The Cornish practice of “wrecking” still continued and in 1776 Wesley writes, “I was afterwards inquiring if that scandal in Cornwall of plundering wrecked vessels still continued.” He was told that it was as great as ever and only the Methodists would not share in it. Wesley remarks, with his usual good sense when dealing with a practical matter, “The Gentry of Cornwall may totally prevent it whenever they please. Only let the law take its course and the plundering will stop. Even if every labourer or tinner (_i.e._ tin miner) guilty of it were to be discharged and his name advertised to prevent his getting respectable employment, there would be no more of it.” In his peregrination Wesley did not disdain to visit and to note in his Journal objects of curiosity and interest. His active mind could not help occupying itself with anything exceptional, and many a traveller with nothing to do but investigate the locality has seen much less than he. Here is his description of how apprentices were made free of the corporation of Alnwick: “Sixteen or seventeen, we were informed, were to receive their freedom this day, and in order thereto (such is the unparalleled wisdom of the present corporation, as well as of their forefathers), to walk through a great bog (purposely preserved for the occasion; otherwise it might have been drained long ago), which takes some of them to the neck, and many of them to the breast.” A few months later he is in the south near Carisbrooke Castle, whither he walked in the afternoon. “It stands upon a solid rock upon the top of a hill and commands a beautiful prospect. There is a well in it, cut quite through the rock, said to be seventy two yards deep, and another in the citadel, near a hundred. They drew up the water by an ass, which they assured us was sixty years old. But all the stately apartments lie in ruins. Only just enough of them is left to shew the chamber where poor King Charles was confined, and the windows through which he attempted to escape.” From the steeple of Glasgow Cathedral Wesley surveys the country. “A more fruitful and better cultivated plain is scarce to be seen in England. Indeed nothing is wanted but more trade (which would naturally bring more people) to make a great part of Scotland in no way inferior to the best counties in England.”