216 THE SEA. 



obtaining farm labour, winch is paid for (out of harvest time) at the rate of nine shillings a 

 week. But this is a resource of which they are rarely obliged to take advantage. A plot of 

 common ground is included with the cottages that are let to them ; and the cultivation of this 

 helps to keep them and their families in bad times, until they find an opportunity of resuming 

 work ; when they may perhaps make as much in one month as an agricultural labourer can in 

 twelve. 



The fisheries not only employ all the inhabitants of the coast, but in the pilchard season 

 many of the farm people work as well. Ten thousand persons, men, women, and children, 

 derive their regular support from the fisheries, which are so amazingly productive that the 

 " drift," or deep-sea fishing, in Mount's Bay alone, is calculated to realise, on the average, 

 30,000 per annum. 



To the employment thus secured for the poor in the mines and fisheries is to be added, as 

 an advantage, the cheapness of rent and living in Cornwall. Good cottages are let at from 

 fifty or sixty shillings to some few pounds a year. Turf for firing grows in abundance on the 

 vast tracts of common land overspreading the country. All sorts of vegetables are plenteous 

 and cheap, with the exception of potatoes, which have so decreased, in consequence of the 

 disease, that the winter stock is now imported from France, Belgium, and Holland. The early 

 potatoes, however, grown in May and June, are still cultivated in large quantities, and realise 

 on exportation a very high price. Corn generally sells a little above the average. Fish is 

 always within the reach of the poorest people. In a good season a dozen pilchards are sold for 

 one penny. Happily for themselves the poor in Cornwall have none of the foolish prejudices 

 against fish so obstinately adhered to by the lower classes in many other parts of England. 

 Their national pride is in their pilchards; they like to talk of them, and especially to strangers; 

 and well they may, for they depend for the main support of life on the tribute of these little 

 fish, which the sea yields annually in almost countless shoals. 



" Of Cornish hospitality," says Wilkie Collins, " we experienced many proofs, one of 

 which may be related as an example. Arriving late at a village, we found some difficulty in 

 arousing the people of the inn. "While we were waiting at the door we heard a man, who lived 

 in a cottage near at hand, and of whom we had asked our way on the road, inquiring of some 

 female member of his family whether she could make up a spare bed. We had met this man 

 proceeding in our direction, and had so far outstripped him in walking, that we had been 

 waiting outside the inn about a quarter of an hour before he got home. When the woman 

 answered this question in the negative, he directed her to put clean sheets on his own bed, and 

 then came out to tell us that if we failed to obtain admission at the public-house, a lodging 

 was ready for us for the night under his own roof. We found on inquiry afterwards that he 

 had looked out of window after getting home, while we were still disturbing the village by a 

 continuous series of assaults on the inn door, had recognised us in the moonlight, and had 

 therefore riot only offered us his bed, but had got out of it himself to do so. When we finally 

 succeeded in gaining admittance to the inn, he declined an invitation to sup with us, and 

 wishing us a good night's rest, returned to his home. I should mention, at the same time, that 

 another bed was offered to us at the vicarage, by the clergyman of the parish, and that after 

 this gentleman had himself seen that we were properly accommodated by our landlady, he left 

 us, with an invitation to breakfast with him the next morning. This is hospitality practised in 



