enough,
whenever they took the form of questions, any jesting in returning an
answer never seemed either to be appreciated or understood by the
country people. Serious replies shared much the same fate as jokes.
Everybody asked whether we could pay for riding, and nobody believed
that we preferred walking, if we could. So we soon gave up the idea of
affording any information at all; and walked through the country
comfortably as mappers, trodgers, tradesmen, guinea-pig-mongers, and
poor back-burdened vagabond lads, altogether, or one at a time, just as
the peasantry pleased.

I have not communicated to the reader all the conjectures formed about
us, for the simple reason that many of them, when they ran to any
length, were by no means so intelligible as could be desired. It will
readily be imagined, that in a county which had a language of its own
(something similar to the Welsh) down to the time of Edward VI., if not
later--in a county where this language continued to be spoken among the
humbler classes until nearly the end of the seventeenth century, and
where it still gives their names to men, places, and implements--some
remnants of it must attach themselves to the dialect of English now
spoken by the lower orders. This is enough of itself to render Cornish
talk not very easy to be understood by ordinary strangers; but the
difficulty of comprehending it is still further increased by the manner
in which the people speak. They pronounce rapidly and indistinctly,
often running separate syllables into one another through a sentence,
until the whole sounds like one long fragmentary word. To the student in
philology a series of conversations with the Cornish poor would, I
imagine, afford ample matter for observation of the most interesting
kind. Some of their expressions have a character that is quite
patriarchal. Young men, for instance, are addressed by their elders as,
"my son"--everything eatable, either for man or beast, is commonly
denominated, "meat."

It may be expected, before I close this hasty sketch of the Cornish
people, that I should touch on the dark side of the picture--unfinished
though it is--which I have endeavoured to draw. But I have nothing to
communicate on the subject of offences in Cornwall, beyond a few words
about "wrecking" and smuggling.

Opinions have been divided among well-informed persons, as to the truth
or falsehood of those statements of travellers and historians, which
impute the ha