But round about Par and Saint Austell enough metal remains to keep some few important mines at work; china-clay, too, is an increasingly important article of commerce. The streams and rivulets that hereabouts run down into Saint Austell or Tywardreath Bay are the very tricolours of water-courses--rust-red with pumpings from the mines, milk-white from the washings of china-clay, and, unpolluted, reflecting the heavenly blue of sunny skies. A long and grimy road leads past Holmbush and Mount Charles to Saint Austell, all the way rutted with the wheels of heavy waggons, and muddy from the rains. I remember that, when we were dining at Fowey, we were told by a Cornishman with whom we talked that Saint Austell was the richest town in Cornwall. I do not wish to dispute that statement, for, with that town’s busy neighbourhood of mines, and, more particularly, china-clay works, it would seem to be in receipt of a very great deal of commerce. Waggons, piled up with great lumps of china-clay, are continually lumbering through its narrow and crooked streets; its shops are many and well appointed; and, earnest of enterprise and prosperity, Saint Austell is lighted by electricity, in the streets, and for domestic use; it was, in fact, a pioneer in the movement for the lighting of towns by electricity. But, with all these signs of wealth, the town is not attractive. Saint Austell remains a market-town of gloomy architecture and cramped thoroughfares, whose foot-pavements, of meagre proportions, would not suffice for the accommodation of a village. Yet the people who are seen in these streets are smartly dressed, and altogether un-provincial in appearance. We saw costumes, not few nor far between, that rivalled Bond Street or Piccadilly. I remarked upon this to the Wreck, who, having had his full share of Saint Austell’s muddy streets, was sarcastically inclined, and observed that, if it was a swell town in one particular, it was a pity that particularity did not extend to its pavements, which had, apparently, shrunk. [Illustration: Font. Saint Austell.] We lunched at as well-appointed a restaurant as might have been found at the West End of London, and then looked through the very fine church that stands in midst of the town. It contains a very early font, sculptured in granite, the bowl of it covered with the Early Norman ideas of owls and griffins, and fearful things that surely never flew in air, or walked the earth, or swam the sea. The church of Saint Austell has one of the finest of Cornish church-towers, lofty and pinnacled, and covered, over the upper stages of it, with much panelled work, and about the body of it with sculptured emblems of the Passion and Crucifixion. The hammer and nails, the crown of thorns, the ladder, are sculptured in groups, together with pierced hands and feet; and so greatly has the significance of these emblems been lost, that many of them are popularly supposed to represent miners’ tools. LIX.