the pretty shaded road that circles it we can see
nearly all there is to be seen with the bodily eye. Yet if we pass
through the grey stone gateway there are other things that we may
see, perhaps: Henrietta Maria carried in upon her litter, “the most
worne and weak pitifull creature in ye world,” seeking a boat to take
her to France; her son a year later coming on the same errand: the
Duke of Hamilton brought hither “to prevent his doing further
mischief,” by order of the King for whom he lost his head a little
later: Fairfax’s messenger summoning Sir John Arundel to surrender
his castle. “Having taken less than two minutes’ resolution,”
answered old John-for-the-King, “I resolve that I will here bury
myself before I deliver up this castle to such as fight against his
Majesty, and that nothing you can threaten is formidable to me in
respect of the loss of loyalty and conscience.”[10] Five months the
garrison held out; and when at last the remnant of them filed
through the gate—a pathetic procession of sick and starving men
tottering out with flying colours and beating drums—they left no
food behind them but one pickled horse.
The belief that the little room above the gate was used by
Henrietta Maria is probably due to what might be called the law of
local tradition; the law that masonry attracts picturesque
associations in direct proportion to its own picturesqueness, and in
inverse proportion to the quantity of building that survives. If one
room only of an old castle remains, it is that room, according to local
tradition, that was the scene of every event that ever took place in
the castle. A gatehouse is an improbable shelter for a queen in time
of war. As for Prince Charles, there was once a tiny room in which he
was reputed to have hidden. Here we have another invariable rule.
Charles II. never occupied any place larger than a cupboard; and
even in a fortress garrisoned by royalists he systematically “hid.” In
this case even his reputed hiding-place is gone, and the legend has
not as yet been transferred to the gatehouse; but if we enter the
fort itself beneath the sculptured arms of Henry VIII., and mount the
long staircase to the leads, we shall see below us on the shore the
little blockhouse from which he escaped to France. On our left lies
the crowded harbour with St. Mawe’s beyond it, and the round grey
tower that was built at the same time as Pendennis: on our right is
the bay of Gyllyng Vase, named William’s Grave in memory of the
prince who was drowned in the White Ship. Headland stretches
beyond headland; and far away on the horizon the Manacles show
their cruel teeth.
During the siege John-for-the-King set fire to Arwenack lest the
Parliament-men should make a battery of it. It is a common saying
that the Killigrews, in their loyalty, put a light to it themselves. But
strangely enough the owner at this time was “ye infamous Lady
Jane,” who had been divorced by Sir John Killigrew but kept
possession of his house for her life—a curious state of things that
definitely settles the question of the firing of Arwenack. It was this
Lady Jane who gave the famous chalice to the town of Penryn,
“when they received mee that was in great miserie.” It was not this
lady, however—as is often said—but Dame Mary of Elizabethan days,
who boarded the Spanish ship in a true Elizabethan spirit and took
her cargo home to Arwenack.[11]
 KING HARRY’S FERRY.

Although this harbour “ys a havyng very notable and famose,” it

lacks the charm of Fowey and Dartmouth; and it is only in the upper
reaches that the Fal has the beauty of the Dart. It is wisest to start
from Falmouth. The hills at first are low and the estuary wide; but
when Carrick Roads have narrowed into King Harry’s Reach and the
river sweeps past us between the rolling woods, we remember
Hawker singing of his native Cornwall and “her streams that march
in music to the sea.” We take our winding way past the ferry to
which King Harry never came, past many alluring creeks, past
Tregothnan—the home but not the house of Admiral Boscawen—and
round the green banks of Woodbury, till we see Truro’s white
cathedral against the sky.
When we finally drive away from Falmouth our most prudent
course is to go out of the town past the recreation-ground, and take
the road that leads to the Lizard by Constantine; for though the
longer road by Helston is by far the better of the two, there are dark
whispers heard in this neighbourhood, sometimes, of measured
distances and other perils. We see on the left the by-road to
Penjerrick, where Caroline Fox wrote her delightful journal and
charmed so many men of mark; pass through Constantine, a village
of solid stone houses, and thatch, and gardens, and run down into
Gweek. It was here that Hereward the Wake twice rescued the
Cornish princess from unpleasant suitors. The high green walls of
oak and ash that Hereward saw are further down the river, but this
is the head of the tide where King Alef’s palace stood, and the
champion of England slew the giant, and where now a brisk trade is
carried on in bone-manure. Whatever may be the truth about
Hereward, the last fact admits of no doubt.
The miles that lead to Lizard Town are of the sort that one
remembers ever after with a thrill. It is rather a complex thrill, with
contributions from the past and from the future and from the
exhilarating present. The Marconi towers, slim fingers pointing
skyward, are not without their influence on our pulses, with their
hints of future conquests, and their message that the fairy-tale of to-
day is the science of to-morrow. The road is broad and smooth and
level, and lies between low hedges, and has the straightness that
the motorist loves; beyond the waving tamarisks a flat land of green
and purple stretches away to the horizon; for the first time in many
days the car speeds over the plain at the pace she loves best; and
the sea-wind rushes to meet us with its story of the Spanish
Armada.
 THE LIZARD.

We slow down at last in Lizard Town, where the squalid little

houses are smothered in flowers fit for a palace, blazing draperies of
scarlet and rose—the climbing geraniums that in Cornwall grow, not
as a favour, but because they enjoy it. Here it is perhaps best to
leave the car, though it is perfectly possible to drive to the foot of
the lighthouse, where there is room to turn. The first lighthouse that
stood on this spot was built by one of the Killigrews of Arwenack, to
the great displeasure of the people. He was robbing them of God’s
grace, they naïvely complained—meaning the spoils of the wrecked.
Beyond the lighthouse are grassy slopes where it is good to sit
alone among the sea-pinks. To right and left are long headlands and
curving bays; on every side are masses of grey rock crowned with
golden lichen; and beyond them the sea comes laughing from the
South. And on a sudden we see the mighty crescent of the Armada,
seven miles wide, sweep up the Channel to its doom, with the
smoke of many guns flying before the gale, and with every man
upon his knees.
It is a disappointment to learn that the track to Kynance Cove is
too sandy for motors; but only a few miles further along the coast is
the cove of Mullion, which is easily reached on quite a good road.
Those who know Kynance declare it is more attractive than Mullion,
but I think there must be some mistake about this, because it is not
possible to be more attractive than Mullion. From the tiny harbour
with its two sheltering piers a natural tunnel—passable only when
the tide is low—leads through the rock to the sands of a little bay.
Here the cliffs are high and wild, and masses of black rock rise sheer
from the ripples of a blue-green sea, and in the caves the
“serpentine” stones are red and green and pink and full of sparkles,
like the stones of Aladdin’s cave. One can see at a glance that the
superstition about Kynance Cove is quite without foundation.

MULLION COVE.
 From Mullion village we may either return to the Helston road at
once, or drop down into Poldhu Cove, close under the Marconi
towers. Hence we must climb on a good surface the very steep hill
to Cury; for Gunwalloe is a place to avoid, although much treasure,
they say, lies hidden under the sands there, buried by long dead
buccaneers. It is an unfortunate circumstance that the road is liable
to be buried under the sands too.
The fine, wide road to Helston passes through dull country, but
the little town itself, with its steep hill and many trees, must wear a
brave air on every eighth of May, when the townsfolk are “up as
soon as any day, O!” and dance off into the fields

“For to fetch the summer home,

The summer and the may, O!”

This Furry Day has been corrupted into Flora Day; but Gilbert
derives it very plausibly from foray, and declares that it celebrates a
defeat of the Saxons, who attempted a raid on this coast. The
original ceremonial included a foray on the neighbours’ houses.
From Kenneggy Downs we may turn aside on a very bad lane to
see the curving sands of Prah and the grey tower of Pengerswick,
the hiding-place, in Henry VIII.’s time, of a certain homicidal Mr.
Milliton. Some say he built it, but this seems an improbably risky
thing to do. It is more likely that he occupied his enforced leisure in
painting the elaborate pictures and moral verses that are now
defaced. Few travellers will turn away from the fine high-road across
Kenneggy Downs to attempt the deciphering of Mr. Milliton’s
reflections; but it will not delay us to remember that John Wesley,
exasperated by the “huge approbation and absolute unconcern” of
the people in these parts, preached a sermon on the Downs, with a
rare touch of humour, on the resurrection of the dry bones. In a few
minutes we run into Marazion, and from the top of the hill first see,
through a gap in the hedge, “the great vision of the guarded Mount.”
In starting forth upon a tour in Cornwall there are two things, I
think, that one especially sets out to see; and in looking back it is
the same two things that one especially remembers to have seen.
One is Tintagel; but the spell of Tintagel is largely a matter of the
imagination. The other is St. Michael’s Mount; and here, though the
imagination has much to feed upon in calmer moments, it is chiefly
as a delight to the eye that it appeals to one in those first moments
that are so far from calm. Little we care for Edward the Confessor
and his monastery, or for any tale of battle and conspiracy, or for
any legend of archangels, while the Mount shows as a blur of blue
upon the pale, hot sky and in the mirror of the wet sands, and
Penzance is veiled in a cloud of gold-dust save for the tall church-
tower that rises from the mist, and the hills beyond the bay melt one
into the other, and the rocks lie in a long red line across the
foreground with a streak of piercing green at their feet. Yet it is hard
to choose a moment and a point of view, and say, “This is the best.”
At high tide or at low, in sunshine or at dusk, from near or far, from
Marazion or from Newlyn, or framed between the red stems of the
pines upon the hill, the Mount is always stately, mysterious, strong—
always the Mount of the Archangel.
 ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT.
It is reached from Marazion by boat at high-water, or on foot by
the causeway when the tide is low. From the little harbour we climb,
on a winding cobbled path among the trees and hydrangeas, the
steep hill that so many have climbed on sterner errands: Henry de la
Pomeroi, serving Prince John while the Lion was still safely caged;
Lord Oxford and his men, disguised as pilgrims, entering the
monastery with the help of pious words and seizing it with the
swords they wore under their habits; the angry adherents of the Old
Faith, charging up the hill with great trusses of hay borne before
them, “to blench the defendants’ sight and deaden their shot.”
Unfortunately there have been modern visitors nearly as turbulent as
these; for which reason there is not much that we are allowed to see
here to-day. We may go into the chapel where the monks once
worshipped, and we may stand on the little paved terrace and look
out over the parapet towards the shore, thinking of Lady Katherine
Gordon, who surely stood here sometimes while her husband Perkin
Warbeck was on his mad adventure. What were her thoughts of him
as she stood here? Did she know him to be an impostor? Did she
think he was the King? Or did she only dream, and dream again, of
that quick wooing up in Scotland by the boy of “visage beautiful”?
“Lady,” he had said, “… what I am now you see, and there is no
boasting in distress; what I may be, I must put it to the trial.… If
you dare now adventure on the adversity I swear to make you
partaker of the prosperity; yea, lay my crown at your feet.” To which
the lady had made answer: “My Lord, … I think you, for your
gentleness and fair demeanour, worthy of any creature or thing you
could desire.… Therefore, noble Sir, repair, I say, to the master of the
family.”
It was here at St. Michael’s Mount that they found her, when
Perkin’s little fight was over and her own little bubble had burst.
A wide and level road takes us round the bay into Penzance, and
up the hill whence Sir Humphry Davy looks down upon the street
where he was born, and past the spot—now covered by the market-
house—where Sir Francis Godolphin once tried in vain to make a
stand against the Spaniards, and on, beside the sea, to Newlyn. This
is a name that is known wherever pictures are painted or beloved;
and no wonder, for there is nothing in this harbour that an artist
might not turn to good account. Here are fishing-boats reflected in
the ripples, and piers hung with dripping seaweed, and lobster-creels
and nets upon the shore; and beyond them is the high sea-wall with
flowers in every cranny, and the steep street curving round the
harbour, and the people whom so many painters have taught us to
know. For all its charm and fame it has changed little since the
sixteenth century. It is still a place with a business in life; still, as
then, mainly a “fischar towne,” with “a key for shippes and bootes.”

NEWLYN HARBOUR.

Rejoining the main road to Land’s End, we pass through some

pretty but very hilly country to Lower Hendra. Those who wish to
see the Logan Rock must turn to the left here, and run down to the
sea through St. Buryan, and finally walk for some distance across
fields. Most people, I think, will keep to the high-road; but lovers of
old churches will wish to turn aside to the sanctuary of that “holy
woman of Irelond,” St. Buriana. From this high ground, where the
tall tower stands as a landmark visible for many miles, King
Athelstane saw the distant Scilly Isles, and here he vowed to build a
college if he should return safely after making the islands his own.
This Perpendicular building dates, of course, from a far later century
than his; but it was the church of the college he founded, and there
were parts of the college itself still standing in Cromwell’s day.
St. Buryan is only four miles from Land’s End. They are rather
dreary miles, by undulating fields and stone walls and the intensely
melancholy little town of Sennan; but they end, all the more
dramatically for their dulness, in the granite walls that guard our
utmost shore. There is no dulness here.
Here there is no carpet of sea-pinks, nor splash of flaming lichen
as at the Lizard, nor rocks fretted into fantastic shapes by the sea;
but an imperturbable front of iron, an unyielding bulwark, a stern
England that rules the waves. This is a fitting climax to our coast. On
each side of us cliff curves beyond cliff, and headland stretches
beyond headland. To the right are the blue waters of Whitesand Bay,
where Athelstane landed from the conquered Scilly Isles and John
from unconquered Ireland, and far away Cape Cornwall bounds the
view. With swelling hearts we stand on the cliff and look out over
the buried land of Lyonesse, and beyond the Longships Lighthouse,
to the wide seas on which Drake and Raleigh sailed away to the
Spanish Main, and Rodney to victory, and Grenville to the death that
made him deathless, and Blake to Teneriffe, and Nelson to Trafalgar.
The salt wind blows in across those seas and sings in our ears:
“When shall the watchful Sun,
England, my England,
Match the master work you’ve done,
England, my own?
When shall he rejoice agen
Such a breed of mighty men
As come forward, one to ten,
To the song on your bugles blown, England—
Down the years on your bugles blown?”

THE LAND’S END.

 NORTH CORNWALL
SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH NORTH
CORNWALL
Distances.

Land’s End
St. Ives 19 miles
Newquay 33 ”
St. Columb Major 7 ”
(Bedruthan Steps and back 14 ”)
Bodmin 15 ”
Liskeard 14 ”
Launceston 20 ”
Back to Bodmin 22 ”
Wadebridge 7 ”
Tintagel 17 ”
Bude 19 ”
Morwenstow 11 ”
Total 198 miles

Roads.

Some very steep gradients, but hills on the whole less constant.
Surface: main roads mostly good; lanes rough.

V
NORTH CORNWALL
 “I believe I may venture to aver,” wrote Tonkin of Cornwall two
hundred years ago, “that there are not any roads in the whole
kingdom worse kept than ours.” This is not the case now. The main
roads of Cornwall are excellent, and are far better kept than the
average road of Somerset, for instance. No doubt the quickest way
from Sennan to St. Ives is by Penzance and St. Erth Station; for this
road, which is in the direct route from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s,
leaves little to be desired. But the more interesting way is through
St. Just, and Morvah, and Zennor. We cannot expect so good a
surface here, yet from Sennan to Morvah, where the country is so
much disfigured by mines that we are glad to hurry, the road is
capital; and it is only as the scenery becomes beautiful that the
surface grows rough. There is a very steep descent beyond St. Just,
followed at once by a climb of which the stiffest gradient is about
one in five and a half.
It is in St. Just that we pass—on our left as we drive through the
Bank Square—the ancient amphitheatre known as the Plân-an-
Guare. Here, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, miracle-plays
were acted on the level space in the centre, while the six tiers of
seats that are replaced by the grassy bank were crowded with
country-folk and miners. The plays were very popular, says Carew,
“for they have therein devils and devices to delight as well the eye
as the ear.”
There are none of these bizarre attractions, nor indeed anything
else, to delight our eyes till we have passed Morvah. But from
Morvah to St. Ives we have a lovely drive through a country of hills
and heather, of bracken slopes and tors of granite—a little pattern
cut from Dartmoor. At Trereen it will be well to leave the car and
walk across several fields to Gurnard’s Head, whence there is a fine
view of the jagged coast. The massive granite steps that here serve
the purpose of stiles are luxurious beyond the dreams of laziness.
The last part of this road is bad, but the wild green slopes remind
us still of Dartmoor till we run down the long, steep hill into the
town of St. Ives. This is quite as good a centre as Penzance from
which to see the western end of Cornwall, for the Tregenna Castle
Hotel, with its park and walled garden and its lovely outlook over the
sea, is one of the most charming in the Duchy; and the place itself is
unspoilt. Indeed, these little fishing towns of Cornwall seem to
understand very well that their face is their fortune, so to speak;
that their welfare depends, not on bandstands and esplanades, but
on the beauty of their harbours and fishing boats and narrow
streets. Here at St. Ives are the simple charms of Newlyn and the
rest: the same little piers and clustered masts, the same contorted
streets and the same artists.
It is well that Mr. Knill, when he set up his crooked pyramid, did
not place it too near the town. If we look back as we drive away we
shall see, upon the skyline, the empty mausoleum of this
unconventional mayor, who built his own tomb and arranged to be
mourned with music and dancing at its base, but omitted to be
buried in it. Some say he did not mean it for a tomb at all, but for a
landmark to smugglers. This may be so, since at one time he
certainly indulged in privateering—an enterprise into which, he
explained, “he was hurried by the force of circumstances.” Perhaps
the same explanation applies to his burial in London.
 ST. IVES.

We drive on through the pretty, straggling village of Lelant to the

port of Hayle. The rich colouring of the harbour and river here, the
red and green flats, the brown and yellow sands, the crooked posts
reflected in the water, and the flocks of gulls, are the last pleasing
sights that we shall see for many miles; for the country through
which we have to pass cannot have been beautiful in its best days,
and is now made hideous by pit-heads and chimneys. Camborne is
big and ugly, with trams: Redruth is big and ugly, without trams:
there is no other visible difference, nor any gap between them. But
the compensation that motorists so often find in dull country is ours:
this is the splendid highway that leads to John o’ Groat’s. We leave it
when it turns towards Truro, but by that time our surroundings are
less depressing. Above Zelah Hill we take the road that crosses
Newlyn Downs, where the close carpet of heather somewhat
restores our spirits, though nowhere till we reach Newquay is there
any hint of the beautiful things that lie hidden in this neighbourhood.
After crossing the railway we should not take the first turn to
Newquay, but should wait for the second, where the signpost stands.
We shall thus avoid two bad hills.
Newquay must have been a glorious place before its shores were
black with people, and its steep red cliffs crowded with lodging-
houses, and its jutting promontory crowned with a huge hotel. Even
now, in spite of these things, its wears something of a queenly air.
We have left behind us the slow ripples of the southern sea: the
fierce blue waves sweep in upon this grand coast with quite a
different kind of dignity. But Newquay is too world-ridden to be really
lovable. “How beautiful she must have been!” is a sad saying,
whether applied to town or woman.
 TRERICE.
In its neighbourhood, however, are several noteworthy things. We
have only a few miles to drive, by leafy lanes and frequent splashes,
to a spot that the world has left untouched and that time has only
made more beautiful, the house of the Arundels. The best way to
Trerice is the lane by Kestle Mill. John Arundel of Trerice is a proud
name that becomes monotonous in the annals of Cornwall, and is
not unknown in those of England. It was here they lived, those
warlike Arundels—old Jack of Tilbury the Admiral, and John-for-the-
King, who made so gallant a fight at Pendennis. Though the
Arundels owned Trerice even in Edward III.’s time, I do not think Old
Tilbury ever saw this Elizabethan building, for he was an old man in
the days of Henry VIII. It was probably his son who built this lovely
house at the foot of the hill, with the huge mullioned window and
the moulded ceilings, and the oriel that overlooks the walled garden
and its yew hedges. But John-for-the-King, we may suppose, has
warmed himself before these splendid fireplaces, and has looked out
through these windows at the flowers and pines, and has eaten his
dinner at the great oak table now in the drawing-room. Some say he
was a hard man. Possibly: for he lived in hard times. Yet one who
knew him well called him “equally stout and kind.” “Of his enemies,”
says Carew, “he would take no wrong nor on them any revenge.
Those who for many years waited in nearest place about him
learned to hate untruth.”
There was another branch of the family who, for their greater
possessions, were known as “the great Arundels.” We may see their
house at St. Mawgan. When approaching, from St. Columb Minor,
the deep wooded hollow in which Lanherne stands close beside the
church of St. Mawgan, one should take the most easterly of the two
by-roads that lead to it. This hill, it is true, is steep enough; but the
other is steeper—one in five. Those who are going on to Bedruthan
Steps or elsewhere will do wisely to climb out of the hollow on this
same road, and go round by St. Columb Major, for the hill on the
further side of St. Mawgan is the steepest of all!
 Here in this seclusion, guarded by a triple defence of hills as well
as by the dark woods and by their own high wall, live the nuns of
Lanherne in the house of warriors. Not much of their dwelling is
visible, of course, but the chapel may be seen, and one wing of the
old house looks down, with many mullioned windows, on a gay little
garden that all may enjoy. Below Lanherne is the church, with
turreted tower and painted screen, and brasses and bench-ends,
and shields of the Arundels.
As I said before, the shortest way to Bedruthan Steps is the
longest way round—the way, namely, by St. Columb Major. The road
by Mawgan Porth has an alluring look upon the map, but as a matter
of fact comes to a sudden end in the sands; and I have heard a
tragic tale of a car that stuck fast there, and endured the humiliation
of being dragged out by horses. At the junction of roads between
the two St. Columbs is a gate into the woods of Lanherne, of whose
loveliness this is the only glimpse we may have, since motors are not
admitted to them. We turn to the left in St. Columb Major, past the
grey church of St. Columba, a maiden who was, says Hals,
“comparatively starved to death” in Gaul. Her church has had a
chequered career. One of the pinnacles of the tower was again and
again destroyed by lightning and rebuilt in vain, till the builders
carved on it the words: “God bless and preserve this work.” I do not
know if it escaped in the seventeenth century, when three
schoolboys, by setting fire to some gunpowder, “made a direful
concussion;” but only a few years later the steeple was again struck
by lightning “and the iron bars therein wreathed and wrested
asunder as threads.”
On a by-road that is of course hilly, but by no means bad, we rise
on to Denzell Downs, with a wide view to the left and a glimpse of
Mawgan Porth in the distance. When, having left St. Eval on the
right, we come to an isolated cottage, we must take the track that
goes straight on; for the one that turns to the right has an endless
number of gates, some steep hills, and a very rough surface, and is
much the longer of the two. Even on the track we take there are
gates enough to try the temper, but it soon leads to a field where we
may leave the car. We walk down across the heather to the cliffs.
These have not the iron severity of the Land’s End: the shale they
are made of is friable, and has been carved into a thousand shapes
—including a ridiculously life-like figure of Queen Bess—by the
waves that fret and foam even on the stillest day. The wide bay lies
below us with all its decorative arches and pinnacles and turrets,
bounded by Park Head, long and grey; and in the distance Trevose
Head makes the skyline. Two flights of steps are cut in the cliffs: one
leading to the shore and the other to a cave.
And now, after all this pottering in the narrow lanes about
Newquay, there are many who will be craving for a comfortable run
on an open road. These I advise to join the Truro and Bodmin road
near St. Columb Road Station, and drive over a series of breezy
heaths, on a good surface with no serious hills, to Bodmin: thence to
follow the Fowey to Liskeard and run up to Launceston: and from
Launceston to return to Bodmin across the moors. This is a fine run
and a real refreshment.
There is no lack of history in Bodmin, the “dwelling-place of
monks,” the burial-place of St. Petrock, once a cathedral city, and
more than once the headquarters of rebellion. Yet, save the great
church, there is little here to see. Very near Bodmin, however,
though not on our direct road, there is a place of wonderful beauty,
Lanhydrock. This park is rich in splendid trees, carpeted with fern,
irregular and wild and lovely beyond the common lot of parks. As we
sweep round a curve the gatehouse comes in view, with its arch and
octagonal towers and pinnacles; behind it is the stately house, the
mullioned windows and the battlements; and between house and
gateway, enclosed within a parapeted wall, lies the formal garden,
the rows of tapering cypresses, and urns of flowers, and blossoming
yuccas. When Essex stayed here with Lord Robarts, at the time that
Charles I. was at Boconnoc, the gatehouse was not yet built; but he
saw the north wing of the house as it now stands. After his desertion
of his troops at Fowey, Lanhydrock fell into royalist hands, and for a
short time was owned by Sir Richard Grenville, “the Skellum.”
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