The south coast differs from the north. Lord Beaconsfield came to Falmouth in his dandy days, and wrote: "It is one of the most charming places I ever saw—I mean the scenery and around." The scenery is still there, and the town is turning it to account and learning to live on it. Falmouth is very much like the lady who has seen "better days," and is reduced to put up the sign "Lodgings to Let." There was a time when the ships of the King's Navy and the Mail Packets came here, and the riches of the world were landed on its quays. Disraeli came here en route for the East, when Falmouth was queen in her own right, if wealth and commerce and beauty can make a queen. Then things changed and changed, and ships and commerce found other ports; but the beauty is there, and is all its own. Some people say more might be made of it in a commercial sense. There is a literary and refined air about the place which delighted the Bookworm, who found out the Libraries and Art Galleries, Polytechnic and Observatory.

Honest John Burton was the Bookworm's delight; and after picking up a first edition of Chatterton in the twopenny box, there was no keeping him away from the premises. It was a rare pick-up, and honest John wouldn't take more than twopence, not he! We rambled over the premises, and found heathen gods enough stocked away to fill a temple in Thibet. The Bookworm said there was nothing so rich and rare in the whole collection as old Burton himself, a dose of whom would banish melancholy. We took his word, for more good things were pumped into him than he could afterwards remember.

Falmouth is linked in Parliamentary matrimony with Penryn, an ancient borough so ashamed of its age that it sold its parish stocks, and other antiquities, "for a song." The boroughs are an ill-assorted pair, and the political marriage was not made in heaven.

Falmouth has its scenery and climate, two inalienable possessions, costing nothing, yet sources of unsuspected wealth if only made the most of. We came across the track of the American citizen, John B. Bellamy, whom we met at Penzance. He left his card with honest John Burton, with an order to send him along any available relics of the late King Arthur. He may get some, who knows? He left behind him also the opinion, that if the "durned old place" was only on the other side of the Atlantic, the harbour might be filled up with the gold that would flow into it every season. Tired Yanks would find paradise, and pay accordingly. The garden of acclimatation speaks of the climate in the bloom and perfume and variety of plants, all of which speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

There is no place in the county so well catered for in the matter of water excursions. The river Fal is marked as one of the beauty spots of the county, and some compare it favourably even with the Dart and the Wye. It may lose or gain by comparison, but it is good enough "on its own." The best way to see the Fal is to sail from the open into the fjord-like inlet of Falmouth, and then up the valley, sinuous and well-wooded, narrowing as you go, and increasing its natural beauty every mile. The Helford river should be seen in a similar way—come in from the open with the sea and fancy, if you can, the mighty rush of waters boring its way through rocks, carving out the miniature creeks, right and left, until its earth-hunger is spent. The scenery from Helford to Gweek is bolder than that of the Fal, and some prefer it on that account. There is a lot of fishing done in the creeks, and most of the yachts we passed had nets and lines hanging over the bows or lying about the decks. The oysters have a good reputation, but there is no considerable trade done in pearls.

Rivers are scarce, though the clouds are generous. Some say there are no real rivers, and that Cornwall has only the predominant partner interest in the Tamar, and two brooks, Camel and Fowey, which you can leap over anywhere with a long pole, until you come to salt water. The Fal and Helford are really estuaries. The upper moorland reaches of the Camel and Fowey abound in delicious little spots where one can sit and listen dreamily to the stream fretting amongst boulders, and swirling in sunshine and shadow amongst ferns and wild flowering shrubs, with effects incomparably beautiful.

The Lizard end of the peninsula is a sort of receiving house for the news of the world. The secrets of many lands arrive here first, breathless and palpitating, after their long runs on the ocean cables. Marconi has his stations here; and at unlooked-for places we come across notices reminding all whom it concerns not to foul the cables. There are secrets of which we know nothing—secrets of peace and war, ruin and success, love and hate, which we would give our ears to have an inkling of, vibrating under water and in the air.

The peninsula has always been a sort of receiving office for the nation. At first, when foes came sailing along, the Cornishmen spied them and sent up a flare, and then the beacon fires flashed out the news in the dark night, so that all men might read in letters of flame. A fire lit high on St. Michael's Mount travelled with speed around the coasts of Britain. Hensbarrow, called the "Archbeacon" of the county, could tell its story in fire from the Lizard to the Tamar, and set men's blood tingling, and hearts throbbing, as no "wire" or "cable" or printed word can do.

It was "wireless," and the British admiral keeping watch upon the French fleet at Brest informed my lords of the Admiralty of their movements by means of signals from frigate to frigate stationed across the Channel, and received at the Dodman by the sleepless watcher. Then the news travelled by semaphore from headland to headland—from Dodman to the Blackhead, to the Gribben, to Polruan, to Polperro, to Maker Heights, to the Commander-in-Chief. Very little time was lost, even in the old days, when there was anything to tell, and Cornwall was the eye, and ear, and tongue.

The Dodman, the highest headland in the county, is one of those places of solitude where depression will not stay. Hour after hour one may pass upon the bluff headland without seeing a human soul or hearing a human voice, and yet feel one's spirits elated in the silence. With a mere half-turn of the head one can see the whole Cornish coast, from the Lizard to the Rame, and beyond, and all the ocean traffic passing up and down. Then below, a sheer fall of four hundred feet, are the little crabbing boats, mere specks upon the blue, shoaling into green and breaking into foam upon the dark, weathered rocks. And then the wind, blow which way it will, must sweep this headland, bringing with it the scents of heather and wild flower untainted, as though in all the world there were no such things as smoke, and factories, and areas of pollution. For miles the cliffs are covered with tall bracken, green in summer, but quickly touched with brown and gold. These cliffs teem with life which we cannot see but know to be there; but feathered life is abundant and everywhere in evidence, flying in air, clustering on the rocks, or diving and swimming when fish abound. And then there come up from the shore the rhythmic sounds of spent energy—

Every sense is filled with thrills, and depression is impossible. People say the country is one vast sanatorium; and I think that open-air treatment on the Dodman would be delightful. The "faculty" are welcome to the hint.

The headland is occupied only by a small shelter for the coastguardsmen, and a modern granite cross, which can be seen, soon after passing the Lizard, by persons on board ship. To those who think it, this fine monument is the symbol of the new life rampant over a buried past, for it stands on the legendary playground of the giants, who laid waste the whole district, and heaped the bones of their victims, pile upon pile, until the headland rose majestic.

A giant once dwelt here who willed his "quoits" to his relatives, who, however, never claimed them, so they became part and parcel of the lord's inheritance and may be seen to this day. Then footsteps of the Vikings are plainly visible in stone encampments, telling of another age, still violent, but of "derring-do;" and to the west we touch Arthurian romance once more, for Geraint of the Round Table lies there, interred with Christian rites in a boat of gold, which was rowed across the sea with silver oars. All this, and more, within sight and sound of the Dodman cross, bearing the following inscription: "In the firm hope of the Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and for the encouragement of those who strive to serve Him, this Cross is erected. A.D. 1896." The old order and the new rest peacefully on this headland solitude.

The finest beaches on the south are here, right and left of the Dodman, and are seldom visited save by stragglers, like ourselves, or picnic parties from a distance. The Bookworm chanced upon the fact that Cornwall had some little share in the production of Lord Byron, his grandmother being a Trevanion of Caerhays, only a short distance from here.[I] Admiral Byron, the grandfather, was known to contemporaries as "Foul-weather Jack," so storm-pursued was he, and the poet's passionate love of the sea was not a mere "sport," after all.