the last thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on st. michael's mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. it would be hard, if after journeying thus far and looking forward to it so many years, the day on which we went to the land's end should turn out a wet day! still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. some of us, i think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so till the hand is dust.
it was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out on the dawn, grey and misty, but still not wet. to be just on the point of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare enough to have a certain pathos in it. we slept again, and trusted for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering sun-gleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky. we wondered for the last time, as we had wondered for half a century, "what the land's end would be like," and then started, rather thoughtful than merry, to find out the truth of the case.
glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet sunday instead of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote us in driving through penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along to morning service, all in their sunday best. perhaps we might manage to go to afternoon church at sennen, or st. sennen's, which we knew by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."
but one can keep sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. i shall never forget the sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island. the way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer leaning over a gate in his decent sunday clothes, or two or three children trotting to school or church, with their books under their arms. unquestionably cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county; religious-minded too, whether methodist, quaker, or other nonconformist sects, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative church of england.
we passed st. buryan's—a curious old church founded on the place where an irishwoman, saint buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. a few stray cottages comprised the whole village. there was nothing special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and sunshine and solitude, till we came to treryn, the nearest point to the celebrated logan or rocking-stone.
from childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in england of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial, who can decide?
"which the touch of a finger alone sets moving,
but all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."
not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish lieutenant goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's crew, and by main force remove the logan a few inches from the point on which it rests. indignant justice very properly compelled him, at great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked properly since.
by charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the lizard, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards. soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.
"you'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the logan, ladies," said one of them in answer to a question.
and so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been much readier than his tongue. i, at least, should never have got even so far as that little rock-nest where i located myself—a somewhat anxious-minded old hen—and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the logan.
"now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the lovely solitude of sky and sea. and i suppose it did rock, but must honestly confess i could not see it stir a single inch.
however, it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones around it were equally huge and most picturesquely thrown together. also—delightful to my young folks!—they furnished the most adventurous scramble that heart could desire. i alone felt a certain relief when we were all again on smooth ground, with no legs or arms broken.
the cliff-walk between the logan and the land's end is said to be one of the finest in england for coast scenery. treryn or treen dinas, pardeneck point, and tol pedn penwith had been named as places we ought to see, but this was impracticable. we had to content ourselves with a dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came forward to the carriage, and charles jumped down from his box.
"you can get out now, ladies. this is the land's end."
"oh!"
i forbear to translate the world of meaning implied in that brief exclamation.
"let us go in and get something. perhaps we shall admire the place more when we have ceased to be hungry."
the words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of an hour at the land's end in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour of the—let me give it its right name—first and last inn, of great britain.
"we never provide for sunday," said the waitress, responding to a sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here. "it's very seldom any tourists come on a sunday."
at which we felt altogether humbled; but in a few minutes more our contrition passed into sovereign content.
we went out of doors, upon the narrow green plateau in front of the house, and then we recognised where we were—standing at the extreme end of a peninsula, with a long line of rocks running out still further into the sea. that "great and wide sea, wherein are moving things innumerable," the mysterious sea "kept in the hollow of his hand," who is infinity, and looking at which, in the intense solitude and silence, one seems dimly to guess at what infinity may be. any one who wishes to go to church for once in the great temple which his hands have builded, should spend a sunday at the land's end.
at first, our thought had been, what in the world shall we do here for two mortal hours! now, we wished we had had two whole days. a sunset, a sunrise, a star-lit night, what would they not have been in this grand lonely place—almost as lonely as a ship at sea? it would be next best to finding ourselves in the middle of the atlantic.
but this bliss could not be; so we proceeded to make the best of what we had. the bright day was darkening, and a soft greyness began to creep over land and sea. no, not soft, that is the very last adjective applicable to the land's end. even on that calm day there was a fresh wind—there must be always wind—and the air felt sharper and more salt than any sea-air i ever knew. stimulating too, so that one's nerves were strung to the highest pitch of excitement. we felt able to do anything, without fear and without fatigue. so that when a guide came forward—a regular man-of-war's-man he looked—we at once resolved to adventure along the line of rocks, seaward, "out as far as anybody was accustomed to go."
"ay, ay; i'll take you, ladies. that is—the young ladies might go—but you—" eying me over with his keen sailor's glance, full of honesty and good humour, "you're pretty well on in years, ma'am."
laughing, i told him how far on, but that i was able to do a good deal yet. he laughed too.
"oh, i've taken ladies much older than you. one the other day was nearly seventy. so we'll do our best, ma'am. come along."
he offered a rugged, brown hand, as firm and steady as a mast, to hold by, and nothing could exceed the care and kindliness with which he guided every step of every one of us, along that perilous path, that is, perilous except for cautious feet and steady heads.
"take care, young ladies. if you make one false step, you are done for," said our guide, composedly as he pointed to the boiling whirl of waters below.
still, though a narrow and giddy path, there was a path, and the exploit, though a little risky, was not fool-hardy. we should have been bitterly sorry not to have done it—not to have stood for one grand ten minutes, where in all our lives we may never stand again, at the farthest point where footing is possible, gazing out upon that magnificent circle of sea which sweeps over the submerged "land of lyonesse," far, far away, into the wide atlantic.
there were just two people standing with us, clergymen evidently, and one, the guide told us, was "the parson at st. sennen." we spoke to him, as people do speak, instinctively, when mutually watching such a scene, and by and by we mentioned the name of the long-dead curate of st. sennen's.
the "parson" caught instantly at the name.
"mr. ——? oh, yes, my father knew him quite well. he used constantly to walk across from sennen to our house, and take us children long rambles across the cliffs, with a volume of southey or wordsworth under his arm. he was a fine young fellow in those days, i have heard, and an excellent clergyman. and he afterwards married a very nice girl from the north somewhere."
"yes;" we smiled. the "nice girl" was now a sweet silver-haired little lady of nearly eighty; the "fine young fellow" had long since departed; and the boy was this grave middle-aged gentleman, who remembered both as a tradition of his youth. what a sermon it all preached, beside this eternal rock, this ever-moving, never-changing sea!
but time was passing—how fast it does pass, minutes, ay, and years! we bade adieu to our known unknown friend, and turned our feet backwards, cautiously as ever, stopping at intervals to listen to the gossip of our guide.
"yes, ladies, that's the spot—you may see the hoof-mark—where general armstrong's horse fell over; he just slipped off in time, but the poor beast was drowned. and here, over that rock, happened the most curious thing. i wouldn't have believed it myself, only i knew a man that saw it with his own eyes. once a bullock fell off into the pool below there—just look, ladies." (we did look, into a perfect maëlstrom of boiling waves.) "everybody thought he was drowned, till he was seen swimming about unhurt. they fished him up, and exhibited him as a curiosity."
and again, pointing to a rock far out in the sea.
"that's the brisons. thirty years ago a ship went to pieces there, and the captain and his wife managed to climb on to that rock. they held on there for two days and a night, before a boat could get at them. at last they were taken off one at a time, with rockets and a rope; the wife first. but the rope slipped and she fell into the water. she was pulled out in a minute or so, and rowed ashore, but they durst not tell her husband she was drowned. i was standing on the beach at whitesand bay when the boat came in. i was only a lad, but i remember it well, and her too lifted out all dripping and quite dead. she was such a fine woman."
"and the captain?"
"they went back for him, and got him off safe, telling him nothing. but when he found she was dead he went crazy-like—kept for ever saying, 'she saved my life, she saved my life,' till he was taken away by his friends. look out, ma'am, mind your footing; just here a lady slipped and broke her leg a week ago. i had to carry her all the way to the hotel. i shouldn't like to carry you."
we all smiled at the comical candour of the honest sailor, who proceeded to give us bits of his autobiography. he was cornish born, but had seen a deal of the world as an a.b. on board her majesty's ship agamemnon.
"of course you have heard of the agamemnon, ma'am. i was in her off balaklava. you remember the crimean war?"
yes, i did. his eyes brightened as we discussed names and places once so familiar, belonging to that time, which now seems so far back as to be almost historical.
"then you know what a winter we had, and what a summer afterwards. i came home invalided, and didn't attempt the service afterwards; but i never thought i should come home at all. yes, it's a fine place the land's end, though the air is so strong that it kills some folks right off. once an invalid gentleman came, and he was dead in a fortnight. but i'm not dead yet, and i stop here mostly all the year round."
he sniffed the salt air and smiled all over his weather-beaten face—keen, bronzed, blue-eyed, like one of the old vikings. he was a fine specimen of a true british tar. when, having seen all we could, we gave him his small honorarium, he accepted it gratefully, and insisted on our taking in return a memento of the place in the shape of a stone weighing about two pounds, glittering with ore, and doubtless valuable, but ponderous. oh, the trouble it gave me to carry it home, and pack and unpack it among my small luggage! but i did bring it home, and i keep it still in remembrance of the land's end, and of the honest sailor of h.m.s. agamemnon.
so all was over. we could dream of an unknown land's end no more. it became now a real place, of which the reality, though different from the imagination, was at least no disappointment. how few people in attaining a life-long desire can say as much!
our only regret, an endurable one now, was that we had not carried out our original plan of staying some days there—tourist-haunted, troubled days they might have been, but the evenings and mornings would have been glorious. with somewhat heavy hearts we summoned charles and the carriage, for already a misty drift of rain began sweeping over the sea.
"still, we must see whitesand bay," said one of us, recalling a story a friend had once told how, staying at land's end, she crossed the bay alone in a blinding storm, took refuge at the coastguard station, where she was hospitably received, and piloted back with most chivalric care by a coastguard, who did not tell her till their journey's end that he had left at home a wife, and a baby just an hour old.
no such romantic adventure befell us. we only caught a glimmer of the bay through drizzling rain, which by the time we reached sennen village had become a regular downpour. evidently, we could do no more that day, which was fast melting into night.
"we'll go home," was the sad resolve, glad nevertheless that we had a comfortable "home" to go to.
so closing the carriage and protecting ourselves as well as we could from the driving rain, we went forward, passing the quakers' burial ground, where is said to be one of the finest views in cornwall; the nine maidens, a circle of druidical stones, and many other interesting things, without once looking at or thinking of them.
half a mile from marazion the rain ceased, and a light like that of the rising moon began to break through the clouds. what a night it might be, or might have been, could we have stayed at the land's end!
that ghostly "might have been!" it is in great things as in small, the worry, the torment, the paralysing burden of life. away with it! we have done our best to be happy, and we have been happy. we have seen the land's end.
