The Cornish coast, in spite of its picturesque character and points of interest, is not so well known by tourists and artists as it should be.
Falmouth has an interesting history. When Sir Walter Raleigh visited it on his return from the Guinea coast, where guinea-pigs came from, he found but one solitary house outside of the family mansion of an ancient county family. His quick eye noted the admirable harbour and entrance, the former capable of holding 500 vessels, and he represented to the Council the advantage of making it a port. From that time its fortunes grew; soon it became a packet station for the arrival and departure of the foreign mails. Now on the lofty headland, St. Anthony’s Point, a lighthouse, flashing brilliantly every twenty seconds, serves to guide the entering ships and steamships, which have sometimes numbered 2,000 in one year. It has a patent slip, dry and other docks, and all conveniences for shipping interests. Connected with the town is an extensive oyster and trawling fishery, and it has a little fleet of pilot cutters. It has a sailors’ Bethel, with library and reading-room; and the Royal Cornwall Sailors’ Home is a prominent institution. Another of the “institutions” of Falmouth might be copied to advantage elsewhere. Every boatman who rescues a drowning person is entitled to receive a reward of one guinea.
The Rev. C. A. Johns tells us that near Gunwalloe, Cornwall, the land rises, and the coast becomes bold for a short distance. The cliffs, though not lofty, are precipitous, and offer no chance of escape to any unfortunate vessel which may chance to be driven in within reach of the rocks. About the year 1785, a vessel laden with wool, and having also on board two and a half tons of money, was driven ashore a few hundred yards west of the church, and soon went to pieces. Ever since, at intervals, after a storm, dollars have been picked up on the beach, but never in sufficient numbers to compensate for the time wasted in the search. No measures, however, on a large scale for recovering the precious cargo were adopted until the year 1845, when people were startled to hear that a party of adventurers were going to sink a dollar-mine in the sea.
This is not the only unsuccessful search for treasure which has been made at Gunwalloe. In the sand-banks near the church, or, as others say, at Kennack Cove, the notorious buccaneer Captain Avery is reported to have buried several chests of treasure previous to his leaving England on the voyage from which he never returned. So strongly did this opinion prevail that Mr. John Knill, collector of the Customs at St. Ives, procured, about the year 1770, a grant of treasure trove, and expended some money in a fruitless search.
The vessel had gone to pieces between two rocks at a short distance from the base of the cliff, and here it was proposed to construct a kind of coffer-dam, from which the water was to be pumped out, and the dollars to be picked up at leisure. Mad though the scheme was, operations were actually commenced; a path was cut in the face of the cliff, iron rods were fixed into the rocks, and several beams of timber laid down, when a breeze set in from the south-west, and in the course of a few hours the work of as many weeks was destroyed. The wood-work was ripped up as effectually as though it had been a mere wicker cage, and the coast was soon lined with the fragments. It is not likely the attempt will be renewed. The speculators were in this instance strangers, which accounts for the enterprise having been taken in hand at all, for any one acquainted with the coast must have been well aware that though the sea is tolerably calm sometimes for many consecutive days, it is never so for a period long [pg 223]enough to allow the completion of a work which requires time, and which, in the most favourable weather, is beset with difficulties; indeed, an ordinary breeze setting on this shore excites the sea to such a state of fury that certainly no unfinished mechanical structure could withstand the force of the breakers.
The lower classes of Cornwall are generally Methodists, and decidedly religious. In Scotland also, strict Sabbatarianism is the rule among the poor. The Northern Ensign, in reply to a journalist who had been advocating the prosecution of the herring fishery on the Sabbath day, had an article showing that there is no class in Scotland, taken as a whole, who love, revere, and enjoy the Sabbath more than the men and women who live by the sea. At Wick, the largest herring fishery station in the world, where the fishers congregate from all parts of the coast, at ten o’clock one Sabbath morning not a single fisherman was to be seen in the street; in half an hour after knots of men and women were wending their way to the various places of worship, and when the church bell announced the hour of meeting the streets were almost impassable—men, women, and children, all cleanly dressed, and not in working clothes, streamed this way and that to church.
No visitor to Cornwall ever misses the Lizard, the most southerly headland promontory in Britain, a piece of rocky land which has caused more vivid and varied emotions than any other on our coasts. The emigrant leaving, as he often thinks, and often wrongly thinks, his native land for ever; the soldier bound for distant battle-fields, and the sailor for far distant foreign ports; the lover just parted from his beloved one; the husband from his wife; have each and all strained their eyes for a last parting glimpse of an isle they loved so much and yet might never see again! And when the lighthouses’ flash could no longer be discerned, how sadly did one and all “turn into” their berths to think, aye, “perchance to dream,” of the happy past and the doubtful future. How different the emotions of the homeward bound, the emigrant with his gathered gold, the bronzed veteran who has come out of the fiercest conflict unscathed, and the sailor who has safely passed the ordeal of fearful climes; the lover ready now for the girl he adores; and the husband jubilant with such good news for his faithful spouse. The first glimpse of that strangely-named rocky point is the signal for heartiest huzzas and congratulation.
The Lizard Rock owes its name, according to various authorities, firstly to its form; secondly to the serpent-like colour of its cliffs; and thirdly is said to be derived from the Cornish word Liazherd, signifying a projecting headland. Its two splendid lights can be seen out at sea at a distance of twenty miles.
WRECK OF A STEAM-SHIP NEAR LIZARD POINT.