Rivers are scarce, though the clouds are generous. Some say there are no real rivers, and that Cornwall has only the predominant partner interest in the Tamar, and two brooks, Camel and Fowey, which you can leap over anywhere with a long pole, until you come to salt water. The Fal and Helford are really estuaries. The upper moorland reaches of the Camel and Fowey abound in delicious little spots where one can sit and listen dreamily to the stream fretting amongst boulders, and swirling in sunshine and shadow amongst ferns and wild flowering shrubs, with effects incomparably beautiful.
The Lizard end of the peninsula is a sort of receiving house for the news of the world. The secrets of many lands arrive here first, breathless and palpitating, after their long runs on the ocean cables. Marconi has his stations here; and at unlooked-for places we come across notices reminding all whom it concerns not to foul the cables. There are secrets of which we know nothing—secrets of peace and war, ruin and success, love and hate, which we would give our ears to have an inkling of, vibrating under water and in the air.
The peninsula has always been a sort of receiving office for the nation. At first, when foes came sailing along, the Cornishmen spied them and sent up a flare, and then the beacon fires flashed out the news in the dark night, so that all men might read in letters of flame. A fire lit high on St. Michael's Mount travelled with speed around the coasts of Britain. Hensbarrow, called the "Archbeacon" of the county, could tell its story in fire from the Lizard to the Tamar, and set men's blood tingling, and hearts throbbing, as no "wire" or "cable" or printed word can do.
It was "wireless," and the British admiral keeping watch upon the French fleet at Brest informed my lords of the Admiralty of their movements by means of signals from frigate to frigate stationed across the Channel, and received at the Dodman by the sleepless watcher. Then the news travelled by semaphore from headland to headland—from Dodman to the Blackhead, to the Gribben, to Polruan, to Polperro, to Maker Heights, to the Commander-in-Chief. Very little time was lost, even in the old days, when there was anything to tell, and Cornwall was the eye, and ear, and tongue.
The Dodman, the highest headland in the county, is one of those places of solitude where depression will not stay. Hour after hour one may pass upon the bluff headland without seeing a human soul or hearing a human voice, and yet feel one's spirits elated in the silence. With a mere half-turn of the head one can see the whole Cornish coast, from the Lizard to the Rame, and beyond, and all the ocean traffic passing up and down. Then below, a sheer fall of four hundred feet, are the little crabbing boats, mere specks upon the blue, shoaling into green and breaking into foam upon the dark, weathered rocks. And then the wind, blow which way it will, must sweep this headland, bringing with it the scents of heather and wild flower untainted, as though in all the world there were no such things as smoke, and factories, and areas of pollution. For miles the cliffs are covered with tall bracken, green in summer, but quickly touched with brown and gold. These cliffs teem with life which we cannot see but know to be there; but feathered life is abundant and everywhere in evidence, flying in air, clustering on the rocks, or diving and swimming when fish abound. And then there come up from the shore the rhythmic sounds of spent energy—
"Hush me to sleep with the soft wave song,
Wash all the cares away, wash all the strife away,
All the old pains that to living belong."
Every sense is filled with thrills, and depression is impossible. People say the country is one vast sanatorium; and I think that open-air treatment on the Dodman would be delightful. The "faculty" are welcome to the hint.
The headland is occupied only by a small shelter for the coastguardsmen, and a modern granite cross, which can be seen, soon after passing the Lizard, by persons on board ship. To those who think it, this fine monument is the symbol of the new life rampant over a buried past, for it stands on the legendary playground of the giants, who laid waste the whole district, and heaped the bones of their victims, pile upon pile, until the headland rose majestic.
A giant once dwelt here who willed his "quoits" to his relatives, who, however, never claimed them, so they became part and parcel of the lord's inheritance and may be seen to this day. Then footsteps of the Vikings are plainly visible in stone encampments, telling of another age, still violent, but of "derring-do;" and to the west we touch Arthurian romance once more, for Geraint of the Round Table lies there, interred with Christian rites in a boat of gold, which was rowed across the sea with silver oars. All this, and more, within sight and sound of the Dodman cross, bearing the following inscription: "In the firm hope of the Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and for the encouragement of those who strive to serve Him, this Cross is erected. A.D. 1896." The old order and the new rest peacefully on this headland solitude.