president's address. 319 



heaps, I love those parts of the country also, and I think that 

 the old disused and dismantled engine houses and chimneys at 

 the closed mines add a peculiar, weird, strange look, character- 

 istic of the Duchy. 



But the Cornish mainland is not all Hat, bleak moors and 

 regions of desolation, for these are intersected by a vast number 

 of little valleys technically called " Combes," which generally 

 run nearly due east and west down to the sea, forming veritable 

 trajis to catch the beams of the setting sun, which at times lends 

 to them a glory and a charm that it would be almost impossible to 

 match elsewhere. These "Combes" have been so grandly 

 described by Charles Kingsley in "Westward Ho" that I must 

 quote his words, since anything I could write would be indeed 

 tame and poor in comparison with them, 



"Each is like the other, and each is like no other 

 English scenery. Each has its upright walls, inland of rich 

 oak wood, nearer the sea of dark green fui'ze, then of 

 smooth turf, then of weird f)lack cliffs, which range out 

 right and left far into the deep sea, in castles, sjiires and 

 wings of jagged ironstone. Each has its narrow strip of 

 fertile meadow ; its crystal trout stream winding across and 

 across from one hill foot to the other ; its grey, stone mill, 

 with the water sparkling and humming around the dripjnng 

 wheel ; its dark rock-pools above the tide-mark, where the 

 salmon gather in from their Atlantic wanderings after each 

 autumn flood ; its ridge of blown sand, bright with golden 

 trefoil and crimson lady's linger ; its grey bank of polished 

 pebbles, down which the stream rattles toward the sea 

 below. Each has its black field of jagged shark's tooth 

 rock, which paves the cove from side to side, streaked with 

 here and there a pink line of shell sand, and laced with 

 white foam from the eternal surge, stretching in parallel 

 lines out to the westward, in strata set upright on edge, or 

 tilted towai'ds each other at strange angles by primeval 

 earthquakes. Such is the "mouth" as those coves are 

 called, and such the jaw of teeth which they display, one 

 rasp of which would grind abroad the timbers of the 

 stoutest ship. 



