THE COENISH PENINSULA. 77 



the west. Dartmoor, within its proper limits, covers an area of 200 square 

 miles, and its population is as sparse as that of Exmoor. Many of its valleys, 

 where villages would be sheltered from the cold winds which sweep the heights, 

 are filled with peat and quaking " stables." Piles of stone and the sepulchral 

 mounds of the ancient inhabitants of the country crown the summits of some of the 

 tors, those enormous masses of granite which form the most striking feature of the 

 scenery. In former times most of the slopes were covered with trees, but they 

 have long ago disappeared, and the ancient Dartmoor Forest has become the home 

 of partridges and heath-cocks. Hidden away in one of its wildest recesses lies the 

 small village of Prince Town (thus named in honour of the Prince of Wales, who 

 owns most of the surrounding land), and near it is one of the largest convict 

 prisons in England. 



The uplands of Cornwall are far inferior to Exmoor and Dartmoor in elevation. 

 They, too, are dreary treeless wastes, intersected by boggy valleys, and are 

 composed of a great variety of rocks, including limestones and schists, granite and 

 porphyry. From Hartland Point, which bounds Barnstaple Bay in the west, a 

 range of hills and small plateaux stretches south and south-westward to the 

 extremity of the peninsula, its spurs terminating in cliffs or chaotic masses of rock 

 along the sea-coast. The Cornish heights culminate in Brown Willy, 1,364 feet. 

 They are bounded in the east by the valley of the Tamar, and deeply penetrated by 

 the winding estuary of the Fal, which almost severs the bold cliffs forming their 

 western extremity from the body of the peninsula. Lizard Point (224 feet), a 

 bold mafs of variegated rock, surmounted by two lighthouses lit by electricity, 

 is the southernmost point of England. Its latitude (49° 57') is nearly the same 

 as that of Dieppe, Amiens, and Mayence. A small group of hills to the west 

 of the St. Ives and Mount's Bays terminates in the headlands of Cornwall 

 and Land's End. The Scilly Islands, which lie off these, are now the only 

 vestiges of an extensive tract of land. Tradition tells us that anciently the districts 

 of the Lionesse and Lelothsow, with forty villages, extended from Cornwall to 

 these islands. An old family bears on its coat of arms a horse escaping from the 

 sea, in memory of an ancestor whom the fleetness of his charger saved from a 

 premature death when these districts were swallowed up by the sea.* 



The aspect of the headlands varies with the nature of the rocks composing 

 them, and the strength of the winds and waves to which they are exposed. 

 Lizard Point, a mass of compact serpentine, is being gnawed by the waves, which, 

 however, are unable to break it up. Land's End is a mass of tabular granite 

 weathered into huge blocks, piled one upon the other like cyclopean walls. 

 Cape Cornwall, composed of slate, is being split up into laminae. The moist 

 and saliferous air proves exceedingly destructive, and on many hills the I'ocks 

 have been broken into quadrangular masses, hardly to be distinguished from 

 the artificial structures raised by the ancient inhabitants of the country. The 

 waves, however, are the principal agents of destruction along the coast. Yast 

 caverns, locally known as " Hugos," have been scooped out at the foot of 



* Carew, " Survev of Cornwall." 



