192 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



quarto some information about the place. I will not, as 

 some learned jjundits do, pitilessly burden you with all the 

 knowledge recently obtained ; because, although I suspect 

 you to be hopelessly ignorant on all these matters, I also 

 susj^ect you to be quite comfortable in that condition, and 

 by no means hungering for information ; and at any rate, 

 you know where such hunger can be satisfied. But on the 

 baptism of the islands a word may be worth hearing. Bor- 

 lase pertinently asks, " How came all these islands to have 

 their general name from so small and inconsiderable a spot as 

 the isle of Scilly, whose clifi's hardly anything but birds can 

 mount, and whose barrenness would never suflfer anything 

 but sea-birds to inhabit there ? A due observation of the 

 shores will answer this question very satisfactorily, and con- 

 vince us, that what is now a bare rock, about a furlong over, 

 and separated from the lands of Guel and Brehar about half 

 a mile, was formerly joined to them by low necks of land, 

 and that Treskaw, St Martin's, Brehar, Samson, and the 

 rocks and islets adjoining, made formerly but one island." 

 Thus it was by encroachments of the sea, according to Borlase, 

 or by the dipping of the lands, that the one island was sepa- 

 rated into several. Scilly was the highest and most conspi- 

 cuous headland, and from it the whole group derived its 

 name. That these isles were by the Greeks called Cassile- 

 rides, and by the Romans Sigdeles, SilUnod, and Silures^ may 

 be conceded to antiquarians and topographers, or denied ; 

 we shall trouble ourselves but slightly with the question. 

 Certain it seems that Phoenicians and Romans came here for 

 tin ; still more certain that, in the tenth century, " when 



