SUNSHINE AT THE LAND S END. 73 



if his journey by rail through the chief mining district of Corn- 

 wall about Camborne and Redruth, leads him to wish to descend 

 a mine. The Land's End district proper, embracing that head- 

 land, and all that lies at the south of it, still remains. As a 

 stranger is always extremely puzzled how to see this tract of 

 country, with its numerous objects of interest, with the least 

 amount of toil, we shall make no apology for drawing out the 

 most eligible route, briefly describing at the same time a few 

 of its beauties from an artistic point of view, in order that 

 home-keeping people may be able to form some conception 

 of the charms of this extreme corner of our land. 



We will drive from Penzance to the Logan village, some 

 eight miles, choosing a day when the soft, summer sunshine 

 sleeps on the changing corn-fields and nourishing market- 

 gardens that hem in Penzance. This district supplies Covent 

 Garden with the earliest vegetables of the year, and from the 

 fertility of the soil and the kindly climate, is the garden of Eng- 

 land. Fuchsias grow here into trees ; scarlet geraniums twine 

 up to the top of the second floor windows. We pass through 

 rich elm avenues, beside clear-flowing brooks, tufted with lady- 

 ferns and hart's-tongue ; then high banks and stone walls suc- 

 ceed, festooned with ivy and honeysuckle, where ferns, and 

 stonecrop, and fox-gloves, and blue scabious run riot in their 

 luxuriance. Few birds are visible in this district, rooks seem 

 especially scarce ; but we have seen several of them amicably 

 feeding with gulls in an arable field, not twenty yards from the 

 highway, and quite undisturbed at our appearance. Trees dimm- 

 ish as we reach the high ground over Penzance, but the living 

 mosaic of flowers that decks the short, sweet turf of the up- 

 lands quite makes up for their loss. Anon we dive into a quiet 

 combe, and a wood-pigeon lazily flaps across it to a clump of 

 firs on the opposite hill-side. Grey masses of granite protrude 

 from gorse-bushes, covered with stains of red, yellow, and 

 brown lichen, with which Nature, to compensate for their 



