But that passenger would be churlish indeed who had any fault to find with the way in which he was treated by the officials, whether on sea or land. From the highest to the lowest they are as courteous as one could wish--unless, of course, they are provoked to turn, like the proverbial worm. There is a stoker on the “Lyonnesse” with a portly and majestic figure; but woe to the ill-bred passenger who tries to raise a laugh at his expense! Once such a passenger saw the stoker looming across his field of vision, and, in spite of being curled up and woebegone with sea-sickness, he aimed at him a feeble joke. [Illustration: ST. MARY’S POOL] “You’d make a splendid advertisement for Mellin’s Food.” The stoker stopped, and let his eye travel slowly over the speaker. Then came his retort, with withering scorn. “Well, and you’d make a first-rate advertisement for Keating’s Powder; for anything more like a _dying insect_ I never did see in all my life.” Whereupon the “dying insect” looked his part more than ever, and was silent. The Great Western Railway Company once offered to run a fast service of steamers in connection with their trains on condition that they might build a luxurious hotel on St. Mary’s; but the Governor was too wise to consent. Scilly does not need to be revolutionised and popularised and advertised. She is so very charming as she is. So blessed be the “Lyonnesse,” and long may she continue to reign supreme over that part of the Atlantic--perhaps until the time when we shall be flying across from Penzance, and looking back with horror on the days of sea-passages, even as we now look back to the days of the sailing-vessels. II HISTORICAL A Well-known writer has spoken of the Scilly Isles as “patches of rock, dignified by historical and political associations”; and one is surprised to find, considering their small size and their isolated situation, how very frequently they do figure in the pages of history. They were included with the mainland when the Romans took possession of Britain, and possibly their conquerors introduced Christianity here as elsewhere after they themselves had been converted. This is only guesswork. Strangely enough the first Christians whom we actually know by historical records to have landed in Scilly were heretics, sent there into exile by the Emperor Maximus for their unorthodox opinions. These were Bishops Instantius and Tiberianus, who were convicted of the Priscilline heresy in A.D. 384 and sent to “insula Sylina, quæ ultra Britannias est,” as we learn from Sulpicius Severus, who wrote only twenty years after the event.