Those who travel through Cornwall by cycle or motor-car will usually find very good roads, but for the most part these only touch the coast at special points; and in some cases it will be wise to leave bicycle or car at hotel or farm if the coast is to be fitly explored. The study of a map will show the tourist what to expect, and he may note the parts where, if he thinks of easy travelling alone, he will have to desert the sea. But by a judicious use of high-road and by-road he need never be far from the shore, and in some places the road that is actually best for him gives fine views of the coast. There are many excellent maps issued, but it is best to go to the fountainhead, to the publications of the Ordnance Survey. For the pedestrian those of one inch to a mile are admirable; but the cyclist or motorist will find the two miles to an inch more handy, as covering a wider range; and even those of four miles to the inch are sufficiently full for the motorist. If any special district is to be carefully explored, the one mile to an inch should be carried, but the wise rider will not content himself with a map of a single scale; he should at least carry one for the entire Duchy and others for the sections.

The maps of the Ordnance Survey for Cornwall are as follow:—

It should be mentioned that Mr. T. Fisher Unwin is sole wholesale agent for these maps, which may be procured from any bookseller. Fuller details of the maps are given in a special Catalogue issued by Mr. Unwin.

A. L. S.

Page 223

Eastward of Pendeen is the church town of Morvah. This tract of coast from Land's End to St. Ives has perhaps been neglected by visitors and writers, only one spot, and that not the finest, Gurnard's Head, being really familiar. The stony barrenness of the inland country is compensated by a real grandeur of coast-line, invisible from the road and therefore often left unexplored. Morvah has traditions of mermaids, with some idea that its name may be a corruption of the Breton morverch; but we must probably seek some other derivation. Tonkin says the name simply means locus maritimus. Stories of mermaids are common enough, or rather were so, along this north shore, doubtless explained by the seals once frequent, and would be still if not shot off by the usual insensate "man with a gun." The small church is Perpendicular, with a pinnacled tower. In this parish is the magnificent Chûn or Chywoon castle, on a hill about 700 feet high. This western extremity of Cornwall was guarded by a line of hill forts, of which this Chûn, if not the most powerful, remains in best preservation. We cannot speak with decision as to the date of their earliest use, but this stronghold of Chûn was almost certainly utilised as late as the fifth or sixth centuries, and may have seen fighting during the days when Irish invaders, even if they came as travelling saints, were not always welcomed. The first and second vallum can be traced with their ditches, and there was doubtless an inner wall. The masonry is of different character from that cyclopean piling of boulders which was all the earlier men had known of building. Of such cyclopean style, though it is a small specimen, is the Chûn cromlech, standing near. In the near neighbourhood are the Mên Scryfa (the inscribed stone), the Mên-an-tol (the holed stone), the Nine Maidens, the Lanyon Quoit,
the huts of Bosporthennis, the Mulfra Quoit—all being monoliths, or other survivals of wonderful interest, with the strange fascination of their mystery. Cairns, barrows, sepulchral monuments, we can understand, for death and burial are ever with us; but what was the meaning of these circles and standing-stones—who built them, and for what purpose? They are interpreted astronomically now—the latest, perhaps the correct, theory. The earliest peoples who brought any culture to these shores came from the East, and we cannot tell what profundities of astrologic science they carried with them. It is generally acknowledged that when the rough Teutons came they encountered and checked a mental culture higher than their own. But we can only conjecture dimly, and leave the controversialists to wrangle.

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