210 THE SEA. 



guide to turn your back to the uppermost stone ; to place your shoulders under one particular 

 part of its lower edge, which is entirely disconnected all round with the supporting rock 

 'below, and in this position to push upwards slowly and steadily, then to leave off again for 

 an instant, then to push once more, and so on, until after a few moments of exertion you feel 

 the whole immense mass above you moving as you press against it. You redouble your 

 efforts, then turn round and see the massy Loggan Stone set in motion by nothing but your 

 own pair of shoulders, slowly rocking backwards and forwards with an alternate ascension 

 and declension, at the outer edges, of at least three inches. You have treated eighty-five 

 tons of granite like a child's cradle; and like a child's cradle those eighty-five tons have 

 rocked at your will ! " 



In the year 1824 a lieutenant in the royal navy, commanding a gunboat then cruising 

 off that coast, heard that it was generally believed in Cornwall that no human power could 

 or should ever overturn the Loggan Stone. Fired with an ignoble ambition, he took a 

 number of his crew ashore, and by applying levers did succeed in upsetting it from its 

 pivot. His little joke was observed by two labourers, who immediately reported it to the 

 lord of the manor. 



All Cornwall was in arms, and the indignation was general, from that of philosophers, 

 who believed that the Druids had placed it on its balance, to those who regarded it as one 

 of the sights of the county, and as a holiday resort. The guides who showed it to visitors, 

 and the hotel-keepers, were furious. Representations were made to the Admiralty, and the 

 unfortunate lieutenant was ordered to replace it. 



Fortunately the great stone had not toppled completely over, or it would have crashed 

 down a precipice into the sea, but it had stuck wedged in a crevice of the rock below. By 

 means of strong beams, chains, pulleys, and capstans, and a hard week's work for a number of 

 men, it was replaced, although it is said never to have regained its former balance. The 

 lieutenant was nearly ruined by it, and is said not to have completely paid the cost of this 

 reparation at the day of his death. 



About eleven miles from the Land's End there lies a dark porphyry rock, the highest 

 point of which rises seventeen feet above low water. It is called " The Wolf," and previous 

 to the construction of a sea-tower upon it no rock had been more fatal to the mariner. It 

 is beaten by a terrific sea, being exposed to the full force of the Atlantic, and it lies just 

 in the track of vessels entering or leaving the channel. In 1860 the Trinity House com- 

 menced the erection of a lighthouse on it, 116 feet high, with a revolving dioptric light. 

 ''The first flash," said a leading journal, "from the Wolf Lighthouse was shot forth on the 

 1st of January, 1870, and within the last ten years it is difficult to calculate what good 

 it has done, by standing like a beneficent monitor in the centre of the greatest highway 

 for shipping in the world." The Wolf light flashes alternately red and white at half-minute 

 intervals. A great authority on the subject, Sir William Thomson, however, expostulates 

 vigorously against all revolving lights, asserting that, for example, the Wolf is more difficult 

 " to pick up," in nautical parlance, than the fixed beacon of the Eddystone. 



The Rev. C. A. Johns, writing about 1840,* says that smuggling was still practised 



* " A Week at the Lizard." 



