Nooks and Corners of Cornwall

By J. S. Fletcher
By C. A. Dawson Scott
By Douglas Goldring
Price 2s. 6d. net each (with map)

At first sight it seems incongruous to speak of the Nooks and Corners to be found in so rugged a land as Cornwall. The masses of rock at Tintagel, Tol-Pedn, and the Lizard, the sheer drop of the High Cliff and the Dodman, the moors, the cromlechs, and the granite tors, are so impressive that we are apt to overlook the fertile valleys that intersect the country, the coves, coombes, and pills in which the hillside vegetation is often semi-tropical, and where the houses are embowered in flowering shrubs till they look like Jacks-in-the-Green that have taken root.
Nor do these picturesque villages, sheltered and fruitful, this magnificent coast scenery, these grey moors, comprise the whole of this half-smiling, half-frowning land. Here in out-of-the-way places are relics of forgotten creeds and peoples, earthworks, amphitheatres, castles, the caves of smugglers, and the subterranean hiding-places of neolithic man. There is so much to interest, so much to see—almost too much it would seem, certainly too much for any one holiday; but Cornwall is a place to go to again and again, to go to till it seems as your own land, and its people have forgiven you for being a foreigner.
This Cornish folk, clannish but kindly, has of late years been decreasing. Not only is there the competition of foreign tin, but the lodes being now deep the cost of home production has proportionately increased. Cousin Jack therefore has to go in search of more remunerative metal, leaving Cousin Jenny at home to manage as best she can on his remittances.
You can only see Cornwall by walking through it, said George Borrow, but the traveller must bear in mind that a name, large on the map, is apt to materialise into a few cottages, a lonely farmhouse, or a rocky gorge with never an inhabitant. Nor though the voice of the tourist has now for several years been heard in the land has the response, in hotels, been great; while there are not as many country inns as might be expected. The cheerful, pleasure-loving Cornishman has another aspect to his character. Generally a Nonconformist and a Sabbatarian he—perhaps more particularly she—thinks the fewer inns the better. Hamlets the size of which would lead one to expect a wayside tavern are often drawn blank, and it is as well to make inquiry, when mapping out the day's journey, as to the accommodation to be found at its latter end.