Cornwall

by G. E. Mitton

Leaving the castle on the mainland we come very quickly to the "little grey church on the windy hill" with its graveyard wall almost swallowed up in rising grass and turf, and some of the tombstones heavily buttressed against the prevailing winds. The church tower must have formed a mark for generations to men of the sea. It stands up straight and bleak with never a tree to hide it. The entrances to the graveyard are over a pavement of round stone bars placed a few inches apart so that the cattle dare not cross them for fear of slipping in between with their narrow hoofs. There are many marks of great age inside the building and the grey stone walls, that have been many times restored, have heard the strong west winds whistling round them from the sea and moaning the tale of the wrecks on the coast for many generations.

All along this coast are steep descents and strange rock freaks. To the north, across the gully leading down to Tintagel Castle, there is a mighty fracture which has split asunder a huge angle of rock, that looks as if it only needed a giant push to thrust it back into the fracture, closely fitting. Yet the chasm below is so sheer and stern that no one can climb up the sides. The sea-birds know it. It was a happy chance for them that made this citadel free from the sullying steps of man, and the steep slopes of brilliant green amid the bare rock surfaces are peppered all over with them as if with a handful of comfits.

The wild music of a host of gulls is the bagpipes of the coast, and arouses the same feelings in the breast of the sea-lover as the pipes do in that of a Scotsman. It is associated with the sound of the surge and the deadly thrust and heavy swell at the foot of the tough cliff. These things tug at the heart of a sea-lover. Lying amid the prickly furze, sheltered for a moment from the deadly wind-whistle, and gazing across that unscalable chasm, we have before us that gull-fortress exactly as it and its kind have been reproduced on the canvas of a well-known painter many many times. What business has he to do the thing so well that we are familiarized with the stern beauty of the haunts of the freest of birds, and feel when we see them in Nature that half the charm has been forestalled by the blunting of our sensibility?

It is no easy task to scramble along these rough cliff edges, and one not to be undertaken by cripples or invalids.

Not very far is one of the valleys so attractive to the Cornish folk, who find in them the growth and snugness that contrast so impressively with their bleak uplands.

Down the Rocky Valley a stream gushes merrily, tumbling in miniature waterfalls every few yards, and meeting at last the oncoming wave with a shock as the sweet water mingles with salt. Everything grows amazingly, and the huge rectangular rocks high overhead on each side of the gully, are mostly draped in masses of ivy. They resemble ruins, as Cornish rocks often do, so that it is frequently most difficult to distinguish the natural from the artificial. Most people's idea of ivy is neat flat clinging stuff but here it grows in lumps, yards in thickness, and decorated with brilliant bunches of black berries in the season when there is little else to compete with it. In the valley which leads from the nearest station, Camelford, to Tintagel just such masses may be seen. The road runs downhill for about four miles, leading mysteriously into what seems the mouth of a quarry. The sides are covered with untidy, loose clumps of furze, with mighty stones, and ever and always, in all corners, moss so rich that it might almost be mistaken for a bed of miniature ferns. Climb up on one side and you get a glimpse into a pool, with sides sheer like a hewn cistern, and something so weird and awful in its onyx depths that it suggests robbery with violence, suicides, hangings, and anything else gruesome, while the water drips perpetually from the green lines of slime on its sharp walls. Further on are the glistening piles of slate from a disused quarry. The real quarry of Delabole, famous far and wide, is behind, beside the railway, from which one may look right down into it. The road to Tintagel opens out at last and then, if we are lucky enough to be going westward at sunset, we may see suddenly a hazy glow as of a forest fire over all the wide expanse of sea and sky, and outlined against it the great black lumps of rock off Trebarwith Strand.

With Tintagel must be associated Boscastle but a few miles along the coast to the north, for hardly anyone who visits the one place will fail to see the other, yet the two are singularly different. Boscastle lies all down the sides of one of those curious clefts, which would be called chines or denes elsewhere, and in this instance the drop is extraordinarily steep. To go sheer down is a feat most people will find difficult, even on foot, and the new road has been designed to help. Even that would be accounted steep in any ordinary place. Down, down it goes into the neck of the funnel, and looks for all the world as if it were leading to a slate quarry, and then suddenly there opens out one of the grandest harbours on the coast, with huge sloping cliffs running alongside and curving round, making the entrance both difficult and dangerous. With their lovely curves and angles they add greatly to the vision. From the heights of these cliffs Lundy Island can be seen when the air is clear. There is an old saw:—

"When Lundy is high it will be dry
When Lundy is plain it will be rain
When Lundy is low it will be snow!"

If the word of the inhabitants is to be trusted the last contingency must come seldom indeed!

The name Boscastle comes from Bottreux or Botreaux-castle, spoken quickly and run together. The site of the castle, which had ceased to exist by Queen Elizabeth's reign, is still pointed out. The town lies in two parishes and the church of Forraburry, belonging to the one, stands well up on the western cliff.