"All the islands, except the bare rocks, are covered with down and moorland, bounded in every direction by rocky headlands and slopes covered with granite boulders. And always, day after day, they came continually upon unexpected places: strange places, beautiful places: beaches of dazzling white; wildly-heaped carns; here a cromlech, a logan stone, a barrow; a new view of sea and sky and white-footed rock. I believe that there does not live any single man who has actually explored all the isles of Scilly, stood upon every rock, climbed every hill, and searched on every island for its treasures of ancient barrows, plants, birds, carns, and headlands. Once there was a worthy person who came here as chaplain to S. Martin's. He started with the excellent intention of seeing everything. Alas! he never saw a single island properly: he never walked round one exhaustively. He wrote a book about them, to be sure; but he saw only half." There are numerous cairns, barrows, kistvaens, and circles of stones in the islands, and Giant's Castle, in S. Mary's, is a good example of a cliff-camp of the Irish Firbolg type. A local guide attributes it to the Danes, but that is nonsense. In Porth Hellick Bay Sir Cloudesley Shovel was washed ashore and buried. In 1707 Sir Cloudesley in the _Association_, Captain Hancock in the _Eagle_, Sir George Byng in the _Royal Anne_, Captain Coney in the _Romney_, Lord Dudley in the _St. George_, Captain Piercy in the _Firebrand_, and a captured fireship, the _Phœnix_, were returning from Toulon after the capture of Gibraltar. On the morning of the 22nd October, the weather being thick and dirty, they came into soundings of nineteen fathoms. There is a tradition that a seaman on the admiral's ship warned the officer of the watch that unless the ship's course were altered they would soon be on the rocks of Scilly. This was reported to Sir Cloudesley, who was very angry. He had the man brought before him, and attempted to browbeat him, but the man stuck to his opinion. The admiral lost his temper, as he considered it a breach of decorum for a common mariner to dictate the course of the vessel to a superior officer, and he ordered the man to be hanged at the yard-arm. One request was granted to the sailor--that he should be allowed to read aloud a psalm to the assembled crew. This was permitted, and he read out Psalm cix.:-- "Hold not Thy tongue, O God of my praise: for the mouth of the ungodly, yea, the mouth of the deceitful, is opened upon us." That night the ship was lost. At six in the evening the admiral, who had brought the fleet to during the afternoon, made sail again, and stood away under canvas. Directly after he made signals of distress, which were returned by several of the fleet. Sir George Byng in the _Royal Anne_, who was a mile to windward of him, saw the breakers, and saved his vessel with difficulty.