Cornwall

by G. E. Mitton

It is an odd feature of Cornwall that however bare and treeless some parts are, and they could hardly be barer in the Hebrides, yet the towns are generally warmly encompassed by trees. It is so at Penzance and it is so here. Woods rise behind the houses, and the richness of the evergreens makes a shelter even in winter, while the ferns are inexhaustible in number and of great variety. The season is only for two months of the year, August and September, during which months the place is packed and the numerous inhabitants who live upon the yearly godsend of the "foreigners'" money, are hard put to it to supply accommodation; but all the year round there is a certain number of visitors who find in the clean fresh air, the glorious golf-links, second to none, and the wide views, just what they need. It is true that tiresome change at St. Erth junction has to be faced before reaching the town, but this is nothing compared with the days when the junction was the very nearest point of rail, and the rest of the journey had to be completed by road. This was altered in 1877 and the innovation was a great factor in the growth of the town. The road approach from this direction is well graded and has a good surface, but from the Zennor side so much cannot be said. A new road is being cut through and the approach improved, but even when it is completed, there must still be the long and precarious descent through a squalid part of the town to face.

A STREET IN ST. IVES

The region of the visitors is mainly above the station, facing Porthminster Bay, where terraces of houses exist for the sole purpose of providing accommodation, but there is a secondary part above Porthmeor Bay where rows of neat little houses claim their share. Down on the harbour front and curving round behind it is the old town with its indescribable jumble of what can scarcely be called architecture; where outside staircases, and overhanging first-floor rooms with no visible means of support, twisted archways and narrow passages are inextricably mingled. The names of some of these places are quite delightful, Puddingbag Lane, Chy-an-Chy, Street-an-Garrow, Bunkers' Hill, and the Digey, while away westward is Clodgy Point. The old inhabitants must have had a genius for nomenclature.

St. Ives is the haunt of a colony of artists who rival those at Newlyn, and what with artists, fishing and visitors, the rest of the inhabitants manage somehow to live. But the fishing is not what it was; gone are the golden days when the shoals of pilchards announced by the "huers" from the Malakoff bastion were sufficient to provide a good livelihood for the whole town:

"The pilchards are expected on the coast in October, when their appearance gives rise to general excitement at a place like St. Ives. Often have been described the patient watching of the huers on the cliffs, who with a huge trumpet at length announce their joyful discovery, and by the waving of bushes telegraph the movements of the shoal marked by the colour of the sea and its hovering escort of gulls; the rush of men, women, and children to the shore with shouts of heva! heva! which is Cornish for the classic Eureka; the marshalling of the seine boats; the shooting of the huge nets; the enclosure of the luckless victims by myriads; then the hurried orgy of capturing, pickling, and storing, stimulated by its promise of prosperity to the whole place."

Alas! they come but scantily now and there is not much of any sort of fishing to be had. Though just enough to account for the brown-sailed boats lying in the harbour and the blue-jerseyed men belonging to them without which, it may be presumed, the artists would find some paucity of material and perhaps disappear also.

St. Ives would not be a Cornish town if it lacked hills and there are plenty to give exercise to leg muscles; but yet there are some places almost flat, and one has only to descend to the sands to secure a perfectly horizontal walk!

This is not a guide book and there is no need to go into detail about the ancient church in the very midst of the workers, or the restored tiny chapel out on the "island" that really once was an island, which overlooks as in blessing the drying nets that blacken the green of the grass on the slopes below. The chunk or bite out of this island on the east is Porthgwidden Cove, and the Foresand runs from here to Penolva Point whence begin Porthminster Sands. On the hill behind the town rises the hideous Knill monument where the little girls dance around on July 25 every fifth year, in memory of the conventional alderman who left such directions in his will, and yet after all is not buried here.