ARGYLE'S CONVENIENCES

29 and the walled fields around afford no indication of the wild scenery on the sea borders. A good road runs to the actual Land's End through Sennen, but all other small coves, rocky inlets, and wild cliff scenery have to be visited on foot and by crossing stiles, fields, and moors of not the smoothest description. The antiquary may see much to interest him on the level moorlands, but even he is forced to take to his feet if he wants to see all the antiquities of the country.

In the centre of most of the fields in this part of Cornwall you will notice a pillar of rough granite, perhaps 6 or 10 feet in height, 1 or 2 or 3 feet wide, stuck upright. These are "Duke of Argyle's conveniences," as they would be called in Scotland, on passing which it is usual to say "God bless the Duke of Argyle," and are for the cattle to scratch themselves against. In the Buryan district, a few years ago, many of them were removed from the fields because they interfered with the agricultural implements. It was found, in consequence, that the cattle knocked or pushed the hedges down, so that it became advisable to reinstate them.

I have known people to mistake some of the taller of these "Duke of Argyle's conveniences" for ancient historical menhirs, or monoliths !

Thin, split, granite stones-6, 8, 10, and even more feet in height I found are similarly used in Galicia, in Spain. There, too, as in Cornwall, they are employed for fencing, and even as supporting-posts for vines. Roadside crosses also abound in Galicia, exceedingly like the Celtic crosses of the Land's End district, which is not to be wondered at when one considers that the inhabitants, like the Cornish, are Celtic.

CHAPTER V

SENNEN COVE

IGHT away at the end of England; the first village

mile distant; a spot richer in antiquarian remains and Celtic curiosities than any in this ancient England of ours. In fact, so thick are they that the archæological Jack Horner can never fail in pulling out an antiquarian plum each time he puts in his exploring thumb. A piece of coast-line beautiful in the colouring of sea and rocks, and delicately delightful in the swiftly changing lights and shades which emotionally affect the aspect of land and ocean. Almost indescribable in the opalescent brilliancy of the sunshine, contrasted at times with the greyness of enveloping mists and sombre landscape.

Such is Sennen Cove, a spot easily reached by the smoothrunning, luxuriantly equipped "Cornish Riviera Express," which leaves Paddington each week-day at 10.30 a.m., and arrives at Penzance at 5.5 p.m. Here a G.W.R. motor 'bus carries the traveller swiftly to Sennen Churchtown, whence a short walk over the fields brings him to the Cove. Viewed from the cliff above, far away to the right stretches Whitesand Bay gleaming with bright white sand, and bounded at the northern extremity by Cape Cornwall (the only point called a "Cape" in England), with those dangerous rocks, "the Brisons," keeping watch and ward over that entrance. To the left lies little oddly shaped, artistic Sennen Cove, and beyond that again is seen the Longships Lighthouse, warning vessels off the perilously rocky, and awfully precipitous, Land's End.

The distance is just about one mile by road from Sennen to Land's End, as I have said, but a footpath cutting across the right angle made by the road can be traversed, materially shortening the journey, or the pedestrian can go viâ Sennen

ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS

31

Cove, and see an immense variety of strange-looking rocks and wild coast scenery.

A footpath starts over a stone stile, nearly opposite the little Sennen post office (where the G.W.R. motor will put you down), and leads to the brow of the hill below where lie, on the right, Whitesand Bay, on the left, the little attenuated clump of cottages making up Sennen Cove.

If the horizon be clear, away to the south-west can be seen the Scilly Isles, faintly represented as irregular, low-lying darker masses against the sky-line. A place to rest in on a hot afternoon and let our imagination have full play and at night to gaze seaward,

"1

"To where the dreaming Scillies sleep in moon-enchanted air." The scene immediately below is unquestionably beautiful, and here let me at once say that the charm of this part of England does not consist in awful precipices, in savage grandeur, in depressing loneliness, or in Sahara-like barrenness. All of these extreme scenic features are better witnessed at other places, and those writers who launch out into superlatives in any of these directions have, I expect, not travelled far from home. No, to me the delights of this small bit of coast-line lie chiefly in the instability of the colouring of sky, sea, and rocks, in the swiftly changing lights and shades which kaleidoscopically never present the same picture twice of land and ocean; in the keen artistic potency of the sunshine, which at times gives place to a very nonactinic pall of sobriety and pensive thoughtfulness.

A nearer acquaintance with the coves and little coast villages of this part of Cornwall heightens the charm, for they and their inhabitants are in keeping with the scene. Quaint, old-time, odd, sometimes humorous, always interesting. And then, to crown all other attraction, are the Land's End sunsets. These are only to be seen, not described. They are the distraction of artists:

Far away to the right, as I have said, stretches Whitesand Bay gleaming with bright white sand and bounded at the

1

Right Rev. Charles Stubbs, Lord Bishop of Truro.
Thomson, "The Seasons."

north extremity by Cape Cornwall with the dangerous rocks, the Brisons, keeping watch and ward over its extremity To the left, the little cove off which are seen the dark-looking, low rocks, Little Bo, Bo Cowloe, and Cowloe. The rock on which the sea is breaking between them and the Longships Lighthouse is the Shark's Fin. And then there is the lighthouse itself, acting as a warning sentinel to ships to keep clear of this dangerous part of the coast.

It was in Whitesand Bay that King Stephen landed on his first arrival in England after Dover had refused to admit him, also King John on his return from the Conquest of Ireland.

The daring and impudent pretender, Perkin Warbeck, the undoubtedly clever son of a Christianised Jew, is said to have landed in Whitesand Bay when he attempted to seize the crown in the reign of Henry VII. Cyrus Redding, in his Illustrated Itinerary of the County of Cornwall (1842), baldly mentions the landing as a fact, but I think it is very doubtful. The youth, who had a remarkable likeness to Edward IV, which no doubt was a leading reason why the Duchess of Burgundy espoused his cause, more probably landed nearer Bodmin, where he was joined by upwards of three thousand men, and first assumed the title of King of England by the name of Richard IV. At any rate, Sennen lays claim to the incident-not one to be proud of or crow over in any case. Sennen has, therefore, had an historic past.

Entering the Cove by the road, the first cottage near the bottom of the valley on the right-hand side is an old and pretty thatched abode, behind which is all that remains of Chapel Idne, or the "narrow chapel." The Lord of Goonhilly, a proprietor of Lyonnesse, the fabled land fair and fertile stretching from Land's End to Scilly and now submerged, concerning which I have more to say later on, is said to have escaped the catastrophe of the great overflowing of the sea in 1029, and built as a thank-offering for his escape this Chapel Idne on the little plateau overlooking Whitesand Bay. Before his time there was no doubt an oratory or hermitage on the spot where the saint dwelt, and therefore the spot was considered holy ground. Now the sole remnants of the chapel consist of a rounded arch with some tracery upon it and some shaped granite stones behind it.