The first sight of Land’s End Hotel, a low, drab-colored building standing on the bleak headland, is apt to beget in the wayfarer who approaches it at sunset a feeling of regret that he passed through Penzance without stopping for the night. Nor does his regret grow less when he is assigned to ill-furnished rooms with uncomfortable-looking beds—which, I may say, do not belie their looks—or when he sits down to a dinner that is only a slight improvement upon our memorable banquet at John O’Groats. But we did not come to Land’s End to find London hotel comforts and conveniences, but for purely sentimental reasons, which should preclude any fault-finding if accommodations are not just to our liking. It was our fancy to spend a night at both Land’s End and John O’Groats—and it must be largely imagination that attracts so many tourists to these widely separated localities, since there are surely hundreds of bits of English and Scottish coast more picturesque or imposing than either.

But here we are, in any event, and we go forth in the gray twilight to take note of our surroundings. An old fellow who has been watching us closely since our arrival follows us and in a language that puzzles us a little urges the necessity of his services as guide if we are to see the wonders of Land’s End. We are glad enough to have his assistance and he leads us toward the broken cliffs, thrusting their rugged bulk far into the white-capped waves which come rolling landward. The sky and sea are still tinged with the hues of sunset and a faint glow touches the reddish rocks along the shores. It is too late for the inspiring effect shown in Mr. Moran’s wonderful picture—had we been an hour earlier we might have beheld such a scene. Subdued purplish hues now prevail and a dark violet-colored sea thunders upon the coast. The wind is blowing—to our notion, a gale, though our old guide calls it a stiff breeze.

“A ’igh wind, sir? Wot would you call a wind that piles up the waves so you can’t see yonder lighthouse, that’s two hundred and fifty feet tall? That’s wot I’d call a ’igh wind, sir. And you’d be drenched to the skin in a minute standing where you are.”

We revise our ideas of high winds accordingly, but a stiff breeze is quite enough for us, especially when the old man urges us to come out upon what seems to us an exceedingly precarious perch—because it is the “last rock in England.” It stands almost sheer as a chimney with the sea foaming in indescribable fury some fifty or sixty feet below, and we have to decline, despite our guide’s insistence that we are missing the chief sensation of Land’s End. It was no doubt this identical spot which so impressed John Wesley, who visited Land’s End in 1743, when he made his famous preaching tour in Cornwall.

“It was an awful sight,” he wrote. “But how will this melt away when God ariseth in judgment. The sea beneath doth indeed boil like a pot. One would indeed think the sea to be hoary! But though they swell, they cannot prevail. He shall set the bounds which they cannot pass!” But the great preacher did not say whether he stood on the “last rock” or not.

We follow our guide in a strenuous scramble over the huge rocks to reach particular viewpoints, and, indeed, there are many awe-inspiring vistas of roaring ocean and rock-bound coast. Everywhere the sea attacks the shore in seeming fury, the great foam-crested waves sweeping against the jagged edges and breaking into a deluge of salt spray.

“I’ve seen more than one ship go to pieces on these rocks in winter storms,” says our guide. “At the last wreck twenty-seven lives were lost. I recovered one body myself—a fine Spanish-looking gentleman six feet three inches tall,” he goes on, with an evident relish for gruesome details.

“The winter storms must be terrible, indeed,” we venture.

“You can’t imagine how dreadful,” he answers. “I’ve seen the sea so rough that for three months no boat could reach yonder lighthouse a mile away; but the keeper was lucky to have food and he kept his light shining all the time. It’s a dreary, lonely country in winter time, but more people would come if they only knew what an awful sight it is to see the sea washing over these headlands.”

The same story is told—in more polished language—by a writer who spent the winter in Cornwall and often visited Land’s End on stormy nights: “The raving of the wind among the rocks; the dark ocean—exceedingly dark except when the flying clouds were broken and the stars shining in the clear spaces touched the big black incoming waves with a steely gray light; the jagged isolated rocks, on which so many ships have been shattered, rising in awful blackness from the spectral foam that appeared and vanished and appeared again; the multitudinous hoarse sounds of the sea, with throbbing and hollow booming noises in the caverns beneath—all together served to bring back something of the old vanished picture or vision of Bolerium as we first imagine it. The glare from the various lighthouses visible at this point only served to heighten the inexpressibly sombre effect, since shining from a distance they make the gloomy world appear vaster. Down in the south, twenty-five miles away, the low clouds were lit up at short intervals by wide white flashes, as of sheet lightning, from the Lizard light, the most powerful of all lights, the reflection of which may be seen at a distance of sixty or seventy miles at sea. In front of the Land’s End promontory, within five miles of it, was the angry red glare from the Longships tower, and further away to the left the white revolving light of the Wolf lighthouse.”

Darkness has fallen and almost blotted out the wild surroundings save for the gleams which flash from the lighthouses across the somber waters. We wend our way back to our inn to rest as best we may in anything but comfortable beds after an unusually strenuous day; we have traveled but one hundred and twenty miles since leaving Plymouth in the morning, but we have seen so much and had such varied experiences that we have a dim feeling of having come many times as far.

A glorious morning gives us the opportunity of seeing the wild coast at its best. A dark blue sea is breaking on the reddish brown rocks and chafing into white foam at their feet. We wander out on the headland to get a farewell glimpse of the scene—for there is little to tempt one to linger at Land’s End; you may see it all at a sunset and sunrise. There is no historic ruin on the spot, and surely any thought of the hotel will hasten your departure if you ever had any intention of lingering.

Sennan, a forlorn collection of stone huts about a mile from Land’s End, is worth noting only as a type of the few tiny villages in the bit of barren country beyond Penzance and St. Ives. There is nothing to catch the artistic eye in these bleak little places; they lack the quaintness of Polperro or St. Ives and the coziness and color of the flower-embowered cottages of Somerset and Hampshire. The isolated farmhouses show the same characteristics and a description by a writer who lived in one of these during the winter months is full of interest:

“Life on these small farms is incredibly rough. One may guess what it is like from the outward aspect of such places. Each, it is true, has its own individual character, but they are all pretty much alike in their dreary, naked and almost squalid appearance. Each, too, has its own ancient Cornish name, some of these very fine or very pretty, but you are tempted to rename them in your own mind Desolation Farm, Dreary Farm, Stony Farm, Bleak Farm and Hungry Farm. The farmhouse is a small, low place and invariably built of granite, with no garden or bush or flower about it. The one I stayed at was a couple of centuries old, but no one had ever thought of growing anything, even a marigold, to soften its bare, harsh aspect. The house itself could hardly be distinguished from the outhouses clustered round it. Several times on coming back to the house in a hurry and not exercising proper care I found I had made for the wrong door and got into the cow-house, or pig-house, or a shed of some sort, instead of into the human habitation. The cows and other animals were all about and you came through deep mud into the living-room. The pigs and fowls did not come in but were otherwise free to go where they liked. The rooms were very low; my hair, when I stood erect, just brushed the beams; but the living-room or kitchen was spacious for so small a house, and had the wide old open fireplace still common in this part of the country. Any other form of fireplace would not be suitable when the fuel consists of furze and turf.”

Such are the towns and farmhouses of this farthest Cornwall to-day—a country once prosperous on account of tin and copper mines which are all now abandoned. I doubt if there is a more poverty-stricken rural section in the Kingdom than Cornwall. I noted in a paper edited by a socialist candidate for the House of Commons a curious outburst over a donation made by the king to the poor of Cornwall, which was accompanied by a little homily from His Majesty on the necessity of the beneficiaries helping themselves. The article is so significant in the light it throws on certain social conditions and as illustrating a greater degree of freedom of speech than is generally supposed to exist in England that I feel it worth quoting:

“Although we do not doubt the King’s longing to help all his people, we must be forgiven if we refuse to be impressed by his apparent intensity of feeling. Not that we blame the King. In order to feel decently about the poor, one must have ‘had some,’ so to speak. And we can hardly imagine that King George knows much concerning the objects of his sympathy, when we consider the annual financial circumstances of his own compact little family. In the year that is ending they will have drawn between them the helpful pittance of six hundred thirty-four thousand pounds. This is exclusive of the income of the Prince of Wales, derived from the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall. And even if this sum has been badly drained by Yuletide beneficence (as faintly threatened in the Church Army donation) the New Year will bring sure replenishment of the royal purse.

“We should not have felt called upon to mention these little details were it not for the offensive phrase—‘may they show their gratitude by industry and vigorous efforts to help themselves.’ How can the poor devils who live in the foetid hovels which dot the Duchy of Cornwall ‘help themselves?’ Out of their shameful earnings—when they have any earnings—they must first pay toll to the bloated rent-roll of the King’s infant son. Out of their constant penury they must help to provide an extravagant Civil List, to enable their Monarch to lecture on self-help at the end of a donation of twenty-five pounds. Help themselves? Show their gratitude? How can they help themselves when the earth was stolen from them before their birth, when their tools of production are owned and controlled by a group of moneyed parasites, when their laws are made and administered by the class which lives on their labours and fattens on their helplessness? Show their gratitude? Heaven have mercy upon us! What have they to be grateful for—these squalid, dependent, but always necessary outcasts of our civilization?”

I fear this is pretty much of a digression, though I think an interesting one. Not all of Cornwall shows evidence of such poverty—the country steadily improves as we hasten to the fine old town of Truro and there is much good country beyond. Though we have come but thirty-six miles from Land’s End, the indisposition of one of our party makes it advisable to pause in the old Cornish capital, where we may be sure of comfortable quarters at the Red Lion.

We find this a commodious, substantial structure, built about two and a half centuries ago, with a fine entrance hall from which a black-oak stairway leads to the upper floors. Its accommodations and service seem to average with the best provincial hotels in towns the size of Truro, and, altogether, the Red Lion is perhaps as good a place to spend a day of enforced idleness as one is likely to come across.

The town itself has little enough to interest the stranger, as I found in wandering about for some hours. Even the splendid cathedral lacks antiquity and historic association, for it still wants a few finishing touches. It has been about thirty years in building and more than a million dollars has been expended in the work. The exterior conforms to the best early English traditions, the most striking feature being the three splendid towers—the central one rising to a height of two hundred and fifty feet. The interior is somewhat glaring and bare, owing largely to the absence of stained-glass windows, of which there are only a few. A portion of the old parish church is included in the building and contains a few ancient monuments of little importance. On the whole, Truro Cathedral is a fine example of modern church architecture and proves that the art is not a lost one by any means. I was fortunate in happening to be inside during an organ rehearsal and more majestic and inspiring music I never heard than the solemn melodies which filled the vast vacant building.

We are ready for the road after a day’s sojourn in Truro, and depart in a steady rain which continues until nightfall. Our road—which we have traversed before—by way of St. Columb Major and Camelford to Launceston, is hilly and heavy and in the pouring rain we make only slow progress. The gray mist envelops the landscape; but it matters little, for the greater part of our road runs between the dirt fences I have described heretofore, which shut out much of the country, even on fine days. St. Columb and Camelford are dreary, angular little towns stretching closely along the highroad, quite unattractive in fine weather and under present conditions positively ugly. Camelford, some say, is the Camelot of the Arthurian romances, but surely no vestige of romance lingers about it to-day. From here we make a wild dash across the moor to Launceston—the rain is falling more heavily and the wind blowing a gale. Our meter seldom registers under forty miles, a pace that lands us quickly at the door of the White Hart; we are damp and cold and the old inn seems a timely haven, indeed. A change of raiment and warm luncheon makes us feel more at peace with the world, but we do not muster courage to venture out in the storm again. Perhaps if we could have foreseen that the following day would be no better, we should have resumed our journey. Indeed, the next morning the storm that drove the fleet away from Penzance was in full sway over Cornwall and a dreary, rain-swept country it was. The road northward to Holsworthy and Great Torrington is little else but a narrow and hilly lane, though as dreary a section as one will find in Cornwall or Devon, and here, also, the hedges intercept our view much of the way. The towns, too, are quite devoid of interest save the fine Perpendicular church which towers over Holsworthy. Bideford, famous in Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!” and Barnstaple, with its potteries which produce the cheap but not inartistic “Barum ware,” we have visited before and both have much worth seeing. We are now out of the zone of the storm and the weather is more tolerable; we have really been suffering from the cold in midsummer—not an uncommon thing in Britain.

There are two first-class old inns at Taunton—on different occasions people of the town had assured us that each was the best—and though Baedeker gives the London the preference and honors it with the much coveted star, we thought the Castle equally good. It is a gray-stone, ivy-covered building near the castle and if our luncheon may be taken as an index, its service is all that can be desired.

A little way out of Taunton we notice a monument a short distance from the roadside and easily identify it from pictures which we have seen as the memorial erected to commemorate the victory of King Alfred over the Danes at Sedgemoor. In olden times this whole section was a vast marsh in which was the Isle of Athelney, surrounded by an almost impenetrable morass. The king and a band of faithful followers built a causeway to the island, which served as a retreat while marshalling sufficient force to cope with the invaders. The rally of the Saxons around the intrepid king finally resulted in a signal victory, which broke the Danish power in England. Alfred built an abbey near the spot as a mark of pious gratitude for his success, but scarcely a trace remains of the structure to-day. In the same vicinity is supposed to have occurred the famous incident of King Alfred and the cakes, which he allowed to burn while watching them. Alfred was then in hiding, disguised as a farm laborer, and received a severe berating from the angry housewife for his carelessness.

But Sedgemoor is historic in a double sense, for here the conflict occurred between the forces of James II. and the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth, to which we have previously referred. The rebels planned a night attack on the royal army, and, knowing that carelessness and debauchery would prevail in the king’s camp on Sunday, they chose that day for the assault. The accidental discharge of a pistol gave warning of the approach of the assailants and they had the farther misfortune to be hopelessly entangled in the deep drainage ditches which then (as now) intersected the valley. The result was a disastrous defeat for the Duke’s followers, of whom a thousand were slain. Monmouth himself was discovered by his enemies after two days’ search, hiding in a ditch, and was duly executed in London Tower. Some five hundred of his followers—mostly ignorant peasants—were hanged at Taunton and Dorchester by orders of the infamous Jeffreys. This battle, which took place on Sunday, July 5, 1685, was the last of any consequence to be fought on English soil. The historic field to-day is green and prosperous-looking and the only indication that it was once a marshy fen is the ditches which drain its surplus waters.

We pass Glastonbury and Wells, which might well detain us had we not visited them previously, for in all England there are few towns richer in tradition and history than the former; and the latter’s cathedral no well-informed traveler would wish to miss. Bath, we know from several previous sojourns, affords an unequalled stopping-place for the night and we soon renew acquaintance at the Empire Hotel, where we are now fairly well known. Our odometer shows an unusually long day’s run, much of which was under trying conditions of road and weather. This hotel belongs to a syndicate which owns several others, in London and at various resorts throughout the country. A guest who enters into a contract may stay the year round at these hotels for a surprisingly low figure, going from one to the other according to his pleasure—to Folkestone, for instance, if he wishes the seaside, or to London if he inclines towards the metropolis. Many English people of leisure avail themselves of this plan, which, it would seem, has its advantages in somewhat relieving the monotony of life in a single hotel.

Though we have been in Bath several times, something has always interfered with our plan to visit the abbey church and we resolve to make amends before we set out Londonward. There are few statelier church edifices in the island—the “Lantern of England,” as the guide-books style it, on account of its magnificent windows. These are mainly modern and prove that the art of making stained glass is far from lost, as has sometimes been insisted. So predominating are the windows, in fact, that one writer declares, “It is the beauty of a flower a little overblown, though it has its charms just the same.” The most remarkable of all is the great western group of seven splendid windows illustrating biblical subjects in wonderfully harmonious colors. As may be imagined, the interior is unusually well lighted, though the soft color tones prevent any garish effect. The intricate tracery of the fine fan vaulted ceiling is clearly brought out and also the delicate carving on the screen—a modern restoration, by the way. The monuments are tasteless and, in the main, of little importance, though our attention is naturally arrested by a memorial to “William Bingham, Senator of the United States of America,” who died at Bath in 1804.

The exterior of the abbey—they tell us—has many architectural defects, though these are not apparent to the layman. The walls are supported by flying buttresses and the west front shows curious sculptures representing the angels upon Jacob’s ladder. The tower, one hundred and sixty-five feet in height, is a pure example of English Perpendicular and is rather peculiar in that it is oblong rather than square.

As we leave the town we cannot but admire its cleanliness and beautiful location. It skirts both banks of the River Avon and is surrounded by an amphitheater of wooded hills. To our notion it is the finest of inland English resort towns and certainly none has a more varied past, nor has any other figured so extensively in literature. It is about one hundred miles from London by road, and is a favorite goal for the motorist from that city.

The road to London is a fine broad highway leading through Marlborough and Reading. It proves a splendid farewell run to our third long motor tour through Britain; we have covered in all nearly twenty thousand miles of highways and byways during varying weather. If there has been much sunshine, there have also been weeks of rain and many lowering gloomy days. There is scarce an historic shrine of importance in the Kingdom that has escaped us and we have visited hundreds of odd corners not even mentioned in the guide-books. And, best of all, we have come to know the people and have gained considerable familiarity with their institutions, which has not lessened our respect and admiration for the Motherland. Indeed, I feel that our experience sufficiently warrants a chapter on the English at home—as we saw them—and I make no apology for concluding this book with such. It is not free from criticism, I know, but could an honest observer write more favorably of our own country—if conditions were such that he might tour our populous states as thoroughly as we have done Britain?

Our last day on the road fulfills the ideal of English midsummer; the storm has passed, leaving the country fresh and bright; green fields alternate with the waving gold of the ripening harvest, and here and there we pass an old village or a solitary cottage by the roadside—all typical of the rural England we have come to love so much. We drive leisurely over the fine road and linger an hour or two in Marlborough after luncheon at the Ailesbury Arms, whose excellence we have proven on previous occasions. We find an antique-shop here with a store of old silver that rivals our discovery in Largo, and the prices asked are no higher.

From Reading we follow the Thames River road, which for some miles skirts the very shore of the historic stream and passes within a distant view of the towers of Windsor, rising in all their romantic majesty against the sunset sky. From Windsor we follow the familiar road to the heart of the teeming metropolis and our third long motor pilgrimage in Summer Britain is at its close.