LIZARD COVE

389

The ground falls away from the church on the Lizard Cove side, and the walls of the churchyard are entered there by two rather picturesque stiles under the trees.

Passing the old thatched cottages, with geraniums in full bloom growing all over them not in pots or small straggling plants, but in great masses, right up to the eaves, and when in flower a perfect blaze of brilliant colour-we pass, to the right, to the cove. A trickling stream accompanies us on the right, quite hidden though with bracken, bramble, and fern.

Lizard Cove is a charming picture bit. Certainly a few ugly sheds on the left as one descends the steep bit of road to the sea, with their slated roofs, detract somewhat from the charm, but once passed we have nothing to grumble at.

The tiny, even miniature, cove is just a landing-place with a little beach, so hidden by precipitous cliffs that you might pass the entrance many times and never find the opening. The shore end of the indentation possesses the usual windlass in a roundhouse for winding up a few boats which here find a local inhabitation, if not a home. Two large boats with heaped-up nets on their sterns, covered with tarpaulins, showed that pilchards frequent the shores of Landewednack. On one side is a lifeboat-house, and from the inscription over the doors we gather it was presented by two cousins in memory of their parents, "Thomas Chavasse, Esq., F.R.C.S., and Miriam Sarah, his wife, and the Rev. Horace Chavasse, M.A., and Margaret Colquhoun, his wife, 1887."

Apparently the Lizard district of Cornwall is associated with longevity. A former minister, the Rev. Thomas Cole, who died and was buried there in 1683, according to the register attained the unusual age of 120, and the sexton of the parish, Michael George, died in the same year, according to the same authority, at 100. Dr. Borlase, the historian of the county, speaks also of an old man of the name of Collins he saw when on a tour in this part, who was then 100 and who died in 1754, aged 104.

ONE

CHAPTER XXXIX

KYNANCE COVE-HELSTON

NE of the wildest and weirdest spots frolicsome Nature ever produced in an elfish mood. The outcome of a delirious sense of irresponsibility. The conception of the unexpected; the realisation of the completely satisfactory. An artistic delight to eye and sense-harmonious, lasting. Such is Kynance Cove.

This enchanting spot-for it is not an epithet unadvisedly used-lies nearly due south from Lizard Town, and has to be reached by walking along a winding path which follows the edge of the cliffs, and involves some exertion and rough walking. To see all the features of interest on the way to the cove, and the several extraordinary natural phenomena when there, necessitates employing a guide.

As a rule I object much to guides, but here it is quite impossible to find out the many extraordinary phenomena of nature for oneself. I was fortunate to obtain the services of one Jose, and I found him a singularly well-informed man, not unduly loquacious or even gushing.

His name led me to suppose that he was a descendant of the Spaniards who once, at some remote period, colonised this most southerly point of England. He told me that there was the tradition in his family that such was the case, and he said that from time immemorial it had been customary for the first girl born in each Jose family to be baptised Sidonia. Jose is a worker in serpentine-marble ornaments and trinkets, and at that business he and his father and ancestors have been employed. I found myself involuntarily calling him "Hōsay," as if he were a Spaniard.

The extent of his travels, I soon discovered (also of his father and mother), had been a trip to Truro, so that all he knew of the great world beyond the Lizard was what he picked up from talking to visitors to the Lizard and from reading.