Rounding the Lizard, either in a fresh easterly or westerly wind, is generally a wet job for craft of small tonnage, as a heavy sea speedily gets up. But once round there is a straight run for Penzance Bay, the last haven of any size (and that not a very good one) on the south-west coast. Penzance lies in the north-western curve of a fine bay, which is, however, too open to afford an ideal anchorage, or much protection in most prevailing winds. As one enters the bay the one striking object is not the town--that, at a distance, is not notably picturesque, and near by is disappointing--but the fine rock of St Michael, which, like its Norman prototype, stands “solitary amid the waste of waters, a townlet upon a rock.” The origin of this outstanding mass, connected with the mainland only by a causeway covered save at low water, is “lost in antiquity,” as historians are wont to explain when nothing detailed or more satisfying is forthcoming. Some authorities, however, have thought that the Roman occupation or a period only a short time anterior to it saw the formation--by reason of seismic convulsion--of St Michael’s Mount, which was “cast up out of the bed of the sea.” Others assert that once the Mount was set inland amid forest glades and primeval woodlands, and was then known as the “hoar rock in the wood.” But whatever the origin may be, the fact remains that at the bottom of Mount’s Bay undoubtedly lies a forest, which was probably engulfed when the Scilly Isles were torn away from Land’s End, which gives some colour to this latter theory. The legend in connexion with this tremendous event is that, when the ancient and romantic land of Lyonesse was overwhelmed, one inhabitant, Trevelyan, swam ashore, and landed and built his house near where the Seven Stones now stand. And whatever truth may underlie tradition, there to this day remains Trevelyan’s Field. Max Müller says that the early monkish owners called the rock and abbey “Mons Tumba,” and this connects it with the sister mount set fair and lovely in the wide bay of Avranches.