Just round the corner from Tol Pedn is to be found one of the quaintest little fishing villages, Porthgwarra, where a tunnel has been cut through the solid rock to allow the fishermen to get down to their boats. The rocks are fine red granite, and with the brilliant blue of the sea on a sunny day and the yellow ochres of sand and sail there are "ready-made" pictures at every turn. Looking out from the darkness of the tunnel the colours are enhanced. One of the most attractive points about the many mighty caverns along the coast are the clean-cut, brilliantly clear pictures to be seen from their dark interiors.
All these and many other curious and fantastic things may be found by those sure of eye and foot. For one of the greatest charms of Cornwall is its variety and unexpectedness, at all events as regards the coast.
For a hundred people who go to Land's End it is safe to say only one visits the Lizard. Though the usual run of tourist conveyances have found it out, it is more difficult to get to than the western extremity, and is a little out of the way. Yet in the opinion of those who have seen both the Lizard beats even the fantastic scenery to the southward of Land's End.
The approach is nothing short of lamentable in its dulness. Except for an oasis about half-way across Goonhilly Downs, the wide, flat, dead-alive plateau occupying the heel of Cornwall, there is nothing to note. Even right on to the end the feeling of dismay grows. The meek green fields carry one down almost to the shore, for though we have come across a bit of heath en route which recalls how repeatedly we have been told that the Erica vagans grows here and nowhere else, we leave this behind and wind once more between grass fields toward the dreary little cluster of houses called Lizard-town, which looks not unlike a forsaken coast-guard station from the distance. To reach the famous Housel Bay Hotel we must branch off before getting to the town, and following a lane which looks as if it led merely to a lighthouse, we come quite suddenly on the building, facing due south in the centre of a little bay. Not until we have passed the hotel and got out to the cliff paths does the surprising interest of the scenery begin to unveil itself, and the orderly sanity of the fields, which vexed our eager souls, is forgotten. On the two horns of the bay stand the flashing lighthouse and Lloyds' signal station. We are here at the most southerly, as we have just been at the most westerly, point of our country.
The cliffs are carved into many fantastic and bewildering shapes. Before we have got very far we are brought up short by an immense hole or funnel, cut clean-lipped from the short turf, and just the shape of one of those paper twists shop-keepers make for sweets. It is much larger in circumference than the Funnel at Tol Pedn. No railing protects the edge; people at the Lizard are supposed to have their wits about them. By lying down flat and approaching cautiously, we can peer over and see that here also the sea runs in on the floor. This is one of the cliff vagaries made within the memory of man. On the night of February 19, 1847, the hole appeared suddenly, yet so quietly that no one knew of it until it was seen. There had apparently been a shell or roof which had given way as the sea scooped out the earth from below. Yet that such a sudden catastrophe is possible shows how little we know about what goes on under our feet.
A little further on a column of spray shoots in fluffy steam from a blow-hole every few seconds after the last billow has fallen away. Near it a huge boulder perched on a great plinth balances at an uncertain angle. How did it get there? At every turn "chairs" of stone extend a silent invitation to us to seat ourselves and gaze at the ships passing and repassing in a silent and endless procession.
The Serpentine rock streaked with hornblende, felspar, slate and green-stone, shows changing colours like a pigeon's breast. It weathers into columns and pillars and arches and caverns, as if on purpose to delight the hearts of children of a larger growth, too old for spades and pails. Only a mile or two away at Kynance Cove these wonders come to perfection in the torn and twisted rocks lying in masses on the shore, which is covered with shining sand in summer but scoured black and stony by the rough seas in winter. By Caerthillian Cove we may pass to Pentreath beach and Yellow Carn and thus to Kynance. At places the cliffs have broken away forming a natural quarry and here come the people from the little town above, and search for well-coloured fragments of serpentine to fashion into candlesticks, and brooches, and ash-trays to sell to tourists. Dark red is a rare and popular colour and dark green also; chocolate with splashes of green, like variegated marble, is often seen. There is little fishing to be done on this wild rigid coast, and beyond some rough farming and their "serpentine" shops, it is hard to see what the population live upon. The rocks at the Lizard are split more often horizontally than vertically, and instead of being sharp upright columns as the granite fragments are at Land's End, these are broad lumps giving a curious sense of steady untiring watching with uplifted heads.
CAERTHILIAN COVE
One interesting point about rock scenery is that it changes so little in the course of years that the impressions of those who saw it long ago are still not out of date. There are two very simple little books, two generations old now, but full of charm when read on the spot, Mrs. Craik's An Unsentimental Journey in Cornwall and the Rev. C. A. Johns's A Week at the Lizard, 1848. Mrs. Craik, who wrote John Halifax, Gentleman, came here with two nieces near the end of her life, and gives a picture of Lizard-town which might stand to-day. With a horse and "shay" they visited the various points of interest along the coast, climbed into the dank caves and mounted the slippery weed-strewn rocks. It was a bold journey to make at the time, and their taste was in advance of most of their contemporaries who had not learnt to delight in the grand and desolate places of the earth. The Rev. C. A. Johns is well known as the author of Wild Flowers of the Field, which ran through numerous editions and is the most popular of his many natural-history books.