From Paddington To Penzance - free ebook by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

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From Paddington To Penzance

Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

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FROM PADDINGTON TO PENZANCE

FROM PADDINGTON TO PENZANCE

By the Author of the Present Volume. Demy 8vo, cloth extra, 16s. THE BRIGHTON ROAD : OLD TIMES AND NEW ON A CLASSIC HIGHWAY . With a Photogravure Frontispiece and Ninety Illustrations. “The revived interest in our long-neglected highways has already produced a considerable crop of books descriptive of English road life and scenery, but few have been more attractive than this substantial volume. The author has gathered together a great deal of amusing matter, chiefly relating to coaching and life

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PREFACE

PREFACE

Before I set about the overhauling of my notes made on this tour—afoot, afloat, awheel—from London to Land’s End, I confided to an old friend my intention of publishing an account of these wanderings. Now, no one has such a mean idea of one’s capacities as an old friend, and so I was by no means surprised when he flouted my project. I have known the man for many years; and as the depth of an old friend’s scorn deepens with time, you may guess how profound by now is his distrust of my powers. “Be

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I.

I.

There were two of us: myself, the narrator, the artist-journalist of these truthful pages, and my sole companion, the Wreck. Why I call him by this unlovely title is our own private business, our exclusive bone of contention; not for untold gold would I disclose the identity of that man, the irresponsible, the nerveless, mute, inglorious fellow-wayfarer in this record of a summer’s tour. Let him, nameless save by epithet, go down with this book to a more or less extended posterity. But I give yo

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II.

II.

What semi-suburb so pleasant as Richmond, quite unspoilable, though jerry-buildings and shoddy hotels conspire to oust its old-world air; though the Terrace elms are doomed; though on Saturdays and Sundays of summer, Halberts and Arrys, Halices and Hemmers, crowd George Street, and shout and sing and exchange hats, and row upon the river, where, from the bridge, you may see them waving their sculls windmill fashion, and colliding, one boat with another, so that, their little hour upon the water

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III.

III.

To continue on the highroad that leads out of populous Richmond toward the “Star and Garter,” is to find one’s self presently surrounded with rustic sights and sounds altogether unexpected of the stranger in these gates. To take the lower road is to come directly into Petersham, wearing, even in these days, an air of retirement and a smack of the eighteenth century, despite its close neighbourhood to the Richmond of District Railways and suburban aspects. The little church of Petersham is intere

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IV.

IV.

Chertsey we passed this morning, heated with rowing, but between this and Laleham we were so far fortunate as to fall in with some acquaintances on a steam-launch who took us in tow so far as Old Windsor Lock, where we cast off and proceeded alone, landing at one of the many slips by Eton Bridge. Windsor and Eton claimed us for the remainder of the day for the due pursuance of some desultory sight-seeing, but Eton chiefly, for the sake of its College, where “her Henry,” that unhappy pious founde

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V.

V.

This morning there was an indignant man to breakfast at Cookham. Nothing pleased the creature, and the crowded coffee-room was well advised of his discontent, for he took care to proclaim it to all and sundry. He had begun the morning badly, so it seemed, and was like to continue thus throughout the day. The birds began it by arousing him from sleep at dawn, and surely never had birds of any sort been so anathematised since the time of that famous jackdaw of Rheims. The rooks and crows, the spar

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VI.

VI.

Regatta Island is scarcely a place of beauty. There is a brick and plaster pseudo-temple affair on it that records the most strenuous days of the classic fallacy, when eighteenth-century poets peopled the country side and the river banks with preposterous naiads and other galvanised reproductions of the beautiful and mystic mythology of the ancients. Alas! this is not Arcadia: Great Pan is dead long since, and his nymphs have danced away to an enduring Götterdämmerung . It is well it should be s

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VII.

VII.

This morning we rowed through Marsh Lock, struggled through the mazes, snags, and shallows of Hennerton Backwater, and lazed in the sunshine at Wargrave, that picturesque beach and village set over against the flat green meadows of the Oxfordshire bank. Then (for the spirit of exploration grew strong again) we laboriously shoved, rather than rowed, our craft through the esoteric windings of the Loddon River and Patricksbourne, arriving some hours later on the hither side of Shiplake Lock, with t

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VIII.

VIII.

And so we came into Hampshire. A weary county this, for those who know not where to seek its beauties—a county of flint-bestrewn roads, a county, too, of unconscionable distances and sad, lonely, rolling downs. Hampshire, indeed, seems ever attuned to memories in a minor key. It is, possibly, but a matter of individual temperament, but so it seems that this county of pine woods and bleak hills—bare, save for some crowning clump of eerie trees, whose branches continually whisper in sobbing breeze

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IX.

IX.

No more dreary road than that sixteen miles between Basingstoke and Winchester; a road that goes in a remorseless straight line through insignificant scenery, passing never a village for twelve or more weary miles, a road upon which every turning leads to Micheldever. Sign-posts one and all conspire to lead you thither, with an unanimity perfectly surprising. We made certain that something entirely out of the common run was to be found at that place of the peculiar name, and so we were ill enoug

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X.

X.

The ancient capital of all England lies in the quiet valley of the River Itchen, a small stream which, some twelve miles lower down, empties into Southampton Water. The naïve remark of the schoolboy upon the “coincidence” of great cities always being situated upon the banks of large rivers did not, when Winchester was the metropolis, have any application here, but in the light of subsequent history it may show the reason of the city’s decadence. From the earliest times Winchester was a city of i

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XI.

XI.

Of Walkelin’s building we have preserved to us unaltered the transepts, tower, crypt, and exterior of the south aisle. The plan, like that of most Norman cathedrals, was cruciform, with an apsidal east end. This plan remains almost the same; but the apse has disappeared, and in its place we have the usual termination, with the addition of a thirteenth century Lady Chapel. The tower, low and yet so massive, has a curious history. In the year 1110, William, the Red King, was killed in the New Fore

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XII.

XII.

We left Winchester regretfully one fine morning, going through West Gate and the suburb of Fulflood to the Stockbridge Road. “From the western gate aforesaid,” to quote Thomas Hardy’s conclusion to “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” “as every Winton-cestrian knows, ascends a long and regular incline of the exact length of a measured mile, leaving the houses gradually behind.... The prospect from this summit was almost unlimited. In the valley beneath lay the city, its more prominent buildings showing

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XIII.

XIII.

Shining with midsummer brilliancy, the sun heated the still air until all movement was irksome, and energy became entirely out of the question; so there was nothing for it but to recline in limp fashion on a hay-rick beside the white and dusty road, lazily noting the passers-by. Few indeed were they who passed down the village street—a shepherd, with barking dog and unruly flock, making in their passage a smother of dust that loaded the hedges with yet another white layer; and, as afternoon wore

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XIV.

XIV.

The rustics watched our departure with interest, until a turning of the lane hid us from their view, and brought us again into the open country, a country-side scattered with small and inhospitable hamlets and villages, where Roman roads ran straight up and down hill, deserted and grass-grown, where apparently the tourist was an unknown quantity, where certainly his wants remain unsatisfied. This night we “camped-out” as a matter of necessity. It was a fine night, and warm, and so there was not

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XV.

XV.

We breakfasted at a roadside inn, full early, not without inquiring glances from the landlady, for surely never before had she entertained such guests, so near the echo of cock-crow, and yet already dusty with travel. And so into Romsey, in company with a profane tinker, who ambled, clattering, beside us, scattering anathemas broadcast. Trade was bad, said he, and he hadn’t the price of a pint in his pockets. Perhaps we had? Assuredly; but there it remained. Whereupon ensued references to “torff

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XVI.

XVI.

We left Romsey by the grateful shade of Broadlands, and entered the New Forest at the hamlet of Ower. Here close battalions of firs lined the way on either side, and continued with us past Coppithorne church, until we reached Cadnam—Cadnam, a ravelled-out settlement emerging insensibly from the Forest and merging again into its groves by equally easy and insensible stages. We plunged into thick glades where a deep hush prevailed in a secondary lighting, varied occasionally by a first-hand patch

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XVII.

XVII.

Here we rested awhile, where all was still. Only the booming of the bees disturbed the ear, and one solitary wayfarer passed in the space of two hours. This was one who toured, even as ourselves, afoot, but one who dressed up to the part, with gaiters and Norfolk jacket and great Balbriggan stockings. He was walking as if for a wager; and while we sniffed at this toil of pleasure, he eyed us as he flashed past with some amusement, as who should smile at exhausted rivals. Presently we set out aga

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XVIII.

XVIII.

It was late in the hot afternoon, when we came into Bournemouth, through what seemed to us miles of suburban roads and endless rows of stucco villas. This is what Mr. Stevenson calls “the uncharted wilderness of Bournemouth,” and, indeed, we found the phrase happy and the place not at all to our liking. From what we saw of the famed pine-woods we were not impressed with them; gaunt battalions of tall trees, bare as scaffold-poles and as straight, with never a branch nor sign of foliage within a

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XIX.

XIX.

We stayed a day at Bournemouth, to catch anew the flavour of the place. On the morning after our arrival we came down early to breakfast. There was an American in the coffee-room. He was staying at the hotel, it seemed, with his wife and daughter. He did not, strange to say, wear striped trousers strapped over his boots, nor a star-spangled waistcoat, as in the comic papers, nor the supposedly-characteristic Yankee goatee. No, he had none of these things; he resembled that American of the carica

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XX.

XX.

It was evening ere we had taken our fill of Bournemouth’s joys and departed from those crowded sands to walk by the sea-shore to North Haven, where the entrance to Poole Harbour bars further progress. Bournemouth’s lights began to glitter in the gloaming, and made this lonely edge of land more cheerless by comparison. An extortionate boatman (as we subsequently learned) rowed us in the darkness across the ferry to South Haven, and left us, pilgrims in a strange land, upon the sands of the Dorset

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XXI.

XXI.

Here we were fairly come into the Isle of Purbeck, which indeed is no isle at all, save by a stretch of fact and imagination. Bounded on the north by Poole Harbour and the river Frome, on the east and south by the sea, the little brook of Luckford Lake runs to meet the Frome only along a portion of Purbeck’s western side, the remainder of that frontier being along a succession of especially tall hills which run down to Worbarrow Bay. Swanage, it may be supposed, is the capital of Purbeck to-day,

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XXII.

XXII.

It is, I suppose, some five miles from Swanage to Corfe: in summer, a hot, dusty, glaring walk, and featureless, too, until Corfe itself is neared. And Corfe, on a hot summer’s day, is a particularly parched, desiccated, thirsty place; shadeless, receiving and radiating heat from its stony expanse until distant objects, commonly still and stolid enough, dance erratically in the quivering air. It shocks the normally-constituted eye to see ranges of hills, distant churches, and big houses wagging

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XXIII.

XXIII.

The Purbeck Hills make breathless walking on a hot day, and so it chanced that when we reached the hamlet of East Lulworth we were hot and footsore and scant of breath. Shall I confess that we were soulless enough (or too tired) to step aside in search of Lulworth Cove, that famous inlet of the sea? Yes, ’tis better so. Instead, we lay awhile under the shade of trees in Lulworth Park, and viewed with some disfavour the unpicturesque towers of Lulworth Castle. At the only inn here we were turned

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XXIV.

XXIV.

Weymouth is a town of red-bricked respectability, and about fourteen thousand inhabitants. It lives on convicts, Portland stone, and the Channel Islands, and lies upon the curving shores of a beautiful bay. Even as George IV. is the patron king of Brighton, so was his father the respected cause of Weymouth’s prosperity. There is a stumpy statue of him upon the esplanade where Weymouth and Melcombe Regis imperceptibly merge one into the other, and that statue, I take it, is not so much an exempla

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XXV.

XXV.

Abbotsbury is a place of very great interest. It lies within half a mile of the sea, near by the Fleet Water and the Chesil Beach, and was at one time the site (as its name implies) of a very extensive and powerful abbey. The Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the appropriation of their funds, put an end to this religious house, among others, and very few remains of it are to be seen to-day. The Abbey Farm, a delightful old house, is built of its stones, and portions of the Gatehouse remain, wi

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XXVI.

XXVI.

Chideock was named from a once powerful family that bore this singular name, but now long since extinct. They had their castle here, of which no sign now remains, saving only in the name of the Chideock Castle Inn, where we stayed the night. It was a night close and intolerably warm, and I could not sleep. All through the night and the earliest morning hours the place within and the countryside without were quiet to a degree. Only once was the stillness of the country road broken—toward the stro

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XXVII.

XXVII.

We returned later to breakfast, and astonished the good folk of the Chideock Castle, who had not heard our early morning exit, and thought us still asleep. It was, by reason of this early rising, yet cool and pleasant when we had left Chideock, and come by way of Morecombelake into Charmouth. Charmouth, on this summer’s day, was wonderfully pleasant—everything, sea and shore and sky, pervaded by a golden haze. But what this settlement-like place must be like on a wet day of incessant drizzle, is

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XXVIII.

XXVIII.

Axminster, for all its quietude and respectable insipidity, has had its stirring times. In the immediate neighbourhood was fought the battle of Brunenburgh, between a huge army of invading Danes and the Saxon forces of Athelstan. To quote the curious phrasing of an old chart of Henry VIII.’s time, “There entrid at Seton dywse strange nacions, who were slayne at Axmyster to the number of v Kings, viij erles, a busshoppe, and ix score thousand in the hole, as a boke old written doth testyfye.” To

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XXIX.

XXIX.

Two miles south of Axminster, on our way to Seaton, we came upon the farmhouse of Ashe, at one time the mansion of the Drakes. Here was born, on May 24, 1650, John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough. Here, too, in the private chapel of the house, now used as a cider cellar, was married Lord North, one of that tactless ministry who lost us the New England States. In 1782, the last of the Ashe Drakes died, and five years later the greater portion of the house was destroyed by fire. In Musbu

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XXX.

XXX.

Preconceived ideas are, when not realised, apt to disturb one’s peace of mind, and so it happened that we, who had conjured up a mental picture of Exeter, had indeed imagined a vain thing: the reality came upon us with something of a rude shock. Used to the more familiar type of cathedral city, dreamy old places where the atmosphere of the Minster is all-pervading, and where the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, and their doings hold the foremost rank in men’s minds and talk, we were not prepared to

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XXXI.

XXXI.

We passed down the steep High Street of Exeter, crowded with ruddy-towered churches, and bordered, as to its farther end, with the low-lying slums of Exe Island. Across Exe Bridge is the suburb of St. Thomas, and we explored its one long street to its end, where it joins the Dunsford Road, from whose rise this prospect of Exeter is taken. Then we retraced our steps some distance, and set out for Teignmouth, coming in rather over a mile to Alphington, a pretty village, with tall and slim church t

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XXXII.

XXXII.

I think him a very charming saint indeed, with a happy lack of anything like a priggish austerity: one might be happy in the society of such a saint as this—if only he wore boots. Pity is that the average run of saints one hears or reads of are very gorgons for grimness: they look not upon the wine when it is red (nor white, either, for that matter). They are not like this old fellow, who is my beau idéal of the jovial anchorite. The first editor of my acquaintance (he was the editor of a pseudo

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XXXIII.

XXXIII.

Exminster lies close to the river, and from its church-tower there is a magnificent view down as far as Exmouth, and then out to sea. The scenery is very beautiful: the Exe broadens into an estuary, and at low tide the smell of the seaweed and the mud-flats comes across the low-lying fields between the river and the highway with a refreshing breeze, doubly welcome after a hot and dusty walk. There is a walk beside the estuary atop of the banks that restrict the waters to their proper channel—a w

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XXXIV.

XXXIV.

I left off somewhat abruptly last night, you may say, but indeed I think there is nothing which it would be profitable to set down in this place of what befell at Starcross. Referring to my diary, I find a mention of cockles (upon which Starcross prides itself), which some kindly stranger invited us to partake of as we were having tea, all three of us, in the hotel coffee-room. But cockles (if you will excuse the Irishry) are very small beer, so I do not propose to trouble you with an account of

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XXXV.

XXXV.

There is a legend accounting for this petrified couple. It seems that the vicar of a neighbouring parish had business with his bishop at the Palace of Exeter. He set out late in the afternoon, on horseback, for the city, accompanied by the parish clerk, and, a storm coming on, they promptly lost their way in the mist and rain; the incessant flashes of lightning, brilliant as they were, would not have sufficed for them to regain their road, even had their horses been less terrified. The vicar was

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XXXVI.

XXXVI.

From here it is a two miles’ walk along the sea-wall into Teignmouth. Time and again, in winter storms, hundreds of feet of massive masonry have been torn down, and often carried away bodily, by the sea, and on two or three occasions great landslips have occurred from the soaring red-sandstone cliffs overlooking the railway. Railway engineering here is no play. “Teignmouth” (says my Bædeker) “is a large watering-place, prettily situated at the mouth of the Teign.” Thus far the guide-book. It is

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XXXVII.

XXXVII.

I knew an artist once who climbed round by these jagged rocks, and slipped down between two of them and sprained his ankle, just as they do in the penny novelettes. But there the resemblance ceased. The artists in the novelettes are always handsome and of a god-like grace, and they wear moustaches of a delightfully silken texture, and velveteen coats, and talk pretty, like nothing or no one ever did talk. This fellow, to the contrary, was as ugly a beggar as one might meet in a long day’s march,

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XXXVIII.

XXXVIII.

The coast here is serrated with tiny bays, from which run valleys, called in Devonshire “coombes,” or “combes,” variously. Of these, Watcombe is perhaps best known. Sometimes the combe has become a town, as at Babbacombe. Maidencombe is one of the smallest and prettiest of those deep and narrow valleys, clothed with a rich vegetation, and thickly wooded with giant elms, retired, and, what Devonshire folk call “loo,” or “lew,” that is, sheltered. There is, indeed, a secluded parish in Devon to wh

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XXXIX.

XXXIX.

When first I saw Torquay and Torbay (I am afraid to think how many years ago), and the long line of curving coast stretching away past parvenu Paignton to Berry Head, I thought that here was a veritable fairyland amongst seaside resorts. Many things have happened since then: the South Devon coast, once so solitary, so quiet, has everywhere its fringe of trim-built villas; the lonely coombes, once the home of rabbits and some few fishermen, echoing only with the querulous cries of sea-gulls, are

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XL.

XL.

Three miles of a delightfully undulating road that leads close by the shores of the bay, and at length we reached Paignton about nine o’clock. Paignton lives on the leavings of Torquay, and a decent subsistence they seem to afford. It is unromantically celebrated for its cabbages, and peculiar for the German nomenclature of its hotels. The whole place is singularly and indecently Teutonic, a sort of Pumpernickel, and its chief street might appropriately be termed the Donnerwetterplatz, from the

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XLI.

XLI.

From woody dells and time-greyed walls to the highroad and modern Bridgetown, the suburb of Totnes, seemed a sorry change, though without the loveliness of Berry it had been fair enough. Bridgetown lies on one side of a narrow valley, Totnes on the other, and between them runs the Dart, crossed by a very serviceable, very modern, very uninteresting bridge, that stands sponsor to the suburb. Totnes, say the historians, is the oldest, or one of the oldest, borough towns in England, founded, we are

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XLII.

XLII.

We took steamer from Totnes to Dartmouth. There are two classes aboard, “saloon” and “second,” and there is but threepence difference between the two. But the Wreck, who was paymaster this day, and is ever economically inclined, prudently bought two of the cheaper tickets, “for,” said he, “we are not travelling en grande tenue ” (terms for translation may be had on application). So we took our places astern, and in due course arrived off the pontoon at Dartmouth. The Wreck, who was in charge of

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XLIII.

XLIII.

The situation of Dartmouth is eminently characteristic of the seaport towns of South Devon and Cornwall. It lies, like so many of them, at the mouth of a little river, which, running almost due south for an inconsiderable number of miles, widens at last into an estuary that gives on the sea through a narrow opening between tall cliffs. On the inner side of this strait and dangerous gut, the storm-tossed mariner, wearied of Channel waves, rides in a deep, land-locked harbour, at peace, and on the

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XLIV.

XLIV.

They call it three and a half miles from Dartmouth to Dittisham; we made it, I should say, about eight; but there is no occasion for any one who essays to follow our route to emulate this shocking example. Those eight miles were all either up or down hill. A spirit-level wouldn’t get the ghost of a chance anywhere along these lanes, for, the moment you get atop of a hill, it begins to descend again. We had just reached the bottom of a long hill when we met a countryman of whom we inquired the wa

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XLV.

XLV.

Little yellow coaches run three times daily from Dartmouth to Kingsbridge and vice versâ , running winter and summer. We walked out of Dartmouth as far as Stoke Fleming—three miles. What shall I say of the country, save that it was hilly? I think we walked to the village through some dim recollections of the name and fame of Thomas Newcomen, who invented the steam-engine, lived and died at Dartmouth, and was buried here. They say his first notion of steam power was gained through watching the st

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XLVI.

XLVI.

Kingsbridge at the time of writing is chiefly noted for its being ten miles from the nearest railway station; but when these lines see the crowning glory of print, it will probably have lost that claim to distinction, for there is now building a branch to it from the main line at Brent, and when that branch is opened, Lord alone knows what the place will do for name or notoriety, unless indeed it can keep the mild fame of its “white ale” in the forefront, together with what kudos may accrue from

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XLVII.

XLVII.

We left Kingsbridge as evening drew on, for the five miles’ voyage to Salcombe. The steamer was full of country folk, and a few tourists were observable amid the market baskets. Next to us sat a young fellow and his newly married wife, evidently on their honeymoon, and desperately ill at ease. Every one on board, although none of them were acquainted with those young people, knew their case, and they were the centre to which all eyes were directed. Few noticed the scenery while this human intere

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XLVIII.

XLVIII.

We were up early this morning, in order to catch the Kingsbridge Packet, which called here on its way to Plymouth, and was timed for eight o’clock. But we need not have hurried over our breakfast to reach the quay, for when we walked aboard on the stroke of eight, the amphibious-looking crew were still busily loading up with the fragments of machinery and steam-pipes salved from a neighbouring wreck, and it was not until nearly an hour later that we were steaming out of the harbour toward the op

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XLIX.

XLIX.

Now were we in Cornwall, the land of fairies and piskies, and of prodigious saints and devils; the land of “once upon a time”—delightful period of twilight vagueness. According to John Taylor, who wrote in 1649— “ Cornewall is the Cornucopia , the compleate and repleate Horne of Abundance for high churlish Hills, and affable courteous people; they are loving to requite a kindnesse, placable to remit a wrong, and hardy to retort injuries; the Countrey hath its share of huge stones, mighty Rocks,

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L.

L.

This morning we rambled down to Antony Passage, on the Lynher River, and hailed the ferryman to put us across to Antony Park, on the opposite shore. The Norman keep of Trematon Castle looks down from the Saltash side on to a mud-creek spanned at its junction with the broad Lynher by one of Brunel’s old wooden railway viaducts, its sturdy timbers stalking across the ooze with curious effect. Landed on the opposite shore, we walked through the beautifully wooded park, passing Antony House, the sea

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LI.

LI.

So it fell out that I explored Antony church alone. A fair specimen this of Perpendicular architecture, crowded with monuments to the Carews of Antony, among them, one to the memory of the author of the “Survey of Cornwall.” Part of the inscription in Latin is by his friend Camden; the English verses are his own. “The verses following were written by Richard Carew of Antony Esq. immediately before his death (which happened the Sixth of November 1620) as he was at his private prayers in his Study

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LII.

LII.

It was a beautiful valley. A little stream came tinkling down it from the impressive moors beyond, and its course was made romantic by many and huge and lichen-stained rocks; and a grey mill stood by it, with a great wheel slowly turning, and covered with aqueous growths, hanging and green, and bulged out dropsically, from whose pendant ends dropped continually crystal-clear beads of water. We unstrapped our knapsacks, and sat down upon the grass, and basked in the sun a while. Then we essayed t

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LIII.

LIII.

Looe is a little place, yet it hums with life quite as loudly, in proportion, as any hive. Carts, all innocent of springs, rattle thunderously up and down its steep and narrow streets and lanes; the voices of them that cry pilchards are heard continually; the noise of the quays and the roar of the waves, the chiming of the Guildhall clock, and the blundering of sea-boots upon cobble-stones, help to swell the noise of as noisy a town for its size as you shall find. There is always, too, the shout

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LIV.

LIV.

We left Looe in the late afternoon, and toiled up the steep and stony hill that begins to ascend directly after the “Jolly Sailor” is passed. Atop of this hill we immediately and perversely lost our way, and the remainder of the afternoon was spent in plunging through “town-places” 10 and fields, and climbing over Cornish hedges, until we reached the church of Talland, nestling under the lee of the hills that run down precipitously to Talland Bay. Talland Church is peculiar in having its tower s

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LV.

LV.

Our map made the road from here to Polperro look like two miles; imagine our joy therefore when, after climbing the steepest hill we have seen in these parts, and after walking about a mile, we became aware of the imminence of that fishing village (or, as Jonathan Couch would have said—town) by seeing the blue smoke from its unseen houses rising in a clearly defined bank from an abyssmal ravine into the calmness of the evening air. “This,” said the Wreck, “must be—the devil.” This emphatic and e

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LVI.

LVI.

This morn we breakfasted betimes, settled our modest score, and trudged away, up steep hillsides and across meadows, to Lansallos, and from Lansallos to Lanteglos-juxta-Fowey. We came to Lanteglos before (according to the map) we had any right so to do, going to it through steep hillside fields. I don’t think there is any village to speak of, but there is a fine church, picturesquely out of plumb, with a four-staged tower, strong and plain, without buttresses, standing, with its churchyard, besi

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LVII.

LVII.

We discharged a heavy bill this morning on leaving our hotel, but consoled ourselves with thinking upon the law of averages, by which our next account should be proportionably light. The morning was dull, and mists occasionally dispersed, apparently only to let some drenching showers through to fall upon us; and when we reached Par, we heard the birds chirping in the trees between the showers, in that way which (experience told us) betokened more rain. Par is a little seaport, with a station on

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LVIII.

LVIII.

Close by, at Castledour, corrupted to Castle Door in these days, stands a tall granite post, inscribed with some half-obliterated Roman inscription. An old Cornish historian tells, in quaint language, of an adventure which befell here. “In a high way neere this toune (says Carew) there lieth a big and long moore stone, containing the remainder of certaine ingraued letters, purporting some memorable antiquity, as it should seeme, but past ability of reading. “Not many yeres sithence, a Gentleman,

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LIX.

LIX.

And now it came on to rain with a deadly persistence that would have daunted us from setting out for Mevagissey had not letters been awaiting us at the post-office there. We set out at five o’clock in the afternoon, conveyed by the damp and undignified medium of a carrier’s cart without a tilt, crowded with country women returning from market, whose umbrellas sent trickling streams down our necks. Great pools of rain-water collected in the depressions of the tarpaulin that covered our knees, and

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LX.

LX.

Mevagissey bears a great resemblance to Polperro. It stands at the bottom of a deep valley leading out into the sea, and has a little harbour, built in much the same fashion. When the tide is out and the harbour dry, the reek of fish-offal is just like that of Polperro, but (if possible) a trifle stronger and more essential. When the cholera visited Mevagissey in 1849, the inhabitants fled the place, and encamped on the hill-tops, the fishermen lying on board their smacks in Fowey Haven. One won

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LXI.

LXI.

Judge of our surprise when we found this morning that Veryan was not upon the sea, but over a mile removed from it. We had carelessly noted Veryan Bay marked on the map, and thus concluded that of course the village of the same name was seated beside the sea. We left our inn and Veryan with our pockets filled with the apples our kindly hostess pressed upon us at parting. My hostess, I salute you! All through this day we wandered blunderingly, as if we had been chartless. Certainly, when the maps

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LXII.

LXII.

Punctually to appointment we set forth, and once past the incline by which the city is left, whizzed along the smooth highway in the rear of a sturdy cob. We cleared the suburbs, and presently came upon the great mining-field that stretches its seamed and blasted waste over mile upon mile of dingy hummocks and ruined engine-houses. Here and there green oases of private parks and pleasaunces alleviate the harshness of the towering piles of mining refuse that harbour no green thing. But for these

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LXIII.

LXIII.

The rain rained all the remainder of the afternoon, and winds blew, and evening mists eventually hid the dismal prospect. All the available literature of the hotel lay in railway-guides and directories, an old copy of the “Pickwick Papers,” and a copy of a new humorist, whose work I am not going to mention by title. We glanced at Dickens with little satisfaction. His humour has long gone threadbare; Pickwickian feasts do not divert nowadays; the spreads are not appetising; the cakes are stale; t

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LXIV.

LXIV.

Carn Brea is a hill of commanding personality, steep and rugged, and encumbered with huge granite boulders, that give its highest point a peculiarly fantastic corona. Here, where rocks are largest and more wildly strewn, long-forgotten builders have contrived a gaunt tower, perched airily on devil-poised crags, overlooking the scarred and streaked mining-field that here stretches from sea to sea. It is with disgust that, as you make a painful and involved ascent of the hillside, and draw nearer

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LXV.

LXV.

The finest thing in Camborne is the road that leads out of it. That is a clumsy paraphrase of Johnson, I know, touched, too, with a suspicion of Irishry; but for all that, true enough. I don’t know that the little hamlet of Barrepper would, with an advent from more pleasing scenes, have seemed so welcome a place, but after Camborne it was welcome indeed. A little hamlet, Barrepper, on the highroad to Hayle. It consists, apparently, of half a dozen cottages, every one uninhabited and in ruins, an

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LXVI.

LXVI.

Now we were housed at Alverton, which, you should know, is the Kensington of Penzance, a suburb of the old town, which has gradually become absorbed, a place of many villas, where the visitor generally finds his rest, where gardens meet the eye at every turn, where fuchsias, geraniums, and myrtles grow to astonishing sizes. Our windows looked down upon the sunlit waves of Mount’s Bay, while through the open casements came the rich odours of these flowers, but above all the piercing scent of the

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LXVII.

LXVII.

But this is a turning out of the path; let us on to Land’s End, up Newlyn’s lanes, whose inhabitants fall into poses as the artist passes along, so sophisticated are these one-time simple folk become. Here winding lanes lead up to the highroad, through a country where “stone walls do not a prison make,” but are fashioned into hedges; where, as you near the end of all things, trees become scarce as corn proverbially was in Egypt aforetime, finally ceasing altogether, incapable of withstanding the

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LXVIII.

LXVIII.

Something of this description, though perhaps not so pronounced, is always going forward at Land’s End in the tourist season. Land’s End is effectually vulgarised, and despite Kingsley’s verses, it is impossible to come to it in any other than a scoffing spirit. Read of Land’s End, and retain the majestic ideal conjured up by the name of it. Visit the place, and you find nothing but sordid surroundings. We visited, on another day of happier auspices, Carn Kenidjack and Cape Cornwall,—those grand

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