One point at least is certain, that nowadays there are only five islands which are inhabited: St. Mary’s, Tresco, Bryher, St. Agnes, and St. Martin. Sixty years ago there were six, but Samson has since been vacated. There is reason to suppose that some of the islands were formerly joined together, and that they have been separated by the encroachment of the sea. Even now at low water of a spring-tide it is possible to walk from Samson to Bryher, from Bryher to Tresco, and from Tresco to St. Martin’s, across the sand-flats, if one does not mind the risk of getting wet; and to wade across Crow Bar between St. Martin’s and St. Mary’s. Ruins of houses and stone walls have been found six feet under the sand, the walls descending from the hills of Bryher and Samson, and running many feet under the level of the sea towards Tresco; and it is said that there was once a causeway from the abbey church at Tresco across the downs to the church on St. Helen’s Isle. There is a tradition that long ago the islands were all connected with the mainland, and that they are the only remnant of a tract of land called Lyonnesse, which contained 140 churches, but over which the Atlantic now rolls. On the spot where now the water swirls round the dangerous “Seven Stones,” there is said to have stood a city called the City of Lions, and that region is even to-day known to fishermen as Tregva--the “town” or “dwelling.” The story goes that when King Arthur, of glorious renown, had fought his last fight and lay dead on the field of battle, his followers fled in confusion, pursued by Mordred, the rebel knight; and the course they took brought them to the extreme west of Cornwall. “Back to the sunset-bound of Lyonnesse-- A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again; Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt, And the long mountains ended in a coast Of ever-shifting sand, and far away The phantom circle of a moaning sea.” Pursuers and pursued were still pressing on when suddenly there arose a mighty tempest. The earth rocked, heaved, and was rent; and in between the two bands of warriors burst an angry flood of surging waters, swallowing up Mordred and his men before they had time to escape. But Arthur’s followers were marvellously preserved; the sea did not overtake them. Like the Israelites of old, they saw the destruction of their enemies while they themselves stood in safety on dry ground. And that ground was Scilly, all that is left of the lost land of Lyonnesse, over which the sea still swirls and eddies with unabating violence. In the names of two of the eastern islands of Scilly, Great and Little Arthur, are found a reminiscence of the followers of the “Flower of Kings,” who are said to have lived and died on the islands where they had been so strangely (and mercifully) cut off from the rest of their kind.