nd to raise the
money he had to part with a small piece of land, which speedily repaid
its purchaser by the richness of its mineral wealth. A jetty built
later withstood the sea better than its more ambitious predecessors
had done.

[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. PIRAN.

_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]

Beyond St. Agnes Beacon the coast is largely composed of clay-slates,
or killas, presenting much desolate grandeur; the slate showing the
jagged scars of its unending resistance to oceanic forces. At Cligga
Head this slate is blended with decomposed hard granite. Off the
shore, about two miles out, rise the two isolated rocks known as the
Man and his Men--sometimes also called the Cow and her Calf. "Man" and
"Men" are simply corruptions of the Celtic _maen_, a stone. Between
St. Agnes and Perranporth the passage along the cliffs is interrupted
by the extensive enclosures of a modern dynamite factory, and the
pedestrian who has known this walk of yore is not likely to bless this
manufacture of a deadly explosive. But there is a great industrial
demand for dynamite in the district, and it is well that its
production should be relegated to a neighbourhood where accidents
would do the least possible damage. At Perranporth we approach a grim
sand-driven tract of country sacred to the name of one of Cornwall's
most typical saints, the Irishman St. Piran. Perranporth itself, since
the advent of the railway, is drawing some visitors away from Newquay,
in quest of equal beauty and greater quiet. The village stands on the
cliffs above a small cove, from which there is some fishing, and
northward runs a fine stretch of sand. There are capabilities here for
almost unlimited growth, and the district, inland and seaward, is full
of charm. The coast is hollowed and arched into wonderful caverns,
where the deep blue and green waters break with gentle swell or dash
with infuriated violence. The church is a chapel-of-ease to
Perranzabuloe (_Piran-in-sabulo_); there are barrows and sand-dunes,
and a vague floating rumour of an immemorial past. In fog or grey
weather the spot can be dreary, weird, desolate; but in times of fair
sunrise or sundown it is glorified with a marvellous beauty, with
restful nooks where a dreamer may enter upon a heritage of beatific
vision. St. Piran, the dominant personality of the district, is the
patron of the tin-miners, but neither they nor others know much about
him; he is a ghost of the far past, but a ghost w