The Cornwall Coast

by Arthur L. Salmon

CHAPTER XI

FROM LAND'S END TO ZENNOR

The western promontory of granite to which we give the name of Land's End is not the grandest piece of coast in these parts; but it has the prestige of a deep sentiment attaching to it, and there is no other spot in England that draws visitors with such a powerful attraction. In one sense the Scillies are the true Land's End, beyond which the deeper gulfs of ocean lie; and, again, there is another land's end at the Lizard, the southernmost point of England, and yet another at Lowestoft, the most easterly. But Lowestoft looks towards the Teutonic Continent, and the Lizard towards what we may call the Latin; both remain European in their outlook. Land's End has a different attitude; it looks westward, and the migratory instinct of European races has ever taken them towards the West. It is the Bolerion of Ptolemy, the Bolerium of Roman writers, the Penwith of the Celts. Adding a Saxon affix, Simeon of Durham named it Penwithsteort, the "tail of Penwith." There is some doubt about the true meaning of Penwith; Mr. Baring-Gould gives it as "headland of blood," which it might well be as the last battle-ground of a defeated people; another interpretation says the "wooded headland." To speak of it as wooded now seems inappropriate, though we cannot forget the submerged trees of Mount's Bay, nor can we say what might have been beyond when the point reached farther westward. But it is as the last land in England that we cross this windy moorland to reach the sea; and beyond, visible on days of rare clearness, lie the Fortunate Isles of our dreams. Many a pilgrimage is made through the length of Cornwall for this sole purpose—to stand here at the dividing point of two channels, the meeting of two seas, the Titanic outermost gateway that confronts the fury or the rough sport of the ocean gods. The visitors come by car-loads from Penzance or from St. Ives; not only during the summer season but throughout the year—there are always some who wish to see Land's End. They often bring the vaguest ideas of what the sight will be; our visions of Land's End before we see it are often dim, immense, mystical. Our dreams turn westward, to the land of the setting sun—to the great ocean of the unknown that hems us in, beyond which lie the promise, the golden hope, that have lured us onward from childhood, through disappointment and failure and the bitter sorrow of loss—

"Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade."

And so we come to the land's end—the end that is also a beginning. When Tennyson came hither he saw a funeral somewhere near, and he has the brief note, "Land's End and Life's End." The sun had just set in a great yellow flare. There is no spot where sunsets seem more pregnant of meaning than here, where winds are more haunted by crying ghosts, where there is a deeper significance in the "murmurs and scents of the infinite sea."

Photo by][Gibson, Penzance.

But we must come to Land's End in the right mood—with sentiment and inner vision, certainly, but without unrealisable expectations of a mighty gigantic headland, an abrupt tremendous precipice. We shall need the inner vision to contend with some jarring aspects of the reality, which are naturally more aggressive if we come during the holiday season. For the Land's End is a show-place, and we know what that entails. There is a large modern hotel here, just as we find similar edifices in some of the lovely solitudes of the Lizard and confronting the very castle of Arthur at Tintagel. Being there, we must take them philosophically—perhaps even make use of them. The cottage once boasting in the name of the "First and Last House in England" must now take a second place. There are some other aspects of even more definite vulgarisation—the presence of the tripper with his halfpenny newspaper, his bananas, and his mineral waters; there is also too much building here, and the prospect of more. Mr. W. H. Hudson makes an appeal for a national fund that shall buy Land's End and sweep away much of this. He says: "The buildings which now deform the place, the unneeded hotels, with stables, shanties, zinc bungalows sprawling over the cliff, and the ugly big and little houses could be cleared away, leaving only the ancient village of Sennen, the old farmhouses, the coastguard and Trinity House stations, and the old fishing hamlet under the cliff." It is a dream that should not be impossible to realise. But the visitor who stays here after sundown, when the throng has departed, can to some extent realise it for himself. When the dusk of nightfall has veiled the defacements and deformities, he can stay on this ultimate headland alone with the immemorial rocks, the whispering wind, the brooding sea, greeted by the lights of the Wolf and the Longships, with a far twinkle from the Scillies. To the south the skies are searched by the great light of the Lizard. This, indeed, is a vision of peaceful intensity, but there are other times when there is no peace here—when winds buffet the barren downs and waves crash furiously on the caverned crags, when the sentinel rocks of the old country are a horror of wreck and death. Of such a scene it would be more easy to say too much than too little. Even Ruskin, when he attempted to describe Land's End seas in his long convoluted sentences, failed to do anything but give a series of phrases and figures that the mind follows with weariness. Such things must be sketched vividly and briefly, or language only betrays its own limitations.

The rocks to which we immediately apply the name Land's End are only about 60 feet above sea-level; there are many higher, even in the near neighbourhood, and there are some more striking. Various fanciful, and for the most part foolish, names have been applied to them, which need not here be repeated. Both here and at the finer rock of Pordenack, a little southward, the rock-formations somewhat resemble those of the Giants' Causeway in appearance. But the noblest cliff of all on this western promontory is that of Tolpedn-Penwith, to reach which we have to pass Nanjisal Cove. Its name, the "holed headland of Penwith," refers to a deep cleft or fissure, which can be explored from the sea when tide and weather permit. Part of this fine bluff is known as the Chair Ladder, and has traditions of a witch, Madge Figgy, who used to take flight with her comrades from this magnificent point, and here would shriek her incantations above the roar of wind and waters. The spot was certainly well chosen. There are some hidden crags, and some that are not hidden, lying off Land's End, such as the Armed Knight, the Irish Lady, and Enys Dodman, which is pierced by a grand natural arch. Rather more than a mile out is a cluster of islets, on one of which, Carn Brâs, stands the Longships lighthouse, built in 1883 to replace one that had been privately erected; it has an occulting light of over seven hundred candle-power, visible at 16 miles. The lantern has sometimes been shattered by the force of the seas, and the tower rocks so violently that on one occasion one of the keepers went mad with terror and shot himself. When a boat had been signalled and managed to approach, the supposed corpse was slung down to it, and a fisherman accidentally touching the wound, the man revived. The Wolf light is about seven miles out, erected with immense labour and cost on a most perilous reef of rocks. Both lighthouses are often quite isolated by stress of weather.