THE END OF ALL THE LAND 61 



people. But I shall have something more to say on 

 this subject in a later chapter. 



Here among the rocks by night I think less of 

 these moral changes, and of other events within 

 historical times, than of those which came before, of 

 which we have no certain knowledge. We can only 

 assume that in the successive invasions during the 

 Bronze Age this was invariably the last place con- 

 quered and last refuge of a beaten fugitive people. 



I recall here a strange phenomenon in wild-bird 

 life occasionally witnessed in this district. Cornwall 

 has a singularly mild and equable climate, but great 

 frosts do at long intervals invade it and reach to the 

 very extremity of the land : and when a cold wave, 

 like that of the winter of 1906-7, travels west, the 

 birds flying for life before it advance along the 

 Cornish country until they come to a point beyond 

 which they cannot go, for the affrighting ocean is 

 before them and they are spent with hunger and cold. 

 They come in a continuous stream, to congregate in 

 tens of thousands, covering the cliffs and fields and 

 stone hedges ; and the villagers turn out with guns 

 and nets and sticks and stones to get their fill of 

 killing. 



So in the dreadful past, whenever a wave of Celtic 

 conquest swept west, the unhappy people were driven 

 further and further from the Tamar along that tongue 

 of land, their last refuge, but where there were no 

 rivers and mountains to stay the pursuers, nor forests 

 and marshes in which to hide, until they could go no 

 further, for the salt sea was in front of them. They 



