To the east of Penolver Point the coast curves sharply in towards the north and is honeycombed with curious caves and blow-holes, Dolor Hugo (from fogou—a subterranean passage), the Devil's Frying Pan by Cadgwith, Raven's Hugo, and others. Here are bays, picturesque with rocks and far from the madding crowd, far also from a railway station, Helston being the nearest; but that is no matter, the ten-mile drive over Goonhilly Downs being well worth the extra weariness and cost.
Mediæval Bells
Cornwall has about fifty bells, dating from before the Reformation. As they had been used to summon the people to rebellion, orders came from London that all bells except "the least of the ring" were to be removed from the churches. This, however, was a command that the recipients thought would be more honoured in the breach than the observance; which is why there are so many good examples, as for instance, at Landewednack, of mediæval bells. This the most southern parish in England has a curious church tower, the admixture of light granite and dark serpentine giving it a chequer-board appearance. It was visited by the plague in 1645, and a hundred years later the burials were disturbed in order to make room for some shipwrecked sailors—whose Christianity one supposes to be vouched for—when to the horror of the inhabitants the plague at once reappeared. Since then they have let sleeping dogs lie.
Landewednack claims to be the last place at which a sermon was preached in Cornish (1678), the incumbent being the Rev. Thos. Cole, who lived to the great age of 120. This fine old gentleman is said to have not long before his death walked to Penryn and back, a distance of thirty miles!
Past Cadgwith, Kennack, Coverack, Porthoustock, and Porthalla, well-known fishing villages, and all romantically situated, but not otherwise interesting, the wanderer comes by way of St. Keverne, a big church with a fresco unique in Cornwall as giving the Greek form of the St. Christopher legend, to Nare Point and the mouth of the Helford River. It is a question which is the more beautiful, this ten-mile long creek with its bold scenery or the softer, more feminine Fal. It rises a little above Helston, at Buttris, flows down to Gweek, where it broadens into an estuary and applies its waters to the nourishing of many oysters—which oysters were unkindly described by Lord Byron, when he stayed at Falmouth, as tasting of copper!
About a mile from Gweek is the "Tolvan," a large irregular slab of granite, near the centre of which is a hole. Weakly children were formerly brought to the "crickstone" and passed at sunrise, nine times, through this hole. The custom having fallen into disrepute, however, the Tolvan now forms part of a cottage fence.
Mawgan
Mawgan Church, which lies between Gweek and Trelowarren, the seat of the Vyvyans, has a brass to one of the Bassets inscribed:
"Shall we all die,
We shall die all,
All die shall we,
Die all we shall."
which quaint lines are also found on a tombstone at Gunwalloe and elsewhere. Trelowarren itself has some interesting pictures, in particular the Vandyke of Charles I. presented by Charles II. in acknowledgment of Sir Rd. Vyvyan's services to his father. This family also possesses the pearl necklace of Queen Henrietta Maria, in which she sat for the painting now at Hampden Court.