LAND'S END. [After J. M. W. Turner.
I cannot, at any rate, find fault with the circumstances of my own first journey to this spot, from London, many years ago. It was before photographic and other illustrations had multiplied so vastly, a time before even the untravelled were very well acquainted with the general appearance of the most distant and obscure places; and one could still cherish some feeling of curiosity. In those days the Great Western Railway, while issuing excursion tickets to Penzance and elsewhere, did so as though it were a weakness, of which it were well to say as little as possible. The hoardings did not in those times flame with pictures of places which were apparently created for the benefit of enterprising railway companies.
I made that excursion journey alone from Paddington to Penzance; and when the long day was drawing to its close and the train, having left Truro, and most of the other passengers, behind, began to wind through the mining-fields of Chacewater and Scorrier, where the deserted mines and their ruined chimney-stacks and 'count-houses looked in the gathering twilight like so many weird beasts of the world's youth, then, as I gazed pale-faced, from a corner of the unlighted carriage, I felt I was indeed coming to the Land's End. Perhaps, also a little sorry for having come. But that was the dramatic, and therefore the right, way. Penzance formed a cheerful interlude for the night, and then on the morrow came the ten miles' walk to Land's End itself.
One has plenty of company here. Brake-loads of people, cyclists, motor-cars, all day long: contemplative people, reverent people, disappointed and irreverent people, a little contemptuous. You can see the thought, "Is this all?" visibly expressed upon their faces. I don't know what they expected: perhaps something in the nature of that childish vision of an abysmal ending, with a horned and hoofed personal devil over the edge; or, at the very least, whales spouting and sharks swimming. And really the cliffs are but some sixty feet high, and it is not a difficult matter to scramble down to the shore, such a tiny exigent bit of shore as there is, at low-water.
The very worst thing to do, to get an adequate idea of Land's End, is to stand upon Land's End itself. It is not impressive, and you want that which you will hardly get here, except on a winter's day or late in the evening: solitude. It is, in fact, not so much the comparative tameness of the spot as the too much company that is really at the bottom of the not very reasoned dissatisfaction most people feel here; and the guides who wish to point out "Dr. Johnson's Head," the "Armed Knight," and other rock-resemblances, are a nuisance. No: go rather a little to the north of Land's End, and then look back upon it, and thence you will see the little crowds of people clustered about it, giving a much-needed idea of scale; and the natural arch beneath it then is visible, and Enys Dodnan and other rocky islets come properly into perspective, with the Longships lighthouse yonder; and, if it be sunset, you may see the round red face of the sun setting on the distant horizon, with some scattered black specks in front. Those are the Isles of Scilly, twenty-seven miles away. The sea in between is "Lethosow," traditionally the site of that lost land of Lyonesse which, with its one hundred and forty churches, was suddenly overwhelmed by the sea in a great storm, vaguely about a thousand years ago. Carew indeed gravely tells us that fishermen at the Seven Stones (a lonely reef thirteen miles north of St. Mary's Island, marked by a lightship) have drawn up with their nets pieces of doors and windows! The Fishermen even to this day call the spot "The City."
The Longships lighthouse is about a mile and a half out at sea, but such is the deceptive purity of the atmosphere that, to a Londoner, it looks less than half that distance. Carn Brâs, the reef on which it stands, rises forty-five feet above the sea at low water, and all around it are numerous rocks, marked on Ordnance maps "Kettles Bottom." The original lighthouse, built in 1793, was a very stumpy affair, and was rebuilt in 1872. It has a singularly tragic record. Four of the lighthouse men have at different times been washed off the rock and drowned, the last in 1877; another died in the lighthouse, one went raving mad, and another committed suicide. He lacerated himself severely and his two mates staunched his wounds by stuffing them with tow. They hoisted signals for assistance, but stormy weather severed all communication for some days, and he was at last landed only to die. It is a melancholy history, and that and the weird noises made by the sea in caverns under the reef make the Longships one of the least desirable of berths at the disposal of the Trinity House.
Here in November 1898 the steamship Bluejacket ran at full speed upon the rocks.
The Wolf lighthouse, eight miles from shore, is a picture of utter loneliness. It was built between 1862 and 1869 on the reef of that name, awash with the tide at high-water, and cost £62,726.