by Daniel Defoe
and the lading, being tin, was afterwards secured.
"N.B.--The merchants very well rewarded the three sailors,
especially the lad that ran her into that place."
Penzance is the farthest town of any note west, being 254 miles
from London, and within about ten miles of the promontory called
the Land's End; so that this promontory is from London 264 miles,
or thereabouts. This town of Penzance is a place of good business,
well built and populous, has a good trade, and a great many ships
belonging to it, notwithstanding it is so remote. Here are also a
great many good families of gentlemen, though in this utmost angle
of the nation; and, which is yet more strange, the veins of lead,
tin, and copper ore are said to be seen even to the utmost extent
of land at low-water mark, and in the very sea--so rich, so
valuable, a treasure is contained in these parts of Great Britain,
though they are supposed to be so poor, because so very remote from
London, which is the centre of our wealth.
Between this town and St. Burien, a town midway between it and the
Land's End, stands a circle of great stones, not unlike those at
Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, with one bigger than the rest in the
middle. They stand about twelve feet asunder, but have no
inscription; neither does tradition offer to leave any part of
their history upon record, as whether it was a trophy or a monument
of burial, or an altar for worship, or what else; so that all that
can be learned of them is that here they are. The parish where
they stand is called Boscawone, from whence the ancient and
honourable family of Boscawen derive their names.
Near Penzance, but open to the sea, is that gulf they call Mount's
Bay; named so from a high hill standing in the water, which they
call St. Michael's Mount: the seamen call it only the Cornish
Mount. It has been fortified, though the situation of it makes it
so difficult of access that, like the Bass in Scotland, there needs
no fortification; like the Bass, too, it was once made a prison for
prisoners of State, but now it is wholly neglected. There is a
very good road here for shipping, which makes the town of Penzance
be a place of good resort.
A little up in the county towards the north-west is Godolchan,
which though a hill, rather than a town, gives name to the noble
and ancient family of Godolphin; and nearer on the northern coast
is Royalton, which since the late Sydney Godolphin, Esq., a younger
brother of the family, was created Earl of Godolphin, gave title of
Lord to his eldest son, who was called Lord Royalton during the
life of his father. This place also is infinitely rich in tin-
mines.
I am now at my journey's end. As to the islands of Scilly, which
lie beyond the Land's End, I shall say something of them presently.
I must now return SUR MES PAS, as the French call it; though not
literally so, for I shall not come back the same way I went. But
as I have coasted the south shore to the Land's End, I shall come
back by the north coast, and my observations in my return will
furnish very well materials for another letter.
APPENDIX TO LAND'S END.
I have ended this account at the utmost extent of the island of
Great Britain west, without visiting those excrescences of the
island, as I think I may call them--viz., the rocks of Scilly; of
which what is most famous is their infamy or reproach; namely, how
many good ships are almost continually dashed in pieces there, and
how many brave lives lost, in spite of the mariners' best skill, or
the lighthouses' and other sea-marks' best notice.
These islands lie so in the middle between the two vast openings of
the north and south narrow seas (or, as the sailors call them, the
Bristol Channel, and The Channel--so called by way of eminence)
that it cannot, or perhaps never will, be avoided but that several
ships in the dark of the night and in stress of weather, may, by
being out in their reckonings, or other unavoidable accidents,
mistake; and if they do, they are sure, as the sailors call it, to
run "bump ashore" upon Scilly, where they find no quarter among the
breakers, but are beat to pieces without any possibility of escape.
One can hardly mention the Bishop and his Clerks, as they are
called, or the rocks of Scilly, without letting fall a tear to the
memory of Sir Cloudesley Shovel and all the gallant spirits that
were with him, at one blow and without a moment's warning dashed
into a state of immortality--the admiral, with three men-of-war,
and all their men (running upon these rocks right afore the wind,
and in a dark night) being lost there, and not a man saved. But
all our annals and histories are full of this, so I need say no
more.
They tell us of eleven sail of merchant-ships homeward bound, and
richly laden from the southward, who had the like fate in the same
place a great many years ago; and that some of them coming from
Spain, and having a great quantity of bullion or pieces of eight on
board, the money frequently drives on shore still, and that in good
quantities, especially after stormy weather.
This may be the reason why, as we observed during our short stay
here, several mornings after it had blown something hard in the
night, the sands were covered with country people running to and
fro to see if the sea had cast up anything of value. This the
seamen call "going a-shoring;" and it seems they do often find good
purchase. Sometimes also dead bodies are cast up here, the
consequence of shipwrecks among those fatal rocks and islands; as
also broken pieces of ships, casks, chests, and almost everything
that will float or roll on shore by the surges of the sea.
Nor is it seldom that the voracious country people scuffle and
fight about the right to what they find, and that in a desperate
manner; so that this part of Cornwall may truly be said to be
inhabited by a fierce and ravenous people. For they are so greedy,
and eager for the prey, that they are charged with strange, bloody,
and cruel dealings, even sometimes with one another; but especially
with poor distressed seamen when they come on shore by force of a
tempest, and seek help for their lives, and where they find the
rooks themselves not more merciless than the people who range about
them for their prey.
Here, also, as a farther testimony of the immense riches which have
been lost at several times upon this coast, we found several
engineers and projectors--some with one sort of diving engine, and
some with another; some claiming such a wreck, and some such-and-
such others; where they alleged they were assured there were great
quantities of money; and strange unprecedented ways were used by
them to come at it: some, I say, with one kind of engine, and some
another; and though we thought several of them very strange
impracticable methods, yet I was assured by the country people that
they had done wonders with them under water, and that some of them
had taken up things of great weight and in a great depth of water.
Others had split open the wrecks they had found in a manner one
would have thought not possible to be done so far under water, and
had taken out things from the very holds of the ships. But we
could not learn that they had come at any pieces of eight, which
was the thing they seemed most to aim at and depend upon; at least,
they had not found any great quantity, as they said they expected.
However, we left them as busy as we found them, and far from being
discouraged; and if half the golden mountains, or silver mountains
either, which they promise themselves should appear, they will be
very well paid for their labour.
From the tops of the hills on this extremity of the land you may
see out into that they call the Chops of the Channel, which, as it
is the greatest inlet of commerce, and the most frequented by
merchant-ships of any place in the world, so one seldom looks out
to seaward but something new presents--that is to say, of ships
passing or repassing, either on the great or lesser Channel.
Upon a former accidental journey into this part of the country,
during the war with France, it was with a mixture of pleasure and
horror that we saw from the hills at the Lizard, which is the
southern-most point of this land, an obstinate fight between three
French men-of-war and two English, with a privateer and three
merchant-ships in their company. The English had the misfortune,
not only to be fewer ships of war in number, but of less force; so
that while the two biggest French ships engaged the English, the
third in the meantime took the two merchant-ships and went off with
them. As to the picaroon or privateer, she was able to do little
in the matter, not daring to come so near the men-of-war as to take
a broadside, which her thin sides would not have been able to bear,
but would have sent her to the bottom at once; so that the English
men-of-war had no assistance from her, nor could she prevent the
taking the two merchant-ships. Yet we observed that the English
captains managed their fight so well, and their seamen behaved so
briskly, that in about three hours both the Frenchmen stood off,
and, being sufficiently banged, let us see that they had no more
stomach to fight; after which the English--having damage enough,
too, no doubt--stood away to the eastward, as we supposed, to
refit.
This point of the Lizard, which runs out to the southward, and the
other promontory mentioned above, make the two angles--or horns, as
they are called--from whence it is supposed this county received
its first name of Cornwall, or, as Mr. Camden says, CORNUBIA in the
Latin, and in the British "Kernaw," as running out in two vastly
extended horns. And indeed it seems as if Nature had formed this
situation for the direction of mariners, as foreknowing of what
importance it should be, and how in future ages these seas should
be thus thronged with merchant-ships, the protection of whose
wealth, and the safety of the people navigating them, was so much
her early care that she stretched out the land so very many ways,
and extended the points and promontories so far and in so many
different places into the sea, that the land might be more easily
discovered at a due distance, which way soever the ships should
come.
Nor is the Lizard Point less useful (though not so far west) than
the other, which is more properly called the Land's End; but if we
may credit our mariners, it is more frequently first discovered
from the sea. For as our mariners, knowing by the soundings when
they are in the mouth of the Channel, do then most naturally stand
to the southward, to avoid mistaking the Channel, and to shun the
Severn Sea or Bristol Channel, but still more to avoid running upon
Scilly and the rocks about it, as is observed before--I say, as
they carefully keep to the southward till they think they are fair
with the Channel, and then stand to the northward again, or north-
east, to make the land, this is the reason why the Lizard is,
generally speaking, the first land they make, and not the Land's
End.
Then having made the Lizard, they either (first) run in for
Falmouth, which is the next port, if they are taken short with
easterly winds, or are in want of provisions and refreshment, or
have anything out of order, so that they care not to keep the sea;
or (secondly) stand away for the Ram Head and Plymouth Sound; or
(thirdly) keep an offing to run up the Channel.
So that the Lizard is the general guide, and of more use in these
cases than the other point, and is therefore the land which the
ships choose to make first; for then also they are sure that they
are past Scilly and all the dangers of that part of the island.
Nature has fortified this part of the island of Britain in a
strange manner, and so, as is worth a traveller's observation, as
if she knew the force and violence of the mighty ocean which beats
upon it; and which, indeed, if the land was not made firm in
proportion, could not withstand, but would have been washed away
long ago.
First, there are the islands of Scilly and the rocks about them;
these are placed like out-works to resist the first assaults of
this enemy, and so break the force of it, as the piles (or
starlings, as they are called) are placed before the solid
stonework of London Bridge to fence off the force either of the
water or ice, or anything else that might be dangerous to the work.
Then there are a vast number of sunk rocks (so the seamen call
them), besides such as are visible and above water, which gradually
lessen the quantity of water that would otherwise lie with an
infinite weight and force upon the land. It is observed that these
rocks lie under water for a great way off into the sea on every
side the said two horns or points of land, so breaking the force of
the water, and, as above, lessening the weight of it.
But besides this the whole TERRA FIRMA, or body of the land which
makes this part of the isle of Britain, seems to be one solid rock,
as if it was formed by Nature to resist the otherwise irresistible
power of the ocean. And, indeed, if one was to observe with what
fury the sea comes on sometimes against the shore here, especially
at the Lizard Point, where there are but few, if any, out-works, as
I call them, to resist it; how high the waves come rolling forward,
storming on the neck of one another (particularly when the wind
blows off sea), one would wonder that even the strongest rocks
themselves should be able to resist and repel them. But, as I
said, the country seems to be, as it were, one great body of stone,
and prepared so on purpose.
And yet, as if all this was not enough, Nature has provided another
strong fence, and that is, that these vast rocks are, as it were,
cemented together by the solid and weighty ore of tin and copper,
especially the last, which is plentifully found upon
the very
outmost edge of the land, and with which the stones may be said to
be soldered together, lest the force of the sea should separate and
disjoint them, and so break in upon these fortifications of the
island to destroy its chief security.
This is certain--that there is a more than ordinary quantity of
tin, copper, and lead also placed by the Great Director of Nature
in these very remote angles (and, as I have said above, the ore is
found upon the very surface of the rocks a good way into the sea);
and that it does not only lie, as it were, upon or between the
stones among the earth (which in that case might be washed from it
by the sea), but that it is even blended or mixed in with the
stones themselves, that the stones must be split into pieces to
come at it. By this mixture the rocks are made infinitely weighty
and solid, and thereby still the more qualified to repel the force
of the sea.
Upon this remote part of the island we saw great numbers of that
famous kind of crows which is known by the name of the Cornish
cough or chough (so the country people call them). They are the
same kind which are found in Switzerland among the Alps, and which
Pliny pretended were peculiar to those mountains, and calls the
PYRRHOCORAX. The body is black; the legs, feet, and bill of a deep
yellow, almost to a red. I could not find that it was affected for
any good quality it had, nor is the flesh good to eat, for it feeds
much on fish and carrion; it is counted little better than a kite,
for it is of ravenous quality, and is very mischievous. It will
steal and carry away anything it finds about the house that is not
too heavy, though not fit for its food--as knives, forks, spoons,
and linen cloths, or whatever it can fly away with; sometimes they
say it has stolen bits of firebrands, or lighted candles, and
lodged them in the stacks of corn and the thatch of barns and
houses, and set them on fire; but this I only had by oral
tradition.
I might take up many sheets in describing the valuable curiosities
of this little Chersonese or Neck Land, called the Land's End, in
which there lies an immense treasure and many things worth notice
(I mean, besides those to be found upon the surface), but I am too
near the end of this letter. If I have opportunity I shall take
notice of some part of what I omit here in my return by the
northern shore of the county.
