We discharged a heavy bill this morning on leaving our hotel, but consoled ourselves with thinking upon the law of averages, by which our next account should be proportionably light. The morning was dull, and mists occasionally dispersed, apparently only to let some drenching showers through to fall upon us; and when we reached Par, we heard the birds chirping in the trees between the showers, in that way which (experience told us) betokened more rain.

Par is a little seaport, with a station on the Great Western Railway, which is also the junction for the North Cornwall lines and for the short branch to Fowey. Imagine a small, accurately semicircular bay, with a sparse fringe of mean whitewashed cottages abutting upon sands, partly overgrown with bents, the sea-poppy, and coarse grass. Add to these a long jetty, a thick cluster of small brigs, a smelting works, with monumentally tall chimney-stack, and in the background, the railway and green hillsides, and you have Par. For the life of the place, add some rumbling carts and waggons, filled with china-clay, rattling their way down to the jetty with their drivers; some three or four whitewashed-looking men, lounging and drinking at the “Welcome Home” Inn; the whistle and noise of an occasional train; a housewife hanging clothes out to dry in a garden, and there you have the full tide of existence at this Cornish seaport toward mid-day. To these incidents were added, when we passed by, a diverting contest in the roadway between a cat and a valorous rooster, their bone of contention, a bone, literally as well as metaphorically. But the cat, having seized the prize at last, vanished with it round a corner, like a streak of lightning, the cockerel after him, and all was quiet again. It will show the quietness of Par when I say that no one but ourselves was attracted by this singular tourney.

The tide was out when we reached Par, and we saw how, when the ebb is at its lowest here, the flat sands stretch an unconscionable distance. The derelict seaweed, wetted by the rain and drying in the moist heat of the day, gave out a very full-flavoured, maritime odour, and “smelt so Par,” if one may be allowed to thus irreverently parody the Prince of Denmark’s disgust with Yorick’s skull. It is confidently believed that the present writer is the first to discover this Shakespearian interest connected with Par.