Part 2

There are two ways of going from Falmouth to the Lizard--the regular route through the town of Helstone, and another, a trifle longer, through the woods of Trelowarren, the seat of the old Cornish family of Vyvyan.

"I'll take you that road, ma'am, it's much the prettiest," said Charles evidently exerting himself to recover his cheerful looks and be the civil driver and guide, showing off all the curiosities and beauties of the neighbourhood. And very pretty Trelowarren was, though nothing remarkable to us who came from the garden of England. Still, the trees were big--for Cornwall, and in the ferny glade grew abundantly the _Osmunda regalis_, a root of which we greatly coveted, and Charles offered to get. He seemed to take a pride in showing us everything, except what he probably did not know of, and which, when I heard of too late, was to me a real regret.

At Trelowarren, not far from the house, are a series of subterranean chambers and galleries, in all ninety feet long and about the height of a man. The entrance is very low. Still it is possible to get into them and traverse them from end to end, the walls being made of blocks of unhewn stone, leaning inward towards the roof, which is formed of horizontal blocks. How, when, and for what purpose this mysterious underground dwelling was made, is utterly lost in the mists of time. I should exceedingly have liked to examine it, and to think we passed close by and never knew of it will always be a certain regret, of which I relieve my mind by telling it for the guidance of other archæological travellers.

One of the charms of Cornwall is that it gives one the sense of being such an old country, as if things had gone exactly as they do now, not merely since the days of King Arthur, but for ever so long before then. The Romans, the Ph[oe]nicians, nay, the heroes of pre-historic ages, such as Jack the Giantkiller and the giant Cormoran, seemed to be not impossible myths, as we gradually quitted civilisation in the shape of a village or two, and a few isolated farm-houses, and came out upon the wild district known as Goonhilly Down.

Certainly not from its hills, for it is as flat as the back of your hand, and as bare. But the word, which is old Cornish--that now extinct tongue, which only survives in the names of places and people--means a _hunting ground_; and there is every reason to believe that this wide treeless waste was once an enormous forest, full of wild beasts. There St. Rumon, an Irish bishop, long before there were any Saxon bishops or saints, is said to have settled, far away from the world, and made a cell and oratory, the memory of which, and of himself, is still kept up by the name of the two villages, Ruan Major and Ruan Minor, on the outskirts of this Goonhilly Down.

In later times the down was noted for a breed of small, strong ponies, called "Goonhillies." Charles had heard of them, but I do not suppose he had ever heard of St. Rumon, or of the primeval forest. At present, the fauna of Goonhilly is represented by no animal more dangerous than a rabbit or a field-mouse, and its vegetation includes nothing bigger than the _erica vagans_--the lovely Cornish heath, lilac, flesh-coloured and white which will grow nowhere else, except in a certain district of Portugal.

"There it is!" we cried, at the pleasant first sight of a new flower: for though not scientific botanists, we have what I may call a speaking acquaintance with almost every wild flower that grows. To see one that we had never seen before was quite an excitement. Instantly we were out of the carriage, and gathering it by handfuls.

Botanists know this heath well--it has the peculiarity of the anthers being outside instead of inside the bell--but we only noticed the beauty of it, the masses in which it grew, and how it would grow only within a particular line--the sharp geological line of magnesian earth, which forms the serpentine district. Already we saw, forcing itself up through the turf, blocks of this curious stone, and noticed how cottage-walls were built, and fences made of it.

"Yes, that's the serpentine," said Charles, now in his depth once more; we could not have expected him to know about St. Rumon, &c. "You'll see plenty of it when you get to the Lizard. All the coast for miles and miles is serpentine. Such curious rocks, reddish and greenish; they look so pretty when the water washes against them, and when polished, and made into ornaments, candlesticks, brooches and the like. But I'll show you the shops as we pass. We shall be at Lizard Town directly."

So it was a town, and it had shops. We should not have thought so, judging by the slender line of white dots which now was appearing on the horizon--Cornish folk seemed to have a perfect mania for painting their houses a glistening white. Yes, that was the Lizard; we were nearing our journey's end. At which we were a little sorry, even though already an hour or two behind-hand--that is, behind the hour we had ordered dinner. But "time was made for slaves"--and railway travellers, and we were beyond railways.

"Never mind, what does dinner matter?" (It did not seriously, as we had taken the precaution, which I recommend to all travellers, of never starting on any expedition without a good piece of bread, a bunch of raisins, and a flask of cold tea or coffee.) "What's the odds so long as you're happy? Let us linger and make the drive as long as we can. The horse will not object, nor Charles either."

Evidently not; our faithful steed cropped contentedly an extempore meal, and Charles, who would have scrambled anywhere or dug up anything "to please the young ladies," took out his pocket-knife, and devoted himself to the collection of all the different coloured heaths; roots which we determined to send home in the hope, alas! I fear vain, that they would grow in our garden, afar from their native magnesia.

So for another peaceful hour we stayed; wandering about upon Goonhilly Down. How little it takes to make one happy, when one wants to be happy, and knows enough of the inevitable sorrows of life to be glad to be happy--as long as fate allows. Each has his burthen to bear, seen or unseen by the world outside, and some of us that day had not a light one; yet was it a bright day, a white day, a day to be thankful for.

Nor did it end when, arriving at the "ideal" lodgings, and being received with a placidity which we felt we had not quite deserved, and fed in a manner which reflected much credit not only on the cook's skill, but her temper--we sallied out to see the place.

Not a picturesque place exactly. A high plain, with the sparkling sea beyond it; the principal object near being the Lizard Lights, a huge low building, with a tower at either side, not unlike the Sydenham Crystal palace, only dazzling white, as every building apparently was at the Lizard.

"We'll go out and adventure," cried the young folks; and off they started down the garden, over a stile--made of serpentine of course--and across what seemed a field, till they disappeared mysteriously where the line of sea cut the line of cliffs, and were heard of no more for two hours.

Then they returned, all delight and excitement. They had found such a lovely little cove, full of tiny pools, a perfect treasure-house of sea-weeds and sea-anemones; and the rocks, so picturesque, and "so grand to scramble over." (I must confess that to these, my practically-minded "chickens," the picturesque or the romantic always ranked second to the fun of a scramble.) The descent to this marine paradise also seemed difficult enough to charm anybody.

"But _you_ wouldn't do it. Quite impossible! You would break all your legs and arms, and sprain both your ankles."

Alas, for a hen--and an old hen--with ducklings! But mine, though daring, were not rash, and had none of that silly fool-hardiness which for the childish vanity of doing, or of saying one has done, a dangerous thing, risks health, comfort, life, and delights selfishly in making other people utterly miserable. So, being feeble on my feet, though steady in my head, I agreed to sit like a cormorant on the nearest cliff, and look down placidly upon the young adventurers in their next delightful scramble.

It could not be to-night, however, for the tide was coming in fast; the fairy cove would soon be all under water.

"Shall we get a boat? It will soon be sunset and moon-rise; we can watch both from the sea."

That sea! Its broad circle had no other bound than the shores of America, and its blueness, or the strange, changing tint often called blue, almost equalled the blue of the Mediterranean.

"Yes, ma'am, it's a fine evening for a row," said the faithful Charles. "And it isn't often you can get a row here; the sea is so rough, and the landing so difficult. But there's a man I know; he has a good boat, he knows the coast well, and he'll not go out unless it's really safe."

This seemed ultra-prudent, with such a smiling sky and sea; but we soon found it was not unnecessary at the Lizard. Indeed all along the Cornish coast the great Atlantic waves come in with such a roll or a heavy ground-swell, windless, but the precursor of a storm that is slowly arriving from across the ocean, that boating here at best is no child's play.

We had been fair-weather sailors, over shut-in lochs or smooth rivers; all of us could handle an oar, or had handled it in old days, but this was a different style of thing. Descending the steep zigzag path to the next cove--the only one where there was anything like a fair landing--we found we still had to walk through a long bed of sea-weed, and manage somehow to get into the boat between the recoil and advance of a wave. Not one of the tiny waves of quiet bays, but an Atlantic roller, which, even if comparatively small and tame, comes in with a force that will take you off your feet at any time.

However, we managed it, and found ourselves floating among an archipelago of rocks, where the solemn cormorants sat in rows, and affectionate families of gulls kept swimming about in a large flotilla of white dots on the dark water. Very dark the sea was: heaving and sinking in great hills and valleys, which made rowing difficult. Also, for several yards round every rock extended a perfect whirlpool of foaming waves, which, if any boat chanced to be caught therein, would have dashed it to pieces in no time. But our boatmen seemed used to the danger, and took us as near it as possible, without actually running into it.

They were both far from commonplace-looking men, especially the elder, our stroke-oar. Being rather given to ethnological tastes, we had already noticed the characteristic Cornish face, not unlike the Norman type, and decidedly superior to that of the inland counties of England. But this was a face by itself, which would have attracted any artist or student of human nature; weather-beaten, sharp-lined, wrinkled as it was--the man must have been fully sixty--there was in it a sweetness, an absolute beauty, which struck us at once. The smile, placid and paternal, came often, though words were few; and the keen, kindly eyes were blue as a child's, or as Tennyson describes King Arthur's.

"I can imagine," whispered one of us who had imaginative tendencies, "that King Arthur might have looked thus, had he lived to grow old."

"I don't believe King Arthur ever lived at all," was the knock-me-down utilitarian answer, to which the other had grown accustomed and indifferent. Nevertheless, there was such a refinement about the man, spite of his rough fisherman's dress, and he had been so kind to the young folks, so considerate to "the old lady," as Cornish candour already called me, that, intending to employ him again, we asked his name.

"John Curgenven."

"John what?" We made several hopeless plunges at it, and finally asked him to spell it.

"Cur-gen-ven," said he; adding, with a slight air of pride, "one of the oldest families in Cornwall."

(I have no hesitation in stating this, because, when we afterwards became great friends, I told John Curgenven I should probably "put him in a book"--if he had no objection. To which he answered with his usual composure, "No, he did not think it would harm him." He evidently considered "writing a book" was a very inferior sort of trade.)

But looking at him, one could not help speculating as to how far the legend of King Arthur had been really true, and whether the type of man which Tennyson has preserved--or created--in this his "own ideal knight," did once exist, and still exists, in a modified modern form, throughout Cornwall. A fancy upon which we then only argued; now I, at least, am inclined to believe it.

"There is Lord Brougham's head, his wig and his turn-up nose, you can see all distinctly. At least, you could if there was light enough."

But there was not light, for the sun was setting, and the moon only just rising. Black looked the heaving sea, except where rings of white foam encircled each group of rocks, blacker still. And blackest of all looked the iron-bound coast, sharp against the amber western sky.

"Yes, that's Kynance Cove, and the Gull Rock and Asparagus Island. Shall we row there? It's only about two miles."

Two miles there, and two back, through this angry sea, and then to land in the dim light about 9 p.m.! Courage failed us. We did not own this; we merely remarked that we would rather see Kynance by daylight, but I think each of us felt a sensation of relief when the boat's head was turned homewards.

Yet how beautiful it all was! Many a night afterwards we watched the same scene, but never lovelier than that night, the curved line of coast traceable distinctly up to Mount's Bay, and then the long peninsula which they told us was the Land's End, stretching out into the horizon, where sea and sky met in a mist of golden light, through which the sun was slowly dropping right from the sky into the sea. Beyond was a vague cloud-land, which might be the fair land of Lyonesse itself, said still to lie there submerged, with all its cities and towers and forests; or the "island-valley of Avillion," whither Arthur sailed with the three queens to be healed of his "grievous wound," and whence he is to come again some day. Popular superstition still expects him, and declares that he haunts this coast even now in the shape of a Cornish chough.

Modern ghosts, too, exist, decidedly more alarming.

"Look up there, ladies, that green slope is Pistol Meadow. Nobody likes to walk there after dark. Other things walk as well."

"What things?"

"Two hundred and more of foreign sailors, whose ship went to pieces in the little cove below. They're buried under the green mounds you see. Out of a crew of seven hundred only two men were washed ashore alive, and they were in irons, which the captain had put on them because they said he was going too near in shore. It was called Pistol Meadow because most of 'em were found with pistols in their hands, which may have been true or may not, since it happened more than a hundred years ago. However, there are the green mounds, you see, and Lizard folk don't much like passing the place after dark."

"But you?"

John Curgenven smiled. "Oh, us and the coast-guards! Us goes anywhere, at all hours, and never meets nothing. D'ye see those white marks all along the coast every few yards? They're rocks, kept white-washed, to guide the men of dark nights between here and Kynance. It's a ticklish path, when all's as black as pitch, with a stiff wind blowing."

I should think it was! One almost shuddered at the idea, and then felt proud of the steady heads and cool courage of these coast-guard men--always the pick of the service, true Englishmen, fearless and faithful--the business of whose whole lives is to save other lives--that is, now that smuggling has abated, and those dreadful stories once current all along the coast of Cornwall have become mostly legends of the past. No tales of wreckers, or of fights between smugglers and revenue officers, reached our ears, but the stories of shipwrecks were endless. Every winter, and many times through the winter, some ghastly tragedy had happened. Every half-mile along this picturesque shore was recorded the place where some good ship went to pieces, often with the brief addendum, "all hands lost."

"The sun's just setting. Look out for the Lizard Lights," called out Charles, who sat in the bow of the boat in faithful attendance upon his "ladies,"--another Knight of the Round Table in humble life--we met many such in Cornwall. "Look! There they are."

And sure enough, the instant the sun's last spark was quenched in the sea, into which he dropped like a red round ball, out burst two substitute suns, and very fair substitutes too, making the poor little moon in the east of no importance whatever. The gleam of them extended far out upon the darkening ocean, and we could easily believe that their light was "equal to 20,000 candles," and that they were seen out at sea to a distance of twenty, some said even thirty, miles.

"Except in a fog; and the fogs at the Lizard are very bad. Then you can see nothing, not even the Lights, but they keep sounding the fog-horn every minute or so. It works by the same machinery as works the Lights--a big steam-engine; you can hear it bum-bumming now, if you listen."

So we could, a mysterious noise like that of a gigantic bumble-bee, coming across the water from that curious building, long and white, with its two towers and those great eyes in each of them, at either end.

"They're wonderful bright;" said John Curgenven; "many's the time I've sat and read my newspaper by them a quarter of a mile off. They're seen through the blackest night, the blacker the brighter, seen through everything--except fog. Now, ladies, d'ye think you can jump ashore?"

Some of us did, airily enough, though it required to choose your moment pretty cleverly so as to escape the incoming wave. And some of us--well, we accepted the inevitable, and were only too thankful to scramble anyhow, wet or dry, on terra firma.

And then we had to ascend the zigzag path, slippery with loose stones, and uncertainly seen in the dim half-twilight, half-moonlight. At last we came out safe by the life-boat house, which we had noticed in passing, with the slit in its door for "Contributions," and a notice below that the key was kept at such and such a house--I forget the man's name--"and at the Rectory."

"Yes," said Curgenven, "in many places along this coast, when there's a wreck, and we're called out, the parson's generally at the head of us. Volunteers? Of course we're all volunteers, except the coast-guard, who are paid. But they're often glad enough of us and of our boats too. The life-boat isn't enough. They keep her here, the only place they can, but it's tough work running her down to the beach on a black winter's night, with a ship going to pieces before your eyes, as ships do here in no time. I've seen it myself--watched her strike, and in ten minutes there was not a bit of her left."

We could well imagine it. Even on this calm evening the waves kept dashing themselves against every rock with a roar and a swell and a circle of boiling foam. What must it be on a stormy winter night, or through the deathly quiet of a white mist, with nothing visible or audible except the roar of the waters and the shriek of the fog-horn!

"I think it's full time we were in-doors," suggested a practical and prudent little voice; "we can come again and see it in the daylight. Here's the road."

"That's the way you came, Miss," said Charles, "but I can take you a much shorter one on the top of the hedges"--or edges, we never quite knew which they were, though on the whole the letter _h_ is tolerably well treated in Cornwall.

These "hedges" were startling to any one not Cornish-born. In the Lizard district the divisions of land are made not by fences, but by walls, built in a peculiar fashion, half stones, half earth, varying from six to ten feet high, and about two feet broad. On the top of this narrow giddy path, fringed on either side by deceitful grass, you are expected to walk!--in fact, are obliged to walk, for there is often no other road. There was none here.

I looked round in despair. Once upon a time I could have walked upon walls as well as anybody, but now--!

"I'll help you, ma'am; and I'm sure you can manage it," said Charles consolingly. "It's only three-quarters of a mile."

Three-quarters of a mile along a two-foot path on the top of a wall, and in this deceitful light, when one false step would entail a certain fall. And at my age one doesn't fall exactly like a feather or an india-rubber ball.

"Ma'am, if you go slow and steady, with me before and Curgenven behind, you'll _not_ fall."

Nor did I. I record it with gratitude to those two honest men--true _gentlemen_, such as I have found at times in all ranks--who never once grumbled or relaxed in their care of their tardy and troublesome charge; one instance more of that kindly courtesy which it does any man good to offer, and which any woman, "lady" though she be, may feel proud to receive.

When we reached "home," as we had already begun to call it, a smiling face and a comfortable tea justified the word. And when we retired, a good deal fatigued, but quite happy, we looked out upon the night, where the fiery stream of the Lizard Lights was contending with the brightest of harvest moons. It was a hopeful ending of our second day.

DAY THE THIRD

"And a beautiful day it is, ladies, though it won't do for Kynance."

Only 8 a.m., yet there stood the faithful Charles, hat in hand, having heard that his ladies were at breakfast, and being evidently anxious that they should not lose an hour of him and his carriage, which were both due at Falmouth to-night. For this day was Saturday, and we were sending him home for Sunday.

"As I found out last night, the tide won't suit for Kynance till Wednesday or Thursday, and you'll be too tired to walk much to-day. I've been thinking it all over. Suppose I were to drive you to Kennack Sands, back by the serpentine works to Cadgwith, and home to dinner? Then after dinner I'll give the horse a rest for two hours, and take you to Mullion; we can order tea at Mary Mundy's, and go on to the cove as far as I can get with the carriage. I'll leave it at the farm and be in time to help you over the rocks to see the caves, run ahead and meet you again with the carriage, and drive you back to Mary Mundy's. You can have tea and be home in the moonlight before nine o'clock."

"And you?" we asked, a good deal bewildered by this carefully-outlined plan and all the strange names of places and people, yet not a little touched by the kindly way in which we were "taken in and done for" by our faithful squire of dames.

"Me, ma'am? Oh, after an hour or two's rest the horse can start again--say at midnight, and be home by daylight. Or we could go to bed and be up early at four, and still get to Falmouth by eight, in time for the church work. Don't you trouble about us, we'll manage. He" (the other and four-footed half of the "we") "is a capital animal, and he'd get much harder work than this if he was at home."

So we decided to put ourselves entirely in the hands of Charles, who seemed to have our interest so much at heart, and yet evinced a tenderness over his horse that is not too common among hired drivers. We promised to be ready in half an hour, so as to waste nothing of this lovely day, in which we had determined to enjoy ourselves.

Who could help it? It was delightful to wake up early and refreshed, and come down to this sunshiny, cheerful breakfast-table, where, though nothing was grand, all was thoroughly comfortable.