"DRUIDS' ALTARS" 333 because the primary interment within the kist consisted of a single body unburnt. These two facts within historic knowledge are worthy of emphasis, since in the case of so few other similar monuments of prehistoric times is anything left but the bare stones, standing out of the level ground. It seems to me clear that these cromlechs, at any rate, were associated with a peculiar species of sepulchre. The popular appellation of "Druids' altars" has been applied to them in ignorance of their real nature. A moment's reflection and the very remarkable similarity pervading all of these cromlechs in England, France, and the Channel Islands show their utter inapplicability to sacrificial purposes. Most, if not all, of them originally were covered deep with earth, and had a wall-or two walls-close around them, so that they were most certainly not adapted for spectacular functions. Graves are found beneath them and all round in their immediate vicinity. True, no doubt, it is that they possess an imposing solemnity. How few but have loved to rest near the venerable, grey-lichened inclined stone and cherished visions of the dimly remote age of their erection. The dreams of barbarous sacrifice and writhing victims, yelling multitudes and strange rites will not stand the searchlight of modern spade-work; the cold-water douche of our latest antiquarian knowledge. No place of religious human sacrifice was here. The observer of to-day stands where mourners once wept, where the last offerings and offices of affection had been bestowed and performed on departed relatives and friends, where the survivors had bewailed the common lot of all humanity in all ages alike, when they saw deposited in peace the mortal remains we now so ruthlessly disturb. Truly the dead are very many and the living few, and sorrow and tears the close, inseparable accompaniments of humanity then as now. Cromlechs, dolmens, or quoits-as they are variously called-are found, as I have said, in many other countries besides Britain. Even at the present day, for example, some of the hill tribes in India continue to erect menhirs, cromlechs, and gigantic stones, sometimes in rows, sometimes in circles, sometimes singly, in either case very closely resembling those similar structures found in Western Europe. Structures such as these are common to mankind. A child, no matter of what nationality, with its box of bricks starts straightway to build cromlechs, dolmens, Stonehenge and Boscawen circles. Jacob of old took a stone and set it up for a pillar (Gen. xxxI.), and in Mount Sinai Moses erected twelve pillars (Exod. xxiv. 4); and when the children of Israel had crossed over Jordan, Joshua took twelve stones and pitched them in Gilgal as a record for the time to come: 'When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land" (Joshua Iv. 21, 22). So there is nothing strange in the fact of the presence of cromlechs in Cornwall. Probably all over the west end of England cromlechs were once quite common, but the inveterate tendencies of past ages and crass ignorance of the people have destroyed nearly all. Hence the apparent rarity of those we now possess. ... THE CHAPTER XXXIV PORT ISAAC, ST. MINVER, AND PADSTOW HE huddled hump of quaint old cottages forming Port Isaac, tumbling over one another in a cleft of precipices on the north coast of Cornwall, is worth seeing. The London and South Western Railway runs direct to Padstow from Waterloo, and the traveller to Port Isaac can leave the train at Port Isaac Road Station, a few miles from the former seaport. The single third-class fare to Port Isaac Road is 20s. 3 d., the distance from London being 276 miles. The trip I took was to Port Isaac Road, thence to the little fishing village Portyssik (vulgarly called by the Hebraic-looking title), and then on to Padstow by a trap, returning direct from the latter place to London, and a pleasant trip it was too, which I recommend others to follow. I had not announced my intention of getting out at Port Isaac Road, and on arrival there was fortunate to find at the station a single vehicle. It was an old, small wagonette, drawn by an equally ancient white steed of uncertain date like the vehicle; the back part had two rough deal boards tied on across for luggage. I sat on the hind board, and so bumped into Port Isaac in due course. One steep, very steep hill leads down from the cliff into Port Isaac, the quaint old houses and cottages arranged higgledy-piggledy, but most artistically and delightfully inconsequently, on either side. At the bottom is a flat pit, where the houses are more than ever squeezed up together, and where the faint attempts at streets and alleys are simply inimitably effective. Seaward the eye wanders along a little cove up which the surf moans and foams regularly according to its allotted times, until it licks the small array of fishing-boats nestling almost in the main street itself. Here is the meeting and gossip place of the port, here centres the life of the little haven. I had tea, for lunch, in a small shop, scrupulously clean, in a back lane so narrow that you could shake hands with neighbours across the way from the first-floor window, had you a mind to do so. The room upstairs was not six feet high, ornamented with a bright blue wall-paper, and ventilated by a fire-place let into the wall unsymmetrically and out of the perpendicular, and ridiculously small, just 3 feet by 2. Still, the tea was excellent, the eggs fresh, and the cry of the gulls," gully, gully," as they wheeled about over the houses, pleasingly and refreshingly distracting. Here the slate from the famous Delabole quarries is shipped, and so naturally all the houses in this district are slateroofed. Artists delight in Port Isaac, and those also in search of quietness and quaintness. Several cottages and villas afford abiding-places for the wayfarer at moderate prices. St. Minver parish possesses two old chapels, which have been restored, sacred to St. Enodock and St. Michael. Some books say these chapels were once overwhelmed by the encroaching sand, and the clergyman, in order to officiate, had to get in from the roof; but the present Vicar of St. Minver, Rev. M. A. Bucknall, informs me that he cannot discover that the chapel of St. Enodock was ever overwhelmed by the sand, that the oldest inhabitants never heard of such an event. It is built on the sand-hills, and on the east the sand rises above the level of the window. St. Michael's, Porthilly, restored and used for worship, was certainly never overwhelmed by sand. An ancient charity of St. Minver is deserving of notice. A Mr. John Randall many years ago left ten shillings a year for a funeral sermon to be preached each year for a thousand years on St. John's Day, December 27th; and also twenty shillings a year for the same period for the poor of the parish, which benefactions the Vicar tells me extant. are still St. Minver parish also has another of those old Quaker burial-grounds similar to that at Sennen. It lies between St. Minver churchtown and Rorerrow (a farm in the parish), about three-quarters of a mile from St. Minver. It is, like TWO GOOD HOSTELRIES 337 the Sennen one, walled, and it contains tombstones, but is not now used. There are not any Quakers now in the parish, but there was once a meeting-house which has now disappeared. The burials in this forgotten and forsaken God's acre were entered in the parish register, the first in 1695. There are twenty-eight recorded between that date and 1742. It would seem, therefore, that the sect of Friends was later in acquiring a hold than nearer Land's End-the first interment in this burial-ground being thirtysix years later than that at Sennen. It was closed also fortyseven years before the Sennen one. In this burial-ground rests the Quaker who wrote A Narrative of the Life and Sufferings of John Peters, a Quaker. He was buried here in 1709. The drive from Port Isaac to St. Minver is not of much interest, but at the Padstow estuary at Rock the view is fine. The ferry from St. Minver to Padstow is a penny halfpenny each person; and Padstow, as one approaches the town, reminds one very much of a small village on a Norwegian fiord. The masts of the trawlers and the big South Western Railway Hotel near the station are the first objects that attract the eye, and then a nearer approach shows the crowded-together houses and the old-time streets. The whole place is tiny and compressed. At "Ye Olde Shippe," with its Cambridge landlord, a man of queer hobbies such as guinea-pigs, gardens, wall-fruit, and strawberries, I found the food simply perfect, and the cleanliness of the accommodation second to no hotel I have ever stayed at. The South Western Hotel near the station is also unusually comfortable and well managed. The town of Padstow has a high claim to attention by antiquaries, as well as by those in love with beautiful scenery. Lodenek, or Padstow, was well known as the only port of communication between Ireland and Cornwall. About the year 432 St. Patrick is said to have landed here, and to have exercised his ministerial functions when on a visit to St. Germanus the Confessor. The existence of Laffenack as the first religious house in the county has by many been dated from this period; it is certain that it had been founded several years previous to the arrival of St. Petrock at Bodmin from Ireland in 518. The tradition of his Ꮓ |