In these days of universal travel thousands of people  visit Cornwall every year.  They climb the cheesewring, picnic amongst the ruins of tintagel's hoary Keep, explore the sylan beauties of the fal, and stand on old Bolerium and strain their eyes to catch a glimpse of the long, low, uneven silhouette of the Scillies.  Then, when the holidays are over, they go home and tell their friends of a land of vivid colouring and rocky grandeur.  They speak enthusiastically of palm trees of geraniums twenty feet high, of fuchsias that grow like large shrubs, of wild asparagus and other vegetarian wonders.  They compare with a sneer the pea-green water of the English channel to the sapphire rollers of the Atlantic, and assert that, after the pinnacled headlands of the West, the chalk cliffs of the South Coast look like neatly cut white cheese.

But how many of these people know the real uniqueness of  Cornwall?  Very few.  For this land of primeval solitude's and prehistoric monuments is not to be discovered in a few weeks of sight-seeing.  Its true spirit does not reveal itself on the sea fronts of its watering places, or in the show spots of the guide-books.

In order to really know Cornwall, and to know her isto love her, it is necessary to leave the beaten tracks and follow the less-trodden paths of her moors and cliffs, to trace the little moorland streams from source to sea, to discover those quaint gray villages that nestle in the hollows of the hills, and to make the acquaintance of their warm-hearted, quick-witted Celtic inhabitants.  This can possibly be done by a good walker from the towns.  By far the better plan, however, is to take rooms in a moorland farm or village.  A few weeks spent in this way will give the visitor a much deeper insight than he could otherwise obtain into this most interesting of counties.  For Cornwall, owing to its semi-insular position, has always been singularly isolated from the rest of the country.  To this day England may be said to terminate on the shores of the Tamar.  Beyond this river is a land of legend and mystery, of eloquent silence and Homeric storms, a land of long ago, inhabited by a race still in many ways as distinct from England as the Bretons are from the French.

There are three great moorland districts in Cornwall where the impress of Time's effacing fingers is still slight, and where, in consequence, the most striking characteristics of her people and her scenery are to be found.  the Bodmin moors in the north, the Goonhilly Downs in the south, and the penwith highlands in the extreme western portion of the county.  the Bodmin moors are situated entirely inland.  They are the most extensive and contain the highest hills in the Duchy.  They are also rich in prehistoric monuments.  The Goonhilly Downs are an elevated tableland, flat and heath-covered, extending to the coast in the neighbourhood of the lizard: a district of peculiar physical features and of great interest to the botanist.  the Penwith highlands reach almost to land's End, and in many ways are the most arresting of all cornwall's uplands.  This insulated region (for it is only four miles from sea to sea where it may be said to leave the mainland and is elsewhere entirely surrounded by the Atlantic) is about eighteen miles long and six miles broad.  nowhere else in the "Delectable Duchy" will you find a grander coast-line, a wilder, more picturesque moorland, or such a wealth of prehistoric villages, cromlechs and stone circles.  This is the sanctum sanctorum of the Cornish Celt.  Here you will find him still clinging to his granite hills, still listerning to the song of the sea and the moan of the moorland wind.  the same dreaming, mystic creature as his forefathers who reared those mighty cromlechs, whose massive outlines still so impressively cut the sky-line of the hills, and beside which our oldest cathedrals are but of yesterday.  Nor can one wonder if his heart is still somewhat tinged with phantasy.  for amid his childhood's dreams mingles as of old the deep diapason of the sea: and his young feet patter familiarly, as did those of his forefathers, along ancestral paths worn in the moor to temple, tomb, and tribal fort.  To the casual observer Cornish people are much the same as Devon or somerset people; but such is not the case.  In the moorland and more remote districts of the Duchy many distinctive traits and habits of thought have been handed down from the distant past.

A considerable portion of this Land's End district consists of rock-strewn uplands.  Towards the south they slope gently to the sea and enclose valleys of most productive soil in a high state of cultivation.  To the north they face the Atlantic in a series of rugged ridges.


On the scarred sides of these hills numerous streams rise.  they have worn for themselves valleys and gorges of great beauty as they rush to the sea, into which they often fall by a series of cascades or perpendicular leaps over the rocky wall of some secluded cove.

The beauty and grandeur of these coves are unknown to the ordinary visitor, and even to the pedestrian who keeps to the field paths and thinks he is "doing" the Cornish coast.  Only the coastguard path, and often not even that, will reveal their charms, especially the little waterfalls.  they are, where the rock is granite or basaltic, guarded by cliffs and headlands crowned with pinnacles which give them the appearance of titanic castles.  the sides of these natural bastions glow with many-coloured lichens, and all that is not sheer rock is covered with a profusion of ferns and flowers.  These secluded amphitheatres of stern grandeur and vivid beauty enclose water so deeply  blue that one can only liken it to a melted sapphire, save when it approaches the little  scimitar of sand at the foot of the cliffs; then it becomes the purest emerald green, fringed with a band of snow-white lace where, in calm weather, the wavelets kiss the shore.  This blending of stern magnificence with the softest beauty is typical of all wild lands, it is Nature's way-the tragic note is never far distant.  Come to one of these little coves when the summer clouds scarce move across the blue, "shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind", when the flowers glow like jewels against the azure of the sea, when the air is heavy with the scent of the heath and the drowsy hum of bees, when the little waves are murmurung to the sand as soft as crooning dove, and it will remain with you as one of your most exquisite memories of peace and beauty.  But come here when the storm fiend is lashing the waves to fury and the air is thick with flying spume, when even the cliffs are trembling before the terrific onslaught, and perhaps, some broken vessel, alas, often happens, is being torn to fragments on the rocks beneath, and it will probably form the most tragic experience of your life.

Grand and interesting as is this Penwithian coast, and indeed the entire coast-line of Cornwall, the moorlands behind them are in some ways even more impressive.  The ocean winds have given them an ideal health producing climate, and the "soft south," borne on the bosom of the great gulf Stream, has clothed their rocks and tors with a tapestry of many colours and given them a wealth of natural flowers not to be seen anywhere else in England.  Here, if anywhere, the jaded city dweller will find that health is a greater boon than wealth, and that happiness-that will-o'-the-wisp-is nearer to him on these rolling hills than in the streets and pleasure-palaces of the metropolis.

For, remember, all these uplands are unconquered; are still unchanged in aspect, since Neolithic man reared his homes and temples and tombs upon their friendly summits untrammeled by the dense beat-ridden forests of the lowlands.  And they are consequently still Nature's sanctuaries, where those who find "sermons in stones and books in running brooks" can enjoy the vital magic of the dear old Earth.  For the poetry of the earth is never dead.  It steals into the heart by a thousand different channels, by the song of birds, by the murmur of the brook, by the flash of a butterfly's wing, by the petals of a flower.  It is never wholly absent.  On the dreariest  winter's night some unseen ambassador is there to whisper in our ear her rhythmic mother's song.  It may be the flute-like note of the wood-owl, the wild whistle of the curlew, the sighing of the wind in the health, or the blooming of the distant surf.

And here, in this sea-girt Duchy, that maternal voice seems to possess a more intimate meaning than elsewhere.  Here, on these wild cliffs and moorland hills beneath the moving pageants of the clouds-those stately daughters of the storm whose cradle is out there  on the broad bosom of the Atlantic in the eye of the setting sun-there will come back to you from the years long ago something of the fragrance of your childhood and of those happy summer days when, because you were a child, you were in tune with the Infinite.  Since that happy time you have come to care for things of no very great importance.  For stocks and shares, for furniture and horses, and for the high places in Senate and Synagogue.  Your primal sense of wonder, love and reverence has been effaced by a love of trusts, truffles and trumpery.

But here, guarded by the ocean and purified by her storms, is a shrine where all can worship, an altar where all can obtain absolution.  Here, if anywhere, you can regain the sweet sanities of your youth and discover, what, perhaps, you had well-nigh forgotten, that the cult of the Golden Calf is not to be compared to the cult of great Spirit of the Universe, whose attributes are Beauty and Harmony, "who makes the clouds his chariot and rides upon the wings of the wind" - "whose dwelling is the light of setting suns."