HISTORY AND THE PARISH 167 



The sycamore and elder that surround and tower above 

 Tregonebris near Boscawen Un. The avenue of ash and 

 elm and wych-elm and sycamore, very close together, 

 leading from grey Nancothan mill, where the dark- 

 brown water mingles its noise with the rustling trees. 

 The wych-elms and golden-fruited sycamores about the 

 roads near St. Hilary, and the long avenue of ash up to 

 the church itself, and the elms through which the evening 

 music floats, amidst the smell of hay, in a misty moun- 

 tained sunset. 



Under the flaming fleeces of a precipitous sky, in a 

 windless hush and at low tide, I descended to a narrow 

 distinct valley just where a stream ran clear and slow 

 through level sands to a bay, between headlands of rocks 

 and of caves among the rocks. The sides of the valley 

 near the sea were high and steep and of grass until their 

 abrupt end in a low but perpendicular wall of rock just 

 above the river sands. Inland the valley began to wind 

 and at the bend trees came darkly trooping down the 

 slopes to the water. Immediately opposite the ford — the 

 wet sands being unscathed by any foot or hoof or wheel — 

 a tributary ran into the river through a gorge of its own. 

 It was a gorge not above a hundred feet across, and its 

 floor was of sand save where the brook was running down, 

 and this floor was all in shadow because the banks were 

 clothed in thick underwood and in ash, sycamore, wych- 

 elm and oak meeting overhead. And in these sands also 

 there was no footprint save of the retreated sea. There 

 was no house, nor wall, nor road. And there was no 

 sound in the caverns of foliage except one call of a cuckoo 

 as I entered and the warbling of a blackbird that mused 

 in the oaks and then laughed and was silent and mused 



