IN the west of Cornwall, on the south coast of the narrow neck of land which forms the beginning of that final westerly region known as “Penwithstart,” is situated Prussia Cove, originally named Porth Leah, or King’s Cove. It lies just eastwardly of the low dark promontory known as Cuddan Point, and is even at this day a secluded place, lying remote from the dull high-road that runs between Helston, Marazion, and Penzance. In the days of the smugglers Porth Leah, or Prussia Cove, was something more than secluded, and those who had any business at all with the place came to it much more easily by sea than by land. This disability was, however, not so serious as at first sight it would seem to be, for the inhabitants of Prussia Cove were few, and were all, without exception, fishermen and smugglers, who were much more at home upon the sea than on land, and desired nothing so little as good roads and easy communication with the world. An interesting and authoritative sidelight upon the then condition of this district of West Cornwall is afforded by _The Gentleman’s Magazine_ of 1754, in which the entire absence of roads of any kind is commented upon. Bridle-paths there were, worn doubtless in the first instance by the remote original inhabitants of this region, trodden by the Phoenician traders of hoary antiquity, and unaltered in all the intervening ages. They then remained, says _The Gentleman’s Magazine_, “as the Deluge left them, and dangerous to travel over.” That time of writing was the era when these conditions were coming to an end, for the road from Penryn to Marazion was shortly afterwards constructed, much to the alarm and disgust of the people of West Cornwall in general, and of those of Penzance in particular. Penzance required no roads, and in 1760 its Corporation petitioned, but unsuccessfully, against the extension of the turnpike road then proposed, from Marazion. That was the time when there was but one cart in the town, and when wheeled traffic was impossible outside it: pack-horses and the sledge-like contrivances known as “truckamucks” being the only methods of conveying such few goods as were required.