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Show Cfianruof - Gornwa i 1 On the Cornish Coast. (Prepared by -the National Oeoirrphle Society. Washington. D. C. HIO WHO has traveled the roads through Cornwall, England's southernmost county, reculls the vast moors, dull, dun, and bare, on which the only Interruption to the eye's runge Is an occasional ruined pit house, through the gaps In which one glimpses the blue sky; or a tumbled heap of eurth where once Phoenician tin miners, perhaps, sought the metal which a Cornish historian once declared "near as fyn as sjiver;' At long tliitervals a cottage Is encountered en-countered of (Imir gray granite, roofed with granite, hreastplnted against the driving rains with slate. In a granite-walled granite-walled Inclosure, with never a shrub or tree to vary the cold monotony with a touch of green. P.ut Cornwall has charm and It Is a charm of enchantment. Its moors are broken by hidden valleys, the existence ex-istence of which one does not suspect until their lips are reached, filled with the greenest grass, from which great trees tower. The hedges that rim In the roads, worn down by centuries of Unfile, glow with the purple of fox-t:love fox-t:love atid the yellow of the furze. In an hour's drive one passes from cliffs of a ravage, sheer hostility, ut whose feet break the most dangerous seas In Knglanil. to smiling estuaries amid rolling bills on which the green of lOngllsli oak alternate with glowing fields. History aii'J tradition play their parts in creating Cornwall's charm. It was on ('ornlsh shores that galleys landed In search of tin long before the Roman rule In England. Local tradition tradi-tion holds that Jewlfh traders gave Its name to the little village of Mara-r.Ion Mara-r.Ion Hitter Zlon which Is at Ifiust - as often culled Market Jew by the country people as by Its own nnme. It Is a pity that arclieolcgists laugh at this fanciful etymology. Offshore the Land of I.yonesse lies sunken with its MO parish churches, whose bells, the fishermen say, may still be heard on days of onshore storms. Wreckers and Smucglers. It Is not many years since wrecking was an established Industry there, and the parson's lame mare, with a ship's lantern tied under her neck, was set to hobble of an evening along the sands, to toll bewildered shlpmen on the rocks. Cottagers drop pins In the holy wells and read their fortunes In the bubbling of the disturbed waters. The county name are an ever-changing ever-changing delight. Can there be a more charming title for a church than St Jurt In RnselandT One crosses by Slaughter bridge straight Into a remote and furious past. Almost every little sencoast town has Its smugglers' cave with a well authenticated history. From the Lizard Liz-ard the Spanish Armada was sighted and alarm fires were lighted. During Cornwall's all too Intermittent spells of prosperity, miners emerge from workings beneath the sea and climb ladders pinned to gigantic cliffs, singing sing-ing as they mount. Oranges and lemons and exotic palms grow In the balmy air. . It was In Cornwall that George Fox. Quaker, was chained in a noisome dungeon fur months. Here John Wesley Wes-ley preached to congregations of 50, 0(10, In an amphitheater, built, perhaps, per-haps, by the heathen. It was on the border of Cornwall that girt Jan ftidd rode against the loones, and John Hldd Is still a warden war-den In the very church In which Lorna Doone was shot down at the altar. Clovelly Is Just across the line in Devon, De-von, and Clovelly Is one of the loveliest love-liest villages In England. Cornwall furnished and still fur-iili-hes the best hard rock miners In the world. They despise coal mining, do these men whose ancestors have fur generations searched for tin and Copper in mines that are at once among the deeport and the most men-get men-get ly equipped In the Industry. Where gold or silver or copper Is to be burrowed bur-rowed for under mountains, they are tn be found as leaders In their craft However, because of their extraordinary extraordi-nary clunnlshness and their strongly marked racial and Individual Idiosyncrasies, Idiosyn-crasies, they often do not Impress themselves on the popular affectiiin. Oi'e recalls them In our Western rtntes, In an environment at once foreign for-eign and hostile, as harsh and silent men. win put a high estimate on them stives and were candid, and perhaps Justified, in their doubts of the rest of mankind. Their more socliible moments mo-ments seemed devoted In almost Masonic Ma-sonic secrecy to Die discussion of an Iron U)uad religion. I Hut It is difilcult for a visitor to Cornwall to understand this Western misconception of the Cornish character. char-acter. Certainly no more kindly or hospitable man exists than the Corn-ishma-n upon his native heath. Vet the Cornish are assuredly a race apart, Just as Cornwall differs In aspect as-pect from Its neighboring county of Devon. Corrrtsh People a Race Apart. Formed of a union of the primitive tribes and the Hrythonlc ruce which gave Its name to Britain, and only slightly modified, according to students of the race history, by succeeding Invasions In-vasions of Romans-, Saxons and Norsemen, Norse-men, they kept their own language until well In the Eighteenth century. They will speak of "going to England," Eng-land," ns If It were a foreign country. Cornwall Is the southwesternmost county of England. It Is a erent promontory, pro-montory, 73 tulles In length, armored against the sea with granite, slate, and serpentine, and 43 miles wide at its greatest, where the River Tamar bars It from Devon. It contains approximately approx-imately 1.3,"i0 squure miles and 300,-000 300,-000 people. Thanks to the Atlantic ocean and the Culf stream on one flank of Its triangle, and to the sheltered waters of the English channel on the other, Its climate Is In great part bo extraordinarily ex-traordinarily warm and equable that enthusiasts refer to It's coast as the Cornish Riviera. It Is true that snow seldom lies, and It Is, also a fact that In a eomparlsoti of average mean temperatures the advantage ad-vantage would be altogether In favor of certain Cornish watering places as against the winter climate of the Mediterranean coast. Yet one should not take these assurances assur-ances altogether at their face value. The winds of Cornwall are so rough that in the uplands the few small' bushes one sees are dwarfed and twisted, and about Lands End the wln-dowpanes wln-dowpanes are ground to opacity by the blowing sand. Cornwall Is an unchanging land. No doubt Dlodorus, who wrote of his visit to Cornwall In the time of Julius Caesar, found Lands End Just as it Is today, save for a few excrescences of Inns and lighthouses and lifeboat stations. sta-tions. The very name has not been disturbed, for Lands End is the Celtic Pen-von-La?, which literally means "the end of the earth." What Is the name of the Longshlps lighthouse, battered bat-tered by waves on a rock nearby, but a translation of naves longae "long ships"? And does not the rock on which It stands suggest a Roman galley gal-ley to one of but. a little Imagination! He who doubts should not come to Cornwall. Yesterday seems very near at hand. Mines Mostly Abandoned. The great central plateau of Corn wall is of chief Interest to the busi ness man and to the archeologlst There are found the many small towns which depend on the copper and tin mining Industries, on farming, or on the great pits from which day la taken, some of which Is sent to China for the manufacture of porcelain. For the most part, the copper and tin mines have gone too deep to be profitable, profit-able, until some new invention comes tn the rescue or prices rise out of all reason. To this cause Is duehe poverty pov-erty and depression which may be 8?en In so many places on the moors. The Cornfshmnn Is a born gambler in hard rock. When It became diffl-cult diffl-cult to attract outside capital, be organized or-ganized his own local concerns to work mines. Many companies of adventurous adventur-ous miners, too, were formed to work leases; on the share plan, Just as ('Ornish fishermen go share and share alike In their boats. The failure of the mines not only bankrupted their owners, but drove them Into other lands. One now sees a pitiful succession of empty houses 'on the moors fine, square, granite-built granite-built houses that will endure the weather for centuries and, come to think of It. almost every Cornlshman one meejs away from home Is a miner by trade. . No part of England Is as rich In prehistoric antiquities as Cornwall, and nowhere, one may guess. Is the study less satisfying to an archeologlst Of the numerous Cornish cropses about all that can be said Is tha: they date from somewhere between Hie Fifth and Twelfth centuries, when Cornwall was Christ Innled by saints from Ireland, ninny of whom, accord lng to' tradition, floated across the narrow nar-row seas in stone cutlins. But one Cornish cross Is perilously Hka all other Corulsh crosses. |