CHAPTER XX 

 PILGRIMS AT THE LAND'S END 



How this book came to be written Fascination of the Land's End 

 Aged pilgrims A vision of the land of rest An Unsentimental 

 Journey through Cornwall A horde of trippers from Lancashire 

 A sentiment to be cherished An appeal. 



I RECALL now that I did not come to Cornwall 

 to write a book about it, or any part of it. But 

 like many others I had to see the Land's End ; 

 and it was winter, when the Wiltshire Downs, where 

 it was my desire to be, are bleak, and I had a cold to 

 get rid of, so I came to the "rocky land of strangers," 

 to look once in my life on the famous headland and 

 return with the wheatear and stone curlew to the 

 lonely green hills. Being here I put down some 

 impressions of gulls and fishing-boats at St. Ives for 

 a weekly journal ; other impressions followed, and 



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