We had stayed a few days at Penzance and got to knew something of Cornwall and things Cornish. Unquestionably Cornwall is the least spoiled section of Southern Britain; its coastline is rocky and serrated, and its tors and hills and rills are about as wild and unspoiled by the hand of man as can be imagined. There is a vast literature on the subject if one cares to read it, and the modern fictionists (like the painter-men) have even developed a "Cornish school." However, there need be no discussion of its merits or demerits here.
In Mount's Bay is the Cornish counterpart of Normandy's St. Michel's Mount. It is by no means so great or imposing, or endowed with such a wealth of architectural charm as the cross-channel Mont St. Michel, but the English St. Michael's Mount, a granite rock rising from the sea two hundred and fifty or more feet, was sufficient of an attraction to draw us to Penzance for our headquarters and to keep us till we had visited its castle of the days of Charles II. There is no question of the age of St. Michael's Mount, for Ptolemy charted it in Roman days, and the Roman warriors, who battled with the Britons, made spear-heads and hatchets of the tin and iron which they dug from its rocky defences.
The grim, unlovely little hotel at Land's End sheltered us the night before the commencement of our journey north, and the Longships Lighthouse flashed its warning in through our open bedroom window all the night long and made us dream of wicked and unworldly monster automobiles bearing down upon us with a great blazing phare which blotted out all else.
The nightmare passed, we got ourselves together at five in the morning, drank tepid tea, and ate the inevitable bacon and eggs furnished one for breakfast in England, and, before lunch, had passed Bodmin, crossed Bodmin moor (a little Exmoor), and skirted Dartmoor, just north of Great Links Tor, arriving at Exeter at high noon.
Pople's New London Hotel at Exeter is the headquarters of the Automobile Club, is patronized by Royalty (so the advertisements say), and is a very satisfactory-looking old-century inn which has not wholly succumbed to modern improvement, nor yet is it wholly backward. It is "fair to middling" only, so far as the requirements of the automobilist go (what Royalty may think of it the writer does not know), but its proprietor ought to take a trip abroad and find out what his house lacks.
The wonder of Exeter for us was the carved west porch of its cathedral, not very good carving, we were told, but undeniably effective, peopled as it was with a whole regiment of sculptured effigies.
Exeter has a ruined castle, too, called Rougement, a name which preserves the identity of its Norman origin. Exeter's High Street is a curious stagy affair, with great jutting house gables, pillars, and pignons, undeniably effective, but a terror to automobilists because of its narrowness and the congestion of its traffic.
The road turns north after leaving Exeter and passes Taunton, "one of the nicest towns in the west of England," as we were told by the landlord's daughter on leaving Exeter. Not knowing what her standard was for judgment, but suspecting it was tea and buns, we delved away into the county of Somerset and reached Wells, on the edge of the Mendip Hills, before dinner.
Somerset is reputed to be one of the loveliest counties in the west of England and one of the most countrified of all Britain. It is a region of farming lands, of big and little estates, with the big ones predominating, which the land reformers, and all others who give it a thought, claim must some day be divided among the people. When that millennium comes Somerset will be a paradise for the people. In spite of its productiveness and its suitability for farming, the great estates of the wealthy are used for the purposes of pleasure and not of profit, for the hunting of foxes and for the shooting of pheasants.