bowl--a kind of hollow valley turfed with grass, and surrounded by a rim; an amphitheatre, however, large enough to hold five thousand people at once.[124] On the flat level floor of this round crater, and in the exact midst, still swells up uninjured the outline of a viking’s grave, unlike other burial-mounds[125] so common in Cornwall and elsewhere, “Where the brown barrow curves its sullen breast Above the bones of some dead gentile’s soul,”[126] and that on every hillside and plain. The shape of the great hillock at Warbstow is neither oval nor round, but survives the exact image of the dragon-ship of northern piracy and war.[127] Moreover, not the shape only, but the size of the ancient vessel of the dead, is perpetuated here. Measured and graduated by scale, this oblong, curved, and narrow grave would yield the dimensions of a boat of fifty tons, which would be about the weight of a Scandinavian serpent of the sea. We saw that an effort had been made to open this barrow at one of the ends; but an old woman, whom we found at a cottage not far off, assured us “that they that tried it were soon forced to give up their digging and flee, for the thunders came for ’em, and the lightnings also.” We endeavoured to sound the local mind of our informant as to the history of the place and origin of the grave; but all we could drag out of her, after questions again and again, was “great warriors, supposing, in old times.” Such was the dirge of the mighty dead, and their requiem, at Warbstow Barrow. But the sun had begun to lean, and we were bound for Boscastle, the breviate of Bottreau[128] Castle, and the abode of the earls[129] of that name. [Illustration: BOSCASTLE HARBOUR.] Strange, striking, and utterly unique is the first aspect of this village by the sea. The gorge or valley lies between two vast and precipitous hills, that yawn asunder as though they had been cleft by the spells of some giant warlock[130] of the West, like the Eildon Hill by Michael Scott.[131] As you descend the hill from the north you discover on the opposite side clusters of quaint old-fashioned houses, grotesque and gabled, that appear as though they clung together for mutual support on the slope of that perilous cliff. Between the houses, and sheer down the mountain side, descended, or rather fell, a steep and ugly road; which led, however, to the “safety of the vale,” and landed the traveller at last in a deep cut or gash between the hills, where the creek ebbed and flowed, which was called by strangers in their courtesy, and by the inhabitants, with aboriginal pride, “the Harbour”--_Cornice_ “Hawn.” There “went the ships,” so that they did not exceed sixty tons in freight; and thither arrived, at certain intervals, coals and timber in bulk and quantity, which can be ascertained, no doubt, by the return of imports laid before Parliament by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.