68 THE LAND'S END 



sion ! Could we know that it would not hurt us to 

 drop off, purposely or by accident, that the air itself 

 and a mysterious faculty in us would sustain us, 

 that it would no more hurt us to be flung from 

 the summit of a cliff than it would hurt a jackdaw, 

 we should be as the bird is, without a sense of sub- 

 limity. 



Daw and herring gull, the most abundant species, 

 were but two of several kinds I was accustomed to 

 see from the headlands, and some of the others were 

 greater birds the great black-backed gull, as big a 

 gull as there is in the world, who had a rock to him- 

 self near the Land's End, where four or five couples 

 could be seen congregated ; and the shag, the cor- 

 morant which abounds most on this coast. They are 

 heavy, ungainly flyers, and have an ugly reptilian look 

 when fishing in the sea, but seen standing erect and 

 motionless, airing their spread wings, they have a 

 noble decorative appearance, like carved bird-figures 

 on the wet black jagged rocks amid the green and 

 white tumultuous sea. There, too, was the ancient 

 raven, and he was the most irreconcilable of all. At 

 one spot on the cliff close to where I was staying a 

 solitary raven invariably turned up to shadow me. 

 He would fly up and down, then alight on a rock a 

 hundred yards away or more and watch me, occa- 

 sionally emitting his deep hoarse human-like croak ; 

 but it failed to frighten me away or put me in a 

 passion, as I was not a native. The Cornishman of 

 the coast, when he hears that ominous sound, mocks 

 the bird : " Corpse ! corpse ! you devil ! If I had a 



