A good road runs from Hayle to Gwythian, skirting the Phillack towans, and then passes onward to Portreath. For the most part it keeps near the sea, so that the cyclist need not feel he is losing everything worth seeing; but the pedestrian, if he does not mind a few rough places, will do better still by taking the cliff path. Camborne and Redruth, lying some miles inland, are not likely to tempt the traveller, unless he be a mining expert intent on studying newest methods, or unless he be a lover of Rugby football, of which, in the proper season, he might see some good games. Cornwall, having deserted hurling for the more modern development of the ball game, has won high position, and these two mining towns are the chief centres of the sport. Something other than football, however, attracts most of those who come to Cornwall, and one such attraction ought to be the lovely view of St. Ives Bay to be enjoyed from the Godrevy headland. The reef of rocks lying off this eastward point of the bay has been a deadly trap for navigation, and the lighthouse, on an island close to the mainland, was first erected in 1857. One early wreck on these crags is connected with memories of the beheaded Charles I. On the day of his execution a fierce storm broke on the coast, easily interpreted by loyal Cornishmen as a judgment of God. A vessel containing the royal wardrobe and other furnishings was riding at the time in St. Ives Bay, being bound for France, and this was driven by the tempest on the Godrevy rocks. Of the sixty persons on board all were lost with the exception of a man and boy; these, with a wolfhound, swam to the islet on which the light now stands and were carried to St. Ives as soon as the storm permitted their rescue. With all the assistance that a powerful light can give the Godrevy stones are still perilous. The lighthouse is finely placed and its white tower is a conspicuous mark along the coast. The eastward projection of this headland is Navax Point. A little beyond is the deep and narrow gorge of Hell’s Mouth not the only spot so named in Cornwall whose dim caverns and beach are said to be more frequented by seals than any other part of the Cornish coast; but the seals will soon be a thing of the past they are foolishly and cruelly shot by men whose instinct is to shoot everything. The caves were once haunted by smugglers also, and their operations were admirably seconded by Nature. There is a sprinkling of little islets along the shore here, one of which is Samphire Isle. About a mile inland, on the left of the road, is Tehidy House, with its parks and plantations of nearly one thousand acres, said to have once reached to the foot of Carn Brea. This is the seat of the Bassets, one of the most memorable of Cornish families, having played a great part in the Duchy’s history. The Bassets were among the earliest Norman settlers in England and can be traced in Cornwall as early as the time of Robert de Mortain, half-brother of the Conqueror. They do not appear to have gained a permanent settlement in Cornwall, however, till the reign of Henry II., when Thomas Baron Basset, of Hedendon, Oxfordshire, married Adeliza de Dunstanville and so took root at Tehidy. The family intermarried with the best local families Grenvilles, Trelawneys, Godolphins, Rashleighs, Prideaux. Francis Basset, who was associated with Grenville in the glorious victory of Stamford Hill, Stratton, was knighted by Charles I. after the fight of Braddoc Down. Some of his letters to his wife at this time are preserved, and they compare with Bevil Grenville’s for touching simplicity and whole-hearted affection. His joy at the victories, which seemed to have established the Royal cause on a firm basis at least in the West is expressed in several of these. “Peace,” he exclaims, “and I hope perpetual. Sadd houses I have seen many, but a joyfuller pleasanter day never than this. Sende the money, as much and as soone as you can. Sende to all our ffriends at home, especially, this good news. I write this on my saddle. Every friend will pardon the illness of it, and you chiefly, my perfect joy.” To this he adds in a postscript: “The Kinge and army march presently for Plymouth. Jesus give the King it and all. The King, in the hearing of thousands, as soon as he saw me in ye morning, cryed to mee, ’Deare Mr. Sheriffe, I leave Cornwall to you safe and sound.’” The letter is addressed “To my Lady Bassett, at her Tehidy, joyfull. After the success near Lostwithiel.” It was not long, however, before this joyfulness was turned to mourning. Grenville and many another gallant Cornishman fell in battle; stronghold after stronghold gave way before the irresistible Fairfax; and Basset himself, after a brave defence of St. Michael’s Mount, had to yield and withdraw to a kind of exile at Scilly. This dauntless loyalist was closely connected with the town of St. Ives, which he represented in Parliament, and to which he gave the silver goblet mentioned in the previous chapter. Tehidy House, which was enlarged and nearly rebuilt in 1865, is beautifully situated and contains an excellent collection of pictures, including specimens by Reynolds, Vandyck, Lely, and Gainsborough. A later notability was Francis, Baron de Dunstanville and Basset, of Tehidy, born at Walcot in 1757, whose virtues were so greatly appreciated by the Duchy that his monument was erected on the summit of Carn Brea, where it stands as a striking landmark, rising 90 feet from its pedestal; this was placed in 1836. The top can be reached by an inner stairway, and commands a magnificent view of land and water. With the death of Lord Francis the title de Dunstanville became extinct. Carn Brea cannot actually be said to belong to the coast, being several miles inland, but it is a dominant feature in any view from a far distance, and it claims a visit partly on account of this monument and partly for its prehistoric remains. This mass of granite, rising to a height of about 740 feet, bears traces of immemorial occupation that have been both a delight and a puzzle to antiquaries. Those familiar with the works of the artist Cruikshank will remember that the giant Bolster used to take this hill with one stride from St. Agnes Beacon, and in addition to this tale of giants there was the usual chatter about Druids and Druidic monuments in connection with Carn Brea. It is safest to leave the Druids alone they are at a discount now; the place is interesting enough without them, and the view from the summit is magnificent, reaching as it does from sea to sea. Clusters of hut circles and signs of neolithic military entrenchment are very obvious, and a number of pure gold coins have been discovered here. There is also a mediaeval castle, restored, and, of course, the inevitable logan-stone. Nearer to Redruth is one of the Cornish “places of play” (plan-an-guare), known as Planguary. These rounded hollows, such as the famous Gwennap Pit, were formerly used for sports and dramatic performances; they played an important part in the social life of the past, and Cornwall had its own speciality in miracle-plays or interludes. Carew tells us that “the Guary Miracle is a kind of interlude compiled in Cornish out of some Scripture history. For representing it they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, leaving the diameter of the enclosed plain some forty or fifty feet. The country people flock from all sides to see and hear it, for they have therein devils and devices to delight the eye as well as the ear. The players speak not their parts without book, but are prompted by one called the ordinary, who followeth at their back with the book in his hand and telleth them softly what they must pronounce aloud. The dramas were acted at one time for several days together and were similar in character to the English mysteries of the same period.”

The parish of Illogan was the birthplace of the engineer Trevithick, who was born here in 1771. His father, a prominent manager of local mines, was a Methodist, often visited by Wesley. The boy, educated at Camborne, was bright and precocious; he is said on one occasion to have irritated his master by offering to do six sums to his one a proposition which no pedagogue is likely to appreciate. He was powerfully developed physically, and at eighteen could lift ten hundredweight. In 1794 he became engineer at the Ding Dong Mine, where he introduced many improvements; and a few years later he was busily engaged in designing a genuine steam-carriage, which was finished and made its first short trip on Christmas Eve, 1801, carrying the first passengers ever known to have been conveyed by steam. Locally this contrivance was known as the “puffing devil,” or as “Cap’n Dick’s Puffer.” The next step was to produce an engine running on rails. This was done in 1804, when Trevithick completed a machine which carried ten tons of iron, five wagons, and seventy men for a distance of nine and a half miles, the speed being about five miles an hour. Clumsy and slow as it was, this was a very marked advance on anything that had previously been accomplished. But the engineer’s genius for invention was not balanced by adequate business capacity, and he lacked the means of perfecting and forwarding his devices; they had to wait. He went to Peru in 1817, and suffered heavy losses through the war of independence. At this time he was nearly drowned in the Magdalena River, but was rescued by a Venezuelan officer, who drew him ashore with a lasso. It is pleasant to learn that he made the acquaintance of George Stephenson at Carthagena, and received generous help from one who might have been considered his rival. He died poor and in debt at Dartford in 1833, when the workmen with whom he had been labouring clubbed together to give him a suitable funeral. There is now a memorial window to his memory in Westminster Abbey. His character seems to have been warm and sanguine, tender-hearted, and easily depressed. He was notably one of those men into whose labours “other men enter” successful to a point, but lacking in the finishing touches that bring fame and triumph; with all his courage he wanted persistence. But when we think of Watt and Stephenson in connection with steam transit we must never forget that the Cornishman Trevithick deserves at least an equal share of honour.

Illogan is a mining centre, and thickly populated, though when we speak of population in Cornwall we must remember that the inhabitants of the whole Duchy number far less than those of such towns as Birmingham, Liverpool, or Manchester. The church here was rebuilt in 1848, when all the old monuments were carefully replaced. Portreath is the thriving little port of the district, and is also popular with Camborne and Redruth folk as a watering-place. But the presence of active and prosperous mining does not make for beauty; a mine only becomes picturesque when it has been deserted and taken back into the bosom of Nature. Otherwise, Portreath has many attractions, and the coast is grand. The port has four docks and a pier of about 260 yards long. Lord de Dunstanville built the first dock here. Copper ore is exported, and there is an import of coal and iron. What with commercialism and pleasure, Portreath (formerly named Basset’s Cove) should do well; but the industries certainly bring some disfigurement, and the stream that flows to the sea discolours the ocean waves with its ruddy stain. From here to St. Agnes the coast is broken into coves, one of which, Porth Towan, is popular with excursionists; but the tripper cannot be here at all times, and when he is absent the shores are left to majestic loneliness, their caves haunted by seals and their crags by crying sea-fowl. We do not escape from the mining when we come to St. Agnes, but we come to a district of notable memories, and those who climb the Beacon can look towards St. Ives on the one side and Newquay on the other. We must not suppose that the Beacon is associated with any memories of the saintly maiden whom Keats and Tennyson have poetically glorified; St. Agnes here is pronounced St. Anne’s, and it is supposed that this Ann is the so-named goddess of the Irish Celts, but the identification is rather difficult. More vivid is the legend that speaks of the love of the giant Bolster for this saint, and the manner in which she contrived to get rid of him. As a married man, the giant believed in the virtues of quick change; he found that a new wife each year was a fairly satisfactory allowance, and it is reported that he killed the old ones by throwing stones at them. St. Agnes was much perturbed by his attentions; she did not approve of his matrimonial methods, and she had some sympathy with the existing Mrs. Bolster. “At last she conceived a device, not very saint-like but perhaps necessary. Would he fill a little hole in the cliff with his blood as a proof of his affection? Of course he would. He cut his arm and let the blood run; but the life-stream flowed and flowed, and his strength ebbed away, and the hole did not fill. At last, when the sea had become red with his blood, he died. The saint had deceived him; the small hole in the rock led down into a cavern, and the cavern led to the sea; not even the ocean could have filled it.” Chapel Porth is named as the scene of this incident. The village of St. Agnes lies at the eastward foot of the Beacon, and Trevaunance, on the coast, is its port. It is a neighbourhood where natural beauties contend with the ugliness of industrialism, and usually emerge triumphant. There is a story told of St. Agnes in connection with Wesley, which proves how rapidly folk-lore may spring up; it is even more remarkable, because more modern, than the manner in which Devonians have associated mythology with the name of Francis Drake. It is said that “when Wesley visited this part of Cornwall preaching, he was refused shelter elsewhere than in an ancient mansion that was unoccupied because haunted by ghosts. Wesley went to the house, and sat up reading by candle-light. At midnight he heard a noise in the hall, and on issuing from his room, saw that a banquet was spread, and that richly apparelled ladies and gentlemen were about the board. Then one cavalier, with dark, piercing eyes and a pointed black beard, wearing a red feather in his cap, said, ‘We invite you to eat and to drink with us,’ and pointed to an empty chair. Wesley at once took the place indicated, but before he put in his mouth a bite of food or drank a drop, said, ’It is my custom to ask a blessing; stand all.’ Then the spectres rose. Wesley began his accustomed grace, ’The Name of God, high over all’ when suddenly the room darkened, and all the apparitions vanished.” There is yet another memory at St. Agnes. The painter Opie (said to have been born Hoppie) was born at Harmony Cottage in the year 1761, his father being a carpenter. At ten years of age he began to teach others in the village school; and at twelve he opened an evening school for poor children. Having already developed an extraordinary taste for drawing, it is related that he once purposely irritated his father in order to catch the expression of anger for a picture. He soon began to practise in a humble way as a portrait-painter, and was advised by Dr. Wolcot ("Peter Pindar”) to raise his price to half a guinea a head; from which we may guess that his previous terms had been excessively modest. Wolcot was a good friend to Opie, though their intercourse did not remain very cordial; but for a time they even entered into some sort of partnership together, in London, and there can be no doubt that the painter was thus introduced to a wider circle than he would otherwise have reached. He became the “Cornish Wonder,” and felt able to tell Wolcot that he could get on by himself. This may sound like ingratitude, but we do not know enough of the story to form a judgment. When Northcote returned to London from abroad Joshua Reynolds said to him, “My dear sir, you may go back; there is a wondrous Cornishman who is carrying all before him.” “What is he like?” asked Northcote. “Like? Why, like Caravaggio and Velasquez in one.” Opie began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1782, and in the same year he married a lady who eloped from him. Divorcing her, he married, many years later, the novelist Mrs. Opie. The flood of his popularity waned considerably, as such sudden fashions do, but still he had plenty of work, and a solid reputation grew on a sounder basis. In 1787 his “Assassination of David Rizzio” procured his election as A.R.A., and a year afterwards he became full member. The lectures that he delivered at the Academy were admirable both in matter and in manner, and are worthy of ranking even with those of Reynolds, whose life Opie wrote. Dying in 1807, after a second married period of great happiness, the painter was buried at St. Paul’s. Among those whose portraits he painted were Dr. Johnson, Fox, Burke, Dr. Parr, Northcote, and many other celebrities of his day. Apart from his own special art, he was passionately devoted to poetry, and is said to have had a wonderful memory for recitation. The house at which he was born is situated about half-way between St. Agnes and Perranporth. Trevaunance Porth, which now has some insignificant accommodation for shipping, is notable for the difficulties that opposed even such small harbourage. The manor belonged to the Tonkin family, who spent much money in the attempt to build a pier, but the force of the sea always frustrated them. About the year 1700 Winstanley, the famous builder of Eddystone, constructed an excellent quay and basin, but a gale destroyed this after a very few years. Tonkin, the parochial historian of Cornwall, whose work is valuable in spite of its errors, laid out a considerable sum in an effort to repair the quay, and to raise the money he had to part with a small piece of land, which speedily repaid its purchaser by the richness of its mineral wealth. A jetty built later withstood the sea better than its more ambitious predecessors had done.

Beyond St. Agnes Beacon the coast is largely composed of clay-slates, or killas, presenting much desolate grandeur; the slate showing the jagged scars of its unending resistance to oceanic forces. At Cligga Head this slate is blended with decomposed hard granite. Off the shore, about two miles out, rise the two isolated rocks known as the Man and his Men sometimes also called the Cow and her Calf. “Man” and “Men” are simply corruptions of the Celtic maen, a stone. Between St. Agnes and Perranporth the passage along the cliffs is interrupted by the extensive enclosures of a modern dynamite factory, and the pedestrian who has known this walk of yore is not likely to bless this manufacture of a deadly explosive. But there is a great industrial demand for dynamite in the district, and it is well that its production should be relegated to a neighbourhood where accidents would do the least possible damage. At Perranporth we approach a grim sand-driven tract of country sacred to the name of one of Cornwall’s most typical saints, the Irishman St. Piran. Perranporth itself, since the advent of the railway, is drawing some visitors away from Newquay, in quest of equal beauty and greater quiet. The village stands on the cliffs above a small cove, from which there is some fishing, and northward runs a fine stretch of sand. There are capabilities here for almost unlimited growth, and the district, inland and seaward, is full of charm. The coast is hollowed and arched into wonderful caverns, where the deep blue and green waters break with gentle swell or dash with infuriated violence. The church is a chapel-of-ease to Perranzabuloe (Piran-in-sábulo); there are barrows and sand-dunes, and a vague floating rumour of an immemorial past. In fog or grey weather the spot can be dreary, weird, desolate; but in times of fair sunrise or sundown it is glorified with a marvellous beauty, with restful nooks where a dreamer may enter upon a heritage of beatific vision. St. Piran, the dominant personality of the district, is the patron of the tin-miners, but neither they nor others know much about him; he is a ghost of the far past, but a ghost with a dim halo around his head. He belongs to the sixth century, and was therefore a little later than the saints of the Land’s End country. In Ireland he is reputed as St. Kieran of Saigir, but the British Celts, according to their usual custom, changed the Gaelic K into P. His Irish record is much more full than his Cornish, but it must not delay us, except to remember that he rescued an Irish girl, Bruinsech, from a chief who had kidnapped her, and that she travelled to Cornwall, probably in his company, to become the Buriena of St. Buryan. Piran is said to have journeyed across the seas on a millstone, which is a mythical way of saying that he brought his altar-stone with him. He is supposed to have landed on these drifting sands that perpetuate his name, and to have founded his first cell here, the oratory that still remains in much mutilated ruin among the towans of Perran. So far as site is concerned, this may be true enough; but the oratory, whose bare foundations are now surrounded by a sheltering rail, is probably at least two centuries later than the day of St. Piran, though it is just possible that the huge skeleton found here might be his. There is no reason why a saint may not also be a giant. But who shall establish the identity of a mouldering skeleton? Only a fragment of gable, a half-buried inscribed slab, and some loose rugged stones, have been left to speak of what may be the earliest religious foundation in England; but even in this matter of antiquity there are competitors. We may suppose that the present oratory was raised over Piran’s original cell somewhere about the eighth century; and about two centuries later it was found that the encroaching sands rendered its further use impossible. It was deserted, and a second church raised a little further inland, of which the site is now marked by a cross. Visitors may be warned that both sites are very difficult to discover without a guide. This second church became collegiate in the time of the Confessor, with a dean and canons, being enriched by the offerings of pilgrims who came from all parts of Cornwall to the shrine of St. Piran. The establishment was presented by Henry I. to the canons of Exeter. We may judge that at this time the first chapel was entirely buried in the sands. In 1420 the second church was rebuilt; the older church, even its site, was forgotten. At the close of the eighteenth century the second church itself was threatened by the same peril; the planting of reed-grass was not then understood as a means of binding the sand. This time the parishioners moved their church to a greater distance, establishing their church town at the present Perranzabuloe, where the materials of the second church were largely used in the erection of a new one; they also carried thither an old hexagonal font, which is thought to have come from the original oratory. In the year 1835 a shifting of sand revealed this earliest church, whose memory only survived in vague tradition; the secret came to light after a burial of eight or nine centuries. The discovery made a considerable stir, and was announced to the public in books written by two clergymen, W. Haslam and Trelawney-Collins, neither of whom, however, is a quite reliable guide. Mr. Collins used the occasion as an opportunity for proving that the Church in England was a Protestant Church more than nine hundred years before the Reformation; while the zeal of Mr. Haslam led him to an unfortunate attempt at restoring the oratory. Then followed neglect, and the tourists who came hither were left to pilfer and carry away the sacred stones piecemeal; now, when it is almost too late, such depredation is stopped. The church was a ruin when it was found; it is something almost less than a ruin now. As revealed by the shifting sand, it presented an almost exact resemblance to the oldest oratories in Ireland; its length was about 29 feet, its breadth 16 feet, with an arched doorway, and one little window, walled up, above the altar. The masonry was of the roughest description, the stones appearing to have been put together with little selection; and the floor was a rude kind of concrete, china clay being used instead of lime. Some skeletons were found within the church, and many more without; in fact, human remains are still cast up by the sands. Perhaps this was once a spot of thick population; or, more probably, the fame of St. Piran may have rendered it a popular burying-ground. A notice has been placed here, warning against any disturbance of the soil or of the remains of the dead. The feast-day of St. Piran falls on the 5th of March, and is not yet quite forgotten; it was once an occasion of such merry-making as to furnish a local saying “As drunk as a Perraner.” There is an unhappy tradition that St. Piran himself died in drink, which we may connect with the other rumour that he discovered Cornish tin in an effort to distil Irish whisky. We have reason to believe that Celtic saints were very human, but we need not credit every idle legend. The saint seems to have been something of a farmer, possessing many horses and cattle. We may question the statement that he lived to the age of two hundred, and then dug his own grave in the sand; but the possibility that the large skeleton found here was really his has some support from the fact that it was headless when discovered, and this tallies with an entry in the will of Sir John Arundell of Trerice: “To provide honourable protection for St. Pieran’s head, the sum of 40s.” Those who wish to find the ancient oratory had better first reach the site of the second church, marked by a high granite cross; from this the older remains lie about a quarter of a mile westward, towards the sea. Another plan-an-guare, resembling that of Redruth, lies near the hamlet of Rose (ros, a moorland); it is about 130 feet in diameter, and has faint traces of seven tiers of seats, which afforded accommodation for two thousand spectators. Originally it was probably a natural subsidence, strengthened by artificial earthworks; and whatever its first use may have been, it became a popular amphitheatre for public performance of miracle-plays. There are many water-mills in this district, and they provide a feature not common in Cornwall.