LXVII.
But this is a turning out of the path; let us on to Land’s End, up Newlyn’s lanes, whose inhabitants fall into poses as the artist passes along, so sophisticated are these one-time simple folk become.
Here winding lanes lead up to the highroad, through a country where “stone walls do not a prison make,” but are fashioned into hedges; where, as you near the end of all things, trees become scarce as corn proverbially was in Egypt aforetime, finally ceasing altogether, incapable of withstanding the strenuous salt winds from the Atlantic.
SAINT BURYAN.
The villages you pass—as Saint Buryan and Saint Sennen, storm-beaten and ashen-grey, wear a rugged, uncanny look, that brightens into cheerfulness only in the strongest sunshine of summer, when they become even as Saharas for dryness.
The road takes its way past Crowz-an-Wra—name of horrid seeming—on to a level bounded by the trim hills of Bartinney—Chapel Carn Brê in one direction, and rounded off by the watery horizon on the other, past the Quakers’ Burial Ground, a little parallelogram of moorland walled in with walls of grey lichen-stained granite, without door or gateway of any kind—a dismal spot, overgrown with rank grasses. Abandon hope all ye who inter here!
Saint Germoe.
Passing through the desolation of Sennen village, with its grey granite church, in whose little graveyard lie many dead sailors and fishermen, in less than a mile you come to the westernmost point of England. Here, with the growth of touring, modern enterprise has supplanted the Sennen Inn, the original First and Last Inn in England, according which way you fare. A large building, close by the cliff’s edge, has usurped the old sign, and here the Penzance coaches set down their loads of sightseers to consume sandwiches and a variety of liquids upon the short grass.