And now, perhaps I have said enough for you to understand why this little tongue of land, whose tip is the Land’s End, has got such a hold upon me. On the greyest day the moors are not dismal to me, nor the shores melancholy. There’s hardly a square mile out of the hundred that isn’t full of associations. The cliffs, the wastes of furze and heather, the tangled bottoms, the open beaches and the little coves, are all rich in pleasant memories; and the whistle of the curlew, the croak of raven or hern, the scream of sea-fowl, the piping of small wading birds and the song of the sedge-warbler are to me the music of familiar voices. Rolling veldt, mountain range and river don’t appeal to me like the downs, hills, and streams that I’ve got to know by heart.
The Land’s End. [Face page 232.
“A treeless, barren waste” a man once called the Land’s End district to my poor father, who preferred the scent of its furze to the perfume of roses and the bell-heather before hothouse flowers. Everything wild he liked, ay, loved; the sea-pinks, the golden samphire, the sea-holly, the ferns in the zawns, the seaweed in the pools, the shells on the beach. And when he was unable to move out of the house—he lived to eighty-two—he used to sit up in the little bay-window, where he could see the sun set, and watch for my return, and then he’d ask what birds I’d seen, and about the flowers. The speedwell, the scarlet pimpernel, and the forget-me-not were especial favourites of his, and I’d always bring home one or the other in my fishing-basket. Touching it was to see him look at them.
If ever a man loved nature with his whole soul, my father did, but above everything he loved the birds.
But come! we must be moving. I see the gulls are winging home.