Every one works in Scilly. I have seen it stated that Scillonians never hurry. The person who made that statement can never have witnessed the desperate efforts often made to pack the flowers, and get them on to the quay at St. Mary's in time for the steamer, which, in winter, when the flower-harvest is at its height, sails only thrice a week. If the steamer is missed, that consignment is worth just nothing at all, for it has to be on sale in London the next morning.
Visitors to Scilly, who commonly travel in summer and autumn, see nothing of these activities. Then, if ever, the islanders who are flower-farmers take things easily, and the little fields where the daffodils and the narcissi grow are of comparatively small interest, being bare of leaves or blossoms.
The fields are all carefully hedged round with shrubs calculated to ward off the winds, which are the farmer's greatest enemy. They are hedges of tamarisk, of laurel, and of escallonia; but chiefly of escallonia, a small-leaved evergreen shrub with a close-growing habit. Strangers at the first sight of its small delicate pink, waxlike blossoms are taken with delight, but it is to the islanders a mere commonplace. Some fields are large, but most very small, giving less chance for the winds to come and play havoc, and the hedges grow to great heights. Picking the blossoms begins as early as Christmas and generally ends in March, when the season "in England" begins, and Scilly rests from its labours, happy in the knowledge that it has skimmed the cream of the trade.
Photographs of fields rich in daffodil and narcissus blossom are familiar, but not readily to be understood, unless on the assumption that they represent a glut in the market, rendering it not worth while to pick them; for the practice is so to arrange the crop that there is a succession of blossoms in the two months and a half, and always to pick them before they are actually opened in full. They are then taken to long glass sheds, and having been tied in bunches of a dozen, are placed in water. Packing then follows. In the height of the season the school-children have a month's holiday from school, especially to help in the work of picking and packing. There are about four dozen bunches to a box, and 240 boxes to a ton. Often the packing is continued all night and into the early hours of the morning. Steam-launches bring laden boats in from the out-islands by nine o'clock in the morning, and an hour later there are perhaps fifty tons of flowers aboard the steamer.
Such are now the chief activities of the Scilly Isles, and they, with fishing and piloting, make up the entire life of the archipelago. Formerly it was new potatoes, and before that a little kelp-burning, and before that a good deal of smuggling kept the islanders alive.
Whence the isles derive their name no man knows. They are first mentioned by Ausonius, who styles them Sillinæ Insulæ. Some declare them to be named from a branch of the ancient Silures; others consider "silya," a name for the conger, to be the origin; and yet others think "sulleh," the sun-rocks, to be the true derivation. There are now five inhabited islands. The largest of these, St. Mary's, contains 1,620 acres and a population of 1,200; Tresco has 700 acres; St. Martin's, 550 acres, St. Agnes, 350 acres, and Bryher, 300 acres. Samson, last inhabited in 1855, has 80 acres. The smaller and uninhabited islets are Annet, 40 acres, St. Helens, 40 acres: Teän and Great Ganniley, each 35 acres, Arthur, 30 acres, Great and Little Ganniornic, 10 acres, Northwithiel and Gweal, each 8 acres, and Little Ganniley, 5 acres. Besides these, there are some hundreds of rocky islets and rocks.
The Isles of Scilly have never been too remote for conquerors to descend upon and subdue them. Thus Athelstan not only subjugated Cornwall in the tenth century, but subdued Scilly as well; and they were fortified in the time of Queen Elizabeth, when the still-existing Star Castle, overlooking St. Mary's, was built, as the initials, E. R. and the date 1593, remain to prove. Scilly was not a safe place of refuge for Prince Charles in 1645. He landed at St. Mary's from Falmouth on March 4th, but the fleets of the Parliament rendered it advisable for him to depart for Guernsey on April 17th. But the isles became, only four years later, the headquarters of a determined band of Royalists under Sir John Grenville, whose privateering exploits so dealt with the shipping trade that it was found necessary to fit out an expedition against him. He was reduced and forced to capitulate in June 1651.
From early times the greater part of the Islands belonged to Tavistock Abbey. In 1539, when the Abbey was suppressed, they reverted to the Crown. From the time of Queen Elizabeth, the Godolphin family and Dukes of Leeds held them on lease, and so continued, except during the Commonwealth period, until 1831. A lease from the Duchy of Cornwall was then taken up by Augustus Smith, a landowner from Hertfordshire, who thus became the first of the Smith and Smith-Dorrien "Lords Proprietors," whose rule, from their residence on Tresco, has been absolute.
Augustus Smith was an autocrat, but a benevolent one. He found the islanders a half-starved race of smugglers and kelp-burners, and by the time of his death, in 1872, left them a prosperous community.
St. Mary's Island is of irregular shape, and is nine miles in circumference. The one town of Scilly, "Hugh Town," stands on the low sandy isthmus of a rocky, almost islanded, peninsula, nearly awash at very high tides, and with two sea-fronts. Over it towers the hill called "The Garrison," crested by Star Castle, so called from its ground-plan of a seven-pointed star; or, some say from "Stella Maris," Star of the Sea; a somewhat unlikely Roman Catholic dedication, considering the Protestant times in which it was built. There has been no garrison here since 1863. A tall wind-gauge stands near by, on the hill-top.