THE SOUTH COUNTRY 9 



sky. The woods seem but just freed from the horror of 

 primeval sea, if that is not primeval sea washing their 

 bases. Capella hangs low, pale, large, moist and trembling, 

 almost engulfed between two horns of the wood upon the 

 headland, the frailest beacon of hope, still fluttering from 

 the storm out of which the land is emerging. Then, or 

 at home looking at a map of Britain, the West calls, out 

 of Wiltshire and out of Cornwall and Devon beyond, 

 out of Monmouth and Glamorgan and Gower and Caer- 

 marthen, with a voice of dead Townsends, Eastaways, 

 Thomases, Phillipses, Treharnes, Marendaz, sea men and 

 mountain men. 



Westward, for men of this island, lies the sea; west- 

 ward are the great hills. In a mere map the west of 

 Britain is fascinating. The great features of that map, 

 which make it something more than a picture to be 

 imperfectly copied by laborious childish pens, are the 

 great promontories of Caernarvon, of Pembroke, of Gower 

 and of Cornwall, jutting out into the western sea, like 

 the features of a grim large face, such a face as is carved 

 on a ship's prow. These protruding features, even on a 

 small-scale map, thrill the mind with a sense of purpose 

 and spirit. They yearn, they peer out ever to the sea, 

 as if using eyes and nostrils to savour the utmost scent of 

 it, as if themselves calling back to the call of the waves. 

 To the eyes of a child they stand for adventure. They 

 are lean and worn and scarred with the strife and watch- 

 ing. Then gradually into the mind of the child comes 

 the story that justifies and, still more, inspires and seems 

 to explain those westward-pointing promontories. For, 

 out towards them continually have the conquered races 



