Arthur, King -- Homes and haunts -- England -- Cornwall (County); Cornwall (England : County) -- Antiquities, Celtic
--seen it again when the east wind made the water thrill, and the
soft light went out of all its face, and the green hardened into iron
blue. A walk from Camelford to Tintagel, passing Trebarwith, and on
from Tintagel to Boscastle, passing Bossiney and many a smaller cove
on the way, reveals the most wonderful and alluring of all changeful
sea-pictures, and displays most vividly the marvel and magic of the
rugged coast. The towering rocks have been wrought by time and carved
by wind and wave into grotesque images, broken at the base into sunless
caves, worn at the heights into sharp and gleaming pinnacles, fretted
and cut, rounded and cracked, sundered and cast down, the massive
blocks made veritably the sport of the elements, so that the beholder
may easily believe himself in the realm of enchantment. All the
sounding shores of Bude and Boss are legend-haunted. The mariner hears
the chime and toll of the lost bells of Bottreaux when he comes within
sight of the “silent tower,” which stands white and grim upon the
headland. The wail of lured voyagers and the despairing lament of the
smugglers who brought them with false lights to their doom are listened
to in awe on stormy nights, and there are visions of good ships that
went down among the rocks in the tragic desperate days of which so many
ghastly tales are told. The last of the Cornish wreckers, for whom,
when he lay dying, a ship with red sails came in a tremendous sea and
bore him shrieking away, looms as an apparition on the darkest nights,
and the cries of tormented spirits mingle with the blast. Merlin, with
flowing beard, is said to pace the shore, and Arthur and his knights
to revisit the scenes of their exploits. The spirit of the king hovers
about sea and land in the form of the almost sacred chough, reverenced
and preserved by the inhabitants that they may not unwittingly injure
their hero. Further north at Bude Haven the long Atlantic breakers
roll, and perhaps there is no more imposing spectacle than the coil
of waves coming in upon the far-extending and rock-strewn sands. The
undulations, miles long, seem to rise and curl far out at sea at short
regular distances from each other, and mass upon mass they break
with thunder-sound and cataract upon the shore. The most brilliant of
sunsets glow in the perfect summer weather when day dies slowly over
these “far-rolling, westward-smiling seas,” and they leave the night
still radiant. The whole land is sweet and bright with flowers: on
one side lies the glittering surf lacing itself in white foam about
the boulders, and on the other side rises the circle of hills topped
by the massy brown summits of Row Tor and Brown Willy. Sometimes the
deserted quarries give a spectral look to the landscape, and when
the rain spatters and darkens the piles of rough slate the aspect is
weird and gloomy indeed. But given a day of sunshine when the sea is
a sparkling emerald or the deepest of blues, when the sky is clear or
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