Footprints of Former Men in Far CornwallHawker, Robert Stephen
History
Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall
Hawker, Robert Stephen
Cornwall (England : County) -- History
At the end of about six weeks Le Daine left my house on his homeward
way, a sadder and a richer man. Gifts had been proffered from many a
hand, so that he was able to return to Jersey, with happy and grateful
mien, well clothed, and with £30 in his purse. His recollections of
our scenery were not such as were in former times associated with the
Cornish shore; for three years afterward he returned to the place of
his disaster accompanied by his uncle, sister, and affianced wife, and
he had brought them that, in his own joyous words, “they might see the
very spot of his great deliverance:” and there, one summer day, they
stood, a group of happy faces, gazing with wonder and gratitude on
our rugged cliffs, that were then clad in that gorgeous vesture of
purple and gold which the heather and gorse wind and weave along the
heights; and the soft blue wave lapping the sand in gentle cadence,
as though the sea had never wreaked an impulse of ferocity, or rent a
helpless prey. Nor was the thankfulness of the sailor a barren feeling.
Whensoever afterward the vicar sought to purchase for his dairy a
Jersey cow, the family and friends of Le Daine rejoiced to ransack the
island until they had found the sleekiest, loveliest, best of that
beautiful breed; and it is to the gratitude of that poor seaman and
stranger from a distant abode that the herd of the glebe has long been
famous in the land, and hence, as Homer would have sung--hence came
“Bleehtah, and Lilith, Neelah, Evan Neelah, and Katy.”
Strange to say, Le Daine has been twice shipwrecked since his first
peril--with similar loss of property, but escape of life; and he is now
the master of a vessel in the trade of the Levant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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