The capital of Clayland is St. Austell; but, as usual, nobody is very sure about the saint. If you say "Saintauzel" through the nose, you may be taken for a native. The church is in the centre of the town, and the narrow, crooked thoroughfares radiate from there. The town seems to have grown as wanted, every house pushing its neighbour towards the centre. The wealth of Ophir in black, glittering tin is said to underlie the town, and there is no doubt about the tin being there, for the nuggies may be heard working on their silver anvils, and bright lights dance upon the surface during autumnal mists. Any tinner will tell you the meaning of these mysterious illuminations; but the mines are not worked now, because the hills above and around are composed of the white clay which all the world wants.

"Saintauzel" is a Friday town. Most things are reckoned as from Friday to Friday, which is market day, and the inhabitants put on their Friday faces and Friday clothes. When it isn't Friday the inhabitants delight in watching the clay-waggons pass their shops, or in dodging them in the narrow, crooked labyrinths called streets. Everything gives way to the clay teams—butcher-boys and motor-drivers screw themselves into nothingness, or back down side-streets when the clay-man is in view, driving his horses in single file, all straining at their chains. An endless procession of heavy waggons rumbles through the narrow streets—waggons laden with powdered clay in barrels, or with square, white, glistening lumps uncovered; and the drivers, stiffened up with clay, like loaded yarn, crack their long whips and keep their teams at it. These drivers, born upon the hills, look a race to themselves—straight-backed, upright, and hard as nails. The clay which they absorb year by year doesn't hurt them. The amount which they swallow with their pasties must be fatal to microbes, as they seldom think of dying until tired of throwing about barrels of clay which would break an ordinary labourer's heart to handle. The old county is sent away in ships as fast as they can carry it, but there is some left.

Guy fancied that there was not so much "expression" in the faces and dramatic action with the people we met here as in other places, and hazarded a guess that this was a result of looking at so much inexpressionless clay. There is not much in clay to lay hold of the imagination, except its whiteness, and the purer the blanker it is; but, then, smirches in clay would cause a sensation, like the entrance of a lady with a past into a party of sweet young things playing at goodness in a social comedy. There is little in the article suggestive of anything but money. The people here are said to be very rich in comparison with those in other towns, and they need three banks to take care of their cash. The chief amusement at night is to walk around the banks, just to see that the doors are closed. The Bookworm made a few inquiries about libraries and art galleries, and that sort of thing, but there were none. He felt sad; he couldn't help it, he said, when he found people with money without books and pictures, and things of that sort. Samuel Drew was born here, so also was John William Colenso, the man who "made an epoch in criticism by his straightforwardness," and there is plenty of room for a statue to each. The old bull-ring is in evidence.

The hill on which the town stands stretches away a mile or so, and the further you go the better the view of the white, glistening patches, and the rills of white water trickling down the valleys seawards. "Milk!" is the one idea, milk flowing through the land—milk enough and to spare for all the condensed milk factories in the world. It's only an illusion—it's clay in solution, which by-and-by will show itself in the sea, like a white apron upon the shore, until it loses itself in the eternal blue. We stand here on what is a sort of terminus of the hilly backbone of the country—eastward, it is black and rugged, moor and mountain with white scars, and ruined engine-houses of abandoned mines; then westward, and there is paradise in green stretching towards the cathedral city. Down again to Clayopolis and the throb of arterial life—clay and money, money and clay.

China clay has no fairy of its own, like tin. It came upon the scene too late; and fairies can't be made at will, but must grow of themselves, and take time. Fishing, agriculture, and mining have their tutelar spirits, able to work and dematerialize at will, and every desolate cave, and cairn, and moor, and pool has its gnome and fairy; but when we come across anything modern there is one thing wanting. Lightning comes from fairyland until it is put in lamps and sold per metre. China clay, unknown to the fairies and unblessed by the saints, has to make its own way in the world, on merits, like any modern youngster turned out of a Board School. And it does very well.

This is one of the few towns in which a theatrical company can pay expenses. The people are musical and dramatic, they can't help it; and though a "theatre" would be "taboo," a drama in Public Rooms is all right. Sports do very well, and you may race anything, from lame ducks to donkeys, bikes and motors, men, women, and children, but not horses. A horse-race is—well, not to be mentioned.

The game of "hurling," peculiar to the county, is not played here now, though it is kept up at St. Columb and Helston and other places, and we saw it played at Newquay in a very mild sort of way. The origin of the game is pre-historic. When a paleolithic gentleman had a nice bone which another paleolithic gentleman tried to grab, a tussle commenced, and the best man got the bone, and kept it. The evolution of the game out of a scrimmage for a bone is so natural that the best-informed antiquarians have missed it.

A hurler should be able to run like a hare, hide like a rabbit, leap like a kangaroo, and climb like a monkey. Then he should be able to box like a pugilist, wrestle like a champion, and sky a ball like an All-England cricketer. These are essentials. Then, if he escapes drowning, and comes alive out of a "scrum," he may make a good hurler. It is a fair game, and may be played by selected teams, like football, or town against country, with an unlimited number. A silvered ball is the trophy. The ball is thrown into the air, and the man catching it runs for his goal, and when the game is too hot for him he skies the ball, and another fellow starts with the whole pack after him, until he's tripped up and buried under a living heap of players; then some one steals away with the ball, wrestles with the first man who catches him, and then there's another "scrum," which gives points to Rugby. And so on, backwards and forwards, from goal to goal, until "time" is called, or someone insured against broken bones and sudden death manages to touch his goal with the ball in his hand. Carew says the game was played in his days so that players returned home "with bloody pates, bones broken and out of joint, and such bruises as serve to shorten their days, and all in good play, and never attorney nor coroner troubled for the matter." If this was the legitimate play, what could the other have been? The game as played on Newquay sands was quite another affair, and, if revived with "Newquay rules," might extend from Cornwall to the country. Porpoises play a game in the sea something like hurling, only instead of a ball they throw a live conger into the air, and the one who catches dodges about until made to throw it up again, and so on, until time is called. An exciting game is on record, but the sensations of the conger are unknown. A good fish story usually leaves a trifle to the imagination.