highlands of Wales have proved sufficient to isolate the people from
those of the rest of South Britain, and to preserve a purely Celtic
race, still very largely of Celtic speech.
_Cornwall and Devon._--The peninsula of Cornwall and Devon may be
looked upon as formed from a synclinal trough of Devonian rocks, which
appear as plateaus on the north and south, while the centre is
occupied by Lower Carboniferous strata at a lower level. The northern
coast, bordering the Bristol Channel, is steep, with picturesque
cliffs and deep bays or short valleys running into the high land, each
occupied by a little seaside town or village. The plateau culminates
in the barren heathy upland of Exmoor, which slopes gently southward
from a general elevation of 1600 ft., and is almost without
inhabitants. The Carboniferous rocks of the centre form a soil which
produces rich pasture under the heavy rainfall and remarkably mild and
equable temperature, forming a great cattle-raising district. The
Devonian strata on the south do not form such lofty elevations as
those on the north, and are in consequence, like the plain of
Hereford, very fertile and peculiarly adapted for fruit-growing and
cider-making. The remarkable features of the scenery of South Devon
and Cornwall are due to a narrow band of Archaean rock which appears
in the south of the peninsulas terminating in Lizard Head and Start
Point, and to huge masses of granite and other eruptive rocks which
form a series of great bosses and dykes. The largest granite boss
gives relief to the wild upland of Dartmoor, culminating in High
Willhays and Yes Tor. The clay resulting from the weathering of the
Dartmoor granite has formed marshes and peat bogs, and the desolation
of the district has been emphasized by the establishment in its midst
of a great convict prison, and in its northern portion of a range for
artillery practice. The Tamar flows from north to south on the
Devonian plain, which lies between Dartmoor on the east and the
similar granitic boss of Bodmin Moor (where Brown Willy rises to 1345
ft.) on the west. There are several smaller granite bosses, of which
the mass of Land's End is the most important. Most of the Lizard
peninsula, the only part of England stretching south of 50° N., is a
mass of serpentine. The great variety of the rocks which meet the sea
along the south of Cornwall and Devon has led to the formation of a
singularly picturesque coast--the headlands being carved from the
hardest igneous rocks, the bays cut back in the softer Devonian
strata. The fjord-like inlets of Falmouth, Plymouth and Dartmouth are
splendid natural harbours, which would have developed great commercial
ports but for their remoteness from the centres of commerce and
manufactures. China clay from the decomposing granites; tin and copper
ore, once abounding at the contacts between the granite and the rocks
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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