Camelford of to-day is certainly not the Camelot of King Arthur—but a very respectable, commonplace little town, much like other country towns; the same genteel linendrapers' and un-genteel ironmongers' shops; the same old-established commercial inn, and a few ugly, but solid-looking private houses, with their faces to the street and their backs nestled in gardens and fields. Some of the inhabitants of these said houses were to be seen taking a quiet afternoon stroll. Doubtless they are eminently respectable and worthy folk, leading a mild provincial life like the people in Miss Martineau's Deerbrook, or Miss Austen's Pride and Prejudice—of which latter quality they have probably a good share.
We let our horses rest, but we ourselves felt not the slightest wish to rest at Camelford, so walked leisurely on till we came to the little river Camel, and to Slaughter Bridge, said to be the point where King Arthur's army was routed and where he received his death-wound. A slab of stone, some little distance up the stream, is still called "King Arthur's Tomb." But as his coffin is preserved, as well as his Round Table, at Winchester; where, according to mediæval tradition, the bodies of both Arthur and Guinevere were found, and the head of Guinevere had yellow hair; also that near the little village of Davidstow, is a long barrow, having in the centre a mound, which is called "King Arthur's grave"—inquiring minds have plenty of "facts" to choose from. Possibly at last they had better resort to fiction, and believe in Arthur's disappearance, as Tennyson makes him say,
"To the island-valley of Avillion ...
Where I may heal me of my grievous wound."
Dozmare Pool we found so far out of our route that we had to make a virtue of necessity, and imagine it all; the melancholy moorland lake, with the bleak hill above it, and stray glimpses of the sea beyond. A ghostly spot, and full of many ghostly stories besides the legend of Arthur. Here Tregeagle, the great demon of Cornwall, once had his dwelling, until, selling his soul to the devil, his home was sunk to the bottom of the mere, and himself is heard of stormy nights, wailing round it with other ghost-demons, in which the Cornish mind still lingeringly believes. Visionary packs of hounds; a shadowy coach and horses, which drives round and round the pool, and then drives into it; flitting lights, kindled by no human hand, in places where no human foot could go—all these tales are still told by the country folk, and we might have heard them all. Might also have seen, in fancy, the flash of the "brand Excalibur"; heard the wailing song of the three queens; and pictured the dying Arthur lying on the lap of his sister Morgane la Faye. But, I forgot, this is an un-sentimental journey.
The Delabole quarries are as un-sentimental a place as one could desire. It was very curious to come suddenly upon this world of slate, piled up in enormous masses on either side the road, and beyond them hills of debris, centuries old—for the mines have been worked ever since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Houses, walls, gates, fences, everything that can possibly be made of slate, is made. No green or other colour tempers the all-pervading shade of bluish-grey, for vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the quarries is abolished, the result of which would be rather dreary, save for the cheerful atmosphere of wholesome labour, the noise of waggons, horses, steam-engines—such a contrast to the silence of the deserted tin-mines.
But, these Delabole quarries passed, silence and solitude come back again. Even the yearly-increasing influx of tourists fails to make the little village of Trevena anything but a village, where the said tourists lounge about in the one street, if it can be called a street, between the two inns and the often-painted, picturesque old post-office. Everything looked so simple, so home-like, that we were amused to find we had to get ready for a table d'hôte dinner, in the only available eating room where the one indefatigable waitress, a comely Cornish girl, who seemed Argus and Briareus rolled into one, served us—a party small enough to make conversation general, and pleasant and intelligent enough to make it very agreeable, which does not always happen at an English hotel.
Then we sallied out to find the lane which leads to Tintagel Castle, or Castles—for one sits in the sea, the other on the opposite heights in the mainland, with power of communicating by the narrow causeway which now at least exists between the rock and the shore. This seems to confirm the legend, how the luckless husband of Ygrayne shut up himself and his wife in two castles, he being slain in the one, and she married to the victorious King Uther Pendragon, in the other.
Both looked so steep and dangerous in the fast-coming twilight that we thought it best to attempt neither, so contented ourselves with a walk on the cliffs and the smooth green field which led thither. Leaning against a gate, we stood and watched one of the grandest out of the many grand sunsets which had blessed us in Cornwall. The black rock of Tintagel filled the foreground; beyond, the eye saw nothing but sea, the sea which covers vanished Lyonesse, until it met the sky, a clear amber with long bars like waves, so that you could hardly tell where sea ended and sky began. Then into it there swam slowly a long low cloud, shaped like a boat, with a raised prow, and two or three figures sitting at the stern.
"King Arthur and the three queens," we declared, and really a very moderate imagination could have fancied it this. "But what is that long black thing at the bow?"