2 THE LAND'S END 



greatest attraction for me, I never got over the Tamar, 

 nor even so far as Plymouth, simply because 1 had 

 not the time, albeit my time was my own. Or be- 

 cause there was enough and more than enough to 

 satisfy me on this side of the boundary. It is true 

 that one desires to see and know all places, but is in no 

 hurry to go from a rich to a poor one. I was told by 

 every one of my friends that it was the most interest- 

 ing county in England, and doubtless it is so to them, 

 but I knew it could not be so to me because of the 

 comparative 1 poverty of the fauna, seeing that the 

 observables which chiefly draw me are the living 

 creatures the wild life and not hills and valleys and 

 granite and serpentine cliffs and seas of Mediterranean 

 blue. These are but the setting of the shining living 

 gems, and we know the finest of these, which gave 

 most lustre to the scene, have been taken out and 

 cast away. 



Cornwall to me was just the Land's End " dark 

 Bolerium, seat of storms " that famous foreland of 

 which a vast but misty picture formed in childhood 

 remains in the mind, and if I ever felt any strong 

 desire to visit Cornwall it was to look upon that 

 scene. Then came a day in November, 1905, when, 

 having settled to go away somewhere for a season, I all 

 at once made up my mind to visit the unknown pen- 

 insula and to go straight away to the very end. It 

 almost astonished me when I alighted from my train 

 at St. Ives to think I had travelled three hundred and 

 twenty odd miles with less discomfort and weariness 

 than I usually experience on any journey of a hundred. 



