Some there are who are drawn by a similar magnet to the Lizard, the most southerly point of our land, but the attraction is not so potent. From time immemorial John o' Groat's to Land's End has formed the measure of Britain.
For very many years Cornwall has been known for its fine coast scenery, but wild and desolate scenery was not the fashion in Early Victorian days, and there were comparatively few brave souls who penetrated so far. It is rather remarkable to notice how many books about the charm of Cornwall appeared in the sixties, doubtless due to the opening of the Cornwall Railway in 1859. There is Wilkie Collins's Rambles Beyond Railways, 1861; J. O. Halliwell's Rambles in Western Cornwall and J. T. Blight's Land's End, the same year, followed by Richard Edmonds's Land's End District the next year.
But Cornwall really began to be known by hundreds of persons in place of tens about 1904, and since then the number of visitors has increased to thousands.
This book is not written by a Cornishman, for the very obvious reason that no Cornishman could for one instant think impartially of his Duchy, any more than you could expect a Yorkshireman to believe that the "rest of England" was in any way to be compared with Yorkshire. The more individual and peculiar a person is, the more deeply is he loved by those who really know him, provided that he has lovable qualities. No characterless good soul ever wins the heartfelt devotion that is the meed of those who have unexpected kinks and corners in their personality, and in the same way a flat, featureless country, carefully cultivated and uninteresting, will never win to itself the true land-love felt for one that is varied, rough maybe, rugged a bit, and in a hundred ways surprising. Of all things human nature hates boredom, and the man or the country who can win free of any trace of boredom insures a reward. Cornwall has in a peculiar measure gained the devotion of its own people. Not only on account of its unexpectedness, but because it stands in some measure apart from the rest of England. The Celtic blood of its older inhabitants, while making them akin to the Welsh and Irish, cuts them off from the Saxons, whom so often and so heartily in the old days they fought.
The geographical position of Cornwall, with three sides washed by the sea, and even the "land" boundary mainly marked by a river, has influenced its sons, who, never being far from the sound of the surging waves, have gained something of the robust aloofness of the sailor. They are friendly to all, but guarded nevertheless; and standing thus apart, marked out by their territory, with small chance to mingle with inhabitants of other counties, the clan feeling among them has grown to be analogous to that of the clans in Scotland. All other Britishers are to the true Cornishman "foreigners." How then could a man so imbued with his own and his Duchy's place in regard to the "rest of England" write a book which should convey in any way the real characteristics of his land?
It would be a feat impossible.
The rugged outlines of a well-known face lose meaning with years of familiarity, and are taken for granted; thus it is with landmarks in Cornwall, which would never figure in such a chronicle at all.
Therefore, as this book is intended not so much for those who know Cornwall as for those who will know it sometime in that future which lies beyond the reading of it, the impressions of an outsider are most fitting.
There are people who go to Cornwall once for a holiday and return to it ever and again, when they get the chance, unable to find satisfaction anywhere else; the "atmosphere" of the country has entered into their blood. They think with an ache of the coast in all its cruelty and glory, they picture the bright blue of the rain-washed skies in a burst of sunshine, and they recall the great "hedges" with a foundation or core of stone, generations old, overlaid by an ample covering of turf and grass, a hot-bed for the stonecrop and hart's-tongue, fern, primrose, or foxglove.