RELIGIOUS FISHERMEN. 223 



enough to allow the completion of a work which requires time, and which, in the most 

 favourable weather, is beset with difficulties ; indeed, an ordinary breeze setting on this shore 

 excites the sea to such a state of fury that certainly no unfinished mechanical structure could 

 withstand the force of the breakers. 



The lower classes of Cornwall are generally Methodists, and decidedly religious. In Scot- 

 land also, strict Sabbatarianism is the rule among the poor. The Northern Ensign, in reply to 

 a journalist who had been advocating the prosecution of the herring fishery on the Sabbath day, 

 had an article showing that there is no class in Scotland, taken as a whole, who love, revere, 

 and enjoy the Sabbath more than the men and women who live by the sea. At Wick, the 

 largest herring fishery station in the world, where the fishers congregate from all parts of the 

 coast, at ten o'clock one Sabbath morning not a single fisherman was to be seen in the 

 street; in half an hour after knots of men and women were wending their way to the various 

 places of worship, and when the church bell announced the hour of meeting the streets were 

 almost impassable men, women, and children, all cleanly dressed, and not in working clothes, 

 streamed this way and that to church. 



No visitor to Cornwall ever misses the Lizard, the most southerly headland promontory 

 in Britain, a piece of rocky land which has caused more vivid and varied emotions than any 

 other on our coasts. The emigrant leaving, as he often thinks, and often wrongly thinks, 

 his native land for ever; the soldier bound for distant battle-fields, and the sailor for far 

 distant foreign ports ; the lover just parted from his beloved one ; the husband from his wife ; 

 have each and all strained their eyes for a last parting glimpse of an isle they loved so much 

 and yet might never see again ! And when the lighthouses' flash could no longer be discerned, 

 how sadly did one and all " turn into'' their berths to think, aye, " perchance to dream," of 

 the happy past and the doubtful future. How different the emotions of the homeward bound, 

 the emigrant with his gathered gold, the bronzed veteran who has come out of the fiercest 

 conflict unscathed, and the sailor who has safely passed the ordeal of fearful climes ; the 

 lover ready now for the girl he adores ; and the husband jubilant with such good news for 

 his faithful spouse. The first glimpse of that strangely-named rocky point is the signal for 

 heartiest huzzas and congratulation. 



The Lizard Rock owes its name, according to various authorities, firstly to its form; 

 secondly to the serpent-like colour of its cliffs ; and thirdly is said to be derived from the 

 Cornish word Liazherd, signifying a projecting headland. Its two splendid lights can be 

 seen out at sea at a distance of twenty miles. 



Mount's Bay, a few miles further west, has a fine anchorage, but is more interesting 

 to the visitor as containing an isolated pyramidal collection of grand rocks, which, with their 

 castle, are the delight of the landscape artist. The old castle on the rocky islet rises to a 

 height of 230 feet. The island is connected with Marazion, a village on the mainland, 400 

 yards distant, by a causeway of stones. In 1846 her Majesty Queen Victoria and Prince 

 Albert paid a visit to the spot, and the event is commemorated on a tablet let into the 

 wall of the pier, and by a brass foot-plate placed on the spot first touched by the Royal feet 

 when they conveyed Her Majesty ashore. There is a snug little harbour, and the pier just 

 named will allow several hundred vessels to unload at the same time. The population of 

 Mount St. Michael is composed almost entirely of pilots and fishermen. 



