island-mart, in allusion to the Mount in the neighbouring bay). The town, situated on the slope of a hill, has constantly been known as Market-Jew; the miners, who will not whistle under ground for fear of the spirits, believing that here the ore was first dug by the Jews who had stood on Calvary when the sun grew dark at noon-day, and were condemned by the Romans to toil in the mines here. The old smelting-houses they call Jew-houses, and the refuse ore occasionally found, Jews' tin; and in the same way the ancient name of the town is often interpreted according to its modern corruption, "the Bitterness of Zion." The miners also believe that the subterranean noises are the work of the "knockers” in the “ Attal Sarasin,” confounding the Hebrew and the Saracen. Don Quixote alludes to the old tradition of the veneration paid to the Cornish chough, which is believed to embody glorious King Arthur, who, after all, was not wafted from Tintagel to the lake of Camelot. The town was plundered by the French; and in 1549, by Humphrey Arundel of Lanherne and the Cornish rebels. Brassica oloracea is found in the neighbourhood. From this spot to Chyandour the sands have a bluish tinge. Borlase relates a marvellous story of this shore, on what he describes as respectable authority. Having dilated on the sea-magpie, the soldier-crab or hermit-shrimp, which unscrupulously takes possession of a vacant tenement, he describes the close siege laid to an unhappy oyster by a voracious lobster: the closed valves baffled the warrior in black mail for some time, but the creature happening to gape, the enemy, by a flip of his claw, adroitly inserted some little pebbles, which made the oyster an easy prey!

At Porthleven, between 1806 and 1810, eleven ships were wrecked, with the loss of 250 lives and of 300,000%. The chief ornament of the bay is

ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.

"Majestic Michael rises, he whose brow

Is crowned with castles, and whose rocky sides
Are clad with dusky ivy; he whose base,
Beat by the storm of ages, stands unmoved
Amidst the wreck of things, the change of times.
That base, encircled by the azure waves,
Was once with verdure clad; the sacred oaks,
Whose awful shades among the Druids strayed
To cut the hallowed mistletoe, and hold

High converse with their gods."-H. Davy.

Bowles has likewise sung of this remarkable hill, finely imagining around it the "sounds of mighty generations past;" its name in Cornish signifies "the gray rock in the wood;" for, once bosomed in wood, the intermediate land, called Lionesse, covered with 140 churches, between St. Michael's and the Scilly Isles, is said to have been overwhelmed by a fearful deluge in the 10th century, like the Irish Lough Neagh, and Plato's isle of Atlantis; and the fishermen averred that, on calm sunny days, far down in the clear blue depths, they could see the towers of a lost city gleaming under the waves. Trees-oak, willow, and hazel— are found now under the sands between the Mount and Penzance. St. Kevin, in the 5th century, came hither as a pilgrim from Ireland. Craggy and barren, a peak of Teneriffe in miniature-on one side a steep precipice, on the other a gentle declivity-St. Michael's Mount is a huge irregular pile of granite rocks and stupendous cliffs, dappled with a few firs, a mile in circuit, and 231 feet high from the sea-level to the platform of the tower. Granite forms the summit and south side; towards Marazion the base is of slate. One shapeless crag bears the name of the "Giant's chair," and a cavern is called the "Cave with the voice." From the Mount is often witnessed the "Calling

ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.

533

of the sea," a mist rising in the quarter from which the wind will shortly blow. Tremendous as sudden is the furious sea which bursts in unawares, rendering the passage from the mainland a continual peril to the passenger; the main is only accessible at low water.

"Who knows not Michael's mount and chair,
The pilgrim's holy vaunt;

Both land and island twice a day,

Both fort and port of haunt?"

The Mount took its name from an apparition of the archangel to some hermits; and Milton, in Lycidas, alludes to the legend :

"Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,

Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,

Where the great vision of the guarded Mount
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold;

Look homeward, angel! now, and melt with ruth."

A grand prospect indeed-the British Channel, the Irish Sea, the broad Atlantic, all meeting at this spot, while the Lizard Point and Land's End close in the bay. A Cistercian abbey, a Gilbertine nunnery, with a chapel of St. Mary, stood on the north-west. Edward the Confessor founded here a Benedictine priory, which Robert, Earl of Mortaigne, subjected as a cell to St. Michael's-of-the Peril-of-the-Sea in Normandy. In Richard the First's reign, a Devonshire knight, named Henry Pomeroy, having murdered a king's messenger, fled hither to his sister, expelled the monks, and fortified the hill: when pressed by the pursuers, on the return of Cœur de Lion, he had his veins opened, or as others say, mounted his horse and leaped into the sea. John, Earl of Oxford, in the disguise of a pilgrim, seized the place, and for some time held out against Henry VI. in 1471. Lady Catherine Gordon took sanctuary here, but was compelled to surrender to Lord Daubeny. On the rising of the Cornishmen, in the time of Edward VI., the chief families who had taken refuge at the Mount were made prisoners by the rebels, who advanced under shelter of trusses of hay. In July, 1676, the castle was struck by a huge meteor, a

blue metallic fireball: it broke down the walls, and crashed through the roof of the room in which sat Lady Catherine St. Aubyn, by whose side it shivered and fell harmless!

The church is composed of a nave, 48 ft. by 20 ft., with a rood-screen, painted with the story of the Passion; and a choir, 21 ft. long, which had three stalls on either side; and on the right of the altar, 12 stairs to the vaulted crypt, 12 feet square. In it lies Sir John Arundel, who, in the time of Henry IV., was killed on the strand below. The refectory in the south court, 33ft. by 16 ft., and 18 ft. high, has an oak timber roof and kitchen adjoining. On the tower is an ancient lantern, in which a light was kept burning, as a beacon to fishermen. There is a recess called St. Michael's Chair, in which pilgrims used to seat themselves, as a proof to the neighbours that they had accomplished their errand: it was long a piece of folklore, that the husband or bride who first occupied it would be supreme ever after. King Charles II. lodged in the Mount. On the rock is found the white topaz. The botany includes fucus esculentus, F. tamariscifolius, F. tormentosus, F. tuberculosus, F. loreus, and F. bulbosus. Southey walked hither on foot in 1799, and was again here on his last journey to the West, Dec. 1836. The next station to Marazion is

PENZANCE

(the Holy Headland), the birthplace of Sir Humphry Davy, Gilbert Davies, Lord Exmouth, and Mary Kalynack, the old woman of 84 years, who walked all the way to the Great Exhibition. The town has a population of 9500, and a climate in which there is no real winter. It stands in the hollow extremity of a deep bay, which to the east sweeps in broad curves as far as the Lizard, with its long dark level line, and southward bends in a convex form towards Mouse-hole and St. Clement's Island. St. Mary's Church (H. Batten, P.C.) was consecrated 1680; St. Paul's was built of granite by Matthews, in 1835; the glazing is by Willement. The esplanade was formed in 1844. St. Paul de Leon was a Cornishman, but the town of the name

St. Pol was

in the vicinity is called after Pol, a lake. the lake saint, St. Denys the hill saint, and St. Allan the moor saint. In 1791, a poor miner named Thomas Curtis conceived the bold idea of sinking the Huel (hole) mine under a shoal 720 feet from the shore. Three summers were spent in the arduous undertaking, for the rock was of elvan (porphyritic rock), covered with water during ten months of the year, with a depth of 19 feet at spring-tides. Ore to the value of 70,000l. was raised; when an American vessel, breaking from her moorings, demolished the machinery, and put an end to an adventure unprecedented for ingenuity. At Penzance the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall have their museum, founded in 1814 by Dr. Paris. On the Eves of St. John and St. Peter, bonfires (boon or contribution fires) are kindled, and torches brandished by the people going in long procession, while the younger folk keep up a fantastic dance, in which threading the needle forms the prominent feature ; while on St. John's day, the poles that mark the boundaries of the mine are garlanded with flowers. The botany is rich; including the lady's tresses, sea spurge, alisma damasonium and ranunculoides, scutellaria minor, Drosera longifolia, hypericum androsæmum, panicum dactylon, silene Anglica, Campanula hederacea, Santolina maritima, exacum filiforme, Eriophorum vaginatum, Sibthorpia Europæa, Bartsia viscosa, senecio Jacobœa, euphorbia peplus, anthemis nobilis, ulex nanus, and lichen caperatus.

Here, too, that remarkable sight, "the Briony,” is not unfrequent, when the gentle swell appears barred with shining paths of liquid fire, and the whole bay gleams with the soft sparks of the glow-worms of the sea:

"The lamps of the sea-nymphs,

Myriad fiery globes, swim heaving and panting; and rainbows,
Crimson, azure, and emerald, are broken in star-showers, lighting
Far through the now dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of
Nereus,

Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the bloom and the palms of the ocean."

In 1525, and again on 23 July, 1595, the Spaniards burned the town: so superstitious were the people, that they