might tell us something
well worth listening to. But their memories would be of a Cornwall
very different from the present, and they would probably look to see
St. Michael's Mount in the midst of a forest.

If we are tired of shipwrecks, perhaps we are not tired of smugglers,
and we come on their footsteps in very vivid fashion at Prussia Cove,
whose original name was Porthleah. The place was a veritable hot-bed
of smuggling long before the days of John Carter, prince of smugglers,
who went by the name of King of Prussia, and gave its present name to
the little cove. Some say that in boyish play-fights he always assumed
the name of King of Prussia, and the title stuck. In Cornwall his
reputation quite over-shadowed that of his Continental namesake; so
that when the news of the battle of Jena and the defeat of the real
King of Prussia reached West Cornwall, a Mousehole man exclaimed,
"Misfortunes never come single; I'm sorry for that man. Not more'n six
weeks ago he lost three hundred keg o' brandy, by information, so I'm
towld." Carter had a brother almost equally famous, Captain Henry, and
the two between them, with much able assistance, rendered this coast a
very hot corner for the Preventive men. Sometimes it very closely
resembled actual war, as when the smugglers, mounting a small battery,
fired openly on a revenue cutter. "A smuggler chased by a revenue
cutter, being somewhat pressed, ran through a narrow channel amongst
the rocks between the Enys and the shore. The cutter, not daring to
venture amongst the shoals, sent her boat in. And the King, with his
merry men, opened fire on the boat. They loaded up the little guns so
that every time they fired the guns kicked over completely backwards,
and had to be replaced. The boat was driven back, and the cutter held
off for the night. Next morning the fight was renewed, the cutter
opening fire from the sea, while a company of riders fired from the
hedge at the top of the hill on the rear of the men in the battery.
This turned the tables on the smugglers, who sought shelter in Bessie
Bussow's house." Nothing serious appears to have happened, however.
Bessie Bussow, who kept the "Kiddleywink" inn, has passed to
immortality in connection with Bessie's Cove, which Nature seems to
have contrived especially for the doings of smugglers. The tempting
caverns remain, but we cannot compass much smuggling now, however much
we might like to; and the coves are chiefly devoted to c