Past this, the point of Carn Voel is reached, with the "Lion's Den" cavern. Ahead, the heights of Pardenick Point rise in columnar majesty, the point whence Turner painted his view of the Land's End, that extraordinarily fantastic and darkling composition, in which the rocks on the hillsides look more like sheep than rocks.
There stretch the stacked rocks of Bolerium, the Land's End, in Cornish "Pedn-an-Laaz," and in Welsh, "Pen-Gwaed," the Headland of Blood; in effect not remotely resembling bundles of cigars set on end.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAND'S END DISTRICT—ST. BURYAN—SENNEN—LAND'S END—THE LONGSHIPS LIGHTHOUSE.
Most strangers obtain their first sight of Land's End at the conclusion of a direct walk or drive from Penzance. It is generally the first place the stranger desires to see, and he makes directly for it along the high road that runs inland.
The Land's End district, stretching westward from Penzance, forms the hundred of Penwith, a Celtic word meaning the "great, or chief, headland"; and Land's End itself was formerly "Penwithstart," a curious word produced by the association of the Celtic "Penwith," which had in very early times come to mean the district in general, with the purely Saxon "steort," or "start," a word which indicates a projecting point: an object that in fact juts, or starts, out. Hence, for example, the name of the Start, that prominent headland in South Devon, one of the most salient promontories along our coasts.
The aspect of the country, as you proceed from Penzance into the Land's End district, is quite in keeping with the name. Everything appears to resign itself to an ending. The town of Penzance looks like a last great urban effort, and the railway itself seems to come, tired out, to the shores of Mount's Bay, and to expire, rather than come to a terminus. It cannot make an effort even to get up into the town, but stops on the doorstep, so to say. And the large white granite station, with iron and glass roof, more resembles an aviary than a railway terminus, the sparrows assembling there in multitudes on the tie-rods, and chattering in almost deafening fashion. In those very considerable intervals between the coming and going of trains one may stand on the platform and not be able to hold a conversation, owing to the sparrows.
EARLY HOME OF LORD EXMOUTH.