THE DEVIL'S FRYING PAN, NEAR CADGWITH.
Uncomfortable, certainly, as we sat with our feet stuck in the long grass to prevent slipping down the slope—a misadventure which would have been, to say the least, awkward. Those boiling waves, roaring each after each through the arch below; and those jagged rocks, round which innumerable sea-birds were flying—one could quite imagine that were any luckless vessel to find itself in or near the Frying-pan, it would never get out again.
To meditative minds there is something very startling in the perpetual contrast between the summer tourist-life, so cheerful and careless, and the winter life of the people here, which must be so full of privations; for one half the year there is nothing to do, no market for serpentine, and almost no fishing possible: they have to live throughout the dark days upon the hay made while the sun shines.
"No, no," said one of the Lizard folk, whom I asked if there was much drunkenness thereabout, for I had seen absolutely none; "no, us don't drink; us can't afford it. Winter's a bad time for we—sometimes for four months a man doesn't earn a halfpenny. He has to save in summer, or he'd starve the rest of the year."
Which apparently is not altogether bad for him. I have seldom seen, in any part of England or Scotland, such an honest, independent, respectable race as the working people on this coast, and indeed throughout Cornwall.
We left with regret the pretty village, resolving to come back again in a day or two; it was barely three miles from the Lizard, though the difference in climate was said to be so great. And then we drove back across the bleak down and through the keen "hungry" sea-air, which made dinner a matter of welcome importance. And without dwelling too much on the delights of the flesh—very mild delights after all—I will say that the vegetables grown in the garden, and the grapes in the simple green-house beside it, were a credit to Cornwall, especially so near the sea-coast.
We had just time to dine, repose a little, and communicate our address to our affectionate friends at home—so as to link ourselves for a few brief days with the outside world—when appeared the punctual Charles.
"Don't be afraid, ladies, he's had a good rest,"—this was the important animal about whose well-being we were naturally anxious. Charles patted his shoulder, and a little person much given to deep equine affections tenderly stroked his nose. He seemed sensible of the attention and of what was expected from him, and started off, as lively as if he had been idle for a week, across the Lizard Down and Pradenack Down to Mullion.