KYNANCE COVE.
THE POST-OFFICE, LIZARD POINT.
POLPEOR.
Kynance Cove is the opening of one of the many shallow valleys indenting the inland plateau, with crags and skerries thrown over the sea, showing that the cliffs on the shore have not, as usual, maintained an unbroken front to the waves, but have been knocked about in wild confusion. Groups of islands dot the cove; Steeple Rock rears its solitary pinnacle aloft; the Lion Rock crouches near the southern verge. It is as wild a place as can well be imagined, and at low water strips of sand connect these rocks with the mainland, though the quickly-rising waters often compel the visitor to run for it. At the water's edge, when the tide is low, little wave-worn caverns are disclosed in the cliffs which are known as the "Drawing-Room," the "Parlor," etc. On the smooth face of the landward slope of one of the larger islands there are two orifices looking like the slit of a letter-box. The upper is called the "Post-Office," and the lower one the "Bellows." If you hold a sheet of paper in the former a gust of air will suddenly suck it into the aperture. Then if you look into the "Post-Office" to investigate its secrets, a column of spray will as suddenly deluge you with a first-class shower-bath. This is on Asparagus Island, and by climbing to the top of the rock the mystery is solved. The rock is almost severed by a fissure opening towards the sea: a wave surges in and spurts from the orifices on the landward side, then recedes and sucks the air back through them. From the cove at Kynance down to the extremity of the Lizard the scenery is everywhere fine. Here is the southernmost extremity of England, there being three headlands jutting into the sea near one another, the westernmost being the Old Lizard Head. Upon the middle one are the lighthouses that warn the mariner. Black cliffs above, and a sea studded with reefs below, give this place a forbidding aspect. One of the reefs is known as "Man-of-War Rock," from the wreck of a vessel there, and the weapons cast upon the neighboring shore gave it the name of the "Pistol Meadow." The other headland supports a telegraph-station, and a submarine cable goes down into the sea, to reappear again upon the distant shores of Portugal. From here the signals are sent that give notice of arriving ships. Beneath the cliffs rises out of the sea that strange black crag, looking like a projecting pulpit, which is known as the Bumble Rock. In the green sward above the cliffs a yawning gulf opens its rocky mouth, and is called the Lion's Den. It terminates in a rocky tunnel which communicates with the sea through a natural archway. This was a cavern, the rocky roof of which fell in about thirty-five years ago. Nestling under the middle headland is the tiny port of Polpeor, the little harbor of the Lizard, a fishermen's paradise in a small way. Around on the eastern coast of the peninsula the rocks are also fine, and here are the fishing-villages of Lizard Town and Landewednack, the latter having a strange old church, reputed to be the last in which a sermon was preached in the Cornish tongue. The grave of one of the rectors tells that he lived to be one hundred and twenty years old, for people live long in this delicious climate. These villages are devoted to the pilchard-fishery, and during the season the lookout-men can be seen perched on the cliffs watching for the approach of a shoal, to warn the fishing-boats that are ready to put to sea from the sheltered coves below. Great crags are tumbled into the ocean, and the coast abounds in caves, with occasionally a quarry for the serpentine. Beyond can be traced the dim outline of the headlands guarding Falmouth entrance. This is a unique district, whose rock-bound coast is a terror to the mariner, but a delight to the geologist and artist, and whose recesses, where the Cornish dialect still flourishes among the old folk, are about the only places in England not yet penetrated by the railway, which has gridironed the British kingdom everywhere else.
