Cornwall (England : County) -- Description and travel
From Penzance we might run out by any one of the diverging roads across
the peninsula, and be sure of coming upon some relic of the most ancient
race inhabiting these islands.
By way of Madron we should pass the Lanyon Quoit or Cromlech, a great
slab of rock 18 feet long, supported on three other slabs which are just
a little too low to allow a man to stand upright beneath it. In 1816 it
fell or was blown down; before this a mounted man could sit under it.
When Lieutenant Goldsmith in 1824 committed the silly trick of upsetting
the Logan Rock, and was condemned by the Admiralty to rebalance it at
his own expense, the apparatus brought down to the duchy for the purpose
was also used to replace the cap of the Cromlech, though why it should
be of less height now than before is not known.
Amid the bleak hills around are to be found constant remains of ancient
British villages, rather in the manner of the Picts' houses of Scotland.
That the strange people who lived in them thrashed corn for food and
kept cattle, there is plenty of evidence. They lived in these little
beehive huts, which were sometimes placed singly, sometimes two or
three together, often with an embankment round, or a good cave near for
retreat if necessary. The huts are circular and built without cement or
mortar. Fragments of pottery have been found in and around. Some of them
are near Chun Castle, that ancient earthwork, one of the half-dozen or
so in the "toe" of Cornwall. This district was the last stronghold of
the British race, who had retreated before the Western invaders to the
very extremity of the land.
By any one of these roads we should come at last out on to the coast
road--rather grandiloquently called "The Atlantic Drive"--running from
Land's End to St. Ives. This has been compared with the famous Corniche
drives of the Riviera. But beware! Don't expect too much, or you will be
terribly disappointed. Yet if you go with an open mind, expecting
nothing, you will see something of very real interest and carry away new
knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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