Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote us in driving through Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."
But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. I shall never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island. The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three children trotting to school or church, with their books under their arms. Unquestionably Cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county; religious-minded too, whether Methodist, Quaker, or other nonconformist sects, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative Church of England.
We passed St. Buryan's—a curious old church founded on the place where an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. A few stray cottages comprised the whole village. There was nothing special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and sunshine and solitude, till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the celebrated Logan or rocking-stone.
From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial, who can decide?
"Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving,
But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."
Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point on which it rests. Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked properly since.
By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the Lizard, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards. Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.
"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of them in answer to a question.
And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been much readier than his tongue. I, at least, should never have got even so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself—a somewhat anxious-minded old hen—and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the Logan.
"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must honestly confess I could not see it stir a single inch.