Part 8

But, fearing to be benighted ere reaching Marazion, we passed them all, and saw nothing more interesting than the ruins of disused tin mines, which Charles showed us, mournfully explaining how the mining business had of late years drifted away from Cornwall, and how hundreds of the once thriving community had been compelled to emigrate or starve. As we neared Marazion, these melancholy wrecks with their little hillocks of mining debris rose up against the evening sky, the image of desolation. And then St. Michael's Mount, the picture in little of Mont St. Michel, in Normandy, appeared in the middle of Mount's Bay. Lastly, after a gorgeous sunset, in a golden twilight and silvery moonlight, we entered Marazion;-and found it, despite its picturesque name, the most commonplace little town imaginable!

We should have regretted our rash decision, and gone on to Penzance, but for the hearty welcome given us at a most comfortable and home-like inn, which determined us to keep to our first intention, and stay.

So, after our habit of making the best of things, we walked down to the ugly beach, and investigated the dirty-looking bay--in the lowest of all low tides, with a soppy, sea-weedy causeway running across to St. Michael's Mount. By advice of Charles, we made acquaintance with an old boatman he knew, a Norwegian who had drifted hither--shipwrecked, I believe--settled down and married an English woman, but whose English was still of the feeblest kind. However, he had an honest face; so we engaged him to take us out bathing early to-morrow.

"And to-night, ladies?" suggested the faithful Charles. "Wouldn't you like to row round the Mount?--When you've had your tea, I'll come back for you, and help you down to the shore--it's rather rough, but nothing like what you have done, ma'am," added he encouragingly. "And it will be bright moonlight, and the Mount will look so fine."

So, the spirit of adventure conquering our weariness, we went. When I think how it looked next morning--the small, shallow bay, with its toy-castle in the centre, I am glad our first vision of it was under the glamour of moonlight, with the battlemented rock throwing dark shadows across the shimmering sea. In the mysterious beauty of that night row round the Mount, we could imagine anything; its earliest inhabitant, the giant Cormoran, killed by that "valiant Cornishman," the illustrious Jack; the lovely St. Keyne, a king's daughter, who came thither on pilgrimage; and, passing down from legend to history, Henry de la Pomeroy, who, being taken prisoner, caused himself to be bled to death in the Castle; Sir John Arundel, slain on the sands, and buried in the Chapel; Perkin Warbeck's unfortunate wife, who took refuge at St. Michael's shrine, but was dragged thence. And so on, and so on, through the centuries, to the family of St. Aubyn, who bought it in 1660, and have inhabited it ever since. "Very nice people," we heard they were; who have received here the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and other royal personages. What a contrast to the legendary Cormoran!

Yet, looking up as we rowed under the gloomy rock, we could fancy his giant ghost sitting there, on the spot where he killed his wife, for bringing in her apron greenstone, instead of granite, to build the chapel with. Which being really built of greenstone the story must be true! What a pleasure it is to be able to believe anything!

Some of us could have stayed out half the night, floating along in the mild soft air and dreamy moonlight, which made even the commonplace little town look like a fairy scene, and exalted St. Michael's Mount into a grand fortress, fit for its centuries of legendary lore--but others preferred going to bed.

So we landed, and retired. Not however without taking a long look out of the window upon the bay, which now, at high tide, was one sheet of rippling moon-lit water, with the grim old Mount, full of glimmering lights like eyes, sitting silent in the midst of the silent sea.

DAY THE TENTH

I cannot advise Marazion as a bathing place. What a down-come from the picturesque vision of last night, to a small ugly fishy-smelling beach, which seemed to form a part of the town and its business, and was overlooked from everywhere! Yet on it two or three family groups were evidently preparing for a dip, or rather a wade of about a quarter of a mile in exceedingly dirty sea water.

"This will never do," we said to our old Norwegian. "You must row us to some quiet cove along the shore, and away from the town."

He nodded his head, solemn and mute as the dumb boatman of dead Elaine, rowed us out seaward for about half-a-mile, and then proceeded to fasten the boat to a big stone, and walk ashore. The water still did not come much above his knees--he seemed quite indifferent to it. But we?

Well, we could but do at Rome as the Romans do. Toilette in an open boat was evidently the custom of the country. And the sun was warm, the sea safe and shallow. Indeed, so rapidly did it subside, that by the time the bath was done, we were aground, and had to call at the top of our voices to our old man, who sat, with his back to us, dim in the distance, on another big stone, calmly smoking the pipe of peace.

"We'll not try this again," was the unanimous resolve, as, after politely declining a suggestion that "the ladies should walk ashore--" did he think we were amphibious?--we got ourselves floated off at last, and rowed to the nearest landing point, the entrance to St. Michael's Mount.

Probably nowhere in England is found the like of this place. Such a curious mingling of a mediæval fortress and modern residence; of antiquarian treasures and everyday business; for at the foot of the rock is a fishing village of about thirty cottages, which carries on a thriving trade; and here also is a sort of station for the tiny underground-railway, which worked by a continuous chain, fulfils the very necessary purpose (failing Giant Cormoran, and wife) of carrying up coals, provisions, luggage, and all other domestic necessaries to the hill top.

Thither we climbed by a good many weary steps, and thought, delightful as it may be to dwell on the top of a rock in the midst of the sea, like eagles in an eyrie, there are certain advantages in living on a level country road, or even in a town street. How in the world do the St. Aubyns manage when they go out to dinner? Two years afterwards, when I read in the paper that one of the daughters of the house, leaning over the battlements, had lost her balance and fallen down, mercifully unhurt, to the rocky slope below--the very spot where we to-day sat so quietly gazing out on the lovely sea view--I felt with a shudder that on the whole, it would be a trying thing to bring up a young family on St. Michael's Mount.

Still, generation after generation of honourable St. Aubyns have brought up their families there, and oh! what a beautiful spot it is! How fresh, and yet mild blew the soft sea-wind outside of it, and inside, what endless treasures there were for the archæological mind! The chapel alone was worth a morning's study, even though shown--odd anachronism--by a footman in livery, who pointed out with great gusto the entrance to a vault discovered during the last repairs, where was found the skeleton of a large man--his bones only--no clue whatever as to who he was or when imprisoned there. The "Jeames" of modern days told us this tale with a noble indifference. Nothing of the kind was likely to happen to him.

Further still we were fortunate enough to penetrate, and saw the Chevy Chase Hall, with its cornice of hunting scenes, the drawing-room, the school-room--only fancy learning lessons there, amidst the veritable evidence of the history one was studying! And perhaps the prettiest bit of it all was our young guide, herself a St. Aubyn, with her simple grace and sweet courtesy, worthy of one of the fair ladies worshipped by King Arthur's knights.

We did not like encroaching on her kindness, though we could have stayed all day, admiring the curious things she showed us. So we descended the rock, and crossed the causeway, now dry, but very rough walking--certainly St. Michael's Mount has its difficulties as a modern dwelling-house--and went back to our inn. For, having given our horse a forenoon's rest, we planned a visit to that spot immortalised by nursery rhyme--

"As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks; Each sack had seven cats; Each cat had seven kits; Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,-- How many were there going to St. Ives?"

--One; and after we had been there, we felt sure he never went again!

There were two roads, we learnt, to that immortal town; one very good, but dull; the other bad--and beautiful. We chose the latter, and never repented.

Nor, in passing through Penzance, did we repent not having taken up our quarters there. It was pretty, but so terribly "genteel," so extremely civilised. Glancing up at the grand hotel, we thought with pleasure of our old-fashioned inn at Marazion, where the benign waiter took quite a fatherly interest in our proceedings, even to giving us for dinner our very own blackberries, gathered yesterday on the road, and politely hindering another guest from helping himself to half a dishful, as "they belonged to the young ladies." Truly, there are better things in life than fashionable hotels.

But the neighbourhood of Penzance is lovely. Shrubs and flowers such as one sees on the shores of the Mediterranean grew and flourished in cottage-gardens, and the forest trees we drove under, whole avenues of them, were very fine; gentlemen's seats appeared here and there, surrounded with the richest vegetation, and commanding lovely views. As the road gradually mounted upwards, we saw, clear as in a panorama, the whole coast from the Lizard Point to the Land's End,--which we should behold to-morrow.

For, hearing that every week-day about a hundred tourists in carriages, carts, and omnibuses, usually flocked thither, we decided that the desire of our lives, the goal of our pilgrimage, should be visited by us on a Sunday. We thought that to drive us thither in solitary Sabbatic peace would be fully as good for Charles's mind and morals as to hang all day idle about Marazion; and he seemed to think so himself. Therefore, in prospect of to-morrow, he dealt very tenderly with his horse to-day, and turned us out to walk up the heaviest hills, of which there were several, between Penzance and Castle-an-Dinas.

"There it is," he said at last, stopping in the midst of a wide moor and pointing to a small building, sharp against the sky. "The carriage can't get further, but you can go on, ladies, and I'll stop and gather some blackberries for you."

For brambles, gorse bushes, and clumps of fading heather, with one or two small stunted trees, were now the only curiosities of this, King Arthur's famed hunting castle, and hunting ground, which spread before us for miles and miles. Passing a small farm-house, we made our way to the building Charles pointed out, standing on the highest ridge of the promontory, whose furthest point is the Land's End. Standing there, we could see--or could have seen but that the afternoon had turned grey and slightly misty--the ocean on both sides. Inland, the view seemed endless. Roughtor and Brown Willy, two Dartmoor hills, are said to be visible sometimes. Nearer, little white dots of houses show the mining districts of Redruth and Camborne.

But here, all was desolate solitude. A single wayfarer, looking like a working man in his Sunday best going to visit friends, but evidently tired, as if he had walked for miles, just glanced at us, and passed on. We stood, all alone, on the very spot where many a time must have stood King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Sir Launcelot, and the other knights--or the real human beings, whether barbarian or not, who formed the originals of those mythical personages.

All had vanished now. Nothing was left but a common-place little tower, built up of the fragments of the old castle, and a wide, pathless moor, over which the wind sighed, and the mist crept. No memorial whatever of King Arthur, except the tradition--which time and change have been powerless to annihilate--that such a man once existed. The long vitality which the legend keeps proves that he must have been a remarkable man in his day. Romance itself cannot exist without a foundation in reality.

So I preached to my incredulous juniors, who threw overboard King Arthur and took to blackberry-gathering; and to conversation with a most comely Cornishwoman, milking the prettiest of Cornish cows in the lonely farm-yard, which was the only sign of humanity for miles and miles. We admired herself and her cattle; we drank her milk, offering for it the usual payment. But the picturesque milkmaid shook her head and demanded just double what even the dearest of London milk-sellers would have asked for the quantity. Which sum we paid in silence, and I only record the fact here in order to state that spite of our foreboding railway friend at Falmouth, this was the only instance in which we were ever "taken in," or in the smallest degree imposed upon, in Cornwall.

Another hour, slowly driving down the gradual slope of the country, through a mining district much more cheerful than that beyond Marazion. The mines were all apparently in full work, and the mining villages were pretty, tidy, and cosy-looking, even picturesque. Approaching St. Ives the houses had quite a foreign look, but when we descended to the town, its dark, narrow streets, pervaded by a "most ancient and fish-like smell," were anything but attractive.

As was our hotel, where, as a matter of duty, we ordered tea, but doubted if we should enjoy it, and went out again to see what little there seemed to be seen, puzzling our way through the gloomy and not too fragrant streets, till at last in despair we stopped a bland, elderly, Methodist-minister-looking gentleman, and asked him the way to the sea.

He eyed us over. "You're strangers here, ma'am?"

I owned the humbling fact, as the inhabitant of St. Ives must doubtless consider it.

"And is it the pilchard fishery you want to see? It is just beginning. A few pilchards have been seen already. There are the boats, the fishermen are all getting ready. It's a fine sight to see them start. Would you like to come and look at them?"

He had turned back and was walking with us down the street, pointing out everything that occurred to him as noticeable, in the kindest and civilest way. When we apologised for troubling him, and would have parted company, our friend made no attempt to go.

"Oh, I've nothing at all to do, except"--he took out the biggest and most respectable of watches--"except to attend a prayer-meeting at half-past six. I should have time to show you the town; we think it is a very nice little town. I ought to know it; I've lived in it, boy and man for thirty-seven years. But now I have left my business to my sons, and I just go about and amuse myself, looking into the shop now and then just for curiosity. You must have seen my old shop, ladies, if you came down that street."

Which he named, and also gave us his own name, which we had seen over the shop door, but I shall not record either. Not that I think the honest man is ever likely to read such "light" literature as this book, or to recall the three wanderers to whom he was so civil and kind, and upon whom he poured out an amount of local and personal facts, which we listened to--as a student of human nature is prone to do--with an amused interest in which the comic verged on the pathetic. How large to each man seems his own little world, and what child-like faith he has in its importance to other people! I shall always recall our friend at St. Ives, with his prayer-meetings, his chapel-goings--I concluded he was a Methodist, a sect very numerous in Cornwall--his delight in his successful shop and well-brought-up sons, who managed it so well, leaving him to enjoy his _otium cum dignitate_--no doubt a municipal dignity, for he showed us the Town Hall with great gusto. Evidently to his honest, simple soul, St. Ives was the heart of the world.

By and by again he pulled out the turnip-like watch. "Just ten minutes to get to my prayer-meeting, and I never like to be late, I have been a punctual man all my life, ma'am," added he, half apologetically, till I suggested that this was probably the cause of his peace and success. Upon which he smiled, lifted his hat with a benign adieu, hoped we had liked St. Ives--we had liked his company at any rate--and with a final pointing across the street, "There's my shop, ladies, if you would care to look at it," trotted away to his prayer-meeting.

I believe the neighbourhood of St. Ives, especially Tregenna, its ancient mansion transformed into an hotel, is exceedingly pretty, but night was falling fast, and we saw nothing. Speedily we despatched a most untempting meal, and hurried Charles's departure, lest we should be benighted, as we nearly were, during the long miles of straight and unlovely road--the good road--between here and Penzance. We had done our duty, we had seen the place, but as, in leaving it behind us, we laughingly repeated the nursery rhyme, we came to the conclusion that the man who was "_going_ to St. Ives" was the least fortunate of all those notable individuals.

DAY THE ELEVENTH

The last thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on St. Michael's Mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. It would be hard, if after journeying thus far and looking forward to it so many years, the day on which we went to the Land's End should turn out a wet day! Still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. Some of us, I think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so till the hand is dust.

It was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out on the dawn, grey and misty, but still not wet. To be just on the point of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare enough to have a certain pathos in it. We slept again, and trusted for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering sun-gleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky. We wondered for the last time, as we had wondered for half a century, "what the Land's End would be like," and then started, rather thoughtful than merry, to find out the truth of the case.

Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote us in driving through Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."

But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. I shall never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island. The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three children trotting to school or church, with their books under their arms. Unquestionably Cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county; religious-minded too, whether Methodist, Quaker, or other nonconformist sects, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative Church of England.

We passed St. Buryan's--a curious old church founded on the place where an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. A few stray cottages comprised the whole village. There was nothing special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and sunshine and solitude, till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the celebrated Logan or rocking-stone.

From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial, who can decide?

"Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving, But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."

Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point on which it rests. Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked properly since.

By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the Lizard, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards. Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.

"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of them in answer to a question.

And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been much readier than his tongue. I, at least, should never have got even so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself--a somewhat anxious-minded old hen--and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the Logan.

"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must honestly confess _I_ could not see it stir a single inch.

However, it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones around it were equally huge and most picturesquely thrown together. Also--delightful to my young folks!--they furnished the most adventurous scramble that heart could desire. I alone felt a certain relief when we were all again on smooth ground, with no legs or arms broken.

The cliff-walk between the Logan and the Land's End is said to be one of the finest in England for coast scenery. Treryn or Treen Dinas, Pardeneck Point, and Tol Pedn Penwith had been named as places we ought to see, but this was impracticable. We had to content ourselves with a dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came forward to the carriage, and Charles jumped down from his box.

"You can get out now, ladies. This is the Land's End."

"Oh!"

I forbear to translate the world of meaning implied in that brief exclamation.

"Let us go in and get something. Perhaps we shall admire the place more when we have ceased to be hungry."

The words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of an hour at the Land's End in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour of the--let me give it its right name--First and Last Inn, of Great Britain.

"We never provide for Sunday," said the waitress, responding to a sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here. "It's very seldom any tourists come on a Sunday."

At which we felt altogether humbled; but in a few minutes more our contrition passed into sovereign content.