That bay is singularly fine, and, facing the south, the climate is
warm. Out of it stands up S. Michael's Mount crowned with a castle,
formerly a monastery, now the residence of Lord S. Levan, and connected
by a causeway with Marazion, or Market Jew. The name has nothing to do
with "Bitter Waters of Zion," or with Israelites. Marazion is the
Cornish for Thursday Market, and Market Jew is a corruption for _Jeudi_
(Thursday) Market.
From Penzance a visit should be paid to S. Ives and to Hayle. The Hayle
river flows in a natural furrow from near Germoe, and the whole of the
district west is, as it were, cut off from the rest of the peninsula.
It needed to have been but a little more depressed, and it would have
been converted almost into an island, linked to the mainland only by
the ridge between S. Hilary and Godolphin.
The great S. Ives Bay is conspicuous through its white hills of blown
sand that form what are locally called Towans.
The church of S. Ives is interesting, and is, like most others in
Cornwall, Perpendicular. It is of granite, and contains some fine oak
carving in bench-ends and waggon-roof, and a portion of the screen
presented, it is supposed, by Ralph Clies, a master smith; also a brass
to Otho Trenwith and his wife. The latter is represented kneeling to
and invoking the archangel Michael. The head of S. Michael has a
comical effect. "Some perplexity may be felt at the appearance of Saint
Michael's head, which looks like nothing so much as a Dutch cheese. The
fact is, that when this brass lay on the floor, the feet of passers-by
had gradually erased the features of the archangel, leaving only the
circular nimbus or glory round his head. Some well-meaning but
misguided restorer of later days has evidently taken the nimbus to be
the outline of the head, and has roughly filled in eyes, nose, and
mouth to correspond."[27]
An event occurred at Penzance in 1760 that was curious.
A large vessel was driven ashore on the beach. Numbers of persons
crowded to the wreck to get from it what they could, when they were
startled to see it manned by swarthy mariners with scimitars and
turbans. At once a panic seized on those who had come out of interested
motives to the wreck, and they scuttled off as hard as their legs would
take them. Presently a company of volunteers was called out to roll of
drum, and marched down to surround the 172 men who had disembarked from
the wreck. These were gallantly captured and driven like sheep into a
spacious barn, and left there under guard through the night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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