shelf of rock 120 feet above the dimly-lighted recesses, and so unspeakably awful when the fierce roar of the waves in a storm booms overhead, that the miners instinctively mount to upper ground. The visitor must don a flannel suit before he descends into the hot atmosphere below, with a candle fixed in a clay socket on the front of his hat, to leave his hands at liberty. The miners work for 8 hours in 24; sometimes by contract, sometimes on tribute earning a per centage on the lode, or otherwise receiving wages varying from 40s. to 50s. by the month. The thermometer often stands at 85°; and consumption ensues, owing to the sudden exposure of a body fresh from that reeking heat to the bleak wind, sleet, and mists that spread out like a shroud over the dripping heath: strains and decline ordinarily break down the miner before he reaches fifty years of age. There was for a long time an old blind man in Botallack, who, if the lights went out, was able to guide the miners through the intricate galleries. The sons of Louis Philippe visited Botallack in 1851; and in 1846 Her Majesty descended Polbero. Such a mine, so beautifully described by Job, is certainly no less wonderful than the pyramid of Egypt-which it equals in size-as an achievement of labour: but the one was built at the cost of human life for the tomb of a mummy, the other dug for the benefit of an entire country by voluntary labourers, who numbered in 1854, 28,000. Incredible is the toil: 20 or 30 men could excavate only a few inches daily of the galleries and shafts which now extend over miles of ground. One mine is 1800 feet deep; another has produced 200 tons of metal daily. The dismal, smoky candle-light, the drip of water, the dust, the noise of hammers and picks, and the explosions when rocks are blasted, confound eye and ear. It was only in the 17th century that gunpowder was employed. The heat and oppression in breathing are very trying. The practical director of the Cornish mine is a superior workman, captain, who is denominated "underground," or "grass," according as the mine is subterranean, or consists of surface works. A chief captain, or manager, presides over the subordinate officials; the "purser" is the paymaster. Again we stand upon the bluff western buttress of England, a solid mountain of smooth red granite, strong as adamant; below are the quaintly named rocks, called the Armed Knight, the Irish Lady, the Johnson's Head, with the hissing foam and whirlpools wildly pouring between; and the Longships rock, 60 feet high and 2 miles distant, with a lighthouse built of granite, by Smyth in 1797, 52 feet high, and with a circumference of 60 feet at the base. "Like the great giant Christopher, it stands Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave, "And the great ships sail outward and return, They wave their silent welcomes and farewells." Sadly enough, the last trace of man here, on the extreme verge of the great ocean, tells of his folly and presumption. Almost effaced, still may be discovered the mark of a horse's hoof in the smooth turf on the brink of the cliff. In 1808, a Captain Arbuthnot, then quartered at Pendennis Castle, undertook for a wager to ride his horse to the Land's End: he actually accomplished the feat, but the frightened animal reared and plunged, and he had scarcely time to disengage his feet from the stirrups, and throw himself on the ground, when the noble creature fell over the precipice, a sacrifice to his rider's senseless hardihood. The ancient name of the Land's End was Pen-ringhuard, the Headland of Blood. Davies Gilbert relates that here a lady and relative of a former vicar of St. Erth, following out a dream, prepared a magic goblet, and with incantations poured out its contents over the cliff, expecting to see the buried Lionesse and its inhabitants rise up once more to bind Cornwall to the Scilly Isles. On the face of the Land's End is an upheaved beach of pebbles and boulders, embedded in the cliff 20 feet above the sea tufts of gray lichen and green moss, violet heath and yellow furze dapple its sides or fringe its edges of rocks heaved upon rocks: noble, impressive, grand always, but sublime when on the tumultuous deep below, with its unbroken vastness of extent and breadth of outline, appear the labouring ship and the monstrous waves, and the only sounds, besides the roar of the winds and the thunder of the sea, is the scream of the sea-mew and cormorant, as the gale whirls them past, or dashes them down into the breaker. And very beautiful it is also when the sky is bright and the waves ripple dreamily in the bay, as the setting sun bathes in violet hues the whole landscape, and flushes, as with the smile of the Creator, weather-beaten rock, distant cape and headland below. Above, in the deep vault of blue, floats cloud piled on cloud in ever-changing forms, with rainbow-tinted flame, itself mirrored in the sea, all on fire upon the horizon, about which lies a pathway of molten gold; this only ending where the soft-drawn islands in the west seem the fairy land in which yet lives the glory of Cornishmen, King Arthur-but only a faint image of that better country where there shall be no night-shall be no sea. Having completed our tour of the South Coast, making our starting-place from a point above the North Foreland in Kent, we propose now, in order to render our GUIDEBook as complete as possible for tourists in the West of England, to round the Land's End, and direct their attention to the still more romantic scenery of the northern coasts of Cornwall and Devon. In this trip the tourist may avail himself of the facilities afforded by the steamers which ply to Bristol from Penzance for visiting the places of interest on those varied shores. NORTH COAST OF CORNWALL AND DEVON. ST. IVES. ST. IVES, so called from an Irish saint-Ia, St. Piran's companion, stands in a district of tin-mines, and though picturesque at a distance, with its white sands and finelycurved bay, is an ugly, narrow, dirty, dull town, full of nauseous scents. It was the birthplace of the learned Jonathan Toup. The churches of Camborne and St. Ives contain Norman fonts, with four lions couching at the bases. The pilchard fishery is the staple of St. Ives. It is supposed that there are 10,000 regular fishermen in Cornwall. The history of the pilchard is a mystery: the shoals appear in July off the Scilly Islands; in November they disappear. Pilchards are sometimes caught on the south-west of Devon, or to the south of Ireland, but not elsewhere in these seas. Twenty-two thousand hogsheads of these fish are exported annually to Italy and Spain. The largest fishing-boat is about 15 tons burthen; the seine net is 193 fathoms long, and costs 170l. The shooters" cast this net; the "tuckers" throw the tuck, a smaller net, within the seine, to bring the fish to the surface; the "huers" are the look-out men, who watch for the shoal when the pilchards are first seen, the fishermen cry loudly," Heva! heva!" 66 NEW QUAY, Situated on a beautiful bay, with sands three miles in extent, under a range of cliffs of limestone abounding in fossils, and lying upon slate, has of late years been much frequented by summer visitors: a railway to connect it with Par, near Fowey (20 miles), designed by Mr. Treffry, is in course of completion. The towan, or blown sand, here forms a concretion which is used for building purposes. The gradual formation of the sandstone can be traced, the fragments of shells in this interesting district undergoing the process of induration. At Lower St. Columb Port is a blow-hole, through which the pent-up air throws up cascades. The force of the sea has hollowed out the cliffs into caverns. About four miles distant is St. Columb: on the road from St. Columb Major (4 miles) (which possesses a cruciform church and an ancient parsonage) is the priory of Rialton, built by Vivian, prior of Bodmin in the reign of Henry VIII. Mawgan may be reached by the cliff path which skirts the red and variegated slate cliffs of Watermouth bay. The church contains a rood-screen, with vignette pattern and figures, a circular Norman font, and three brasses of the Arundel family, dated 1580 and 1578; a brass of an ecclesiastic, 1480; and a Tregonon of the 17th century. In the south transept is an effigy of a crusader (Carminow). In the garth stands an ancient cross, overshadowing a fragment of a boat's stern, set up to the memory of a crew which, drifting on shore in it, was frozen to death in 1846. A braided cross, brought from the barton of Rosworthy, in Gwinnear, stands in the garden of the nunnery of Lanherne. This Elizabethan mansion was hospitably granted by the eighth Lord Arundell of Wardour to sixteen Carmelite nuns, who escaped as emigrants from Antwerp during the French Revolution. Trerice, an Elizabethan building, is three and a half miles distant: it belonged to the Arundells, but was sold to Sir T. Acland. Two miles south-east of St. Columb is Castle-an-Dinas, a triple entrenchment on a hill 729 feet high. It is of elliptic form, and of two lines, the lesser diameter being 1500 feet, the larger 1700 feet. It is known as King Arthur's Castle, the barren moors of Tregoze being called his hunting-ground. A little cove, called Bedruthan Steps, one mile north-west of Mawgan Point, forms one of the finest points on the coast. Trevose Head, six miles further, commands a most |