CHAPTER XX.

SKETCHES OF OUR COASTS.—CORNWALL (_continued_).

Wilkie Collins’s Experiences as a Pedestrian—Taken for “Mapper,” “Trodger,” and Hawker—An Exciting Wreck at Penzance—The Life‐line sent out—An Obstinate Captain—A Brave Coastguardsman—Five Courageous Young Ladies—Falmouth and Sir Walter Raleigh—Its Rapid Growth—One of its Institutions—A Dollar Mine—Religious Fishermen—The Lizard and its Associations for Voyagers—Origin of the Name—Mount St. Michael, the Picturesque—Her Majesty’s Visit—An Heroic Rescue at Plymouth—Another Gallant Rescue.

Mr. Collins’s experiences as a pedestrian are amusing. Says he:—“We enter a small public‐house by the road‐side to get a draught of beer. In the kitchen we behold the landlord and a tall man, who is a customer. Both stare as a matter of course; the tall man especially, after taking one look at our knapsacks, fixes his eyes firmly on us, and sits bolt upright on the bench without saying a word—he is evidently prepared for the worst we can do. We get into conversation with the landlord, a jovial, talkative fellow, who desires greatly to know what we are, if we have no objection. We ask him what he thinks we are? ‘Well,’ says the landlord, pointing to my friend’s knapsack, which has a square ruler strapped to it for architectural drawing, ‘Well, I think you are both of you _Mappers_; mappers, who come here to make new roads; you may be coming to make a railroad, I dare say. We’ve had mappers in the county before this. I know a mapper myself. Here’s both your good healths.’ We drink the landlord’s good health in return, and disclaim the honour of being ‘mappers;’ we walk through the country, we tell him, for pleasure alone, and take any roads we can get, without wanting to make new ones. The landlord would like to know, if that is the case, why we carry these loads at our backs? Because we want to carry our luggage about with us. Couldn’t we pay to ride? Yes, we could. And yet we like walking better? Yes, we do. This last answer utterly confounds the tall customer, who has been hitherto listening intently to the dialogue. It is evidently too much for his credulity; he pays his reckoning, and walks out in a hurry without uttering a word. The landlord appears to be convinced, but it is only in appearance; he looks at us suspiciously in spite of himself. We leave him standing at his door, keeping his eye on us as long as we are in sight, still evidently persuaded that we are ‘mappers,’ but ‘mappers’ of a bad order, whose perseverance is fraught with some unknown peril to the security of the Queen’s highway.

“We get on into another district. Here public opinion is not flattering. Some of the groups gathered together in the road to observe us begin to speculate on our characters before we are quite out of hearing. Then this sort of dialogue, spoken in serious, subdued tones, just reaches us. Question—‘What can they be?’ Answer—‘_Trodgers!_’

“This is particularly humiliating, because it happens to be true. We certainly do trudge, and are therefore properly, though rather unceremoniously, called trudgers, or ‘trodgers.’ But we sink to a lower depth yet a little further on. We are viewed as objects of pity. It is a fine evening. We stop and lean against a bank by the road‐side to look at the sunset. An old woman comes tottering by on high pattens, very comfortably and nicely clad. She sees our knapsacks, and instantly stops in front of us, and begins to moan lamentably. Not understanding at first what this means, we ask respectfully if she feels at all ill? ‘Ah! poor fellows, poor fellows!’ she sighs in answer, ‘obliged to carry all your baggage on your own backs! very hard! poor lads! very hard indeed!’ and the good old soul goes away groaning over our evil plight, and mumbling something which sounds very like an assurance that she has no money to give us.

“In another part of the county we rise again gloriously in worldly consideration. We pass a cottage; a woman looks out after us over the low garden wall, and rather hesitatingly calls us back. I approach her first, and am thus saluted: ‘If you please, sir, what have you got to sell?’ Again, an old man meets us on the road, stops, cheerfully taps our knapsacks with his stick, and says, ‘Aha! you’re tradesmen, eh! things to sell? I say, have you got any tea?’ (pronounced _tay_). Further on we approach some miners breaking ore. As we pass by we hear one asking amazedly, ‘What have they got to sell in those things on their backs?’ and another answering, in the prompt tones of a guesser who is convinced that he guesses right, ‘Guinea‐pigs!’

“It is, unfortunately, impossible to convey to the reader any adequate idea by mere description of the extraordinary gravity of manner, the looks of surprise, and the tones of conviction which accompanied these various popular conjectures as to our calling and station in life, and which added immeasurably at the time to their comic effect. Curiously enough, whenever they took the form of questions, any jesting in returning an answer never seemed either to be appreciated or understood by the country people. Serious replies fared much the same fate as jokes. Everybody asked whether we could pay for riding, and nobody believed we preferred walking, if we could. So we soon gave up any idea of affording any information at all, and walked through the country comfortably as mappers, trodgers, tradesmen, guinea‐pig mongers, and poor back‐burdened vagabond lads, altogether, or one at a time, just as the peasantry pleased.”

Penzance is itself the most westerly port of England. It has a noble pier, 700 feet long, and a lighthouse, the red light of which can be seen nine miles off. It has a lifeboat, the crew of which has done many a gallant deed. Out of a population of twelve or thirteen thousand in and about the town, at least twenty‐five per cent. are hardy men of the sea—fishermen or sailors. It was the scene, only a couple of years ago, of a most exciting event.

A French brig, the _Ponthieu_, went ashore near the town, during the prevalence of a strong south‐west gale. The Marazion rocket apparatus was worked successfully, and the line was thrown over the wreck, but the crew, being ignorant of the mode of working it, fastened it loosely on board, instead of hauling it in taut. One of the crew managed, however, to get safely ashore by it. The Penzance lifeboat was then got out, but on her arrival at the ill‐fated vessel, the French crew, though in infinite peril, great seas washing over them, took no notice, the captain apparently forbidding them to leave, or even throw a line to the boat. The wind and sea rapidly increased in fury; the vessel was evidently doomed, and must soon break up. In vain the life‐boatmen entreated. They were actually warned off, and had, after earnest warning, to leave. But seeing the inevitable loss of life that must ensue, the brave coxswain of the boat determined to return. Result: five lives saved. The captain still remained obstinate, and at length a coastguardsman, all honour to him! volunteered for the perilous duty of going out to the wreck by the rocket line, taking with him a letter from the French Consul, urging the captain to leave. In the presence of hundreds of intensely‐excited spectators, the coastguard made his way, often under the waves for several seconds, and in peril of being washed off. The captain was watching him from the brig, but stood motionless, even when his deliverer had arrived under the bows. Just then a furious sea broke over the hero of the rocket line, and washed him away, and it was feared by all on shore that he must perish. Happily, however, he regained the rope, and more dead than alive, was washed ashore. Meanwhile the brig was fast breaking up. The masts fell over the side. The stern, on which the captain was standing, was first battered in, and then clean carried away. It was supposed that the captain had perished, but presently he was seen among the wreckage, mounting to the foreyard, the sail of which somewhat sheltered him. The coastguardsmen fired two more rockets, and one line falling close to the captain, he seized it, but even then seemed irresolute whether to save himself or perish with his brig. After a quarter of an hour the love of life constrained him to fasten the rope round his body, and the foolhardy man was dragged ashore. Within an hour nothing was to be seen of the vessel but a few floating spars. The cheers which greeted the captain’s rescue were but feeble compared with those that had welcomed the return of the coastguardsman whose life had been risked in attempting to save him. Brave Gould!

The coastguardsmen, however, do not enjoy a monopoly of bravery in Cornwall. There are courageous women there, some of them very young.

Towards the end of October, 1879, a well‐earned presentation was made at Padstow, to five young ladies of an equal number of silver medals and testimonials inscribed on vellum, the vote of the National Life‐boat Institution. The four Misses Prideaux Brune and Miss Nora O’Shaughnessy had taken a boat through a heavy sea, at the risk of their own lives, to save an exhausted sailor from a capsized boat, two of the companions of whom had perished before their arrival. Samuel Bate, late the assistant coxswain of the Padstow life‐boat, was towing the ladies’ boat astern of his fishing smack, when seeing the accident, they requested to be cast off, and that being done, though against his convictions, he states that they rowed “like tigers” to the rescue through a furious sea, and he has no doubt that the man would have perished like his companions but for their prompt arrival. Such noble‐hearted girls make us still more proud of Cornwall, which has given England—aye, the world—so many noble men.

The Cornish coast, in spite of its picturesque character and points of interest, is not so well known by tourists and artists as it should be.

Falmouth has an interesting history. When Sir Walter Raleigh visited it on his return from the Guinea coast, where guinea‐pigs came from, he found but one solitary house outside of the family mansion of an ancient county family. His quick eye noted the admirable harbour and entrance, the former capable of holding 500 vessels, and he represented to the Council the advantage of making it a port. From that time its fortunes grew; soon it became a packet station for the arrival and departure of the foreign mails. Now on the lofty headland, St. Anthony’s Point, a lighthouse, flashing brilliantly every twenty seconds, serves to guide the entering ships and steamships, which have sometimes numbered 2,000 in one year. It has a patent slip, dry and other docks, and all conveniences for shipping interests. Connected with the town is an extensive oyster and trawling fishery, and it has a little fleet of pilot cutters. It has a sailors’ Bethel, with library and reading‐room; and the Royal Cornwall Sailors’ Home is a prominent institution. Another of the “institutions” of Falmouth might be copied to advantage elsewhere. Every boatman who rescues a drowning person is entitled to receive a reward of one guinea.

The Rev. C. A. Johns tells us that near Gunwalloe, Cornwall, the land rises, and the coast becomes bold for a short distance. The cliffs, though not lofty, are precipitous, and offer no chance of escape to any unfortunate vessel which may chance to be driven in within reach of the rocks. About the year 1785, a vessel laden with wool, and having also on board two and a half tons of money, was driven ashore a few hundred yards west of the church, and soon went to pieces. Ever since, at intervals, after a storm, dollars have been picked up on the beach, but never in sufficient numbers to compensate for the time wasted in the search. No measures, however, on a large scale for recovering the precious cargo were adopted until the year 1845, when people were startled to hear that a party of adventurers were going to sink a dollar‐mine in the sea.

This is not the only unsuccessful search for treasure which has been made at Gunwalloe. In the sand‐banks near the church, or, as others say, at Kennack Cove, the notorious buccaneer Captain Avery is reported to have buried several chests of treasure previous to his leaving England on the voyage from which he never returned. So strongly did this opinion prevail that Mr. John Knill, collector of the Customs at St. Ives, procured, about the year 1770, a grant of treasure trove, and expended some money in a fruitless search.

The vessel had gone to pieces between two rocks at a short distance from the base of the cliff, and here it was proposed to construct a kind of coffer‐dam, from which the water was to be pumped out, and the dollars to be picked up at leisure. Mad though the scheme was, operations were actually commenced; a path was cut in the face of the cliff, iron rods were fixed into the rocks, and several beams of timber laid down, when a breeze set in from the south‐west, and in the course of a few hours the work of as many weeks was destroyed. The wood‐work was ripped up as effectually as though it had been a mere wicker cage, and the coast was soon lined with the fragments. It is not likely the attempt will be renewed. The speculators were in this instance strangers, which accounts for the enterprise having been taken in hand at all, for any one acquainted with the coast must have been well aware that though the sea is tolerably calm sometimes for many consecutive days, it is never so for a period long enough to allow the completion of a work which requires time, and which, in the most favourable weather, is beset with difficulties; indeed, an ordinary breeze setting on this shore excites the sea to such a state of fury that certainly no unfinished mechanical structure could withstand the force of the breakers.

The lower classes of Cornwall are generally Methodists, and decidedly religious. In Scotland also, strict Sabbatarianism is the rule among the poor. _The Northern Ensign_, in reply to a journalist who had been advocating the prosecution of the herring fishery on the Sabbath day, had an article showing that there is no class in Scotland, taken as a whole, who love, revere, and enjoy the Sabbath more than the men and women who live by the sea. At Wick, the largest herring fishery station in the world, where the fishers congregate from all parts of the coast, at ten o’clock one Sabbath morning not a single fisherman was to be seen in the street; in half an hour after knots of men and women were wending their way to the various places of worship, and when the church bell announced the hour of meeting the streets were almost impassable—men, women, and children, all cleanly dressed, and not in working clothes, streamed this way and that to church.

No visitor to Cornwall ever misses the Lizard, the most southerly headland promontory in Britain, a piece of rocky land which has caused more vivid and varied emotions than any other on our coasts. The emigrant leaving, as he often thinks, and often wrongly thinks, his native land for ever; the soldier bound for distant battle‐fields, and the sailor for far distant foreign ports; the lover just parted from his beloved one; the husband from his wife; have each and all strained their eyes for a last parting glimpse of an isle they loved so much and yet might never see again! And when the lighthouses’ flash could no longer be discerned, how sadly did one and all “turn into” their berths to think, aye, “perchance to dream,” of the happy past and the doubtful future. How different the emotions of the homeward bound, the emigrant with his gathered gold, the bronzed veteran who has come out of the fiercest conflict unscathed, and the sailor who has safely passed the ordeal of fearful climes; the lover ready now for the girl he adores; and the husband jubilant with such good news for his faithful spouse. The first glimpse of that strangely‐named rocky point is the signal for heartiest huzzas and congratulation.

The Lizard Rock owes its name, according to various authorities, firstly to its form; secondly to the serpent‐like colour of its cliffs; and thirdly is said to be derived from the Cornish word Liazherd, signifying a projecting headland. Its two splendid lights can be seen out at sea at a distance of twenty miles.

Mount’s Bay, a few miles further west, has a fine anchorage, but is more interesting to the visitor as containing an isolated pyramidal collection of grand rocks, which, with their castle, are the delight of the landscape artist. The old castle on the rocky islet rises to a height of 230 feet. The island is connected with Marazion, a village on the mainland, 400 yards distant, by a causeway of stones. In 1846 her Majesty Queen Victoria and Prince Albert paid a visit to the spot, and the event is commemorated on a tablet let into the wall of the pier, and by a brass foot‐plate placed on the spot first touched by the Royal feet when they conveyed Her Majesty ashore. There is a snug little harbour, and the pier just named will allow several hundred vessels to unload at the same time. The population of Mount St. Michael is composed almost entirely of pilots and fishermen.

Plymouth, Devon, with its grand breakwater and many associations, has often been mentioned in these pages. Comparatively recently it was the scene of a most gallant rescue. Five boys were playing on the beach in front of the Hoe, when they entered a cave in the rocks, and remained there until the tide, which flowed in with unusual rapidity on account of a gale outside, completely hemmed them in. Their screams were heard from the road and promenade above, and hundreds of people quickly congregated. The waves were dashing furiously on the beach, and surging into the cave where the terrified lads were crouching, shivering with wet and cold, and trembling at their apparently inevitable fate. No boat could live in the surf, or dare approach the rocks. But seamen’s proverbial ingenuity came to the rescue; ropes were procured, and two seafaring men, George Andrews and Thomas Penny by name, were lowered over the precipitous crags through the blinding spray and dashing foam to the mouth of the rocky recess. Here, still attached to the ropes, they allowed themselves to be washed by the sea into the cave far enough to seize a boy, when, the signal being given, they were hauled out and up. This was repeated, until amid enthusiastic cheering, the fifth and last boy was saved.

Has the reader ever visited Dartmouth, one of the loveliest spots in Britain? The men, and, if history tells us aright, the women too, of that ancient town rendered a good account of themselves when the French, in 1404, after burning and sacking Plymouth, thought they would have an easy prey. The inhabitants of Dartmouth pluckily resisted the invaders, and with such success, that the commander of the fleet, three barons, and twenty knights, were taken prisoners. But then out of a comparatively small population, then as now, a large proportion were men of the sea.