n the opposite side of the
channel. We have seen St. Maws, but Pendennis they will not let us
behold, because Hobhouse and I are suspected of having already taken
St. Maws by a _coup-de-main_. The town contains many quakers and salt
fish--the oysters have a taste of copper, owing to the soil of a
mining country; the women (blessed be the Corporation therefor!) are
flogged at the cart's tail when they pick and steal, as happened to
one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her
behaviour, and damned the mayor." One might have expected that he
would at least have had a word for the town's beauty of position and
for its magnificent harbour; but such things were features that he
usually ignored in his letters, and his avoidance of the poetical
always amounted to an affectation. Defoe, who had been here about
eighty years earlier, found something to say about the harbour as
being, "next to Milford Haven, the fairest and best road for shipping
that is in the whole isle of Britain." Of Falmouth itself he says that
"it is by much the richest and best trading town in this county,
though not so ancient as its neighbour town of Truro." Truro might
have the honour, but "Falmouth has gotten the trade." He says further
that "Falmouth is well built, has abundance of shipping, is full of
rich merchants, and has a flourishing and increasing trade. I say
'increasing,' because by the late setting up the English packets
between this port and Lisbon, there is a new commerce between Portugal
and this town carried on to a very great value." The origin of this
trading, he suggests, was very much assisted by a species of
export-smuggling, whereby British manufactures were carried from
England to Portugal without paying custom at either end. But the
custom-house soon put an end to this, or at least greatly modified it.
Among other notable visitors it is interesting to remember that
Disraeli was here in his younger days, in 1830, detained before
starting on his own somewhat Byronic voyage to the Mediterranean; he
found the town "one of the most charming places I ever saw." In
days when Falmouth was a port-of-call for nearly every outward-bound
vessel, many another distinguished traveller must have put in here and
explored the town while the ship waited its sailing orders; but it
must be confessed that the records of such visits are rather scanty,
and the literary or other associations of Falmouth are not of the
richest. There are