CHAPTER XIX.

SKETCHES OF OUR COASTS.—CORNWALL.

The Land’s End—Cornwall and her Contributions to the Navy—The Great Botallack Mine—Curious Sight Outwardly—Plugging Out the Atlantic Ocean—The Roar of the Sea Heard Inside—In a Storm—The Miner’s Fears—The Loggan Stone—A Foolish Lieutenant and his Little Joke—The Penalty—The once‐feared Wolf Rock—Revolving Lights—Are they Advantageous to the Mariner—Smuggling in Cornwall—A Coastguardsman Smuggler—Landing 150 Kegs under the Noses of the Officers—A Cornish Fishing‐town—Looe, the Ancient—The Old Bridge—Beauty of the Place from a Distance—Closer Inspection—Picturesque Streets—The Inhabitants—Looe Island and the Rats—A Novel Mode of Extirpation—The Poor of Cornwall Better Off than Elsewhere—Mines and Fisheries—Working on “Tribute”—Profits of the Pilchard Season—Cornish Hospitality and Gratitude.

The Land’s End has a particular interest to the reader of this work, for its very name indicates a point beyond which one cannot go, except we step into the great ocean. Round the spot a certain air of mystery and interest also clings. What is this ending place like? It is the extreme western termination of one of the most rugged of England’s counties, one which has produced some of her greatest men, and has always been intimately connected with the history of the sea. Cornwall has afforded more hardy sailors to the royal navy and merchant marine than any other county whatever, Devonshire, perhaps, excepted. One must remember her sparse population in making any calculation on this point. Her fishermen and miners are among the very best in the world. Some sketches therefore of Cornish coasts and coast life may be acceptable.(54)

One of the great features of the Land’s End is the famed Botallack Mine, which stretches out thousands of feet beyond the land, and under the sea. Wilkie Collins, in an excellent description of his visit to the old mine says:—“The sight was, in its way, as striking and extraordinary as the first view of the Cheese‐Wring itself. Here we beheld a scaffolding perched on a rock that rose out of the waves—there a steam‐pump was at work raising gallons of water from the mine every minute, on a mere ledge of land half down the steep cliff side. Chains, pipes, conduits, protruded in all directions from the precipice; rotten‐looking wooden platforms, running over deep chasms, supported great beams of timber and heavy coils of cable; crazy little boarded houses were built where gull’s nests might have been found in other places. There did not appear to be a foot of level space anywhere, for any part of the works of the mine to stand upon; and yet, there they were, fulfilling all the purposes for which they had been constructed, as safely and completely, on rocks in the sea, and down precipices in the land, as if they had been cautiously founded on the tracts of the smooth solid ground above!”

The Botallack is principally a copper and tin mine, and has in days gone by yielded largely. Mr. Collins descended it to some depth, and found the salt water percolating from the ocean above, through holes and crannies. In one place he noted a great wooden plug the thickness of a man’s leg driven into a cranny of the rock. It was placed there to prevent the sea from swamping the mine! Fancy placing a plug to literally keep out the Atlantic Ocean!

“We are now,” says Mr. Collins in his narrative, “400 yards out _under the bottom of the sea_, and twenty fathoms, or 120 feet below the sea level. Coast trade vessels are sailing over our heads. Two hundred and forty feet beneath us men are at work, and there are galleries deeper yet, even below that.... After listening for a few moments, a distant, unearthly noise becomes faintly audible—a long, low, mysterious moaning, that never changes, that is felt on the ear as well as heard by it—a sound that might proceed from some incalculable distance—from some far invisible height—a sound unlike anything that is heard on the upper ground, in the free air of heaven, a sound so sublimely mournful and still, so ghostly and impressive when listened to in the subterranean recesses of the earth, that we continue instinctively to hold our peace, as if enchanted by it, and think not of communicating to each other the strange awe and astonishment which it has inspired in us both from the very first.

“At last the miner speaks again, and tells us that what we hear is the sound of the surf lashing the rocks a hundred and twenty feet above us, and of the waves that are breaking on the beach beyond. The tide is now at the flow, and the sea is in no extraordinary state of agitation, so the sound is low and distant just at this period. But when storms are at their height, when the ocean hurls mountain after mountain of water on the cliffs, then the noise is terrific; the roaring heard down in the mine is so inexpressibly fierce and awful that the boldest men at work are afraid to continue their labour; all ascend to the surface to breathe the upper air and stand on the firm earth, dreading, though no such catastrophe has ever happened yet, that the sea will break in on them if they remain in the caverns below.”

One of the great sights of the Land’s End is the famous Loggan Stone. After climbing up some perilous‐looking places you see a solid, irregular mass of granite, which is computed to weigh eighty‐five tons, resting by its centre only on another rock, the latter itself supported by a number of others around. “You are told,” says Wilkie Collins, “by the guide to turn your back to the uppermost stone; to place your shoulders under one particular part of its lower edge, which is entirely disconnected all round with the supporting rock below, and in this position to push upwards slowly and steadily, then to leave off again for an instant, then to push once more, and so on, until after a few moments of exertion you feel the whole immense mass above you moving as you press against it. You redouble your efforts, then turn round and see the massy Loggan Stone set in motion by nothing but your own pair of shoulders, slowly rocking backwards and forwards with an alternate ascension and declension, at the outer edges, of at least three inches. You have treated eighty‐five tons of granite like a child’s cradle; and like a child’s cradle those eighty‐five tons have rocked at your will!”

In the year 1824 a lieutenant in the royal navy, commanding a gunboat then cruising off that coast, heard that it was generally believed in Cornwall that no human power could or should ever overturn the Loggan Stone. Fired with an ignoble ambition, he took a number of his crew ashore, and by applying levers did succeed in upsetting it from its pivot. His little joke was observed by two labourers, who immediately reported it to the lord of the manor.

All Cornwall was in arms, and the indignation was general, from that of philosophers, who believed that the Druids had placed it on its balance, to those who regarded it as one of the sights of the county, and as a holiday resort. The guides who showed it to visitors, and the hotel‐ keepers, were furious. Representations were made to the Admiralty, and the unfortunate lieutenant was ordered to replace it.

Fortunately the great stone had not toppled completely over, or it would have crashed down a precipice into the sea, but it had stuck wedged in a crevice of the rock below. By means of strong beams, chains, pulleys, and capstans, and a hard week’s work for a number of men, it was replaced, although it is said never to have regained its former balance. The lieutenant was nearly ruined by it, and is said not to have completely paid the cost of this reparation at the day of his death.

About eleven miles from the Land’s End there lies a dark porphyry rock, the highest point of which rises seventeen feet above low water. It is called “The Wolf,” and previous to the construction of a sea‐tower upon it no rock had been more fatal to the mariner. It is beaten by a terrific sea, being exposed to the full force of the Atlantic, and it lies just in the track of vessels entering or leaving the channel. In 1860 the Trinity House commenced the erection of a lighthouse on it, 116 feet high, with a revolving dioptric light. “The first flash,” said a leading journal, “from the Wolf Lighthouse was shot forth on the 1st of January, 1870, and within the last ten years it is difficult to calculate what good it has done, by standing like a beneficent monitor in the centre of the greatest highway for shipping in the world.” The Wolf light flashes alternately red and white at half‐minute intervals. A great authority on the subject, Sir William Thomson, however, expostulates vigorously against all revolving lights, asserting that, for example, the Wolf is more difficult “to pick up,” in nautical parlance, than the fixed beacon of the Eddystone.

The Rev. C. A. Johns, writing about 1840,(55) says that smuggling was still practised till within a few years previously. Most families on the coast were more or less engaged in it, and many of the houses had, and still have, secret underground chambers, which could be entered only through the parlour cupboard, which was furnished with a false back. Old grey‐headed adventurers talked with evident pleasure of the exciting adventures of their younger days, and of their frequent hairbreadth escapes. One sturdy veteran in particular, who since he had dropped his profession of smuggler had on many occasions risked his life in the effort to save the crews of shipwrecked vessels, told how he was chased by a king’s boat, how he threw himself overboard and swam for dear life, and how he eluded, by diving, blow after blow dealt by an oar or cutlass, at last to escape safely to land. The rowers who pursued may not have put forth their utmost strength, and the blows may have been dealt with purposed inaccuracy, for in those days there were many sailors in the navy who had been smugglers, and had a fellow‐feeling for their kind. “I can myself,” says Mr. Johns, “recollect having conversed some forty years ago with a coastguardsman who had been a smuggler, and who had with his comrades been captured by a revenue cutter. He and another were tried and convicted, and sentenced, as was then customary, to five years’ service in the navy. While on board the vessel in which they were to proceed to a foreign station, anchored at Spithead, they escaped from confinement, and threw themselves into the sea by night, with the intention of swimming ashore. They had not, however, gone far when they were descried by the sentinel on board, who gave the alarm, and they were fired at. My informant reached the shore in safety, hid himself for a short time, and being afraid to return to his own neighbourhood, entered into the preventive service, and was at the very time I saw him, after the lapse of some years, visiting his friends in his native village, and close to the scene of his early feats of daring. His comrade was not so fortunate; either he was struck by a bullet, or became exhausted before he reached the shore, and was drowned. At all events, he was never seen again.”

About the same period, Mr. Johns tells us, he was, one fine summer evening, loitering about the beach, near a small fishing‐village, in a remote part of the county. It was about four o’clock, the sea was as smooth as glass, and the wind so light that whatever vessels and boats were in sight were either stationary or sluggishly impelled by oars. One fishing‐boat only, about a hundred yards from shore, had its sails hanging idly from the mast, but yet appeared to be creeping towards a quay which ran out between the beach on which he was standing and the houses in which the coastguard resided. At the very instant that she had advanced so far that the pier was interposed between her hull and the houses a great splashing, as of boxes or kegs, or something else, rapidly thrown in the water, was heard. Simultaneously a number of men ran down the beach into the water up to their waists, and then scampered up to their houses, each bearing an armful of something. In a few minutes the boat capsized; probably this was done on purpose, but as it was in shallow water no harm resulted. Some innocent‐looking fishermen soon righted her and baled her out. Mr. Johns learned later on that no less than 150 kegs of spirits were landed on that occasion right under the very noses of the coastguard. It was a desperate venture, but the fishermen‐smugglers had calculated that the officers would not expect any attempt of the kind in calm weather, and had reckoned rightly. Smuggling was almost invariably carried on in stormy weather, or on dark, cloudy nights. On some occasions the people of these fishing‐towns and the country behind rose _en masse_ and resisted the revenue officers, even to the extent of stoning and firing upon them.

The antiquities of Cornwall have called forth a very considerable quantity of learned literature, but, with the exception of the picturesque and graphic matter furnished by Wilkie Collins, Philip Henry Gosse, and, in lesser degree, by the writer just quoted, the county is not popularly known. Mr. Collins’s description of Looe, an ancient Cornish fishing‐town, will be read with interest. He says: “The first point for which we made in the morning was the old bridge, and a most picturesque and singular structure we found it to be. Its construction dates back as far as the beginning of the fifteenth century. It is three hundred and eighty‐four feet long, and has fourteen arches, no two of which are on the same scale. The stout buttresses built between each arch are hollowed at the top into curious triangular places of refuge for pedestrians, the roughly‐paved roadway being just wide enough to allow the passage of one cart at a time. On some of these buttresses, towards the middle, once stood an oratory, or chapel, dedicated to St. Anne, but no traces of it now remain. The old bridge, however, still rises sturdily enough on its old foundations; and, whatever the point from which its silver‐grey stones and quaint arches of all shapes and sizes may be beheld, forms no mean adjunct to the charming landscape around it.

“Looe is known to have existed as a town in the reign of Edward I., and it remains to this day one of the prettiest and most primitive places in England. The river divides it into East and West Looe, and the view from the bridge, looking towards the two little colonies of houses thus separated, is in some respects almost unique. At each side of you rise high ranges of beautifully‐wooded hills; here and there a cottage peeps out among the trees, the winding path that leads to it being now lost to sight in the thick foliage, now visible again as a thin serpentine line of soft grey. Midway on the slopes appear the gardens of Looe, built up the acclivity on stone terraces one above another, thus displaying the veritable garden architecture of the mountains of Palestine, magically transplanted to the side of an English hill. Here, in this soft and genial atmosphere, the hydrangea is a common flower‐bed ornament, the fuchsia grows lofty and luxuriant in the poorest cottage garden, the myrtle flourishes close to the sea‐shore, and the tender tamarisk is the wild plant of every farmer’s hedge. Looking down the hills yet, you see the town straggling out towards the sea along each bank of the river in mazes of little narrow streets; curious old quays project over the water at different points; coast‐trade vessels are being loaded and unloaded, built in one place and repaired in another, all within view; while the prospect of hills, harbour, and houses thus quaintly combined together is closed at length by the English Channel, just visible as a small strip of blue water pent in between the ridges of two promontories which stretch out on either side to the beach.

“Such is Looe as beheld from a distance; and it loses none of its attractions when you look at it more closely. There is no such thing as a straight street in the place, no martinet of an architect has been here, to drill the old stone houses into regimental regularity. Sometimes you go down steps into the ground floor, sometimes you mount an outside staircase to get to the bed‐rooms. Never were such places devised for hide‐and‐seek since that exciting nursery game was first invented. No house has fewer than two doors leading into two different lanes; some have three, opening at once into a court, a street, and a wharf, all situated at different points of the compass. The shops, too, have their diverting irregularities, as well as the town. Here you might call a man Jack‐of‐ all‐trades, as the best and truest compliment you could pay him—for here one shop combines in itself a smart drug‐mongering, cheese‐mongering, stationery, grocery, and oil and Italian line of business; to say nothing of such cosmopolitan commercial miscellanies as wrinkled apples, dusty nuts, cracked slate pencils, and fly‐blown mock jewellery. The moral good which you derive, in the first pane of a window, from the contemplation of brief biographies of murdered missionaries, and serious tracts against intemperance and tight lacing, you lose in the second, before such fleshly temptations as ginger‐bread, shirt studs, and fascinating white hats for Sunday wear at two‐and‐ninepence a‐piece. Let no man rightly say that he has seen all that British enterprise can do for the extension of British commerce until he has carefully studied the shop‐fronts of the tradesmen of Looe.

“Then, when you have at last threaded your way successfully through the streets, and have got out on the beach, you see a pretty miniature bay formed by the extremity of a green hill on the right, and by fine jagged slate rocks on the left. Before this seaward quarter of the town is erected a strong bulwark of rough stones, to resist the incursion of high tides. Here the idlers of the place assemble to lounge and gossip, to look out for any outward‐bound ships that are to be seen in the Channel, and to criticise the appearance and glorify the capabilities of the little fleet of Looe fishing‐boats riding snugly at anchor before them at the entrance of the bay.

“The inhabitants number some fourteen hundred, and are as good‐humoured and unsophisticated a set of people as you will meet with anywhere. The fisheries and the coast trade form their principal means of subsistence. The women take a very fair share of the hard work out of the men’s hands. You constantly see them carrying coals from the vessels to the quay in curious hand‐barrows; they laugh, scream, and run in each other’s way incessantly; but these little irregularities seem to assist rather than impede them in the prosecution of their tasks. As to the men, one absorbing interest appears to govern them all. The whole day long they are mending boats, painting boats, cleaning boats, rowing boats, or, standing with their hands in their pockets, looking at boats. The children seem to be children in size, and children in nothing else. They congregate together in sober little groups, and hold mysterious conversation, in a dialect which we cannot understand. If they ever tumble down, soil their pinafores, throw stones, or make mud‐pies, they practise these juvenile vices in a midnight secresy that no stranger’s eye can penetrate.”

A mile or so out at sea rises a green triangularly‐shaped eminence, called Looe Island. Several years since a ship was wrecked on the island, but not only were the crew saved, but several free passengers of the rat species, who had got on board, nobody knew how, where, or when, were also preserved by their own strenuous exertions, and wisely took up permanent quarters for the future on the _terra firma_ of Looe Island. In course of time these rats increased and multiplied; and, being confined all round within certain limits by the sea, soon became a palpable and tremendous nuisance. Destruction was threatened to the agricultural produce of all the small patches of cultivated land on the island—it seemed doubtful whether any man who ventured there by himself might not share the fate of Bishop Hatto, and be devoured by rats. Under these circumstances, the people of Looe decided to make one determined and united effort to extirpate the whole colony of invaders. Ordinary means of destruction had been tried already, and without effect. It was said that the rats left for dead on the ground had mysteriously revived faster than they could be picked up and skinned or cast into the sea. Rats desperately wounded had got away into their holes, and become convalescent, and increased and multiplied again more productively than ever. The great problem was, not how to kill the rats, but how to annihilate them so effectually that the whole population might certainly know that the reappearance of even one of them was altogether out of the question. This was the problem, and it was solved practically and triumphantly in the following manner:—All the inhabitants of the town were called to join in a great hunt. The rats were caught by every conceivable artifice; and, once taken, were instantly and ferociously _smothered in onions_; the corpses were then decently laid out on clean china dishes, and straightway eaten with vindictive relish by the people of Looe. Never was any invention for destroying rats so complete and so successful as this. Every man, woman, and child that could eat could swear to the death and annihilation of all the rats they had eaten. The local returns of dead rats were not made by the bills of mortality, but by the bills of fare; it was getting rid of a nuisance by the unheard‐ of process of stomaching a nuisance! Day after day passed on, and rats disappeared by hundreds, never to return. They had resisted the ordinary force of dogs, ferrets, traps, sticks, stones, and guns, arrayed against them; but when to these engines of assault were added, as auxiliaries, smothering onions, scalding stew‐pans, hungry mouths, sharp teeth, good digestions, and the gastric juice, what could they do but give in? Swift and sure was the destruction which now overwhelmed them—everybody who wanted a dinner had a strong personal interest in hunting them down to the very last. In a short space of time the island was cleared of the usurpers. Cheeses remained intact; ricks were uninjured. And this is the true story of how the people of Looe got rid of the rats!

Many causes, Mr. Collins tell us, combined to secure the poor of Cornwall from that last worse consequence of poverty to which the poor in most of the other divisions of England are more or less exposed. The number of inhabitants in the county is stated by the last census at 341,269—the number of square miles that they have to live on being 1,327. This will be found, on proper computation and comparison, to be considerably under the average population of a square mile throughout the rest of England. Thus, the supply of men for all purposes does not appear to be greater than the demand in Cornwall. The remote situation of the county guarantees it against any considerable influx of strangers to compete with the natives for work on their own ground. Mr. Collins met a farmer there who was so far from being besieged in harvest time by claimants for labour on his land, that he was obliged to go forth to seek them in a neighbouring town, and was doubtful whether he should find men enough left him unemployed at the mines and the fisheries to gather in his crops in good time at two shillings a day and as much “victuals and drink” as they cared to have.

Another cause which has of late years contributed, in some measure, to keep Cornwall free from the burthen of a surplus population of working men must not be overlooked. Emigration has been more largely resorted to in that county than, perhaps, in any other in England. Out of the population of the Penzance Union alone nearly five per cent. left their native land for Australia or New Zealand in 1849. The potato blight is assigned as the chief cause of this, for it has damaged seriously the growth of a vegetable from the sale of which in the London markets the Cornish agriculturist derived large profits, and on which (with their fish) the Cornish poor depended as a staple article of food.

It is by the mines and fisheries that Cornwall is compensated for a soil too barren in many parts of the country to be ever cultivated except at such an expenditure of capital as no mere farmer can afford. From the inexhaustible treasures in the earth, and from the equally inexhaustible shoals of pilchards which annually visit the coast, the working population of Cornwall derived their regular means of support where agriculture would fail them. At the mines the regular rate of wages is from forty to fifty shillings a month; but miners have opportunities of making more than this. By what is termed working “on tribute,” that is, agreeing to excavate the mineral lodes for a percentage on the value of the metal they raise, some of them have been known to make as much as six and even ten pounds a month. Even when they are unlucky in their working speculations, or perhaps thrown out of employment altogether by the shutting up of a mine, they have a fair opportunity of obtaining farm labour, which is paid for (out of harvest time) at the rate of nine shillings a week. But this is a resource of which they are rarely obliged to take advantage. A plot of common ground is included with the cottages that are let to them; and the cultivation of this helps to keep them and their families in bad times, until they find an opportunity of resuming work; when they may perhaps make as much in one month as an agricultural labourer can in twelve.

The fisheries not only employ all the inhabitants of the coast, but in the pilchard season many of the farm people work as well. Ten thousand persons, men, women, and children, derive their regular support from the fisheries, which are so amazingly productive that the “drift,” or deep‐sea fishing, in Mount’s Bay alone, is calculated to realise, on the average, £30,000 per annum.

To the employment thus secured for the poor in the mines and fisheries is to be added, as an advantage, the cheapness of rent and living in Cornwall. Good cottages are let at from fifty or sixty shillings to some few pounds a year. Turf for firing grows in abundance on the vast tracts of common land overspreading the country. All sorts of vegetables are plenteous and cheap, with the exception of potatoes, which have so decreased, in consequence of the disease, that the winter stock is now imported from France, Belgium, and Holland. The early potatoes, however, grown in May and June, are still cultivated in large quantities, and realise on exportation a very high price. Corn generally sells a little above the average. Fish is always within the reach of the poorest people. In a good season a dozen pilchards are sold for one penny. Happily for themselves the poor in Cornwall have none of the foolish prejudices against fish so obstinately adhered to by the lower classes in many other parts of England. Their national pride is in their pilchards; they like to talk of them, and especially to strangers; and well they may, for they depend for the main support of life on the tribute of these little fish, which the sea yields annually in almost countless shoals.

“Of Cornish hospitality,” says Wilkie Collins, “we experienced many proofs, one of which may be related as an example. Arriving late at a village, we found some difficulty in arousing the people of the inn. While we were waiting at the door we heard a man, who lived in a cottage near at hand, and of whom we had asked our way on the road, inquiring of some female member of his family whether she could make up a spare bed. We had met this man proceeding in our direction, and had so far outstripped him in walking, that we had been waiting outside the inn about a quarter of an hour before he got home. When the woman answered this question in the negative, he directed her to put clean sheets on his own bed, and then came out to tell us that if we failed to obtain admission at the public‐ house, a lodging was ready for us for the night under his own roof. We found on inquiry afterwards that he had looked out of window after getting home, while we were still disturbing the village by a continuous series of assaults on the inn door, had recognised us in the moonlight, and had therefore not only offered us his bed, but had got out of it himself to do so. When we finally succeeded in gaining admittance to the inn, he declined an invitation to sup with us, and wishing us a good night’s rest, returned to his home. I should mention, at the same time, that another bed was offered to us at the vicarage, by the clergyman of the parish, and that after this gentleman had himself seen that we were properly accommodated by our landlady, he left us, with an invitation to breakfast with him the next morning. This is hospitality practised in Cornwall, a county where, it must be remembered, a stranger is doubly a stranger, in relation to provincial sympathies; where the national sympathy is almost entirely merged in the local feeling; where a man speaks of himself as _Cornish_ in much the same spirit as a Welshman speaks of himself as Welsh.

“In like manner, another instance drawn from my own experience will best display and describe the anxiety which we found generally testified by the Cornish poor to make the best and most grateful return in their power for anything which they considered as a favour kindly bestowed. Such anecdotes as I here relate in illustration of popular character cannot, I think, be considered trifling; for it is by trifles, after all, that we gain our truest appreciation of the marking signs of good or evil in the dispositions of our fellow‐beings, just as in the beating of a single artery under the touch we discover an indication of the strength or weakness of the whole vital frame.

“On the granite cliffs at the Land’s End I met with an old man, seventy‐ two years of age, of whom I asked some questions relative to the extraordinary rocks scattered about this part of the coast. He immediately opened his whole budget of local anecdotes, telling them in a high quavering treble voice, which was barely audible above the dash of the breakers beneath, and the fierce whistling of the wind among the rocks around us. However, the old fellow went on talking incessantly, hobbling along before me, up and down steep paths, and along the very brink of a fearful precipice, with as much coolness as if his sight was as clear and his step as firm as in his youth. When he had shown me all that he could show, and had thoroughly exhausted himself with talking, I gave him a shilling at parting. He appeared to be perfectly astonished by a remuneration which the reader will doubtless consider the reverse of excessive, thanked me at the top of his voice, and then led me in a great hurry, and with many mysterious nods and gestures, to a hollow in the grass, where he had spread on a clean handkerchief a little stock‐in‐trade of his own, consisting of barnacles, bits of rock and ore, and specimens of dried sea‐weed. Pointing to these, he told me to take anything I liked as a present in return for what I had given him. He would not hear of my buying anything; he was not, he said, a regular guide, and I had paid him more already than such an old man was worth. What I took out of his handkerchief I must take as a present only. I saw by his manner that he would be really mortified if I contested the matter with him, so as a present I received one of his pieces of rock. I had no right to deprive him of the pleasure of doing a kind action because there happened to be a few more shillings in my pocket than in his.”