of ocean lie; and, again, there is another land's end at
the Lizard, the southernmost point of England, and yet another at
Lowestoft, the most easterly. But Lowestoft looks towards the Teutonic
Continent, and the Lizard towards what we may call the Latin; both
remain European in their outlook. Land's End has a different attitude;
it looks westward, and the migratory instinct of European races has
ever taken them towards the West. It is the _Bolerion_ of Ptolemy, the
_Bolerium_ of Roman writers, the _Penwith_ of the Celts. Adding a
Saxon affix, Simeon of Durham named it _Penwithsteort_, the "tail of
Penwith." There is some doubt about the true meaning of Penwith; Mr.
Baring-Gould gives it as "headland of blood," which it might well be
as the last battle-ground of a defeated people; another interpretation
says the "wooded headland." To speak of it as wooded now seems
inappropriate, though we cannot forget the submerged trees of Mount's
Bay, nor can we say what might have been beyond when the point reached
farther westward. But it is as the last land in England that we cross
this windy moorland to reach the sea; and beyond, visible on days of
rare clearness, lie the Fortunate Isles of our dreams. Many a
pilgrimage is made through the length of Cornwall for this sole
purpose--to stand here at the dividing point of two channels, the
meeting of two seas, the Titanic outermost gateway that confronts the
fury or the rough sport of the ocean gods. The visitors come by
car-loads from Penzance or from St. Ives; not only during the summer
season but throughout the year--there are always some who wish to see
Land's End. They often bring the vaguest ideas of what the sight will
be; our visions of Land's End before we see it are often dim, immense,
mystical. Our dreams turn westward, to the land of the setting sun--to
the great ocean of the unknown that hems us in, beyond which lie the
promise, the golden hope, that have lured us onward from childhood,
through disappointment and failure and the bitter sorrow of loss--

"Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade."

And so we come to the land's end--the end that is also a beginning.
When Tennyson came hither he saw a funeral somewhere near, and he has
the brief note, "Land's End and Life's End." The sun had just set in a
great yellow flare. There is no spot where sunsets seem more pregnant
of meaning than here, where winds are more haunted by c