THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK.
Still, though a narrow and giddy path, there was a path, and the exploit, though a little risky, was not fool-hardy. We should have been bitterly sorry not to have done it—not to have stood for one grand ten minutes, where in all our lives we may never stand again, at the farthest point where footing is possible, gazing out upon that magnificent circle of sea which sweeps over the submerged "land of Lyonesse," far, far away, into the wide Atlantic.
There were just two people standing with us, clergymen evidently, and one, the guide told us, was "the parson at St. Sennen." We spoke to him, as people do speak, instinctively, when mutually watching such a scene, and by and by we mentioned the name of the long-dead curate of St. Sennen's.
The "parson" caught instantly at the name.
"Mr. ——? Oh, yes, my father knew him quite well. He used constantly to walk across from Sennen to our house, and take us children long rambles across the cliffs, with a volume of Southey or Wordsworth under his arm. He was a fine young fellow in those days, I have heard, and an excellent clergyman. And he afterwards married a very nice girl from the north somewhere."
"Yes;" we smiled. The "nice girl" was now a sweet silver-haired little lady of nearly eighty; the "fine young fellow" had long since departed; and the boy was this grave middle-aged gentleman, who remembered both as a tradition of his youth. What a sermon it all preached, beside this eternal rock, this ever-moving, never-changing sea!
But time was passing—how fast it does pass, minutes, ay, and years! We bade adieu to our known unknown friend, and turned our feet backwards, cautiously as ever, stopping at intervals to listen to the gossip of our guide.
"Yes, ladies, that's the spot—you may see the hoof-mark—where General Armstrong's horse fell over; he just slipped off in time, but the poor beast was drowned. And here, over that rock, happened the most curious thing. I wouldn't have believed it myself, only I knew a man that saw it with his own eyes. Once a bullock fell off into the pool below there—just look, ladies." (We did look, into a perfect Maëlstrom of boiling waves.) "Everybody thought he was drowned, till he was seen swimming about unhurt. They fished him up, and exhibited him as a curiosity."
And again, pointing to a rock far out in the sea.
"That's the Brisons. Thirty years ago a ship went to pieces there, and the captain and his wife managed to climb on to that rock. They held on there for two days and a night, before a boat could get at them. At last they were taken off one at a time, with rockets and a rope; the wife first. But the rope slipped and she fell into the water. She was pulled out in a minute or so, and rowed ashore, but they durst not tell her husband she was drowned. I was standing on the beach at Whitesand Bay when the boat came in. I was only a lad, but I remember it well, and her too lifted out all dripping and quite dead. She was such a fine woman."