56 THE LAND'S END 



his arrival at the famous spot where he would have 

 to pull himself together and launch himself bird-like 

 from the cliffs, as it were, on the void sublime. There 

 was great variety in these utterances, but I think 

 the one that diverted me most was in a book entitled 

 A Trip to the Far West^ published in 1840, as the 

 author, one Baker Peter Smith, was evidently an 

 experimenter in words, some of his own making ; 

 or we might call him an Early Victorian young man 

 in search of a style. 



" I reached the Land's End," he wrote, " and sat 

 down on a protuberant block of granite, close to the 

 precipice, overhanging the multitangular rocks which 

 form an impenetrable barrier against the raging tides 

 of the mighty waters." After lamenting that he had 

 so little time in which to survey the " multicapsular 

 curiosities of the region," he proceeds : " The local 

 sublimity of the Land's End affords a commanding 

 view of scenick expanse ; and the colossal columns of 

 rock give an awful effect to the stupendous vision ; 

 whilst, added to these grave and elevating sentiments, 

 consequent on so grand a sight, the sense of hearing 

 also acts upon the mind : by the distant roar of the 

 angry sea, ascending from the caverns below, and the 

 screaming of the Cornish chough assailing you from 

 above and every side," and so on. He concludes : 

 "The entranced spectator has no election, but is 

 engrossed with admiration of that Great Power by 

 the fiat of whose mere volition nature's chaos was 

 thus harmonized and stamped with the glorifying im- 

 press of multiplicious beauty." 



