scowled over the whole landward horizon; the bright blue sky at the
opposite point was covered with towering white clouds which moved and
changed magnificently; the tossing and raging of the great bright sea
was sublimely contrasted by the solitude and tranquillity of the desert,
overshadowed land--while ever and ever, sounding as they first sounded
when the morning stars sang together, the rolling waves and the rushing
wind pealed out their primeval music over the whole scene!

And now, when we began to examine the coast more in detail, inquiring
the names of remarkable objects as we proceeded, we found ourselves in a
country where each succeeding spot that the traveller visited, was
memorable for some mighty convulsion of Nature, or tragically associated
with some gloomy story of shipwreck and death. Turning from the Lizard
Head towards a cliff at some little distance, we passed through a field
on our way, overgrown with sweet-smelling wild flowers, and broken up
into low grassy mounds. This place is called "Pistol Meadow," and is
connected with a terrible event which is still spoken of by the country
people with superstitious awe.

Some hundred years since, a transport-ship, filled with troops, was
wrecked on the reef off the Lizard Head. Two men only were washed ashore
alive. Out of the fearful number that perished, two hundred corpses
were driven up on the beach below Pistol Meadow; and there they were
buried by tens and twenties together in great pits, the position of
which is still revealed by the low irregular mounds that chequer the
surface of the field. The place was named, in remembrance of the
quantity of fire-arms,--especially pistols--found about the wreck of the
ill-fated ship, at low tide, on the reef below the cliffs. To this day,
the peasantry continue to regard Pistol Meadow with feelings of awe and
horror, and fear to walk near the graves of the drowned men at night.
Nor have many of the inhabitants yet forgotten a revolting circumstance
connected by traditional report with the burial of the corpses after the
shipwreck. It is said, that when dead bodies were first washed ashore,
troops of ferocious, half-starved dogs suddenly appeared from the
surrounding country, and could with difficulty be driven from preying on
the mangled remains that were cast up on the beach. Ever since that
period, the peasantry have been reported as holding the dog in
abhorrence. Whether this be true or not, it is certainly a rare
adventure to meet with a dog in the Lizard district. You may walk
through farm-yard after farm-yard, you may enter cottage after cottage,
and never hear any barking at your heels;--you may pass, on the road,
labourer after labourer, and yet never find one of them accompanied, as
in other parts of the country, by his favourite attendant cur.

Leaving Pistol Meadow, after gathering a few of the wild herbs growing
fragrant and plentiful over the graves of the dead, we turned our steps
towards the Lizard Lighthouse. As we passed before the front of the
large and massive building, our progress was suddenly and startlingly
checked by a hideous chasm in the cliff, sunk to a perpendicular depth
of seventy feet, and measuring more than a hundred in circumference.
Nothing prepares the stranger for this great gulf; no railing is placed
about it; it lies hidden by rising land, and the earth all around is
treacherously smooth. The first moment when you see it, is the moment
when you start back instinctively from its edge, doubtful whether the
hole has not yawned open in that very instant before your feet.

This chasm--melodramatically entitled by the people, "The Lion's
Den"--was formed in an extraordinary manner, not many years since. In
the evening the whole surface of the down above the cliff was smooth to
the eye, and firm to the foot--in the morning it had opened into an
enormous hole. The men who kept watch at the Lighthouse, heard no sounds
beyond the moaning of the sea--felt no shock--looked out on the night,
and saw that all was apparently still and quiet. Nature suffered her
convulsion and effected her change in silence. Hundreds on hundreds of
tons of soil had sunk down into depths beneath them, none knew in how
long, or how short a time; but there the Lion's Den was in the morning,
where the firm earth had been the evening before.

The explanation of the manner in which this curious landslip occurred,
is to be found by descending the face of the cliff, beyond the Lion's
Den, and entering a cavern in the rocks, called "Daw's Hugo" (or Cave).
The place is only accessible at low water. Passing from the beach
through the opening of the cavern, you find yourself in a lofty,
tortuous recess, into the farthest extremity of which, a stream of light
pours down from some eighty or a hundred feet above. This light is
admitted through the Lion's Den, and thus explains by itself the nature
of the accident by which that chasm was formed. Here, the weight of the
upper soil broke through the roof of the cave; and the earth which then
fell into it, was subsequently washed away by the sea, which fills Daw's
Hugo at every flow of the tide. It has lately been noticed that the
loose particles of ground at the bottom of the Lion's Den, still
continue to sink gradually through the narrow, slanting passage into the
cave already formed; and it is expected that in no very long time the
lower extremity of the chasm will widen so far, as to make the sea
plainly visible through it from above. At present, the effect of the two
streams of light pouring into Daw's Hugo from two opposite
directions--one from the Lion's Den, the other from the seaward opening
in the rocks--and falling together, in cross directions on the black
rugged walls of the cave and the beautiful marine ferns growing from
them, is supernaturally striking and grand. Here, Rembrandt would have
loved to study; for here, even _his_ sublime perception of the poetry of
light and shade might have received a new impulse, and learned from the
teaching of Nature one immortal lesson more.

Daw's Hugo and the Lion's Den may be fairly taken as characteristic
types of the whole coast scenery about the Lizard Head, in its general
aspects. Great caves and greater landslips are to be seen both eastward
and westward. In calm weather you may behold the long prospects of riven
rock, in their finest combination, from a boat. At such times, you may
row into vast caverns, always filled by the sea, and only to be
approached when the waves ripple as calmly as the waters of a lake.
Then, you may see the naturally arched roof high above you, adorned in
the loveliest manner by marine plants waving to and fro gently in the
wind. Rocky walls are at each side of you, variegated in dark red and
dark green colours--now advancing, now receding, now winding in and out,
now rising straight and lofty, until their termination is hid in a
pitch-dark obscurity which no man has ever ventured to fathom to its
end. Beneath, is the emerald-green sea, so still and clear that you can
behold the white sand far below, and can watch the fish gliding swiftly
and stealthily out and in: while, all around, thin drops of moisture are
dripping from above, like rain, into the deep quiet water below, with a
monotonous echoing sound which half oppresses and half soothes the ear,
at the same time.

On stormy days your course is different. Then, you wander along the
summits of the cliffs; and looking down, through the hedges of tamarisk
and myrtle that skirt the ends of the fields, see the rocks suddenly
broken away beneath you into an immense shelving amphitheatre, on the
floor of which the sea boils in fury, rushing through natural archways
and narrow rifts. Beyond them, at intervals as the waves fall, you catch
glimpses of the brilliant blue main ocean, and the outer reefs
stretching into it. Often, such wild views as these are relieved from
monotony by the prospect of smooth cornfields and pasture-lands, or by
pretty little fishing villages perched among the rocks--each with its
small group of boats drawn up on a slip of sandy beach, and its modest,
tiny gardens rising one above another, wherever the slope is gentle, and
the cliff beyond rises high to shelter them from the winter winds.

But the place at which the coast scenery of the Lizard district arrives
at its climax of grandeur is Kynance Cove. Here, such gigantic specimens
are to be seen of the most beautiful of all varieties of rock--the
"serpentine"--as are unrivalled in Cornwall; perhaps, unrivalled
anywhere. A walk of two miles along the westward cliffs from Lizard
Town, brought us to the top of a precipice of three hundred feet.
Looking forward from this, we saw the white sand of Kynance Cove
stretching out in a half circle into the sea.

What a scene was now presented to us! It was a perfect palace of rocks!
Some rose perpendicularly and separate from each other, in the shapes of
pyramids and steeples--some were overhanging at the top and pierced with
dark caverns at the bottom--some were stretched horizontally on the
sand, here studded with pools of water, there broken into natural
archways. No one of these rocks resembled another in shape, size, or
position--and all, at the moment when we looked on them, were wrapped in
the solemn obscurity of a deep mist; a mist which shadowed without
concealing them, which exaggerated their size, and, hiding all the
cliffs beyond, presented them sublimely as separate and solitary objects
in the sea-view.

It was now necessary, however, to occupy as little time as possible in
contemplating Kynance Cove from a distance; for if we desired to explore
it, immediate advantage was to be taken of the state of the tide, which
was already rapidly ebbing. Hurriedly descending the cliffs, therefore,
we soon reached the sand: and here, leaving my companion to sketch, I
set forth to wander among the rocks, doubtful whither to turn my steps
first. While still hesitating, I was fortunate enough to meet with a
guide, whose intelligence and skill well deserve such record as I can
give of them here; for, to the former I was indebted for much local
information and anecdote, and to the latter, for quitting Kynance Cove
with all my limbs in as sound a condition as when I first approached it.

The guide introduced himself to me by propounding a sort of stranger's
catechism. 1st. "Did I want to see everything?"--"Certainly." 2nd. "Was
I giddy on the tops of high places?"--"No." 3rd. "Would I be so good, if
I got into a difficulty anywhere, as to take it easy, and catch hold of
him tight?"--"Yes, very tight!" With these answers the guide appeared to
be satisfied. He gave his hat a smart knock with one hand, to fix it on
his head; and pointing upwards with the other, said, "We'll try that
rock first, to look into the gulls' nests, and get some wild asparagus."
And away we went accordingly.

We mount the side of an immense rock which projects far out into the
sea, and is the largest of the surrounding group. It is called Asparagus
Island, from the quantity of wild asparagus growing among the long grass
on its summit. Half way up, we cross an ugly chasm. The guide points to
a small chink or crevice, barely discernible in one side of it, and says
"Devil's Bellows!" Then, first courteously putting my toes for me into a
comfortable little hole in the perpendicular rock side, which just fits
them, he proceeds to explain himself. Through the base of the opposite
extremity of the island there is a natural channel, into which the sea
rushes furiously at high tide: and finding no other vent but the little
crevice we now look down on, is expelled through it in long, thin jets
of spray, with a roaring noise resembling the sound of a gigantic
bellows at work. But the sea is not yet high enough to exhibit this
phenomenon, so the guide takes my toes out of the hole again for me,
just as politely as he put them in; and forthwith leads the way up
higher still--expounding as he goes, the whole art and mystery of
climbing, which he condenses into this axiom:--"Never loose one hand,
till you've got a grip with the other; and never scramble your toes
about, where toes have no business to be."

At last we reach the topmost ridge of the island, and look down upon the
white restless water far beneath, and peep into one or two deserted
gulls' nests, and gather wild asparagus--which I can only describe as
bearing no resemblance at all, that I could discover, to the garden
species. Then, the guide points to another perpendicular rock, farther
out at sea, looming dark and phantom-like in the mist, and tells me that
he was the man who built the cairn of stones on its top: and then he
proposes that we shall go to the opposite extremity of the ridge on
which we stand, and look down into "The Devil's Throat."

This desirable journey is accomplished with the greatest ease on his
part, and with considerable difficulty and delay on mine--for the wind
blows fiercely over us on the height; our rock track is narrow, rugged,
and slippery; the sea roars bewilderingly below; and a single false step
would not be attended with agreeable consequences. Soon, however, we
begin to descend a little from our "bad eminence," and come to a halt
before a wide, tunnelled opening, slanting sharply downwards in the very
middle of the island--a black, gaping hole, into the bottom of which the
sea is driven through some unknown subterranean channel, roaring and
thundering with a fearful noise, which rises in hollow echoes through
the aptly-named "Devil's Throat." About this hole no grass grew: the
rocks rose wild, jagged, and precipitous, all around it. If ever the
ghastly imagery of Dante's terrible "Vision" was realized on earth, it
was realized here.

At this place, close to the mouth of the hole, the guide suggests that
we shall sit down and have a little talk!--and very impressive talk it
is, when he begins the conversation by bawling into my ear (and down the
Devil's Throat at the same time) to make himself heard above the fierce
roaring beneath us. Now, his tale is of tremendous jets of water which
he has seen, during the storms of winter, shot out of the hole before
which we sit, into the creek of the sea below--now, he tells me of a
shipwreck off Asparagus Island, of half-drowned sailors floating ashore
on pieces of timber, and dashed out to sea again just as they touched
the strand, by a jet from the Devil's Throat--now, he points away in the
opposite direction, under one of the steeple-shaped rocks, and speaks of
a chase after smugglers that began from this place; a desperate chase,
in which some of the smugglers' cargo, but not one of the smugglers
themselves, was seized--now, he talks of another great hole in the
landward rocks, where the sea may be seen boiling within: a hole into
which a man who was fishing for fragments of a wreck fell and was
drowned; his body being sucked away through some invisible channel,
never to be seen again by mortal eyes.

Anon, the guide's talk changes from tragedy to comedy. He begins to
recount odd adventures of his own with strangers. He tells me of a huge
fat woman who was got up to the top of Asparagus Island, by the easiest
path, and by the exertions of several guides; who, left to herself,
gasped, reeled, and fell down immediately; and was just rolling off,
with all the momentum of sixteen stone, over the precipice below her,
when she was adroitly caught, and anchored fast to the ground, by the
ankle of one leg and the calf of the other. Then he speaks of an elderly
gentleman, who, while descending the rocks with him, suddenly stopped
short at the most dangerous point, giddy and panic-stricken, pouring
forth death-bed confessions of all his sins, and wildly refusing to move
another inch in any direction. Even this man the guide got down in
safety at last, by making stepping places of his hands, on which the
elderly gentleman lowered himself as on a ladder, ejaculating
incoherently all the way, and trembling in great agony long after he had
been safely landed on the sands.

This last story ended, it is settled that we shall descend again to the
beach. Stimulated by the ease with which my worthy leader goes down
beneath me, I get over-confident in my dexterity, and begin to slip
here, and slide there, and come to awkward pauses at precipitous
places, in what would be rather an alarming manner, but for the potent
presence of the guide, who is always beneath me, ready to be fallen
upon. Sometimes, when I am holding on with all the necessary tenacity of
grip, as regards my hands, but, "scrambling my toes about" in a very
disorderly and unworkmanlike fashion, he pops his head up from below for
me to sit on; and puts my feet into crevices for me, with many apologies
for taking the liberty! Sometimes, I fancy myself treading on what feels
like soft turf; I look down, and find that I am standing like an acrobat
on his shoulders, and hear him civilly entreating me to take hold of his
jacket next, and let myself down over his body to the ledge where he is
waiting for me. He never makes a false step, never stumbles, scrambles,
hesitates, or fails to have a hand always at my service. The nautical
metaphor of "holding on by your eyelids" becomes a fact in his case. He
really views his employer, as porters are expected to view a package
labelled "_glass with care_." I am firmly persuaded that he could take a
drunken man up and down Asparagus Island, without the slightest risk
either to himself or his charge; and I hold him in no small admiration,
when, after landing on the sand with something between a tumble and a
jump, I find him raising me to my perpendicular almost before I have
touched the ground, and politely hoping that I feel quite satisfied,
hitherto, with his conduct as a guide.

We now go across the beach to explore some caves--dry at low water--on
the opposite side. Some of these are wide, lofty, and well-lighted from
without. We walk in and out and around them, as if in great, irregular,
Gothic halls. Some are narrow and dark. Now, we crawl into them on hands
and knees; now, we wriggle onward a few feet, serpent-like, flat on our
bellies; now, we are suddenly able to stand upright in pitch darkness,
hearing faint moaning sounds of pent-up winds, when we are silent, and
long reverberations of our own voices, when we speak. Then, as we turn
and crawl out again, we soon see before us one bright speck of light
that may be fancied miles and miles away--a star shining in the earth--a
diamond sparkling in the bosom of the rock. This guides us out again
pleasantly; and, on gaining the open air, we find that while we have
been groping in the darkness, a change has been taking place in the
regions of light, which has altered and is still altering the aspect of
the whole scene.

It is now two o'clock. The tide is rising fast; the sea dashes, in
higher and higher waves, on the narrowing beach. Rain and mist are both
gone. Overhead, the clouds are falling asunder in every direction,
assuming strange momentary shapes, quaint airy resemblances of the forms
of the great rocks among which we stand. Height after height along the
distant cliffs dawns on us gently; great golden rays shoot down over
them; far out on the ocean, the waters flash into a streak of fire; the
sails of ships passing there, glitter bright; yet a moment more, and the
glorious sunlight bursts out over the whole view. The sea changes soon
from dull grey to bright blue, embroidered thickly with golden specks,
as it rolls and rushes and dances in the wind. The sand at our feet
grows brighter and purer to the eye; the sea-birds flying and swooping
above us, look like flashes of white light against the blue firmament;
and, most beautiful of all, the wet serpentine rocks now shine forth in
full splendour beneath the sun; every one of their exquisite varieties
of colour becomes plainly visible--silver grey and bright yellow, dark
red, deep brown, and malachite green appear, here combined in thin
intertwined streaks, there outspread in separate irregular
patches--glorious ornaments of the sea-shore, fashioned by no human
art!--Nature's own home-made jewellery, which the wear of centuries has
failed to tarnish, and the rage of tempests has been powerless to
destroy!

But the hour wanes while we stand and admire; the surf dashes nearer and
nearer to our feet; soon, the sea will cover the sand, and rush swiftly
into the caves where we have slowly crawled. Already the Devil's Bellows
is at work--the jets of spray spout forth from it with a roar. The sea
thunders louder and louder in the Devil's Throat--we must gain the
cliffs while we have yet time. The guide takes his leave; my companion
unwillingly closes his sketch-book; and we slowly ascend on our inland
way together--looking back often and often, with no feigned regret, on
all that we are leaving behind us at KYNANCE COVE.

VII.

THE PILCHARD FISHERY.

If it so happened that a stranger in Cornwall went out to take his first
walk along the cliffs towards the south of the county, in the month of
August, that stranger could not advance far in any direction without
witnessing what would strike him as a very singular and alarming
phenomenon.

He would see a man standing on the extreme edge of a precipice, just
over the sea, gesticulating in a very remarkable manner, with a bush in
his hand; waving it to the right and the left, brandishing it over his
head, sweeping it past his feet--in short, apparently acting the part of
a maniac of the most dangerous character. It would add considerably to
the startling effect of this sight on the stranger, if he were told,
while beholding it, that the insane individual before him was paid for
flourishing the bush at the rate of a guinea a week. And if he,
thereupon, advanced a little to obtain a nearer view of the madman, and
then observed on the sea below (as he certainly might) a well-manned
boat, turning carefully to right and left exactly as the bush turned
right and left, his mystification would probably be complete, and the
right time would arrive to come to his rescue with a few charitable
explanatory words. He would then learn that the man with the bush was an
important agent in the Pilchard Fishery of Cornwall; that he had just
discovered a shoal of pilchards swimming towards the land; and that the
men in the boat were guided by his gesticulations alone, in securing the
fish on which they and all their countrymen on the coast depend for a
livelihood.

To begin, however, with the pilchards themselves, as forming one of the
staple commercial commodities of Cornwall. They may be, perhaps, best
described as bearing a very close resemblance to the herring, but as
being rather smaller in size and having larger scales. Where they come
from before they visit the Cornish coast--where those that escape the
fishermen go to when they quit it, is unknown; or, at best, only vaguely
conjectured. All that is certain about them is, that they are met with,
swimming past the Scilly Isles, as early as July (when they are caught
with a drift-net). They then advance inland in August, during which
month the principal, or "in-shore," fishing begins; visit different
parts of the coast until October or November; and after that disappear
until the next year. They may be sometimes caught off the south-west
part of Devonshire, and are occasionally to be met with near the
southernmost coast of Ireland; but beyond these two points they are
never seen on any other portion of the shores of Great Britain, either
before they approach Cornwall, or after they have left it.

The first sight from the cliffs of a shoal of pilchards advancing
towards the land, is not a little interesting. They produce on the sea
the appearance of the shadow of a dark cloud. This shadow comes on and
on, until you can see the fish leaping and playing on the surface by
thousands at a time, all huddled close together, and all approaching so
near to the shore, that they can be always caught in some fifty or sixty
feet of water. Indeed, on certain occasions, when the shoals are of
considerable magnitude, the fish behind have been known to force the
fish before, literally up to the beach, so that they could be taken in
buckets, or even in the hand with the greatest ease. It is said that
they are thus impelled to approach the land by precisely the same
necessity which impels the fishermen to catch them as they appear--the
necessity of getting food.

With the discovery of the first shoal, the active duties of the
"look-out" on the cliffs begin. Each fishing-village places one or more
of these men on the watch all round the coast. They are called "huers,"
a word said to be derived from the old French verb, _huer_, to call out,
to give an alarm. On the vigilance and skill of the "huer" much depends.
He is, therefore, not only paid his guinea a week while he is on the
watch, but receives, besides, a perquisite in the shape of a per-centage
on the produce of all the fish taken under his auspices. He is placed at
his post, where he can command an uninterrupted view of the sea, some
days before the pilchards are expected to appear; and, at the same time,
boats, nets, and men are all ready for action at a moment's notice.

The principal boat used is at least fifteen tons in burden, and carries
a large net called the "seine," which measures a hundred and ninety
fathoms in length, and costs a hundred and seventy pounds--sometimes
more. It is simply one long strip, from eleven to thirteen fathoms in
breadth, composed of very small meshes, and furnished, all along its
length, with lead at one side and corks at the other. The men who cast
this net are called the "shooters," and receive eleven shillings and
sixpence a week, and a perquisite of one basket of fish each out of
every haul.

As soon as the "huer" discerns the first appearance of a shoal, he waves
his bush. The signal is conveyed to the beach immediately by men and
boys watching near him. The "seine" boat (accompanied by another small
boat, to assist in casting the net) is rowed out where he can see it.
Then there is a pause, a hush of great expectation on all sides.
Meanwhile, the devoted pilchards press on--a compact mass of thousands
on thousands of fish, swimming to meet their doom. All eyes are fixed on
the "huer;" he stands watchful and still, until the shoal is thoroughly
embayed, in water which he knows to be within the depth of the "seine"
net. Then, as the fish begin to pause in their progress, and gradually
crowd closer and closer together, he gives the signal; the boats come
up, and the "seine" net is cast, or, in the technical phrase "shot,"
overboard.

The grand object is now to enclose the entire shoal. The leads sink one
end of the net perpendicularly to the ground; the corks buoy up the
other to the surface of the water. When it has been taken all round the
fish, the two extremities are made fast, and the shoal is then
imprisoned within an oblong barrier of network surrounding it on all
sides. The great art is to let as few of the pilchards escape as
possible, while this process is being completed. Whenever the "huer"
observes from above that they are startled, and are separating at any
particular point, to that point he waves his bush, thither the boats are
steered, and there the net is "shot" at once. In whatever direction the
fish attempt to get out to sea again, they are thus immediately met and
thwarted with extraordinary readiness and skill. This labour completed,
the silence of intense expectation that has hitherto prevailed among the
spectators on the cliff, is broken. There is a great shout of joy on all
sides--the shoal is secured!

The "seine'" is now regarded as a great reservoir of fish. It may remain
in the water a week or more. To secure it against being moved from its
position in case a gale should come on, it is warped by two or three
ropes to points of land in the cliff, and is, at the same time,
contracted in circuit, by its opposite ends being brought together, and
fastened tight over a length of several feet. While these operations are
in course of performance, another boat, another set of men, and another
net (different in form from the "seine") are approaching the scene of
action.

This new net is called the "tuck;" it is smaller than the "seine,"
inside which it is now to be let down for the purpose of bringing the
fish closely collected to the surface. The men who manage this net are
termed "regular seiners." They receive ten shillings a week, and the
same perquisite as the "shooters." Their boat is first of all rowed
inside the seine-net, and laid close to the seine-boat, which remains
stationary outside, and to the bows of which one rope at one end of the
"tuck-net" is fastened. The "tuck" boat then slowly makes the inner
circuit of the "seine," the smaller net being dropped overboard as she
goes, and attached at intervals to the larger. To prevent the fish from
getting between the two nets during this operation, they are frightened
into the middle of the enclosure by beating the water, at proper places,
with oars, and heavy stones fastened to ropes. When the "tuck" net has
at length travelled round the whole circle of the "seine," and is
securely fastened to the "seine" boat, at the end as it was at the
beginning, everything is ready for the great event of the day, the
hauling of the fish to the surface.

Now, the scene on shore and sea rises to a prodigious pitch of
excitement. The merchants, to whom the boats and nets belong, and by
whom the men are employed, join the "huer" on the cliff; all their
friends follow them; boys shout, dogs bark madly; every little boat in
the place puts off, crammed with idle spectators; old men and women
hobble down to the beach to wait for the news. The noise, the bustle,
and the agitation, increase every moment. Soon the shrill cheering of
the boys is joined by the deep voices of the "seiners." There they
stand, six or eight stalwart sunburnt fellows, ranged in a row in the
"seine" boat, hauling with all their might at the "tuck" net, and
roaring the regular nautical "Yo-heave-ho!" in chorus! Higher and higher
rises the net, louder and louder shout the boys and the idlers. The
merchant forgets his dignity, and joins them; the "huer," so calm and
collected hitherto, loses his self-possession and waves his cap
triumphantly; even you and I, reader, uninitiated spectators though we
are, catch the infection, and cheer away with the rest, as if our bread
depended on the event of the next few minutes. "Hooray! hooray! Yo-hoy,
hoy, hoy! Pull away, boys! Up she comes! Here they are! Here they are!"
The water boils and eddies; the "tuck" net rises to the surface, and one
teeming, convulsed mass of shining, glancing, silvery scales; one
compact crowd of tens of thousands of fish, each one of which is madly
endeavouring to escape, appears in an instant!

The noise before was as nothing compared with the noise now. Boats as
large as barges are pulled up in hot haste all round the net; baskets
are produced by dozens: the fish are dipped up in them, and shot out,
like coals out of a sack, into the boats. Ere long, the men are up to
their ankles in pilchards; they jump upon the rowing benches and work
on, until the boats are filled with fish as full as they can hold, and
the gunwales are within two or three inches of the water. Even yet, the
shoal is not exhausted; the "tuck" net must be let down again and left
ready for a fresh haul, while the boats are slowly propelled to the
shore, where we must join them without delay.

As soon as the fish are brought to land, one set of men, bearing
capacious wooden shovels, jump in among them; and another set bring
large hand-barrows close to the side of the boat, into which the
pilchards are thrown with amazing rapidity. This operation proceeds
without ceasing for a moment. As soon as one barrow is ready to be
carried to the salting-house, another is waiting to be filled. When this
labour is performed by night, which is often the case, the scene becomes
doubly picturesque. The men with the shovels, standing up to their knees
in pilchards, working energetically; the crowd stretching down from the
salting-house, across the beach, and hemming in the boat all round; the
uninterrupted succession of men hurrying backwards and forwards with
their barrows, through a narrow way kept clear for them in the throng;
the glare of the lanterns giving light to the workmen, and throwing red
flashes on the fish as they fly incessantly from the shovels over the
side of the boat--all combine together to produce such a series of
striking contrasts, such a moving picture of bustle and animation, as
not even the most careless of spectators could ever forget.

Having watched the progress of affairs on the shore, we next proceed to
the salting-house, a quadrangular structure of granite, well-roofed in
all round the sides, but open to the sky in the middle. Here, we must
prepare ourselves to be bewildered by incessant confusion and noise; for
here are assembled all the women and girls in the district, piling up
the pilchards on layers of salt, at three-pence an hour; to which
remuneration, a glass of brandy and a piece of bread and cheese are
hospitably added at every sixth hour, by way of refreshment. It is a
service of some little hazard to enter this place at all. There are men
rushing out with empty barrows, and men rushing in with full barrows, in
almost perpetual succession. However, while we are waiting for an
opportunity to slip through the doorway, we may amuse ourselves by
watching a very curious ceremony which is constantly in course of
performance outside it.

As the filled barrows are going into the salting-house, we observe a
little urchin running by the side of them, and hitting their edges with
a long cane, in a constant succession of smart strokes, until they are
fairly carried through the gate, when he quickly returns to perform the
same office for the next series that arrive. The object of this
apparently unaccountable proceeding is soon practically illustrated by a
group of children, hovering about the entrance of the salting-house, who
every now and then dash resolutely up to the barrows, and endeavour to
seize on as many fish as they can take away at one snatch. It is
understood to be their privilege to keep as many pilchards as they can
get in this way by their dexterity, in spite of a liberal allowance of
strokes aimed at their hands; and their adroitness richly deserves its
reward. Vainly does the boy officially entrusted with the administration
of the cane, strike the sides of the barrow with malignant smartness and
perseverance--fish are snatched away with lightning rapidity and
pickpocket neatness of hand. The hardest rap over the knuckles fails to
daunt the sturdy little assailants. Howling with pain, they dash up to
the next barrow that passes them, with unimpaired resolution; and often
collect their ten or a dozen fish a piece, in an hour or two. No
description can do justice to the "Jack-in-Office" importance of the boy
with the cane, as he flourishes it about ferociously in the full
enjoyment of his vested right to castigate his companions as often as he
can. As an instance of the early development of the tyrannic tendencies
of human nature, it is, in a philosophical point of view, quite unique.

But now, while we have a chance, while the doorway is accidentally clear
for a few moments, let us enter the salting-house, and approach the
noisiest and most amusing of all the scenes which the pilchard fishery
presents. First of all we pass a great heap of fish lying in one recess
inside the door, and an equally great heap of coarse, brownish salt
lying in another. Then we advance farther, get out of the way of
everybody, behind a pillar, and see a whole congregation of the fair sex
screaming, talking, and--to their honour be it spoken--working at the
same time, round a compact mass of pilchards which their nimble hands
have already built up to a height of three feet, a breadth of more than
four, and a length of twenty. Here we have every variety of the "fairer
half of creation" displayed before us, ranged round an odoriferous heap
of salted fish. Here we see crones of sixty and girls of sixteen; the
ugly and the lean, the comely and the plump; the sour-tempered and the
sweet--all squabbling, singing, jesting, lamenting, and shrieking at the
very top of their very shrill voices for "more fish," and "more salt;"
both of which are brought from the stores, in small buckets, by a long
train of children running backwards and forwards with unceasing activity
and in bewildering confusion. But, universal as the uproar is, the work
never flags; the hands move as fast as the tongues; there may be no
silence and no discipline, but there is also no idleness and no delay.
Never was three-pence an hour more joyously or more fairly earned than
it is here!

The labour is thus performed. After the stone floor has been swept
clean, a thin layer of salt is spread on it, and covered with pilchards
laid partly edgewise, and close together. Then another layer of salt,
smoothed fine with the palm of the hand, is laid over the pilchards; and
then more pilchards are placed upon that; and so on until the heap rises
to four feet or more. Nothing can exceed the ease, quickness, and
regularity with which this is done. Each woman works on her own small
area, without reference to her neighbour; a bucketful of salt and a
bucketful of fish being shot out in two little piles under her hands,
for her own especial use. All proceed in their labour, however, with
such equal diligence and equal skill, that no irregularities appear in
the various layers when they are finished--they run as straight and
smooth from one end to the other, as if they were constructed by
machinery. The heap, when completed, looks like a long, solid,
neatly-made mass of dirty salt; nothing being now seen of the pilchards
but the extreme tips of their noses or tails, just peeping out in rows,
up the sides of the pile.

Having now inspected the progress of the pilchard fishery, from the
catching to the curing, we have seen all that we can personally observe
of its different processes, at one opportunity. What more remains to be
done, will not be completed until after an interval of several weeks. We
must be content to hear about this from information given to us by
others. Yonder, sitting against the outside wall of the salting-house,
is an intelligent old man, too infirm now to do more than take care of
the baby that he holds in his arms, while the baby's mother is earning
her three-pence an hour inside. To this ancient we will address all our
inquiries; and he is well qualified to answer us, for the poor old
fellow has worked away all the pith and marrow of his life in the
pilchard fishery.

The fish--as we learn from our old friend, who is mightily pleased to be
asked for information--will remain in salt, or, as the technical
expression is, "in bulk," for five or six weeks. During this period, a
quantity of oil, salt, and water drips from them into wells cut in the
centre of the stone floor on which they are placed. After the oil has
been collected and clarified, it will sell for enough to pay off the
whole expense of the wages, food, and drink given to the
"seiners"--perhaps defraying other incidental charges besides. The salt
and water left behind, and offal of all sorts found with it, furnish a
valuable manure. Nothing in the pilchard itself, or in connexion with
the pilchard, runs to waste--the precious little fish is a treasure in
every part of him.

After the pilchards have been taken out of "bulk," they are washed clean
in salt water, and packed in hogsheads, which are then sent for
exportation to some large sea-port--Penzance for instance--in coast
traders. The fish reserved for use in Cornwall, are generally cured by
those who purchase them. The export trade is confined to the shores of
the Mediterranean--Italy and Spain providing the two great foreign
markets for pilchards. The home consumption, as regards Great Britain,
is nothing, or next to nothing. Some variation takes place in the prices
realized by the foreign trade--their average, wholesale, is stated to be
about fifty shillings per hogshead.

As an investment for money, on a small scale, the pilchard fishery
offers the first great advantage of security. The only outlay necessary,
is that for providing boats and nets, and for building salting-houses--an
outlay which, it is calculated, may be covered by a thousand pounds. The
profits resulting from the speculation are immediate and large.
Transactions are managed on the ready money principle, and the markets of
Italy and Spain (where pilchards are considered a great delicacy) are
always open to any supply. The fluctuation between a good season's
fishing and a bad season's fishing is rarely, if ever, seriously great.
Accidents happen but seldom; the casualty most dreaded, being the
enclosure of a large fish along with a shoal of pilchards. A "ling," for
instance, if unfortunately imprisoned in the seine, often bursts through
its thin meshes, after luxuriously gorging himself with prey, and is of
course at once followed out of the breach by all the pilchards. Then, not
only is the shoal lost, but the net is seriously damaged, and must be
tediously and expensively repaired. Such an accident as this, however,
very seldom happens; and when it does, the loss occasioned falls on those
best able to bear it, the merchant speculators. The work and wages of the
fishermen go on as usual.

Some idea of the almost incalculable multitude of pilchards caught on
the shores of Cornwall, may be formed from the following _data_. At the
small fishing cove of Trereen, 600 hogsheads were taken in little more
than one week, during August, 1850. Allowing 2,400 fish only to each
hogshead--3,000 would be the highest calculation--we have a result of
1,440,000 pilchards, caught by the inhabitants of one little village
alone, on the Cornish coast, at the commencement of the season's
fishing.

At considerable sea-port towns, where there is an unusually large supply
of men, boats, and nets, such figures as those quoted above, are far
below the mark. At St. Ives, for example, 1,000 hogsheads were taken in
the first three seine nets cast into the water. The number of hogsheads
exported annually, averages 22,000. In 1850, 27,000 were secured for the
foreign markets. Incredible as these numbers may appear to some readers,
they may nevertheless be relied on; for they are derived from
trustworthy sources--partly from local returns furnished to me; partly
from the very men who filled the baskets from the boat-side, and who
afterwards verified their calculations by frequent visits to the
salting-houses.

Such is the pilchard fishery of Cornwall--a small unit, indeed, in the
vast aggregate of England's internal sources of wealth: but yet neither
unimportant nor uninteresting, if it be regarded as giving active
employment to a hardy and honest race who would starve without it; as
impartially extending the advantages of commerce to one of the remotest
corners of our island; and, more than all, as displaying a wise and
beautiful provision of Nature, by which the rich tribute of the great
deep is most generously lavished on the land most in need of a
compensation for its own sterility.

VIII.

THE LAND'S END.

Something like what Jerusalem was to the pilgrim in the Holy Land, the
Land's End is--comparing great things with small--to the tourist in
Cornwall. It is the Ultima Thule where his progress stops--the shrine
towards which his face has been set, from the first day when he started
on his travels--the main vent, through which all the pent-up enthusiasm
accumulated along the line of route is to burst its way out, in one long
flow of admiration and delight.

The Land's End! There is something in the very words that stirs us all.
It was the name that struck us most, and was best remembered by us, as
children, when we learnt our geography. It fills the minds of
imaginative people with visions of barrenness and solitude, with dreams
of some lonely promontory, far away by itself out in the sea--the sort
of place where the last man in England would be most likely to be found
waiting for death, at the end of the world! It suggests even to the most
prosaically constituted people, ideas of tremendous storms, of flakes of
foam flying over the land before the wind, of billows in convulsion, of
rocks shaken to their centre, of caves where smugglers lurk in ambush,
of wrecks and hurricanes, desolation, danger, and death. It awakens
curiosity in the most careless--once hear of it, and you long to see
it--tell your friends that you have travelled in Cornwall, and ten
thousand chances to one, the first question they ask is:--"Have you been
to the Land's End?"

And yet, strange to say, this spot so singled out and set apart by our
imaginations as something remarkable and even unique of its kind, is as
a matter of fact, not distinguishable from any part of the coast on
either side of it, by any local peculiarity whatever. If you desire
really and truly to stand on the Land's End itself, you must ask your
way to it, or you are in danger of mistaking any one of the numerous
promontories on the right hand and the left, for your actual place of
destination. But I am anticipating. Before I say more about the Land's
End, it is necessary to relate how my companion and I got there, and
what we saw that was interesting and characteristic on our road.

The reader may perhaps remember that he last left us scrambling out of
reach of the tide, up the cliffs overlooking Kynance Cove. From that
place we got back to Helston in mist and rain, just as we had left it.
From Helston we proceeded to Marazion,--stopping there to visit St.
Michael's Mount, so well known to readers of all classes by innumerable
pictures and drawings, and by descriptions scarcely less plentiful, that
they will surely be relieved rather than disappointed, if these pages
exhibit the distinguished negative merit of passing the Mount without
notice. From Marazion we walked to Penzance, from Penzance to the
beautiful coast scenery at Lamorna Cove, and thence to Trereen,
celebrated as the halting place for a visit to one of Cornwall's
greatest curiosities--the Loggan Stone.

This far-famed rock rises on the top of a bold promontory of granite,
jutting far out into the sea, split into the wildest forms, and towering
precipitously to a height of a hundred feet. When you reach the Loggan
Stone, after some little climbing up perilous-looking places, you see a
solid, irregular mass of granite, which is computed to weigh eighty
five tons, supported by its centre only, on a flat, broad rock, which,
in its turn, rests on several others stretching out around it on all
sides. You are told 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!

The pivot on which the Loggan Stone is thus easily moved, is a small
protrusion in its base, on all sides of which the whole surrounding
weight of rock is, by an accident of Nature, so exactly equalized, as
to keep it poised in the nicest balance on the one little point in its
lower surface which rests on the flat granite slab beneath. But perfect
as this balance appears at present, it has lost something, the merest
hair's-breadth, of its original faultlessness of adjustment. The rock is
not to be moved now, either so easily or to so great an extent, as it
could once be moved. Six-and-twenty years since, it was overthrown by
artificial means; and was then lifted again into its former position.
This is the story of the affair, as it was related to me by a man who
was an eyewitness of the process of restoring the stone to its proper
place.

In the year 1824, a certain Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, then in
command of a cutter stationed off the southern coast of Cornwall, was
told of an ancient Cornish prophecy, that no human power should ever
succeed in overturning the Loggan Stone. No sooner was the prediction
communicated to him, than he conceived a mischievous ambition to falsify
practically an assertion which the commonest common sense might have
informed him had sprung from nothing but popular error and popular
superstition. Accompanied by a body of picked men from his crew, he
ascended to the Loggan Stone, ordered several levers to be placed under
it at one point, gave the word to "heave"--and the next moment had the
miserable satisfaction of seeing one of the most remarkable natural
curiosities in the world utterly destroyed, for aught he could foresee
to the contrary, under his own directions!

But Fortune befriended the Loggan Stone. One edge of it, as it rolled
over, became fixed by a lucky chance in a crevice in the rocks
immediately below the granite slab from which it had been started. Had
this not happened, it must have fallen over a sheer precipice, and been
lost in the sea. By another accident, equally fortunate, two labouring
men at work in the neighbourhood, were led by curiosity secretly to
follow the Lieutenant and his myrmidons up to the Stone. Having
witnessed, from a secure hiding-place, all that occurred, the two
workmen, with great propriety, immediately hurried off to inform the
lord of the manor of the wanton act of destruction which they had seen
perpetrated.

The news was soon communicated throughout the district, and thence,
throughout all Cornwall. The indignation of the whole county was
aroused. Antiquaries, who believed the Loggan Stone to have been
balanced by the Druids; philosophers who held that it was produced by
an eccentricity of natural formation; ignorant people, who cared nothing
about Druids, or natural formations, but who liked to climb up and rock
the stone whenever they passed near it; tribes of guides who lived by
showing it; innkeepers in the neighbourhood, to whom it had brought
customers by hundreds; tourists of every degree who were on their way to
see it--all joined in one general clamour of execration against the
overthrower of the rock. A full report of the affair was forwarded to
the Admiralty; and the Admiralty, for once, acted vigorously for the
public advantage, and mercifully spared the public purse.

The Lieutenant was officially informed that his commission was in
danger, unless he set up the Loggan Stone again in its proper place. The
materials for compassing this achievement were offered to him, _gratis_,
from the Dock Yards; but he was left to his own resources to defray the
expense of employing workmen to help him. Being by this time awakened to
a proper sense of the mischief he had done, and to a tolerably strong
conviction of the disagreeable position in which he was placed with the
Admiralty, he addressed himself vigorously to the task of repairing his
fault. Strong beams were planted about the Loggan Stone, chains were
passed round it, pulleys were rigged, and capstans were manned. After a
week's hard work and brave perseverance on the part of every one
employed in the labour, the rock was pulled back into its former
position, but not into its former perfection of balance: it has never
moved since as freely as it moved before.

It is only fair to the Lieutenant to add to this narrative of his
mischievous frolic the fact, that he defrayed, though a poor man, all
the heavy expenses of replacing the rock. Just before his death, he paid
the last remaining debt, and paid it with interest.

Leaving the Loggan Stone, we next shaped our course for the Land's End.
We stopped on our way, to admire the desolate pile of rocks and caverns
which form the towering promontory, called "Tol-Peden-Penwith," or, "The
Holed Headland on the Left." Thence, turning a little inland--passing
over wild, pathless moors; occasionally catching distant glimpses of the
sea, with the mist sometimes falling thick down to the very edges of the
waves, sometimes parting mysteriously and discovering distant crags of
granite rising shadowy out of the foaming waters,--we reached, at last,
the limits of our outward journey, and saw the Atlantic before us,
rolling against the westernmost extremity of the shores of England.

I have already said, that the stranger must ask his way before he can
find out the particular mass of rocks, geographically entitled to the
appellation of the "Land's End." He may, however, easily discover when
he has reached the _district_ of the "Land's End," by two rather
remarkable indications that he will meet with on his road. He will
observe, at some distance from the coast, an old milestone marked "I,"
and will be informed that this is the real original first mile in
England; as if all measurement of distances began strictly from the
West! A little further on he will come to a house, on one wall of which
he will see written in large letters, "This is the first Inn in
England," and on the other: "This is the last Inn in England;" as if the
recognised beginning, and end too, of the Island of Britain were here,
and here only! Having pondered a little on the slightly exclusive view
of the attributes of their locality, taken by the inhabitants, he will
then be led forward, about half a mile, by his guide, will descend some
cliffs, will walk out on a ridge of rocks till he can go no
farther--and will then be told that he is standing on the Land's End!

Here, as elsewhere, there are certain "sights" which a stranger is
required to examine assiduously, as a duty if not as a pleasure, by
guide-book law, rigidly administered by guides. There is, first of all,
the mark of a horse's hoof, which is with great care kept _sharply
modelled_ (to borrow the painter's phrase), in the thin grass at the
edge of a precipice. This mark commemorates the narrow escape from death
of a military man who, for a wager, rode a horse down the cliff to the
extreme verge of the Land's End; where the poor animal, seeing its
danger, turned in affright, reared, and fell back into the sea raging
over the rocks beneath. The foolhardy rider had just sense enough left
to throw himself off in time--he tumbled on the ground, within a few
inches of the precipice, and so barely saved the life which he had
richly deserved to lose.

After the mark of the hoof, the traveller is next desired to look at a
natural tunnel in the outer cliff, which pierces it through from one end
to the other. Then his attention is directed to a lighthouse built on a
reef of rocks detached from the land; and he is told of the great waves
which break over the top of the building during the winter storms.
Lastly, he is requested to inspect a quaint protuberance in a pile of
granite at a little distance off, which bears a remote resemblance to a
gigantic human face, adorned with a short beard; and which, he is
informed, is considered quite a portrait (of all the people in the world
to liken it to!) of Dr. Johnson! It is, therefore, publicly known as
"Johnson's Head." If it can fairly be compared with any of the
countenances of any remarkable characters that ever existed, it may be
said to exhibit, in violent exaggeration, the worst physiognomical
peculiarities of Nero and Henry the Eighth, combined in one face!

These several local curiosities duly examined, you are at last left free
to look at the Land's End in your own way. Before you, stretches the
wide, wild ocean; the largest of the Scilly Islands being barely
discernible on the extreme horizon, on clear days. Tracts of heath;
fields where corn is blown by the wind into mimic waves; downs, valleys,
and crags, mingle together picturesquely and confusedly, until they are
lost in the distance, on your left. On your right is a magnificent bay,
bounded at either extremity by far-stretching promontories rising from a
beach of the purest white sand, on which the yet whiter foam of the
surf is ever seething, as waves on waves break one behind the other. The
whole bold view possesses all the sublimity that vastness and space can
bestow; but it is that sublimity which is to be seen, not described,
which the heart may acknowledge and the mind contain, but which no mere
words may delineate--which even painting itself may but faintly reflect.

However, it is, after all, the walk to the Land's End along the southern
coast, rather than the Land's End itself, which displays the grandest
combinations of scenery in which this grandest part of Cornwall abounds.
There, Nature appears in her most triumphant glory and beauty--there,
every mile as you proceed, offers some new prospect, or awakens some
fresh impression. All objects that you meet with, great and small,
moving and motionless, seem united in perfect harmony to form a scene
where original images might still be found by the poet; and where
original pictures are waiting, ready composed, for the painter's eye.

On approaching the wondrous landscapes between Trereen and the Land's
End, the first characteristic that strikes you, is the change that has
taken place in the forms of the cliffs since you left the Lizard Head.
You no longer look on variously shaped and variously coloured
"serpentine" rocks; it is granite, and granite alone, that appears
everywhere--granite, less lofty and less eccentric in form than the
"serpentine" cliffs and crags; but presenting an appearance of
adamantine solidity and strength, a mighty breadth of outline and an
unbroken vastness of extent, nobly adapted to the purpose of protecting
the shores of Cornwall, where they are most exposed to the fury of the
Atlantic waves. In these wild districts, the sea rolls and roars in
fiercer agitation, and the mists fall thicker, and at the same time fade
and change faster, than elsewhere. Vessels pitching heavily in the
waves, are seen to dawn, at one moment, in the clearing atmosphere--and
then, at another, to fade again mysteriously, as it abruptly thickens,
like phantom ships. Up on the top of the cliffs, furze and heath in
brilliant clothing of purple and yellow, cluster close round great
white, weird masses of rock, dotted fantastically with patches of
grey-green moss. The solitude on these heights is unbroken--no houses
are to be seen--often, no pathway is to be found. You go on, guided by
the _sight_ of the sea, when the sky brightens fitfully: and by the
_sound_ of the sea, when you stray instinctively from the edge of the
cliff, as mist and darkness gather once more densely and solemnly all
around you.

Then, when the path appears again--a winding path, that descends
rapidly--you gradually enter on a new scene. Old horses startle you,
scrambling into perilous situations, to pick dainty bits by the
hillside; sheep, fettered by the fore and hind leg, hobble away
desperately as you advance. Suddenly, you discern a small strip of beach
shut in snugly between protecting rocks. A spring bubbles down from an
inland valley; while not far off, an old stone well collects the water
into a calm, clear pool. Sturdy little cottages, built of rough granite,
and thickly thatched, stand near you, with gulls' and cormorants' eggs
set in their loop-holed windows for ornament; great white sections of
fish hang thickly together on their walls to dry, looking more like many
legs of many dirty duck trousers, than anything else; pigsties are
hard-by the cottages, either formed by the Cromlech stones of the
Druids, or excavated like caves in the side of the hill. Down on the
beach, where the rough old fishing-boats lie, the sand is entirely
formed by countless multitudes of the tiniest, fairy-like shells, often
as small as a pin's head, and all exquisitely tender in colour and
wonderfully varied in form. Up the lower and flatter parts of the hills
above, fishing nets are stretched to dry. While you stop to look forth
over the quiet, simple scene, wild little children peep out at you in
astonishment; and hard-working men and women greet you with a hearty
Cornish salutation, as you pass near their cottage doors.

You walk a few hundred yards inland, up the valley, and discover in a
retired, sheltered situation, the ancient village church, with its
square grey tower surmounted by moss-grown turrets, with its venerable
Saxon stone cross in the churchyard--where the turf graves rise humbly
by twos and threes, and where the old coffin-shaped stone stands midway
at the entrance gates, still used, as in former times, by the bearers of
a rustic funeral. Appearing thus amid the noblest scenery, as the simple
altar of the prayers of a simple race, this is a church which speaks of
religion in no formal or sectarian tone. Appealing to the heart of every
traveller be his creed what it may, in loving and solemn accents, it
sends him on his way again, up the mighty cliffs and through the mist
driving cloud-like over them, the better fitted for his journey forward
here; the better fitted, it may be, even for that other dread journey
of one irrevocable moment--the last he shall ever take--to his
abiding-place among the spirits of the dead!

These are some of the attractions which home rambles can offer to tempt
the home traveller; for these are the impressions produced, and the
incidents presented during a walk to the Land's End.

IX.

BOTALLACK MINE.

I have little doubt that the less patient among the readers of this
narrative have already, while perusing it, asked themselves some such
questions as these:--"Is not Cornwall a celebrated mineral country? Why
has the author not taken us below the surface yet? Why have we heard
nothing all this time about the mines?"

Readers who have questioned thus, may be assured that their impatience
to go down a mine, in this book, was fully equalled by our impatience to
go down a mine, in the county of which this book treats. Our anxiety,
however, when we mentioned it to Cornish friends, was invariably met by
the same answer. "Wait"--they all said--"until you have turned your
backs on the Land's End; and then go to Botallack. The mine there is the
most extraordinary mine in Cornwall; go down that, and you will not
want to go down another--wait for Botallack." And we did wait for
Botallack, just as the reader has waited for it in these pages. May he
derive as much satisfaction from the present description of the mine, as
we did from visiting the mine itself!

We left the Land's End, feeling that our homeward journey had now begun
from that point; and walking northward, about five miles along the
coast, arrived at Botallack. Having heard that there was some
disinclination in Cornwall to allow strangers to go down the mines, we
had provided ourselves--through the kindness of a friend--with a proper
letter of introduction, in case of emergency. We were told to go to the
counting-house to present our credentials; and on our road thither, we
beheld the buildings and machinery of the mine, literally stretching
down the precipitous face of the cliff, from the land at the top, to the
sea at the bottom.

This 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 way 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
gulls' 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 smooth solid ground above!

The counting-house was built on a projection of earth about midway
between the top of the cliff and the sea. When we got there, the agent,
to whom our letter was addressed, was absent; but his place was supplied
by two miners who came out to receive us; and to one of them we
mentioned our recommendation, and modestly hinted a wish to go down the
mine forthwith.

But our new friend was not a person who did anything in a hurry. He was
a grave, courteous, and rather melancholy man, of great stature and
strength. He looked on us with a benevolent, paternal expression, and
appeared to think that we were nothing like strong enough, or cautious
enough to be trusted down the mine. "Did we know," he urged, "that it
was dangerous work?" "Yes; but we didn't mind danger!"--"Perhaps we were
not aware that we should perspire profusely, and be dead tired getting
up and down the ladders?" "Very likely; but we didn't mind that,
either!"--"Surely we shouldn't like to strip and put on miners'
clothes?" "Yes, we should, of all things!" and pulling off coat and
waistcoat, on the spot, we stood half-undressed already, just as the big
miner was proposing another objection, which, under existing
circumstances, he good-naturedly changed into a speech of acquiescence.
"Very well, gentlemen," he said, taking up two suits of miners' clothes,
"I see you are determined to go down; and so you shall! You'll be wet
through with the heat and the work before you come up again; so just put
on these things, and keep your own clothes dry."

The clothing consisted of a flannel shirt, flannel drawers, canvas
trousers, and a canvas jacket--all stained of a tawny copper colour; but
all quite clean. A white night-cap and a round hat, composed of some
iron-hard substance, well calculated to protect the head from any loose
stones that might fall on it, completed the equipment; to which, three
tallow-candles were afterwards added, two to hang at the buttonhole, one
to carry in the hand.

My friend was dressed first. He had got a suit which fitted him
tolerably, and which, as far as appearances went, made a miner of him at
once. Far different was my case.

The same mysterious dispensation of fate, which always awards tall wives
to short men, decreed that a suit of the big miner's should be reserved
for me. He stood six feet two inches--I stand five feet six inches. I
put on his flannel shirt--it fell down to my toes, like a bedgown; his
drawers--and they flowed in Turkish luxuriance over my feet. At his
trousers I helplessly stopped short, lost in the voluminous recesses of
each leg. The big miner, like a good Samaritan as he was, came to my
assistance. He put the pocket button through the waist buttonhole, to
keep the trousers up in the first instance; then, he pulled steadily at
the braces until my waistband was under my armpits; and then he
pronounced that I and my trousers fitted each other in great perfection.
The cuffs of the jacket were next turned up to my elbows--the white
night-cap was dragged over my ears--the round hat was jammed down over
my eyes. When I add to all this, that I am so nearsighted as to be
obliged to wear spectacles, and that I finished my toilet by putting my
spectacles on (knowing that I should see little or nothing without
them), nobody, I think, will be astonished to hear that my companion
seized his sketch-book, and caricatured me on the spot; and that the
grave miner, polite as he was, shook with internal laughter, when I took
up my tallow-candles and reported myself ready for a descent into the
mine.

We left the counting-house, and ascended the face of the cliff--then,
walked a short distance along the edge, descended a little again, and
stopped at a wooden platform built across a deep gully. Here, the miner
pulled up a trap-door, and disclosed a perpendicular ladder leading down
to a black hole, like the opening of a chimney. "This is the shaft; I
will go down first, to catch you in case you tumble; follow me and hold
tight;" saying this, our friend squeezed himself through the trap-door,
and we went after him as we had been bidden.

The black hole, when we entered it, proved to be not quite so dark as it
had appeared from above. Rays of light occasionally penetrated it
through chinks in the outer rock. But by the time we had got some little
way farther down, these rays began to fade. Then, just as we seemed to
be lowering ourselves into total darkness, we were desired to stand on a
narrow landing-place opposite the ladder, and wait there while the miner
went below for a light. He soon reascended to us, bringing, not only the
light he had promised, but a large lump of damp clay with it. Having
lighted our candles he stuck them against the front of our hats with the
clay--in order, as he said, to leave both our hands free to us to use as
we liked. Thus strangely accoutred, like Solomon Eagles in the Great
Plague, with flame on our heads, we resumed the descent of the shaft;
and now at last began to penetrate beneath the surface of the earth in
good earnest.

The process of getting down the ladders was not very pleasant. They were
all quite perpendicular, the rounds were placed at irregular distances,
were many of them much worn away, and were slippery with water and
copper-ooze. Add to this, the narrowness of the shaft, the dripping wet
rock shutting you in, as it were, all round your back and sides against
the ladder--the fathomless darkness beneath--the light flaring
immediately above you, as if your head was on fire--the voice of the
miner below, rumbling away in dull echoes lower and lower into the
bowels of the earth--the consciousness that if the rounds of the ladder
broke, you might fall down a thousand feet or so of narrow tunnel in a
moment--imagine all this, and you may easily realize what are the first
impressions produced by a descent into a Cornish mine.

By the time we had got down seventy fathoms, or four hundred and twenty
feet of perpendicular ladders, we stopped at another landing-place, just
broad enough to afford standing room for us three. Here, the miner,
pointing to an opening yawning horizontally in the rock at one side of
us, said that this was the first gallery from the surface; that we had
done with the ladders for the present; and that a little climbing and
crawling were now to begin.

Our path was a strange one, as we advanced through the rift. Rough
stones of all sizes, holes here, and eminences there, impeded us at
every yard. Sometimes, we could walk on in a stooping position--sometimes,
we were obliged to crawl on our hands and knees. Occasionally, greater
difficulties than these presented themselves. Certain parts of the
gallery dipped into black, ugly-looking pits, crossed by thin planks,
over which we walked dizzily, a little bewildered by the violent contrast
between the flaring light that we carried above us, and the pitch darkness
beneath and before us. One of these places terminated in a sudden rising
in the rock, hollowed away below, but surmounted by a narrow projecting
wooden platform, to which it was necessary to climb by cross-beams
arranged at wide distances. My companion ascended to this awkward
elevation, without hesitating; but I came to an "awful pause" before it.
Fettered as I was by my Brobdingnag jacket and trousers, I felt a
humiliating consciousness that any extraordinary gymnastic exertion was
altogether out of my power.

Our friend the miner saw my difficulty, and extricated me from it at
once, with a promptitude and skill which deserve record. Descending half
way by the beams, he clutched with one hand that hinder part of my too
voluminous nether garments, which presented the broadest superficies of
canvas to his grasp (I hope the delicate reader appreciates my ingenious
indirectness of expression, when I touch on the unmentionable subject of
trousers!). Grappling me thus, and supporting himself by his free hand,
he lifted me up as easily as if I had been a small parcel; then carried
me horizontally along the loose boards, like a refractory little boy
borne off by the usher to the master's birch; or--considering the candle
burning on my hat, and the necessity of elevating my position by as
lofty a comparison as I can make--like a flying Mercury with a star on
his head; and finally deposited me safely upon my legs again, on the
firm rock pathway beyond. "You are but a light and a little man, my
son," says this excellent fellow, snuffing my candle for me before we go
on; "only let me lift you about as I like, and you shan't come to any
harm while I am with you!"

Speaking thus, the miner leads us forward again. After we have walked a
little farther in a crouching position, he calls a halt, makes a seat
for us by sticking a piece of old board between the rocky walls of the
gallery, and then proceeds to explain the exact subterranean position
which we actually occupy.

We are now four hundred yards out, _under the bottom of the sea_; and
twenty fathoms or a hundred and twenty 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! The extraordinary position down the face of the cliff,
of the engines and other works on the surface, at Botallack, is now
explained. The mine is not excavated like other mines under the land,
but under the sea!

Having communicated these particulars, the miner next tells us to keep
strict silence and listen. We obey him, sitting speechless and
motionless. If the reader could only have beheld us now, dressed in our
copper-coloured garments, huddled close together in a mere cleft of
subterranean rock, with flame burning on our heads and darkness
enveloping our limbs--he must certainly have imagined, without any
violent stretch of fancy, that he was looking down upon a conclave of
gnomes.

After listening for a few moments, a distant, unearthly noise becomes
faintly audible--a long, low, mysterious moaning, which never changes,
which 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 so unlike anything that is heard on the upper ground, in
the free air of heaven; 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 awe and
astonishment which it has inspired in us 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 here
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.

Hearing this, we get up to look at the rock above us. We are able to
stand upright in the position we now occupy; and flaring our candles
hither and thither in the darkness, can see the bright pure copper
streaking the dark ceiling of the gallery in every direction. Lumps of
ooze, of the most lustrous green colour, traversed by a natural network
of thin red veins of iron, appear here and there in large irregular
patches, over which water is dripping slowly and incessantly in certain
places. This is the salt water percolating through invisible crannies in
the rock. On stormy days it spirts out furiously in thin, continuous
streams. Just over our heads we observe a wooden plug of the thickness
of a man's leg; there is a hole here, and the plug is all that we have
to keep out the sea.

Immense wealth of metal is contained in the roof of this gallery,
throughout its whole length; but it remains, and will always remain,
untouched. The miners dare not take it, for it is part, and a great
part, of the rock which forms their only protection against the sea; and
which has been so far worked away here, that its thickness is limited to
an average of three feet only between the water and the gallery in which
we now stand. No one knows what might be the consequence of another
day's labour with the pickaxe on any part of it.

This information is rather startling when communicated at a depth of
four hundred and twenty feet under ground. We should decidedly have
preferred to receive it in the counting-house! It makes us pause for an
instant, to the miner's infinite amusement, in the very act of knocking
away a tiny morsel of ore from the rock, as a memento of Botallack.
Having, however, ventured on reflection to assume the responsibility of
weakening our defence against the sea, by the length and breadth of an
inch, we secure our piece of copper, and next proceed to discuss the
propriety of descending two hundred and forty feet more of ladders, for
the sake of visiting that part of the mine where the men are at work.

Two or three causes concur to make us doubt the wisdom of going lower.
There is a hot, moist, sickly vapour floating about us, which becomes
more oppressive every moment; we are already perspiring at every pore,
as we were told we should; and our hands, faces, jackets, and trousers
are all more or less covered with a mixture of mud, tallow, and
iron-drippings, which we can feel and smell much more acutely than is
exactly desirable. We ask the miner what there is to see lower down. He
replies, nothing but men breaking ore with pickaxes; the galleries of
the mine are alike, however deep they may go; when you have seen one
you have seen all.

The answer decides us--we determine to get back to the surface.

We returned along the gallery, just as we had advanced, with the same
large allowance of scrambling, creeping, and stumbling on our way. I was
charitably carried along and down the platform over the pit, by my
trousers, as before; our order of procession only changing when we
gained the ladders again. Then, our friend the miner went last instead
of first, upon the same principle of being ready to catch us if we fell,
which led him to precede us on our descent. Except that one of the
rounds cracked under his weight as we went up, we ascended without
casualties of any kind. As we neared the mouth of the shaft, the
daylight atmosphere looked dazzlingly white, after the darkness in which
we had been groping so long; and when we once more stood out on the
cliff, we felt a cold, health-giving purity in the sea breeze, and, at
the same time, a sense of recovered freedom in the power that we now
enjoyed of running, jumping, and stretching our limbs in perfect
security, and with full space for action, which it was almost a new
sensation to experience. Habit teaches us to think little of the light
and air that we live and breathe in, or, at most, to view them only as
the ordinary conditions of our being. To find out that they are more
than this, that they are a luxury as well as a necessity of life, go
down into a mine, and compare what you _can_ exist in there, with what
you _do_ exist in, on upper earth!

On re-entering the counting-house, we were greeted by the welcome
appearance of two large tubs of water, with soap and flannel placed
invitingly by their sides. Copious ablutions and clean clothes are
potent restorers of muscular energy. These, and a half hour of repose,
enabled us to resume our knapsacks as briskly as ever, and walk on
fifteen miles to the town of St. Ives--our resting place for the night.

While we were sitting in the counting-house, we had some talk with our
good-humoured and intelligent guide, on the subject of miners and mining
at Botallack. Some of the local information that he gave us, may
interest the reader--to whom I do not pretend to offer more here than a
simple record of a half hour's gossip. I could only write elaborately
about the Cornish mines, by swelling my pages with extracts on the
subject from Encyclopædias and Itineraries which are within easy reach
of every one, and on the province of which, it is neither my business
nor my desire to intrude.

Botallack mine is a copper mine; but tin, and occasionally iron, are
found in it as well. It is situated at the western extremity of the
great strata of copper, tin, and lead, running eastward through
Cornwall, as far as the Dartmoor Hills. According to the statement of my
informant in the counting-house, it has been worked for more than a
century. In former times, it produced enormous profits to the
speculators; but now the case is altered. The price of copper has fallen
of late years; the lodes have proved neither so rich nor so extensive,
as at past periods; and the mine, when we visited Cornwall, had failed
to pay the expenses of working it.

The organization of labour at Botallack, and in all other mines
throughout the county, is thus managed:--The men work eight hours
underground, out of the twenty-four; taking their turn of night duty
(for labour proceeds in the mines by night as well as by day), in
regular rotation. The different methods on which their work is
undertaken, and the rates of remuneration that they receive, have been
already touched on, in the chapter on the "Cornish People." It will be
found that ordinary wages for mine labour, are there stated as ranging
from forty to fifty shillings a month--mention being made at the same
time, of the larger remuneration which may be obtained by working "on
tribute," or, in other words, by agreeing to excavate the lodes of metal
for a per-centage which varies with the varying value of the mineral
raised. It is, however, necessary to add here, that, although men who
labour on this latter plan, occasionally make as much as six or ten
pounds each, in a month, they are on the other hand liable to heavy
losses from the speculative character of the work in which they engage.
The lode may, for instance, be poor when they begin to work it, and may
continue poor as they proceed farther and farther. Under these
circumstances, the low value of the mineral they have raised, realizes a
correspondingly low rate of per-centage; and when this happens, the best
workmen cannot make more than twenty shillings a month.

Another system on which the men are employed, is the system of
"contract." A certain quantity of ore in the rock is mapped out by the
captain of the mine; and put up to auction among the miners thus:--One
man mentions a sum for which he is willing to undertake excavating the
ore, upon the understanding that he is himself to pay for the
assistance, candles, &c., out of the price he asks. Another man, who is
also anxious to get the contract, then offers to accept it on lower
terms; a third man's demand is smaller still; and so they proceed until
the piece of work is knocked down to the lowest bidder. By this sort of
labour the contracting workman--after he has paid his expenses for
assistance--seldom clears more than twelve shillings a week.

Upon the whole, setting his successful and his disastrous speculations
fairly against each other, the Cornish miner's average gains, year by
year, may be fairly estimated at about ten shillings a week. "It's hard
work we have to do, sir," said my informant, summing up, when we parted,
the proportions of good and evil in the social positions of his brethren
and himself--"harder work than people think, down in the heat and
darkness under ground. We may get a good deal at one time, but we get
little enough at another; sometimes mines are shut up, and then we are
thrown out altogether--but, good work or bad work, or no work at all,
what with our bits of ground for potatoes and greens, and what with
cheap living, somehow we and our families make it do. We contrive to
keep our good cloth coat for Sundays, and go to chapel in the
morning--for we're most of us Wesleyans--and then to church in the
afternoon; so as to give 'em both their turn like! We never go near the
mine on Sundays, except to look after the steam-pump: our rest, and our
walk in the evening once a week, is a good deal to us. That's how we
live, sir; whatever happens, we manage to work through, and don't
complain!"

Although the occupation of smelting the copper above ground is, as may
well be imagined, unhealthy enough, the labour of getting it from the
mine (by blasting the subterranean rock in the first place, and then
hewing and breaking the ore out of the fragments), seems to be attended
with no bad effect on the constitution. The miners are a fine-looking
race of men--strong and well-proportioned. The fact appears to be, that
they gain more, physically, by the pure air of the cliffs and moors on
which their cottages are built, and the temperance of their lives (many
of them are "teetotallers"), than they lose by their hardest exertions
in the underground atmosphere in which they work.

Serious accidents are rare in the mines of Cornwall. From the horrors of
such explosions as take place in coal mines, they are by their nature
entirely free. The casualties that oftenest occur are serious falls,
generally produced by the carelessness of inexperienced or foolhardy
people. Of these, and of extraordinary escapes from death with which
they are associated, many anecdotes are told in mining districts, which
would appear to the reader exaggerated, or positively untrue, if I
related them on mere hearsay evidence. There was, however, one instance
of a fall down the shaft of a mine, unattended with fatal consequences,
which occurred while I was in Cornwall; and which I may safely adduce,
for I can state some of the facts connected with the affair as an
eyewitness. I attended an examination of the sufferer by a medical man,
and heard the story of the accident from the parents of the patient.

On the 7th of August 1850, a boy fourteen years of age, the son of a
miner, slipped into the shaft of Boscaswell Down Mine, in the
neighbourhood of Penzance. He fell to the depth of thirteen fathoms, or
seventy-eight feet. Fifty-eight feet down, he struck his left side
against a board placed across the shaft, snapped it in two, and then
falling twenty feet more, pitched on his head. He was of course taken
up insensible; the doctor was sent for; and on examining him, found, to
his amazement, that there was actually a chance of the boy's recovery
after this tremendous fall!

Not a bone in his body was broken. He was bruised and scratched all
over, and there were three cuts--none of them serious--on his head. The
board stretched across the shaft, twenty feet from the bottom, had saved
him from being dashed to pieces; but had inflicted at the same time,
where his left side had struck it, the only injury that appeared
dangerous to the medical man--a large, hard lump that could be felt
under the bruised skin. The boy showed no symptoms of fever; his pulse,
day after day, was found never varying from eighty-two to the minute;
his appetite was voracious; and the internal functions of his body only
required a little ordinary medicine to keep them properly at work. In
short, nothing was to be dreaded but the chance of the formation of an
abscess in his left side, between the hip and ribs. He had been under
medical care exactly one week, when I accompanied the doctor on a visit
to him.

The cottage where he lived with his parents, though small, was neat and
comfortable. We found him lying in bed, awake. He looked languid and
lethargic; but his skin was moist and cool; his face displayed no
paleness, and no injury of any kind. He had just eaten a good dinner of
rabbit-pie, and was anxious to be allowed to sit up in a chair, and
amuse himself by looking out of the window. His left side was first
examined. A great circular bruise discoloured the skin, over the whole
space between the hip and ribs; but on touching it, the doctor
discovered that the lump beneath had considerably decreased in size, and
was much less hard than it had felt during previous visits. Next we
looked at his back and arms--they were scratched and bruised all over;
but nowhere seriously. Lastly, the dressings were taken off his head,
and three cuts were disclosed, which even a non-medical eye could easily
perceive to be of no great importance. Such were all the results of a
fall of seventy-eight feet.

The boy's father reiterated to me the account of the accident, just as I
had already heard it from the doctor. How it happened, he said, could
only be guessed, for his son had completely forgotten all the
circumstances immediately preceding the fall; neither could he
communicate any of the sensations which must have attended it. Most
probably, he had been sitting dangling his legs idly over the mouth of
the shaft, and had so slipped in. But however the accident really
happened, there the sufferer was before us--less seriously hurt than
many a lad who has trodden on a piece of orange peel as he was walking
along the street.

We left him (humanly speaking) certain of recovery, now that the
dangerous lump in his side had begun to decrease. I heard afterwards
from his medical attendant, that in two months from the date of the
accident, he was at work again as usual in the mine; at that very part
of it, too, where his fall had taken place!

It was not the least interesting part of my visit to the cottage where
he lay ill, to observe the anxious affection displayed towards him by
both his parents. His mother left her work in the kitchen to hold him in
her arms, while the old dressings were being taken off and the new ones
applied--sighing bitterly, poor creature, every time he winced or cried
out under the pain of the operation. The father put several questions to
the doctor, which were always perfectly to the point; and did the
honours of his little abode to his stranger visitor, with a natural
politeness and a simple cordiality of manner which showed that he
really meant the welcome that he spoke. Nor was he any exception to the
rest of his brother-workmen with whom I met. As a body of men, they are
industrious and intelligent; sober and orderly; neither soured by hard
work, nor easily depressed by harder privations. No description of
personal experiences in the Cornish mines can be fairly concluded,
without a collateral testimony to the merits of the Cornish miners--a
testimony which I am happy to accord here; and to which my readers would
cheerfully add their voices, if they ever felt inclined to test its
impartiality by their own experience.

X.

THE MODERN DRAMA IN CORNWALL.

Our walk from Botallack Mine to St. Ives, led us almost invariably
between moors and hills on one side, and cliffs and sea on the other;
and displayed some of the dreariest views that we had yet beheld in
Cornwall. About nightfall, we halted for a short time at a place which
was certainly not calculated to cheer the traveller along his onward
way.

Imagine three or four large, square, comfortless-looking, shut-up
houses, all apparently uninhabited; add some half-dozen miserable little
cottages standing near the houses, with the nasal notes of a Methodist
hymn pouring disastrously through the open door of one of them; let the
largest of the large buildings be called an inn, but let it make up no
beds, because nobody ever stops to sleep there: place in the kitchen of
this inn a sickly little girl, and a middle-aged, melancholy woman, the
first staring despondently on a wasting fire, the second offering to the
stranger a piece of bread, three eggs, and some sour porter corked down
in an earthenware jar, as all that her larder and cellar can afford;
fancy next an old, grim, dark church, with two or three lads leaning
against the churchyard wall, looking out together in gloomy silence on a
solitary high road; conceive a thin, slow rain falling, a cold twilight
just changing into darkness, a surrounding landscape wild, barren, and
shelterless--imagine all this, and you will have the picture before you
which presented itself to me and my companion, when we found ourselves
in the village of Morvah.

Late that night, we got to the large sea-port town of St. Ives; and
stayed there two or three days to look at the pilchard fishery, which
was then proceeding with all the bustle and activity denoting the
commencement of a good season. Leaving St. Ives, on our way up the
northern coast, we now passed through the central part of the mining
districts of Cornwall. Chimneys and engine-houses chequered the surface
of the landscape; the roads glittered with metallic particles; the walls
at their sides were built with crystallized stones; towns showed a
sudden increase in importance; villages grew large and populous; inns
disappeared, and hotels arose in their stead; people became less curious
to know who we were, stared at us less, gossiped with us less; gave us
information, but gave us nothing more--no long stories, no invitations
to stop and smoke a pipe, no hospitable offers of bed and board. All
that we saw and heard tended to convince us that we had left the
picturesque and the primitive, with the streets of Looe and the
fishermen at the Land's End; and had got into the commercial part of the
county, among sharp, prosperous, business like people--it was like
walking out of a painter's studio into a merchant's counting-house!

As we were travelling, like the renowned Doctor Syntax, in search of the
picturesque, we hurried through this populous and highly-civilized
region of Cornwall as rapidly as possible. I doubt much whether we
should not have passed as unceremoniously through the large town of
Redruth--the capital city of the mining districts--as we passed through
several towns and villages before it, had not our attention been
attracted and our departure delayed by a public notice, printed on
rainbow-coloured paper, and pasted up in the most conspicuous part of
the market-place.

The notice set forth, that "the beautiful drama of The Curate's
Daughter" was to be performed at night, in the "unrivalled Sans Pareil
Theatre," by "the most talented company in England," before "the most
discerning audience in the world." As far as we were individually
concerned, this theatrical announcement was remarkably tempting and
well-timed. We were now within one day's journey of Piran Round, the
famous amphitheatre where the old Cornish Miracle Plays used to be
performed. Anything connected with the stage was, therefore, a subject
of particular interest in our eyes. The bill before us seemed to offer a
curious opportunity of studying the dramatic tastes of the modern
Cornish, on the very day before we were about to speculate on the
dramatic tastes of the ancient Cornish, among the remains of their
public theatre. Such an occasion was too favourable to be neglected; we
ordered our beds at Redruth, and joined the "discerning audience"
assembled to sit in judgment on "The Curate's Daughter."

The Sans Pareil Theatre was not of that order of architecture in which
outward ornament is studied. There was nothing "florid" about it;
canvas, ropes, scaffolding-poles, and old boards, threw an air of Saxon
simplicity over the whole structure. Admitted within, we turned
instinctively towards the stage. On each side of the proscenium boards
was painted a knight in full armour, with powerful calves, weak knees,
and an immense spear. Tallow candles, stuck round two hoops, threw a
mysterious light on the green curtain, in front of which sat an
orchestra of four musicians, playing on a trombone, an ophicleide, a
clarionet, and a fiddle, as loudly as they could--the artist on the
trombone, especially, performing prodigies of blowing, though he had not
room enough to develop the whole length of his instrument. Every now and
then great excitement was created among the expectant audience by the
vehement ringing of a bell behind the scenes, and by the occasional
appearance of a youth who gravely snuffed the candles all round, with a
skill and composure highly creditable to him, considering the
pertinacity with which he was stared at by everybody while he pursued
his occupation.

At last, the bell was rung furiously for the twentieth time; the curtain
drew up, and the drama of "The Curate's Daughter" began.

Our sympathies were excited at the outset. We beheld a lady-like woman
who answered to the name of "Grace;" and an old gentleman, dressed in
dingy black, who personated her father, the Curate; and who was, on this
occasion (I presume through unavoidable circumstances), neither more nor
less than--drunk. There was no mistaking the cause of the fixed leer in
the reverend gentleman's eye; of the slow swaying in his gait; of the
gruff huskiness in his elocution. It appeared, from the opening
dialogue, that a pending law-suit, and the absence of his daughter Fanny
in London, combined to make him uneasy in his mind just at present. But
he was by no means so clear on this subject as could be desired--in
fact, he spoke through his nose, put in and left out his _hs_ in the
wrong places, and involved his dialogue in a long labyrinth of
parentheses whenever he expressed himself at any length. It was not
until the entrance of his daughter Fanny (just arrived from London:
nobody knew why or wherefore), that he grew more emphatic and
intelligible. We now observed with pleasure that he gave his children
his blessing and embraced them both at once; and we were additionally
gratified by hearing from his own lips, that his "daughters were the
h'all on which his h'all depended--that they would watch h'over his
'ale autumn; and that whatever happened the whole party must invariably
trust in heabben's obdipotent power!"

Grateful for this clerical advice, Fanny retired into the garden to
gather her parent some flowers; but immediately returned shrieking. She
was followed by a Highwayman with a cocked hat, mustachios, bandit's
ringlets, a scarlet hunting-coat, and buff boots. This gentleman had
shown his extraordinary politeness--although a perfect stranger--by
giving Miss Fanny a kiss in the garden; conduct for which the Curate
very properly cursed him, in the strongest language. Apparently a quiet
and orderly character, the Highwayman replied by beginning a handsome
apology, when he was interrupted by the abrupt entrance of another
personage, who ordered him (rather late in the day, as we ventured to
think) to "let go his holt, and beware how he laid his brutal touch on
the form of innocence!" This newcomer, the parson informed us, was "good
h'Adam Marle, the teacher of the village school." We found "h'Adam," in
respect of his outward appearance, to be a very short man, dressed in a
high-crowned modern hat, with a fringed vandyck collar drooping over his
back and shoulders, a modern frock-coat, buttoned tight at the waist,
and a pair of jack-boots of the period of James the Second. Aided by his
advantages of costume, this character naturally interested us; and we
regretted seeing but little of him in the first scene, from which he
retired, following the penitent Highwayman out, and lecturing him as he
went. No sooner were their backs turned, than a waggoner, in a clean
smock-frock and high-lows, entered with an offer of a situation in
London for Fanny, which the unsuspicious Curate accepted immediately. As
soon as he had committed himself, it was confided to the audience that
the waggoner was a depraved villain, in the employ of that notorious
profligate, Colonel Chartress, who had commissioned a second myrmidon
(of the female sex) to lure Fanny from virtue and the country, to vice
and the metropolis. By the time the plot had "thickened" thus far, the
scene changed, and we got to London at once.

We now beheld the Curate, Chartress's female accomplice, Fanny, and the
vicious waggoner, all standing in a row, across the stage. The Curate,
in a burst of amiability, had just lifted up his hands to bless the
company, when Colonel Chartress (dressed in an old _naval_ uniform, with
an opera-hat of the year 1800), suddenly rushed in, followed by the
Highwayman, who having relapsed from penitence to guilt, had, as a
necessary consequence, determined to supplant Chartress in the favour of
Miss Fanny. These two promptly seized each other by the throat; vehement
shouting, scuffling, and screaming ensued; and the Curate, clasping his
daughter round the waist, frantically elevated his walking-stick in the
air. Was he about to inflict personal chastisement on his innocent
child? Who could say? Before there was time to ask the question, the
curtain fell with a bang, on the crisis of the first act.

In act the second, the first scene was described in the bills as Temple
Bar by moonlight. Neither Bar nor moonlight appeared when the curtain
rose--so we took both for granted, and fixed our minds on the story. The
first person who now confronted us, was "good h'Adam Marle." The paint
was all washed off his face; his immense spread of collar looked
grievously in want of washing; and he leaned languidly on an oaken
stick. He had been walking--he informed us--through the streets of
London for six consecutive days and nights, without sustenance, in
search of Miss Fanny, who had disappeared since the skirmish at the end
of act the first, and had never been heard of since. Poor dear Marle!
how eloquent he was with his white handkerchief, when he fairly opened
his heart, and confided to us that he was madly attached to Fanny; that
he knew he "was nothink" to her; and that, under existing circumstances,
he felt inclined to rest himself on a door step! Just as he had
comfortably settled down, the valet of the profligate Chartress entered,
in the communicative stage of intoxication; and immediately mentioned
all his master's private affairs to "h'Adam." It appeared that the
Colonel had carried off Miss Fanny, had then got tired of her, and had
coolly handed her over to a Jew, in part payment of "a little bill."
Having ascertained the Jew's address, the indefatigable Marle left us
(still without sustenance) to rescue the Curate's daughter, or die in
the attempt.

The next scene disclosed Fanny, sitting conscience-stricken and
inconsolable, in a red polka jacket and white muslin slip. Mr. Marle,
having discovered her place of refuge, now stepped in to lecture and
reclaim. Vain proceeding! The Curate's daughter looked at him with a
scream, exclaimed, "Cuss me, h'Adam! cuss me!" and rushed out.
"H'Adam," after a despondent soliloquy, followed with his eloquent
handkerchief to his eyes; but, while he had been talking to himself, our
old friend the Highwayman had been on the alert, and had picked Fanny
up, fainting in the street. And what did he do with her after that? He
handed her over to his "comrades in villany." And who were his comrades
in villany? They were the trombone and ophicleide players from the
orchestra, and the "Miss Grace," of act first, disguised as a bad
character, in a cloak, with a red pocket-handkerchief over her head. And
what happened next? A series of events happened next. Miss Fanny
recovered on a sudden, perceived what sort of company she had about her,
rushed out a second time into the street, fell fainting a second time on
the pavement, and was picked up on this occasion by Colonel
Chartress--in the interests, it is to be presumed, of his friend, the
Jew money-lender. Before, however, he could get clear off with his
prize, the indefatigably vicious Highwayman, and the indefatigably
virtuous Marle, precipitated themselves on the stage, assaulting
Chartress, assaulting each other, assaulting everybody. Fanny fell
fainting a third time in the street; and before we could find out who
was the third person who picked her up, down came the curtain in the
midst of the catastrophe.

Act the third was opened by the heroine, still injured, still
inconsolable, and still clad in the polka jacket and white slip. We
thought her a very nice little woman, with a melodious,
genteel-comedy-voice, trim ankles, and a habit of catching her breath in
the most pathetic manner, at least a dozen times in the course of one
soliloquy. While she was still assuring us that she felt the most
forlorn creature on the face of the earth, she was suddenly interrupted
by the entrance of no less a person than the Curate himself. We had seen
nothing of the reverend gentleman throughout the second act; but
"h'Adam" had casually informed us that his time had been passed at his
parsonage, "sittun with his 'ed between his knees, sobbun!" Having now
wearied of this gymnastic method of indulging in parental grief, he had
set forth to seek his lost daughter, and had accidentally stopped at the
very inn where she had taken refuge. Nothing could be more piteous than
his present appearance; he was infinitely more tipsy, infinitely more
dignified, and infinitely more parenthetical in his mode of expressing
himself, than when we last beheld him. A streak of burnt cork running
down each side of his venerable nose, showed us how deeply grief had
increased the wrinkles of age; and our pity for him reached its climax
when he cast his clerical hat on the floor, sank drowsily into a chair,
and began to pray in these words: "Oh heabben! hear a solemn and a solid
prayer--hear a solemn heart who wants to embrace his darling Fanny!"

All this time, the lost daughter was hiding behind the forlorn father's
chair; an awful and convenient darkness being thrown on the stage by the
introduction of a plank between the actors and the tallow candles. In
this striking situation, Miss Fanny told her sad story, and pleaded her
own cause as a stranger, under disguise of the darkness. Useless--quite
useless! The reverend gentleman, having never turned round to see who it
was that was speaking to him, and having therefore no idea that it was
his own daughter, received in dignified silence the advances of a young
person unknown to him. What course was now left to the unhappy Fanny?
The old course--a rush off the stage, and a swoon in the street. As soon
as her back was turned, the Parson, forgetting to take away his hat
with him, staggered out at the opposite side to continue his journey. He
uttered as he went the following moral observation:--"No soul so lost to
Nature, but must be lost eternally--my 'art is broken!"

The next moment, we were startled by a long and elaborate trampling of
feet behind the scenes, and the villain Chartress, ran panic-stricken
across the stage, hotly pursued by "good h'Adam Marle." In the eloquent
language of virtue, thus did Adam address him:--"Stay, ruffian, stay!
Inquiring for Chartress at the bar of this inn, I found indeed that you
was the very identical. You foul, venomous, treacherous, voluptuous
liar, where is the un'appy Fanny? where is the victim of your prey?--Ha!
'oary-'edded ruffian, I have yer!" (_Collars Chartress._) "But no! I
will not _strike_ yer; I will _drag_ yer!" It was interesting to see
Adam exemplify the peculiar distinction in the science of assault
implied in his last words, by hauling Chartress all round the stage. It
was awful to observe that the Colonel lost his temper at the second
round, murderously snapped a pistol in "h'Adam's" face, and rushed off
in hot homicidal triumph. We waited breathless for the fall of Marle.
Nothing of the sort happened. He started, frowned, paused, laughed
fiercely, exclaimed,--"The villain 'as missed!" and followed in pursuit.

In the interim, Miss Fanny had been picked up in the street, for the
fourth time, by a benevolent "washerwoman," who happened to be passing
by at the moment; had been conveyed to the said washerwoman's lodgings;
and now appeared before us, despoiled, at last, of all the glories of
the red polka, enveloped from head to foot in clouds of white muslin,
and dying with frightful rapidity in an armchair. In the next and last
scene, all that remained to represent the unhappy heroine was a coffin
decently covered with a white sheet. With slow and funereal steps, the
Curate, Miss Grace, "h'Adam," the Highwayman, and the "venomous and
voluptuous liar," Chartress, approached to weep over it. The Curate had
gone raving mad since we saw him last. His wig was set on wrong side
foremost; the ends of his clerical cravat floated wildly, a yard long at
least over his shoulders; his eyes rolled in frenzy; he swooned at the
sight of the coffin; recovered convulsively; placed Marle's hand in the
hand of Miss Grace (telling him that now one daughter was dead, nothing
was left for him but to marry the other); and then fell flat on his
back, with a thump that shook the stage and made the audience start
unanimously. Marle--well-bred to the last--politely offered his arm to
Grace; and pointing to the coffin, asked Chartress, reproachfully,
whether that was not _his_ work. The Colonel took off his opera-hat,
raised his hand to his eyes, and doggedly answered, "Indeed, it is!" The
Tableau thus formed, was completed by the Highwayman, the coffin, and
the defunct Curate; and the curtain fell to slow music.

Such was the plot of this remarkable dramatic work, exactly as I took it
down in the theatre, between the acts; noting also in my pocket-book
such scraps of dialogue as I have presented to the reader, while they
fell from the actors' lips. There were plenty of comic scenes in the
play which I leave unmentioned; for their humour was of the dreariest,
and their morality of the lowest order that can possibly be conceived. I
can only say, as the result of my own experience at Redruth, that if the
dramatic reforms which are now being attempted in the theatrical by-ways
of the metropolis succeed, there would be no harm in extending the
experiment as far as the locomotive stage of Cornwall. Good plays are
good missionaries; and, like missionaries, let them travel to teach.

And now, having seen enough of the modern drama in Cornwall, without
waiting for the songs, the dances, and the farces which are to follow
the "Curate's Daughter," let us go on to Piranzabuloe, and look at the
theatre in which the Cornish of former days assembled; endeavouring to
discover, at the same time, by what sort of performances the people were
instructed or amused some two hundred and fifty years ago.

XI.

THE ANCIENT DRAMA IN CORNWALL.

We found the modern Cornish theatre situated in a populous town; built
up, as a temporary structure, with old canvas and boards; and opened to
audiences only at night. We found the ancient Cornish theatre placed in
a perfect desert; constructed permanently, though rudely, of mounds of
turf--the sky forming its only roof, the flat plain its only stage, the
broad daylight its only means of illumination. Nothing of the kind could
be more strongly marked than the difference between the theatre of the
past, and the theatre of the present day, in the far West of England.

In like manner, the country about Piran Round (such is the name of the
Old Cornish amphitheatre) offers a startling contrast to the country
about Redruth. You are at once powerfully impressed by its barren
solitude, its dreary repose, after the fertility and populousness of the
great mining districts through which you have just passed. Now, the
large towns and busy villages disappear, the mines grow rarer, the roads
look deserted, the wide pathways dwindle to the merest foot-track. Again
you behold the spacious moor rolling away in alternate hill and dale to
the far horizon; again you pass though the quaint coast villages; and
see the few simple cottages, the few old boats, the little groups
talking quietly at the inn door, as they have already presented
themselves along the southern and western shores of Cornwall. Soon,
however, your onward road towards Piran Round becomes yet more desolate.
Ere long, not even a solitary cottage is in sight, not a living being
appears: you find yourself wandering along the uneven boundary of a
wilderness of sand-hills heaped up from the seashore by the wind. You
look over a perfect desert of miniature mountains and valleys, in some
places overgrown with thin, dry grass; in others, dotted with little
pools of mud and stagnant water. Year by year, this invasion of sand
encroaches on the moorland--year by year, it is ever shifting, ever
increasing, ever assuming newer and more fantastic forms, now in one
direction and now in another, with each fresh storm.

When you leave this dreary scene, you only leave it for the wild flat
heath, the open naked country once more. You follow your long road,
visible miles on before you, winding white and serpent-like over the
dark ground, until you suddenly observe in the distance an object which
rises strangely above the level prospect. You approach nearer, and
behold a circular turf embankment; a wide, lonesome, desolate enclosure,
looking like a witches' dancing-ring that has sprung up in the midst of
the open moor. This is Piran Round. Here, the old inhabitants of
Cornwall assembled to form the audience of the drama of former days.

A level area of grassy ground, one hundred and thirty feet in diameter,
is enclosed by the embankment. There are two entrances to this area cut
through the boundary circle of turf and earth, which rises to a height
of nine or ten feet, and narrows towards the top, where it is seven feet
wide. All round the inside of the embankment steps were formerly cut;
but their traces are now almost obliterated by the growth of the grass.
They were originally seven in number; the spectators stood on them in
rows, one above another--a closely packed multitude, all looking down at
the dramatic performances taking place on the wide circumference of the
plain. When it was well filled, the amphitheatre must have contained
upwards of two thousand people.

Such is this rude, yet extraordinary structure, in our time. It has not
lost its patriarchal simplicity since the far distant period when the
populace thronged its turf steps to welcome the strolling players of
their age. The antiquity of Piran Round dates back beyond the period of
the earliest and rudest dramatic performances on English ground. It was
first used for popular sports, for single combats, for rustic councils.
Then, plays were acted in it--miracle plays--some translated into the
ancient Cornish language, some originally written in it. The oldest of
these are lost; but one of a comparatively late date has been preserved
and translated into English. We will examine this book while we sit
within the deserted amphitheatre; and thus, in imagination at least,
people the simple stage before us with the rough country actors who once
trod it--thus pry behind the scenes at all that is left to us of the
ancient drama in Cornwall.

The play which we now open is called by the comprehensive title of "The
Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood." It was translated in 1611,
from a drama of much earlier date, for performance in Cornish, by
William Jordan; was then rendered into English by John Keygwyn, in 1691;
and was finally corrected and published by Mr. Davies Gilbert, in 1827.
The Cornish and English versions are printed on opposite pages, so we
can compare the two throughout, as we go on.

The play is in five acts, and is written in poetry--in a rambling
octosyllabic metre, often varied by the introduction of longer or
shorter lines, and sometimes interspersed (in the Cornish version) with
a word or two of English. It occupies a hundred and eighty pages,
containing on the average about twenty-five lines each. This would be
thought rather a lengthy manner of developing a dramatic story in our
days; but we must remember that the time embraced in the plot of the old
playwright extends from the Creation to the Flood, and must be
astonished and thankful that he has not been more diffuse.

The _dramatis personæ_ muster by the legion. In the first act, we have
the whole heavenly host: in the second, are superadded Adam, Eve,
"Torpen, a devil," Beelzebub, the Serpent, and Michael the Archangel; in
the third, besides these, Death, Cain and his wife, Abel and Seth; in
the fourth, we have the addition of Lamech, a servant, a Cherubim, and a
first and second devil; and in the fifth, Enoch, Noah and his wife,
Shem, Ham, Japhet, Seth, Jaball, and Tubal Cain.

The author manages this tremendous list of mortal and immortal
characters with infinite coolness and dexterity. Nothing appears to
embarrass him. He follows history in a negligent, sauntering way,
passing over a hundred years or so, whenever it is convenient; and
giving all his personages their turn of talking in orderly and impartial
rotation. His speeches are wonderfully moral and long; even his worst
characters have, for the most part, a temperate and logical way of
uttering the most violent language, which must have read an excellent
lesson to the roistering young gentlemen among the audiences of the
time.

We will now examine the play a little in detail, quoting the stage
directions (the most extraordinary part of it) exactly as they occur;
and occasionally presenting a line or two of the dialogue from the old
English translation wherever it best illustrates the author's style.

The first act comprehends the fall of the angels--the introductory stage
direction commanding that the theatrical clouds, and the whole sky to
boot, shall open when Heaven is named! All is harmony at the outset of
the play, until it is Lucifer's turn to speak. He declares that he alone
is great, and that all allegiance must be given to him. Some of the
angels glorify him accordingly; others remain true to their celestial
service; the debate grows warm, and some of the disputants give each
other the lie (but very calmly). At length, the scene is closed by
Lucifer's condemnation to Hell, which, as the directions provide, "shall
gape when it is named." The faithful angels are then told to "have
swords and staves ready for Lucifer," who, we are informed, "voideth and
goeth down to Hell apparelled foul, with fire about him, turning to
Hell, with every degree of devils and lost spirits on cords running into
the plain." With this stirring scene the act ends.

The second act comprises the creation and fall of man. Here, again, we
will consult the stage directions, as giving the best idea of the
incidents and scenes. We find that Adam and Eve are to be "apparelled in
white leather in a place appointed by the conveyor" (probably the
person we term stage-manager now); "and are not to be seen until they be
called; and then each rises." After this, we read:--"Let Paradise be
finely made, with fair trees in it, and apples upon a tree, and other
fruit on the others. A fountain, too, in Paradise, and fine flowers
painted. Put Adam into Paradise--let flowers appear in Paradise--let
Adam lie down and sleep where Eve is, and she, by the conveyor, must be
taken from Adam's side--let fishes of all sorts, birds and beasts, as
oxen, kyne, sheep, and such like, appear."

Then, we have the preparations for the temptation, ordered thus:--"A
fine serpent to be made with a virgin's face, and yellow hair on her
head. Let the serpent appear, and also geese and hens." Lucifer enters
immediately afterwards, and goes into the serpent, which is then
directed to be "seen singing in a tree" (the actor who personated
Lucifer must have had some gymnastic difficulties to contend with in his
part!)--"Eve looketh strange on the serpent;" then, "talketh familiarly
and cometh near him;" then, "doubteth and looketh angrily;" and then
eats part of the apple, shows it to Adam, and insists on his eating
part of it too, in the following lines:--

  "Sir, in a few words,
  Taste them part of the apple,
    Or my love thou shalt lose!
  See, take this fair apple,
  Or surely between thee and thy wife
  The love shall utterly fail,
    If thou wilt not eat of it!"[4]

The stage direction now proceeds:--"Adam receiveth the apple and tasteth
it, and so repenteth and casteth it away. Eve looketh on Adam very
strangely and speaketh not anything." During this pause, the "conveyor"
is told "to get the fig-leaves ready." Then Lucifer is ordered to "come
out of the serpent and creep on his belly to hell;" Adam and Eve receive
the curse, and depart out of Paradise, "showing a spindle and
distaff"--no badly-conceived emblem of the labour to which they are
henceforth doomed. And thus the second act terminates.

The third act treats of Cain and Abel; and is properly opened by an
impersonation of Death. After which Cain and Abel appear to sacrifice.

Cain makes his offering of the first substance that comes to hand--"dry
cow-dung"(!); and tells Abel that he is a "dolthead" and "a frothy fool"
for using anything better. "Abel is stricken with a jawbone and dieth;
Cain casteth him into a ditch." The effect of the first murder on the
minds of our first parents, is delineated in some speeches exhibiting a
certain antique simplicity of thought, which almost rises to the
poetical by its homely adherence to nature, and its perfect innocence of
effort, artifice, or display. The banishment of Cain, still glorying in
his crime, follows the lamentations of Adam and Eve for the death of
Abel; and the act is closed by Adam's announcement of the birth of Seth.

The fourth act relates the deaths of Cain and Adam, and contains some of
the most eccentric, and also, some of the most elevated writing in the
play. Lamech opens the scene, candidly and methodically exposing his own
character in these lines:--

    "Sure I am the first
  That ever yet had two wives!
  And maidens in sufficient plenty
  They are to me. I am not dainty,
  I can find them where I will;
  Nor do I spare of them
    In anywise one that is handsome.
  But I am wondrous troubled,
  Scarce do I see one glimpse
    What the devil shall be done!"

In this vagabond frame of mind Lamech goes out hunting, with bow and
arrow, and shoots Cain, accidentally, in a bush. When Cain falls, Lamech
appeals to his servant, to know what is it that he has shot. The servant
declares that it is "hairy, rough, ugly, and a buck-goat of the night."
Cain, however, discovers himself before he dies. There is something
rudely dreary and graphic about his description of his loneliness, bare
as it is of any recommendation of metaphors or epithets:

  "Deformed I am very much,
  And overgrown with hair;
  I do live continually in heat or cold frost,
        Surely night and day;
  Nor do I desire to see the son of man,
  With my will at any time;
  But accompany most time with all the beasts."

Lamech, discovering the fatal error that he has committed, kills his
servant in his anger; and the scene ends with "the devils carrying them
away with great noise to hell."

The second scene is between Adam and his son Seth; and here, the old
dramatist often rises to an elevation of poetical feeling, which,
judging from the preceding portions of the play, we should not have
imagined he could reach. Barbarous as his execution may be, the simple
beauty of his conception often shines through it faintly, but yet
palpably, in this part of the drama.

Adam is weary of life and weary of the world; he sends Seth to the gates
of Paradise to ask mercy and release for him, telling his son that he
will find the way thither by his father's foot-prints, burnt into the
surface of the earth which was cursed for Adam's transgression. Seth
finds and follows the supernatural marks, is welcomed by the angel at
the gate of Paradise, and is permitted to look in. He beholds there, an
Apocalypse of the redemption of the world. On the tree of life sit the
Virgin and Child; while on the tree from which Eve plucked the apple,
"the woman" is seen, having power over the serpent. The vision changes,
and Cain is shown in hell, "sorrowing and weeping." Then the angel
plucks three kernels from the tree of life, and gives them to Seth for
his father's use, saying that they shall grow to another tree of life,
when more than five thousand years are ended; and that Adam shall be
redeemed from his pains when that period is fulfilled. After this, Seth
is dismissed by the angel and returns to communicate to his father the
message of consolation which he has received.

Adam hears the result of his son's mission with thankfulness; blesses
Seth; and speaks these last words, while he is confronted by Death:--

  "Old and weak, I am gone!
  To live longer is not for me:
  Death is come,
  Nor will here leave me
      To live one breath!

  I see him now with his spear,
  Ready to pierce me on every side,
  There is no escaping from him!
  The time is welcome with, me--
      I have served long in the world!"

So, the patriarch dies, trusting in the promise conveyed through his
son; and is buried by Seth "in a fair tomb, with some Church sonnet."

After this impressive close to the fourth act--impressive in its
intention, however clumsy the appliances by which that intention is
worked out--it would be doing the old author no kindness to examine his
fifth act in detail. Here, he sinks again in many places, to puerility
of conception and coarseness of dialogue. It is enough to say that the
history of the Flood closes the drama, and that the spectators are
dismissed with an epilogue, directing them to "come to-morrow, betimes,
and see very great matters"--the minstrels being charged, at the
conclusion to "pipe," so that all may dance together, as the proper
manner of ending the day's amusements.

And now, let us close the book, look forth over this lonesome country
and lonesome amphitheatre, and imagine what a scene both must have
presented, when a play was to be acted on a fine summer's morning in the
year 1611.

Fancy, at the outset, the arrival of the audience--people dressed in the
picturesque holiday costume of the time, which varied with every varying
rank, hurrying to their daylight play from miles off; all visible in
every direction on the surface of the open moor, and all converging from
every point of the compass to the one common centre of Piran Round.
Then, imagine the assembling in the amphitheatre; the running round the
outer circle of the embankment to get at the entrances; the tumbling and
rushing up the steps inside; the racing of hot-headed youngsters to get
to the top places; the sly deliberation of the elders in selecting the
lower and safer positions; the quarrelling when a tall man chanced to
stand before a short one; the giggling and blushing of buxom peasant
wenches when the gallant young bachelors of the district happened to be
placed behind them; the universal speculations on the weather; the
universal shouting for pots of ale--and finally, as the time of the
performance drew near and the minstrels appeared with their pipes, the
gradual hush and stillness among the multitude; the combined stare of
the whole circular mass of spectators on one point in the plain of the
amphitheatre, where all knew that the actors lay hidden in a pit,
properly covered in from observation--the mysterious "green-room" of
the strolling players of old Cornwall!