BOSCASTLE.
That spring, trickling down from the very top of the rock, and making a verdant space all round it—what a treasure it must have been to the unknown inhabitants who, centuries ago, entrenched themselves here—for offence or defence—against the main-land. Peacefully it flowed on still, with the little ferns growing, and the sheep nibbling beside it. We idle tourists alone occupied that solitary height where those long-past warlike races—one succeeding the other—lived and loved, fought and died.
The chapel—where the high altar and a little burial-ground beside it can still be traced—is clearly much later than Arthur's time. However, there are so few data to go upon, and the action of sea-storms destroys so much every year, that even to the learned archæologist, Tintagel is a great mystery, out of which the imaginative mind may evolve almost anything it likes.
We sat a long time on the top of the rock—realising only the one obvious fact that our eyes were gazing on precisely the same scene, seawards and coastwards, that all these long-dead eyes were accustomed to behold. Beaten by winds and waves till the grey of its slate formation is nearly black; worn into holes by the constant action of the tide which widens yearly the space between it and the main-land, and gnaws the rock below into dangerous hollows that in time become sea-caves, Tintagel still remains—and one marvels that so much of it does still remain—a landmark of the cloudy time between legend and actual history.
Whether the ruin on the opposite height was once a portion of Tintagel Castle, before the sea divided it, making a promontory into an island—or whether it was the Castle Terrabil, in which Gorlois, Ygrayne's husband, was slain—no one now can say. That both the twin fortresses were habitable till Elizabeth's time, there is evidence to prove. But since then they have been left to decay, to the silent sheep and the screeching ravens, including doubtless that ghostly chough, in whose shape the soul of King Arthur is believed still to revisit the familiar scene.
We did not see that notable bird—though we watched with interest two tame and pretty specimens of its almost extinct species walking about in a flower-garden in the village, and superstitiously cherished there. We were told that to this day no Cornishman likes to shoot a chough or a raven. So they live and breed in peace among the twin ruins, and scream contentedly to the noisy stream which dances down the rocky hollow from Trevena, and leaps into the sea at Porth Hern—the "iron gate," over against Tintagel. Otherwise, all is solitude and silence.