178 AN ISLAND PARADISE 



would be afforded to her congested districts by a vast 

 extension of territory on the west. Strange to say, 

 there would still be deep water in the Beaufort Dyke, 

 that profound cleft which lies between Port Patrick 

 and Donaghadee, and some of the Highland sea-lochs 

 would remain as isolated sheets of water. 



Such were some of the reflections suggested lately 

 when I came on deck one fine summer morning after 

 our yacht had come to an anchor during the night in 

 the quaint little archipelago of Scilly. Scarcely a 

 ripple stirred the surface of the roadstead, and all 

 around rose hog-backed isles and rugged islets, capped 

 with fantastic crests of granite. One is impressed 

 immediately by their similarity to the hill-tops of 

 Cornwall; the Land's End and Lizard Point being 

 respectively but twenty-five and forty miles to the 

 eastward. Yes; these are but the summits of sub- 

 merged mountains, and a far slighter elevation or 

 depression than many which have affected the earth's 

 crust would unite them in a single range or sink them 

 out of sight. 



If the Scilly group is correctly identified with the 

 Cassiterides, or Tin Islands of Greek writers (and they 

 are always specified as distinct from the mainland of 

 Britain), the name must have originated from their 

 use as a depot for tin raised in Cornwall, the metal 

 being transhipped in the roadstead for an ocean passage. 

 Of the monks of Tresco and their secluded abbey 

 nothing now remains but a couple of fourteenth-century 

 arches in Mr. Dorrien Smith's garden. 



But what a garden that is! Were it not for the 



