The Cornwall Coast Part 5

When Defoe came to Penzance, he seems to have been surprised to find it so civilised and so comfortable, "being so remote from London, which is the centre of our wealth." That is the remark of a true Londoner, showing an att.i.tude of mind towards the provincial that is not quite extinct. He says: "This town of Penzance is a place of good business, well built and populous, has a good trade, and a great many s.h.i.+ps belonging to it, notwithstanding it is so remote. Here are also a great many good families of gentlemen, though in this utmost angle of the nation." It is clear he expected to find a village of savages.

As a matter of fact Penzance now, with its admirable train service, seems nearer to Paddington than many places that are not half so far off; every express that comes westward brings a savour of the great city with it, just as each train that leaves Penzance carries material evidence of Cornwall's existence into the very heart of old London.

All the flowers from Scilly go by this route, and the Penzance neighbourhood has many flowers, fruits, and early vegetables of its own to dispatch to Covent Garden, together with a considerable quant.i.ty of fish. The railway is carried by viaduct across Marazion sands; in 1869 a large portion was shattered by the sea, and the line had to be removed further back. Sea and winds remain as untamable as they were when men of the Stone Age broke each other's heads at Chysauster. In Alverton Street (retaining the name of the old Alwaretone estate, mentioned in Domesday) are the museums and buildings of the Natural History, Antiquarian, and Cornish Royal Geological Societies, with the Guildhall, and a public room for meetings; but the Penzance Library, containing about 25,000 volumes, many of great rarity, is kept at Morrab House. There are Schools of Art and of Mining--both subjects strongly to the front in Cornwall.

Immediately below the domed market-house, once the Town Hall, is a statue of the town's most famous son, Sir Humphry Davy, born here in 1778, his father being a wood-carver. He was educated partly at Truro, and early evinced that taste for poetry and angling that never left him. After serving with a Penzance surgeon, he went to Dr. Beddoes at Clifton, where he met Coleridge and Southey, and discovered the curious effects of "laughing-gas." His further career does not belong to Cornwall, but he proved himself a true son of the Duchy by inventing the Davy safety-lamp for miners. Another great man in a different school of activity, Pellew, better known as Lord Exmouth, though born at Dover, spent much of his boyhood with his Cornish grandmother at Penzance. His gallant deeds against the enemies of his country form a stirring page in our national history, but Mr. Norway has told us of one occasion on which he ran away from a pursuer. He was a mischievous lad, and once, "having wandered with a friend up Castle Horneck Avenue, he was inspired to discharge a few shots through the latticed window of a cottage inhabited by two excellent old maiden ladies. The pellets were aimed at pewter plates, and struck those only, but the insult knocked at the heart of one of the old ladies, who seized the firehook, as the nearest weapon, kilted up her gown, and gave chase. Pellew's courage dissolved at the first sight of this gaunt apparition, running as he thought no lady of her age could run. He fled like a hare; she cast away her firehook and followed; he threw away his musket and gained some ground; she caught him up again, and in Madron church-town was almost on his back, when there came a kindly hill. The old lady's wind was gone, she could spurt no more; so while the culprit fled away in shameful rout without his arms, she retreated honourably, the one person (if she could have known it) who ever terrified Pellew."

Penzance has quite a commodious harbour, as it deserves, having spent at least 100,000 on it; there is a regular service to Scilly, a good deal of coasting, much fis.h.i.+ng, and some s.h.i.+p-building. The west arm of the pier is built on a vein of felspar porphyry, visible at low water. Around the harbour cl.u.s.ter the narrow streets of the older town, with nothing particular to recommend them; beyond this is the town's one conventional feature, its promenade. A rather dreary and unkempt mile of road takes us to Newlyn; and in this part Penzance has certainly unduly emphasised its carelessness of appearance. It need not be quite so slovenly and slipshod. Newlyn, the paradise of artists, deserves a better approach, and Penzance itself merits a fairer exit.

But before pa.s.sing on to Newlyn something must be said both of Gulval and of Madron. The tract of sheltered land in which Gulval lies, reaching from Mount's Bay to Ludgvan, is one of the most productive in Cornwall, being chiefly devoted to market-gardens and flowers; its rare mildness and productiveness is proved by the wealth of exotic vegetation around Gulval Church and Vicarage. In this respect the place actually rivals Tresco, and the fields of narcissi are as luxuriant as those of the Scillies. Much of this soil is worked by hand, in the good old-fas.h.i.+oned style, whose results always seem better than those of machinery. It is quite an idyllic corner of land, with a tangible outcome that goes to the markets in the shape of early vegetables and spring flowers. Below stretches the wide Bay, with its gem, the Mount, of which it is so glorious a setting. There is another gem close at hand, and that is Gulval Church itself, dedicated to a St. Gudval or Wolvele. The general character of the church is Early English, but there were two restorations in the past century, the last being in 1892, and a great deal of modern decoration has been added, largely in Derbys.h.i.+re felspar, with excellent result. The church has been under the special care of the Bolitho family, whose monuments abound here, and it is a proof that old ecclesiastic buildings may be beautified by modern adornment, without the disastrous result that sometimes attends such attempts. Gulval holy well was one of the most famous in Cornwall, and there can be little doubt that the saint's early oratory was on the site of the church--a few traces, indeed, may remain in the walling, a successful blending of the very ancient and the recent. Even more famous was the well of St. Madron or Maddern, which was quite a Lourdes in its way. The church here, probably on an older site, dates from the time of Richard I., being built by one of the Pomeroys; but little remains of this earlier building except its very curious and apparently mutilated font. The present church is chiefly Perpendicular.

In the graveyard is the epitaph of George Daniell, the founder of Madron schools in days when men built schools instead of quarrelling about them:--

"Belgia me birth, Britaine me breeding gave; Cornwall a wife, ten children, and a grave."

Madron Feast (Advent Sunday) was always an occasion of prolonged merrymakings and dissipation. It seems to have been in this district that the last bull-baiting took place in Cornwall. A witness states that it took place in Gulval parish, in the summer of 1814: "I remember the black bull being led by four men. The crowd was dispersed early in the morning by a severe thunderstorm, which much alarmed the people, who thought it (I was led to believe) a judgment from heaven."

This proves that their minds were already uneasy. It is devoutly to be wished that all those whose so-called sports cause suffering to animals may be equally on the watch for judgments from heaven. The village of old Madron is very beautiful and interesting.

Newlyn, a long mile beyond Penzance, in spite of the painters who have carried its name far and wide, is still largely unspoiled. It must be said for painters that they do not spoil a place as other visitors so often do; in fact, all change--modernising, restoring, destroying--is opposed to their sense of fitness; they are champions of the picturesque and sworn foes of the jerry-builder. Newlyn remains quaint and fishy, though it has its little Art Gallery and its Rue des Beaux Arts. There are artistic industries also--copper repousse and enamel jewellery; a new Renaissance has come to this Cornish fis.h.i.+ng-village--its youths and maidens are learning mysteries of beautiful craft which may save them from the deadly inanities of the average British workman. When we speak of early Newlyn days, of course we mean the days of the first artistic settlement, some thirty years since; older Newlyn has little to tell, except that it was burnt by the Spanish, and that its life has always been bound up with the fortunes of the fishery. Mr. Stanhope Forbes has told us something of the place as he first knew it. "I had come from France, where I had been studying, and wandering down into Cornwall, came one spring morning along that dusty road by which Newlyn is approached from Penzance. Little did I think that the cl.u.s.ter of grey-roofed houses which I saw before me against the hillside would be my home for so many years." But he bewails that Newlyn is not what it was; there has been some spoliation, some pulling down of old cottages, some unsightly intrusion of the ugly and modern, though certainly less than might have been feared. It was here that Frank Bramley painted his "Hopeless Dawn" and "After Fifty Years"; here Walter Langley painted "Among the Missing," and Mr. Forbes "The Health of the Bride." It would be hopeless to attempt to name all the pictures that have carried different aspects of Newlyn life to the London exhibitions--the piers, the blue-guernseyed fishermen, the brown-sailed smacks (now partly giving place to steam-drifters), the rich-complexioned old men and women, the lovely bright-eyed children, the st.u.r.dy lads, the gulls, the wonderful bay. From the first there was an excellent understanding between the painters and the people; great tact was shown by the artists, and a mutual pride sprang up between them. What is true of Newlyn is true also of St. Ives and of all the haunts around Land's End where painters have established; rarely has there been any friction, even if the artists have sometimes been regarded as amiable madmen. It is true that John Brett, the marine painter, before Newlyn's most palmy days, managed to offend the natives by his too outspoken religious opinions and his habit of laying on colour with his palette-knife. "What can you expect," asked a fisherman, "of a man who says there's no G.o.d and paints his pictures with a knife?" It will be remembered that religious differences have been a cause of strife before now between Cornish fishermen and fishers who brought laxer views of Sunday fis.h.i.+ng from the East Country. Such things have still a strong hold on those who "do business in great waters." But there are times when politics, blown to white-heat by the Bethels, will drive even religion from the minds of the fisher-folk, as we may judge by a story told by Mr. Hudson. It was after the visit of a lady missioner, who usually reaped a rich harvest of converts; some one asked the minister how many souls had been won on this occasion. "Not one this time," he answered; "we were too busy with the elections."

The Newlyn corner of Mount's Bay is named Gwavas Lake, and it is said that it once really was a lake. A little southward we get into the parish of Paul, whose name probably embodies no dedication to any St.

Paul, but is a corruption of the Cornish _pol_--a pool or creek.

Mousehole, one of the most delightful fis.h.i.+ng-villages in England, is in this parish, far more unspoiled even than Newlyn. As has been already mentioned, Paul was burned by Spaniards, July 23, 1595, on which day, the parish register tells us, "the church, towre, bells, and all other things pertaining to the same, together with the houses and goods, was burn'd and spoil'd by the Spaniards in the said parish, being Wensdaie the daie aforsaid, in the 37th yeare of the Reigne of our Sovereigne Ladie Elizabeth, by the grace of G.o.d, of England, Fraunce, and Ireland, defender of the Faith." It seems, however, that the church was not so utterly destroyed as this might lead us to believe; much of the stonework survived, including the lofty granite tower. Most persons remember Paul as the burial-place of Dolly Pentreath, whose claim to be the last person speaking Cornish can hardly be maintained, though even she did not speak it habitually. Her married name appears to have been Jeffery, but that did not matter; when the wife was the better half her maiden name often prevailed over that of the husband, in later days than this. In 1768 Daines Barrington visited her, and was heartily abused by her in Cornish because he slyly suggested that she did not understand the tongue. He says: "She does indeed talk Cornish as readily as others do English, being bred up from a child to know no other language, nor could she talk a word of English before she was past twenty years of age, as, her father being a fisherman, she was sent with fish to Penzance at twelve years old, and sold them in the Cornish language, which the inhabitants in general, even the gentry, did then well understand. She is positive, however, that there is neither in Mousehole, nor in any other part of the county, any other person who knows anything of it, or at least can converse in it. She is poor, and maintained partly by the parish and partly by fortune-telling and gabbling Cornish." The stone above her grave was erected in 1860 by "the Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, in union with the Rev. John Garrett, Vicar of St. Paul."

Prince Lucien, nephew of the first Napoleon, was an eager student of philology. In 1854 George Borrow, then touring Cornwall (his father was a Cornishman), visited Paul Church, and noticed a Cornish epitaph on the walls--said to be the only inscription in the old vernacular surviving in this fas.h.i.+on. It may be given as a specimen of the extinct language:--

"Bounas heb dueth Eu poes Karens wei tha Pobl Bohodzhak Paull han Egles nei";

which has been thus rendered:--

"Eternal life be his whose loving care Gave Paul an almshouse and the church repair."

Two words here prove how Cornish was affected by the Roman occupation--_pobl_ for people, and _egles_ for church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LANYON CROMLECH.

_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]

When Paul was burned Mousehole suffered also, and its only house that survived was the manor of the Keigwins, now the "Keigwin Arms," whose appearance quite justifies the antiquity claimed for it. Borrow, when he came here, must have been struck by the similarity of the name of Mousehole with that of Mousehold Heath, with which he was so familiar at Norwich; there seems no satisfactory explanation of either name. Perhaps both embody some Celtic root. Mousehole was once called Porth Enys, the island-port; and there is a little islet, St.

Clement's, lying off it. The place is in every way quieter than Newlyn; there are fewer visitors in the summer months, less bustle on the quays, less stir of fish-auctions; even the artists are rarer. All is quaintness and primitive seclusion. There may be a somewhat too aggressive savour of pilchards; but we must excuse this when we remember what the pilchards mean to these fisher-folk, who were once considered somewhat of a race apart, with a supposed infusion of Spanish blood in them. There was a quay here and a chapelry in very early days, and the place was active enough before Penzance had come forward as a port at all; it is said that there was also a small oratory on St. Clement's Isle. The fisher-folk have spent a good deal on improving their harbour. The coast is grand and cavernous. On both sides, near Newlyn and at Lamorna, there is some busy quarrying; the quarries at Lamorna supplied much of the granite for the Thames Embankment. Being a favourite trip from Penzance, the cove at Lamorna is pretty well known; it opens to the sea from a very beautiful little valley formed by the Lamorna stream, wooded with hazels and alders.

There need be no complaint just here that Cornwall is treeless, though beyond and above the land stretches unwooded and desolate. But it is a grand sort of desolation; only in thick weather or fierce driving storms do we feel in a kind of lost world. At the head of the Lamorna valley is an estate known as Trewoofe, or Troove, with a remarkable _fogou_ (subterranean pa.s.sage), not easy to find and not easy to enter. It runs for about 36 feet, being 6 feet high and nearly as wide, and is formed of rugged unhewn blocks. Stories tell that it successfully sheltered a party of fugitive Royalists once, and it may also have been used by smugglers of later date; but for its origin we must go farther back, and perhaps it takes us to the dim days when race was struggling with race on this far western limit of land. There are so many prehistoric relics near as to be almost bewildering, and this is surely not the place in which to discourse learnedly of them all; besides which, the utmost learning does little but reveal our dense ignorance of their real significance. Troove belonged to the Le Veales, or Levelis, family, who came over with the Conqueror, and flourished in this spot for six centuries, dying at last in the person of Arthur Levelis, who was buried at St. Buryan in 1671. The modern house retains only a few fragments of the mansion; but the doorway remains, its jambs sculptured with queer figures, and three calves'

heads carved above it as the family arms. About half a mile westward is Boleigh, or Boleit, with the Pipers--two rough granite figures.

When Athelstan traversed Cornwall from end to end, about the year 936, he is said to have fought his last battle against the defeated British at Boleit; not content with the whole of Cornwall, he crossed to the Scillies and took these also. It is quite possible that there was fighting here at that time, but very certainly the Pipers were not then raised as burial monoliths; they are clearly of far earlier date.

In an open field near is the stone circle of _Dawns men_, the dancing-stones, known as the Merry Maidens; there are nineteen rough boulders of granite, and there was probably a twentieth. Naturally, there is the usual story that they were maidens who danced on the Sabbath and were thus punished, the Pipers being similarly doomed for playing the dances.

Though St. Buryan lies about three miles from the coast, it must be visited for the beauty of its church and the interest of its traditions. The church is so named after Buriena, a beautiful Irish girl who came to Cornwall to become a saint, but it is very difficult to decide definitely as to her personality. We may conjecture that she came to Cornwall about the same time as St. Piran, perhaps in his company, and that she set up her cell in a field formerly called the Sanctuary, and later the Sentry. The present church is always understood to have been founded by Athelstan, when he sighted the Scilly Isles from this high ground, and vowed that if he returned safely from their conquest he would endow a collegiate establishment here. The expedition to Scilly accomplished, he observed his vow, and founded an establishment consisting of a dean and three prebendaries, with jurisdiction over the parishes of Buryan, Levan, and Sennen.

There was trouble later, because the Buryan priests claimed freedom from episcopal control; but we find the Bishop of Exeter dedicating the church here in 1238, of which some Norman arches, font, and stoup survive; Athelstan's church has quite vanished. The building is about 100 feet long, and compared with the nave the chancel is almost like a cathedral choir, thus proving its collegiate character, the stalls still remaining. Much foolish restoration has done irreparable damage, but the church is still beautiful in design and detail; unhappily the screen was badly mutilated, and many bench-ends destroyed. When Blight wrote his admirable book on the churches of West Cornwall the Miserere seats could be raised; later, they were very stupidly fixed down. On the floor of the tower lies the ancient tomb of "Clarice La Femme Cheffrei De Bolleit," with an inscription in Norman-French characters of the thirteenth century, begging visitors to pray for her soul, and promising a ten days' pardon to those who do so; there can be no harm in our testing the efficacy of this offer.

The tower that rises above this remarkably interesting grave is 90 feet in height, and as the church itself stands high it forms a fine landmark. Outside there is a shaftless cross of Celtic appearance, but not supposed to be Celtic in origin, though it certainly may have been adapted from a Celtic original. There is another old cross outside the churchyard gate, which may perhaps at one time have been included within the sacred pale, as traces of burial have been found. But churchyards were not often diminished in this manner, and the graves must probably be otherwise accounted for. In the church is an altar-cloth, now rarely used, worked by two maiden ladies more than two centuries since.

St. Buryan is familiar to all visitors to the Land's End, as the cars usually make it a halting-place. Even more famous, and perhaps more attractive to the conventional sight-seer, is the Logan Stone of Treryn, or Treen; but what makes this spot truly worth seeing is not the ma.s.s of poised rock, which certainly stirs clumsily when pushed, but the grand headland itself, on which there is a _dinas_, or old entrenchment. The coast here has more beauties than can be named, but this immemorial stronghold of a vanished race, on its magnificent bluff of granite that juts from a turf-clad neck of land, is far more glorious than any logging-stone, even though it may have been displaced and replaced by a nephew of the poet Goldsmith. The little hamlet of Treen is just across the fields. Logan rocks are simply a freak of nature, in spite of the Druidic nonsense that has been talked about them; softer soils have been eroded beneath, and the rock has remained balanced. Treen is in the parish of St. Levan, but we have to pa.s.s Porthcurnow Cove before reaching that saint's immediate locality.

Porthcurnow, with its fine sh.o.r.e and grand seas, and its memories of Tregeagle, whose doom is to sweep the sands from Porthcurnow to the farther side of Land's End, has in some sense had its romance knocked out of it by the establishment of the Eastern Telegraph Company, and the presence of about a hundred keen, sport-loving telegraphists. They have a comfortable settlement for their exile here, with excellent cricket and tennis grounds and perfect accommodation. Their duties resemble those of any telegraph instrument-room in the country, but the locality should render their leisure hours delightful. Hunt tells a tale of a Spectre s.h.i.+p at Porthcurnow, but all these traditions were dying when he told them, and that is a good while ago now. The name of Porthcurnow is interesting, as it probably embodies the root of the name of Cornwall itself; and there was once a very ancient chapel here, raised on a burial cairn of far greater antiquity; very slight traces remain. Perhaps Penberth and St. Loy's Coves ought to have been mentioned; but we must pa.s.s on to St. Levan, who was a very attractive saint, with an engaging touch of human nature about him. Even so, his ident.i.ty is a little doubtful. The prefix St. is quite modern in Cornwall, and as this parish was once spoken of as Siluan, and is still sometimes called Slevan, it is possible that the real saint was Silva.n.u.s, and not Levan at all. Whoever he was, he had a little oratory and holy well on the cliff below the site of the present church; and he lived on a single fish each day. One day two fish persisted in being caught; and when he reached his cell he found that his sister Breaca (whose name survives at Breage) had paid him a visit with her two children. This legend goes on the usual supposition that the saint was really the Irish Levan, brother of St. Breage. Unhappily the children ate so eagerly that they were choked by the fishbones, in memory of which bream (or sometimes chad) used to be called "choke-cheeld." Mr. Baring-Gould says this caused a coolness between brother and sister. He had another unpleasantness with a woman Joanna, who lived near, who was a rigid vegetarian, and quarrelled with the saint for catching his fish on Sunday. He said that to fish was no worse than to do gardening. We may repeat these old stories, but the Cornish folk of to-day know nothing of them; they are dead, except as matter for the guide-books. St. Levan Church is snugly sheltered. It has been carefully restored and is very attractive, with a good tower, some fine bench-ends, and a beautiful screen. Outside the church is a cleft boulder of granite, and there used to be a local saying that when a pack-horse should ride through St. Levan's stone the world would come to an end. A little beyond is the really delightful Porthgwarra, with its rugged stone slip and tunnels leading to the little fis.h.i.+ng-cove. Visitors are beginning to discover Porthgwarra, and it is one of those quiet, lonely haunts where lodgings must be booked long in advance. Cornwall has a good many such--the resort of those who shun the ordinary watering-place.

CHAPTER X

THE SCILLY ISLANDS

Geologically, we are still on the mainland when we reach the isles of Scilly; they belong to the axis of the Cornish peninsula, and are in what may still be called, comparatively, the narrow seas. The hundred-fathom line lies far beyond them; these waters, though thoroughly oceanic in character, are not oceanic in depth. We may regard the islands as the last upward thrust of the granitic backbone that runs, at a diminis.h.i.+ng gradient, from Dartmoor to Land's End, while the submarine plateau follows a similar gradient. Structurally, therefore, these isles are a continuation of Land's End, but the granite has become less consistent and more friable; it is largely broken into felspar, quartz, and mica, with schorl, chlorite, and hornblende. No great elevation is attained--nothing above 160 feet; the grandeur of the coasts, which certainly does not equal that of North Cornwall, consists in their rugged wildness and the fantastic weathering of their crags. Contorted formations, logans and rock-basins, reveal the decomposition of softer measures that has been proceeding for ages. The isles lie about 27 miles west of Land's End, but the journey from Penzance to St. Mary's is about 40 miles, and the small steamers that make the pa.s.sage usually take about four hours. More often than not this pa.s.sage is an uncomfortable one; the islands stand in the ocean gateway of the two Channels, and they catch whatever is going in the way of sea, while of course winds play upon them with unbroken force. It is rather surprising that their strategic importance should be neglected by the Government. There was indeed some talk of forming a naval base here, but the scheme seems to have been abandoned; yet a station with extensive harbourage could be planned without vast cost, and would be a dominant factor in controlling the navigation of the English Channel. During the Franco-German War, when the navy of Germany was much less powerful than that of France, Germany made considerable use of the Scillies as a neutral port for the convenience of vessels making the Channel; and a time may easily come when a naval base here would be of untold advantage to Great Britain, as its absence might become a positive disaster.

[Ill.u.s.tration: s.h.i.+PMAN HEAD, SCILLY.

_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]

The archipelago occupies an area of about 30 square miles, the isles, reckoning many that are mere fragments of rock, numbering about two hundred; the princ.i.p.al of which range in size from the 1,600 acres of St. Mary's to the five acres of Little Ganniley. St. Mary's is about three miles long and two in breadth, with a circ.u.mference of nine miles and a population of about 1,500--about three-quarters of the entire population. It contains the capital, Hugh Town, which is more often simply styled St. Mary's, and which stands chiefly on a neck of land that appears to be rather perilously threatened by the sea. Four other islands are inhabited--Tresco, St. Martin's, St. Agnes, and Bryher; they are all considerably smaller. The first to come into definite view from a vessel making the isles is St. Martin's, with its day-mark standing at a height of about 160 feet.

It must be confessed that, for their beauty, the islands depend very largely on suns.h.i.+ne and atmospheric effect; without the sun they can become very dreary. Meteorologic figures prove that the average summer temperature is only 58 Fahrenheit and the winter about 45; so that there is little oppressive heat, and frost is very rare. But in spite of these figures the islands can become sultry under a blaze of suns.h.i.+ne; and in winter the winds are sometimes piercingly keen. No trees will grow unless protected from this wind; yet the tropical vegetation that flourishes in the open air conclusively proves the remarkable equability of the climate; while rainfall, which is seldom excessive, is quickly absorbed or evaporated. To the lover of history, legend, and romance the Scillies are a rich mine of treasure, and their inaccessibility keeps them immune from the spoiling tendencies of fas.h.i.+on. At one time this inaccessibility was far greater, and only those came to Scilly who had business there. It is claimed by tradition that these islets are a portion of the lost land of Lyonesse, the old-world haunt of Arthur and Tristram--a land of villages, pastures, smiling vales, now buried beneath the waves.

Persons sometimes apply the name of Lyonesse to the whole of Cornwall, but this is a mistake; the true Lyonesse of legend was a tract of country lying to the south-west of Land's End, which we may connect, racially or otherwise, with the Leon of Brittany. There are many traces of submerged forest in Mount's Bay and elsewhere along the southern coast; and the old Cornish name of St. Michael's Mount represents that rock as having once stood in the centre of woodland.

It is impossible to say when or how the Scillies first became insular, whether by sudden cataclysm or by gradual erosion; the latter seems more likely, but tradition has preferred to speak of a sudden catastrophe, such as that which is supposed to have overwhelmed Cardigan Bay. There is a story which says that a member of the Trevilian family was only saved from the inrush of waters by the speed of his horse, which struggled inland from the pursuing waves, reaching a rocky cleft on the sh.o.r.e at Perranuthnoe. It is possible that slow erosion may have paved the way to some such immediate disaster, such as that caused by a great storm in 1099, when, according to the Saxon Chronicle, many villages and churches were swept away. It was this storm, accompanied perhaps by a tidal wave, that converted the estates of Earl G.o.dwin into the dreaded Goodwin Sands; and it may have caused tremendous damage, not definitely recorded, in the West. But another tradition attributes the formation of the islands to magic. It was said, by those who placed Arthur's last great battle in the West of England, that, after the fight was over, the triumphant Mordred chased the King's despairing followers to the extreme limits of Lyonesse, where they lay "between the devil and the deep sea," like the Israelites pursued by Pharaoh. The cruel Mordred was close at their heels, rejoicing in the prospect of exterminating the last remnant of Arthur's Round Table, when suddenly the wizard Merlin appeared in his path. The magician raised his hand and summoned the elements to his aid. The earth began to heave and the rocks to split; waters came rus.h.i.+ng into immense fissures and yawning chasms. Mordred and his men turned back horror-stricken, attempting to flee from this upheaval of nature; but the ocean was too quick for them. Where there had been smiling acres of pasture and tillage, valley and moorland, waves were now seething and foaming; there was no refuge to the east or to the west; the breakers overtook them on all sides. But while they were thus overwhelmed in the ruin of Lyonesse, the followers of Arthur stood on land that had been spared. This far-west cl.u.s.ter of hill-summits had been changed into a group of islets; and in this home of refuge that was miraculously left to them, the fugitives settled into peaceful residence, building houses and churches. Such, the story says, is the ancestry of the Scillonians.

All this belongs to the region of romance; history knows nothing of it. Even the name of Scilly is a puzzle, though perhaps the best authorities think that it derives from the widespread tribe of the Silures. Strictly speaking, the name Scilly only attaches to one small islet lying off Bryher, but somehow it has affixed itself to the whole group. Many derive it from _silya_ or _selli_, meaning conger-eels, a favourite Cornish dish; others suggest the Celtic _sulleh_, or "sun-rocks," denoting the old sun-wors.h.i.+p. It is interesting to note that there is a Sully isle lying off Glamorgan, south of Cardiff, and there may have been some connection between the two names, for Scilly was sometimes spelt Sully; there is also a Scilly in Ireland. The Romans usually called the islands _Sillinae_, but Sulpicius Severus used the form _Sylinancis_, which Sir John Rhys a.s.sociates with the _Silula.n.u.s_ of an inscribed stone at Lydney. Another name was _Silura_; Richard of Cirencester wrote of the _Sygdilles_, "also denominated the Oestromenides and Ca.s.siterides"; the Danes spoke of the _Syllingar_; and in French charts the isles are "_les Sorlingues_." The whole question is very difficult, and this is hardly the place in which to discuss it. It is almost certain that the isles cannot have been the Ca.s.siterides, or tin-islands; they present only slight traces of tin-working, and it is far from likely that the tin-workers of Cornwall would have s.h.i.+pped their metal to this isolated spot in order to find a market with foreign traders. It is more probable that the name of Tin Islands was applied by the ancients to the British Isles in general, whose number and extent were little known in those days. Rome seems to have used the isles as a place of banishment and penal settlement, and in days of early Christianity two heretical bishops were exiled here. Early in the tenth century Athelstan made a progress through Cornwall, ostensibly to conquer it as a part of Wess.e.x; and when he reached the high land near the present St. Buryan it is said that he sighted these islands in the distance and was not content till he had visited them. He vowed to build a church on the spot where he then stood if he returned safely from the expedition. The church of St. Buryan stands as a memorial of his fulfilled vow. On the isles themselves he is said to have founded Tresco Abbey, dedicated to St. Nicholas, which became a wealthy religious establishment, though now only a few fragments remain. Later in the same century King Olaf of Norway came hither during one of the marauding cruises that made him a terror of the British sh.o.r.es. It is related that a hermit living at St. Mary's gave him timely warning of a mutiny among his seamen; Olaf crushed the mutiny, but received a severe wound. He was carried to the monastery at Tresco, and consented to be baptized; after which he became a saint himself, and churches were dedicated to him--there is one such at Exeter. Longfellow has told us of

"His cruisings o'er the seas, Westward to the Hebrides, And to Scilly's rocky sh.o.r.e;"

and he was probably not the only Norse Viking whose keel touched here.

Other saints have left their mark on Scilly: Samson of Glamorgan came hither, about the middle of the sixth century, after founding a church near Fowey; he is the same Samson that we find at Guernsey, who afterwards became Bishop of Dol. The island that bears his name, rendered familiar to many delighted readers by Besant's _Armorel of Lyonesse_, is no longer inhabited, but bears many marks of its former population. Traces of old habitation abound; there are many barrows and one perfect kistvaen. Among other saints, Teilo seems to have been at St. Helen's. St. Agnes, like the parish so named on the mainland, is almost certainly a dedication to the Celtic Ann. It was natural that Tresco should become the ecclesiastical centre of Scilly. The abbey and all the churches of the islands were granted by Henry I. to the monks of Tavistock; at the Dissolution the abbey reverted to the Crown, and pa.s.sed to the G.o.dolphins, whose name survives at Dolphin Town. It is likely that the private history of the isles was romantic and exciting enough, but there is little to record until the days of the Civil War, when they became a last refuge of the fugitive Charles II. before his escape to France. In the meantime the Governor, Sir John Grenville, had fortified the isles and held them for the King; they became a centre of active privateering. The Royalist garrison did not limit themselves to attacking Parliamentary vessels; they molested Dutch s.h.i.+pping as well; so that the Admiral, Van Tromp, made an attack on them, but without result. It is said that he parleyed with Grenville, trying to induce that gallant soldier to yield Scilly into Dutch hands; but Grenville was too loyal an Englishman for such treachery--he would rather the Parliament took the isles than that they should become Dutch. It was with no disgrace that he was forced to yield, at last, to such worthy opponents as Blake and Sir George Ascue. In the days of our French wars, a century since, the islands were garrisoned, and became a port of supply for British s.h.i.+ps, as well as a rendezvous for vessels waiting convoy. A great deal of smuggling was done here, and it has been said some wrecking; but, here as elsewhere in Cornwall, the lights that were thought to be exposed with such wicked intent were often merely meant as signals to those who were watching for an opportunity to run a cargo. There was little need indeed at Scilly for any artificial increase of wrecks; Nature did her part far too well in this particular, from the disaster to Sir Cloudesley Shovel to that of the _Minnehaha_ in the present year. A small detachment of Royal Artillery and some engineers are stationed here. Beyond this, the islands are practically defenceless, except for the protection of their rough seas, fierce inter-channel currents, and the off-lying deadly fangs of rock.

The event of chief moment to modern Scilly was certainly the arrival of Mr. Augustus Smith in 1834. The isles at that time were in a bad way; the kelp industry had failed, fis.h.i.+ng was poor and precarious, smuggling could not longer be depended on for a living. Previous "lords of the isles" had been absentees, taking little interest in the welfare of the inhabitants; and the population had become too large to support itself. But when Mr. Smith, a Hertfords.h.i.+re gentleman, became landlord by purchase, he came to live on his little kingdom, and to rule as a benevolent autocrat. Just such a rule was needed, for matters demanded a firm hand. There was some resistance, some kicking, some difference of opinion between himself and his people; but the strong will and the firm hand conquered in the end and a better time dawned for Scilly. The squire sent the boys off to sea and the girls to service on the mainland; he made new roads, improved the quay, and even enforced a system of compulsory education. He resided at Tresco Abbey, where the few remains of the old monastic establishment added picturesqueness to a modern manor-house, and where he brought the gardens into very much the state in which we still find them. It was his wish that their character should be maintained. Tresco, in its special style, is indeed beautiful. "The Cape geranium, the common fuchsia, the sweet-scented verbena, and various kinds of myrtles and veronicas, are grown as hedges to protect the crops. Looking across Crow Sound from St. Mary's, these hedges are one blaze of colour, and the air is heavy with their perfume. The Abbey stands in a rocky valley looking south. The grounds are laid out in a succession of terraces, and from every nook and crevice rare specimens of cacti, sedums, and mesembryanthemums with their orange and purple bloom sprawl over the rocks and run riot among the borders. In the gardens South American aloes throw up their flowering stalks heavy with aromatic fragrance, 20 feet high, and giant dracaenas wave their feathery heads in the balmy breeze. Exotic palms, the bamboo, the sugar-cane, and the cotton plant grow in the open, and tropical mosses and orchids hang from the trees. Outside on the breezy downs one may drink in pure ozone from the Atlantic, and revel in an atmosphere untainted by microbes or bacilli. Wild duck, woodc.o.c.k, and plover, resting in their migratory flight, crowd the marshes, ponds, and lagoons, and the sea is alive with fish." Such was the Tresco that Mr.

Augustus Smith made his home; such it is still in the hands of Mr.

Dorrien-Smith. It is certain that when Mr. Smith died in 1872, and was buried at St. Buryan, he left the islands in a far better condition than that in which he had found them; and his memory fully deserves the striking monument of unhewn granite that has been raised to his honour in his island-home.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SCILLY FLOWER GARDEN.

_Photo by Alex. Old._]

Industrially, we chiefly think of Scilly in connection with flowers.

At one time there was some active s.h.i.+p-building, and Scilly-made boats had an excellent reputation; but steam navigation put an end to this.

There was also a very lively business in potatoes, at first almost without compet.i.tion; but this trade has been hit very hard by the Channel Islands, by foreign imports, and by the crus.h.i.+ng cost of freights. Vegetable cargoes cost less from the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean than they do from Scilly; the foreigner is given every advantage in his efforts to undersell the Briton, and the Briton, though fighting at home, fights with one hand tied behind. Fis.h.i.+ng at Scilly was long in a precarious state, but is now a little better, owing to the use of steam-drifters. The isles are too far from the markets, but by catching the boat to Penzance the fishermen can now get their fish away in most cases before it has had time to spoil.

With mackerel, the most profitable catch, this is very important, as the mackerel so speedily deteriorates; but a good deal of the fishery that takes place off the Scillies is not in the hands of Scillonians--Cornishmen, East Anglians, foreigners, all compete. With regard to flowers Scilly seems more happily placed, though to some extent the same difficulties apply--the distance, the cost of carriage, the compet.i.tion of the untaxed foreigner. The story has been often told--how, rather more than thirty years since, W. Trevellick, of Rocky Hill, St. Mary's, sent a few bunches of narcissi in a hamper to Covent Garden as a venture, and was astonished at the return they brought him. These were simply "Scilly Whites," which had been growing wild about the cottages without any one hitherto dreaming of their financial possibilities.

The knowledge of a demand soon roused the supply; new species were cultivated, everything was done to ensure early flowering, the more sensitive kinds were protected by wattle-fences and hedges of escalonia or veronica; and from January till May every steamer to the mainland carries tons of blooms. A ton of flowers is something rather s.p.a.cious; and in the height of the season as many as thirty tons are taken in one boatload. The more severe the weather on the mainland, the better is the demand. The bulbs are set in narrow fields, to secure their shelter from the winds by thick hedges. As many as two hundred kinds of narcissus, daffodil, and lily are now cultivated.

"The beds are renewed every third year. This is necessary to retain the vigour of the plant, as if allowed to remain too long without lifting, the bulbs crowd each other and send up barren and feeble shoots. When the bulbs are lifted they are divided, and any surplus stock either sold or replanted in fresh ground. The beds require very little attention further than being kept free from weeds, and having a top-dressing of stable litter or freshly gathered seaweed. Bulbs will not stand forcing, and are always st.u.r.dier when grown in the open."

Men, women, and children find employment in the flower-fields, and in the busy time are often engaged from early morning till long after sunset. Picking must be done with great care, the blooms being gathered before they are fully opened or they will not bear carriage.

A number are now sent by Parcel Post, as well as in more wholesale method. Within twenty-four hours of being plucked they are exposed in the London markets, or being offered for sale in the streets of large towns by the flower-hawkers. Some even go as far as Scotland. During 1907 as many as 1,000 tons were despatched from St. Mary's Quay, the cost of freight being 6 10s. per ton. Besides paying this heavy charge, the Scillonians have to compete with growers in the south of Cornwall, and even as far eastward as Dorset; while Continental florists can pour their produce into England at a rate that further hampers the home trade.

Things are very different now from what they were when the mail arrived irregularly from Penzance, and letters were distributed from the window of the one small post-office in St. Mary's. Each of the inhabited isles has now its own postal and telegraph office; and they are also connected with the mainland by telephone, for coastguard purposes. To be at Scilly is no longer to be quite out of the world.

There was a spice of romance about the manner in which the first cable to Scilly was laid--or, perhaps we should say, was not laid. By the Act that came into force in 1870 the Government had agreed to buy over on favourable terms all telegraphs that at that time were found in actual existence as working concerns. With a view to large profits, companies sprang into being, hoping to get their wires into working order, so as to be bought over on the appointed day. One such company took the Scilly Isles into its charge--not from any benevolent motives; Scilly had long been praying for telegraphic connection. A cable of the supposed right length was procured and brought to Land's End, where its sh.o.r.e end was fixed, and the vessel bearing it made towards Scilly. Somehow or other the conveyors found themselves five miles south of the Isles with every inch of their cable paid out. Time was precious; it would never do to buoy the end and wait for a fresh supply, and the present poor cable would not bear the strain of picking up. But there was a clever man on board. He cut the cable a few fathoms from the s.h.i.+p, carried its f.a.g-end to St. Mary's, and attached it to an old Morse instrument. Outwardly, things looked all right; there was the cable attached at Land's End, and here was its other end at Scilly. The difficulty was how to get messages through in time to prove that an established telegraph was working. The operator was equal to the occasion. Shutting himself in the little instrument-room, he manipulated the current and produced messages. Mr.

Uren, the late Postmaster of Penzance, says, "I can testify that I saw signals which purported to have pa.s.sed over the cable, printed in plain characters on the Morse slip; and on the faith of these signals the contractors issued their certificate, and the Company took over the cable. Needless to say, the whole thing was a ruse. The ruptured cable lay dead and idle at the bottom of the Channel--lost past all recovery." It was easy to explain afterwards that the fracture took place naturally; and a new cable was soon laid to the island. Such being one sample of the proceedings at the time, we may imagine that the public paid very dearly when Government took over these telegraphs, which have never yet shown a profit.

It is frequently stated, as a reason for its equable climate, that Scilly lies right in the course of the Gulf Stream. Of course this is a mistake. The true Gulf Stream does not come within a thousand miles of Britain. There is, however, a surface-current of warm water carried north-eastward from hot lat.i.tudes, and this materially affects not only Scilly, but the entire western coast. Although so mild, the climate is dry and bracing; there are no unwholesome damps. Longevity is the rule on the islands, and the single doctor has little to do beyond a.s.sisting st.u.r.dy young Scillonians on their entrance into the world. At the capital, St. Mary's, there are shops, banks, and hotels, with a public hall, a modern church, and of course a fair supply of the chapels that are so dear to these fervent Nonconformists. On Garrison Hill is a fine promenade, close to Star Castle, which was erected by Francis G.o.dolphin, Lord-Lieutenant of Cornwall in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The naval importance of Scilly was fully realised in those days. There is a Cromwellian fort at Tresco, on a narrow rock jutting into the sea. Prehistoric relics are too numerous to be mentioned here in detail, and equally numerous are traces of s.h.i.+pwreck. In Tresco Gardens there is one terrace devoted entirely to the figure-heads of vessels that have been cast on these sh.o.r.es.