Variety is one of the attractions of the county. For a tourist who rides a bike or a motor, the variety is perpetual, and he must pull up even now and again and ask himself what has become of the last sensation. If you can rely upon your legs, you had best walk from village to village until you are where you wish to be. To lose one's self is an advantage sometimes; and you can't go very far wrong. When at Newquay, breathing in the Atlantic on the north, you are only twenty miles from your friends breathing in the soft airs of the sunny south. The tramp across the country, from north to south, is simply delicious. First of all, there are the moors, springy to the foot, restful to the eye, and the "coombes" running seawards and catching sunbeams, so that you get opposing lines of light and shadow, and charm everywhere.
We made our way from Newquay to Roche, one of the portals to the land of the white men—a wonderful land, producing the white clay which is shipped to all quarters of the globe. The heathen Chinee has found it out, and buys it in lumps. At first, he used to buy it by the yard in his calico. The Lancashire merchant bought the white clay and worked it into his inferior cotton goods, and John Chinaman paid extra for the loaded yarn. The heathen learnt the secret in the course of time, imported the clay, loaded his own yarn, and put the profit into his own pocket. Then the "Yellow peril" was talked about.
All the white patches in the hills and valleys visible from here spell "kaolin," or "china clay," and everything that china clay touches is white; white waggons piled up with square white blocks travel along white, dusty roads, drawn by white-powdered horses, driven by men as white as ghosts in the last stages of galloping consumption.
"Fish, tin, and copper," was the old commercial toast; but china clay has come in and taken a front seat. It is only a hundred and fifty years ago since a long-nosed Quaker found out that the stuff was good for pottery; and then chemists came in and found there was money in it for manufacturers of cotton and paper; and now the society beauty may have the satisfaction of knowing that her fair cheek is made fairer still by honest china clay most delicately perfumed. The men and women who handle the clay get the same stuff for nothing, and do well enough without the perfume. China clay, being a modern industry in this land of ancients, has no piskie, or nuggie, or bucca connected with it, and Guy took kindly to it on that account, saying it represented the practical, hard-headed twentieth century. Who would buy Cornwall for its legends, he would like to know! Whereas all the world was buying mountains of china clay. He supposed if this long-nosed old Quaker had lived a thousand or two years ago he would have been turned into a piskie, and a fine crop of legends would have sprung up. We failed to trace any legend or folk-lore about china clay. It was all modern—modern discovery, modern uses, modern shipments; the only thing fabulous seemed to be the inexhaustible supply and the value of certain spots free from impurities. One might almost fancy legend at work—the wicked giant and the sainted virgin crumbling into kaolin rather than be the heroine of the romance with wedding bell accompaniment.
We came to a rock where there is a well which is said to ebb and flow with the tide; only it doesn't. The water is said to be brackish, which it probably is; but a reverend canon, writing on the spot, warned visitors against tasting it on that account. All brackish water does not come from the sea. However, this was a holy well once on a time, and young people even now drop bent pins into it and wish. It is very simple, and costs nothing. Then there is the cell in which St. Roche lived until he died, and then, the apartment being light and airy, and 680 feet above the sea, was occupied by successive saints. At present the apartment is unoccupied, but the parish is taking care of it. This is the cell wherein the damned soul of Tregeagle tried to find sanctuary when pursued by the fiends from Dozmary Pool. The inhabitants of the wild and desolate region between Roche and Dozmary hear the hell-hounds pursuing the shrieking soul on dark tempestuous nights, and on Christmas Eve the hunt is said to be on a grand scale. The inhabitants of the moors keep indoors after dark. The story is told in—
"The soul of Tregeagle in pain."
A Ballad of the Haunted Moor.
When the snow lay on the moor, brown moor,
And frost hung crystals on bracken and tree,
Gehenna and Sheöl and Blackman's whelp
Shook themselves free with deep-mouthed bay
To hunt a poor soul in pain.
A soul in pain, a notable soul,
The soul of Tregeagle, a deathless soul,
Burning in winter in Dozmary Pool,
Freezing in summer in Dozmary Pool,
The soul of Tregeagle in pain.