Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-dayBesant, Walter
General
Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day
Besant, Walter
Fraud -- Fiction; Isles of Scilly (England) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
One must not ask of the islanders themselves for information about the
isles, because few of them ever go outside their own island unless to
Hugh Town, where is the Port, and where are the shops. Why should
they? On the other islands they have no business. Justinian Tryeth,
for instance, was seventy-five years of age; Hugh Town he knew, and
had often been there, though now Peter did the business of the farm at
the Port: St. Agnes he knew, having wooed and won a wife there: he had
been to Bryher Church, which is close to the shore--the rest of Bryher
was to him as unknown as Iceland. As for St. Martin's, or Annet, or
Great Ganilly, he saw them constantly; they were always within his
sight, yet he had never desired to visit them. They were an emblem, a
shape, a name to him, and nothing more. It is so always with those who
live in strange and beautiful places: the marvels are part of their
daily life: they heed them not, unless, like Armorel, they have no
work to do and are quick to feel the influences of things around them.
Most Swiss people seem to care nothing for their Alps, but here and
there is one who would gladly spend all his days high up among the
fragrant pines, or climbing the slope of ice with steady step and
slow.
But these young people did try to visit all the islands. Upon Roland
there fell the insatiate curiosity--the rage--of an explorer and a
discoverer. He became like Captain Cook himself: he longed for more
islands: every day he found a new island. 'Give,' cries he who sails
upon unknown seas and scans the round circle of the horizon for the
cloudy peak of some far-distant mountain, 'give--give more
islands--still more islands! Let us sail for yonder cloud! Let us sail
on until the cloud becomes a hill-top, and the hill another island!
Largesse for him who first calls "Land ahead!" There shall we find
strange monsters and treasures rare, with friendly natives, and girls
more blooming than those of fair Tahiti. Let us sail thither, though
it prove no more than a barren rock, the resting-place of the
sea-lion; though we can do no more than climb its steep sides and
stand upon the top while the spray flies over the rocks and beats upon
our faces.' In such a spirit as Captain Carteret (Armorel's favourite)
steered his frail bark from shore to shore did Roland sail among those
Scilly seas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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