the CORNISH COAST south.
CHAPTER I
NEW BRIDGE—THE TAMAR—MORWELL ROCKS—CALSTOCK—COTHELE—PENTILLIE—LANDULPH
The southern portion of the Cornish Coast may be said to begin at the head of the navigation of the river Tamar, at Weir Head, to which the excursion steamers from Plymouth can come at favourable tides, or a little lower, at Morwellham Quay, where the depth of water permits of more frequent approach. But barges can penetrate somewhat higher than even Weir Head, proceeding through the canal locks at Netstakes, almost as far as that ancient work, New Bridge, which carries the high road from Dartmoor and Tavistock out of Devon into Cornwall.
From hence, then, at New Bridge, a hoary Gothic work of five pointed arches with picturesquely projecting cutwaters, the south coast of Cornwall may most fitly be traced. It is a constant surprise to the explorer in England to discover that almost invariably the things that are called "new" are really of great age. They were once new and remarkable things. There is a "New Bridge" across the Thames, but it is the oldest now existing. The town of Newmarket, in Cambridgeshire, was a new thing in 1227, and there are other "Newmarkets" of even greater age. The subject might be pursued at great length; but sufficient has been said to prepare those who come this way not to expect some modern triumph of engineering in iron or steel.
NEW BRIDGE.
New Bridge, three and a half miles west of Tavistock, is approached from that town by the old coach road and the new, descending with varying degrees of steepness to the river. As you come down the older and steeper and straighter road, you see the bridge far below, and the first glimpse of Cornwall beyond it, where the lofty hills of Gunnislake rise, scattered with the whitewashed cottages of the miners engaged in the tin mines of the district. They, and the large factory buildings below, near the river level, are not beautiful, and yet the scene is of great picturesqueness and singularity. A weird building beside the bridge on the Devonshire side, with two of its angles chamfered off, is an old toll-house. Mines in working on the Devonshire side belong to the Duke of Bedford, who has a fine park and residence near by, at Endsleigh, which he would not (according to his own account), be able to maintain, together with various other residences, including the palatial Woburn Abbey, were it not for his vast income from the ground-rents of what he was pleased to style "a few London lodging-houses."
The surrounding country is dominated for many miles by the cone-shaped Kit Hill, the crest of the elevated district of Hingston Down, crowned by a monumental mine-chimney.
"Hingston Down, well wrought,
Is worth London, dear bought."