ially pistols--found about the wreck of the
ill-fated ship, at low tide, on the reef below the cliffs. To this day,
the peasantry continue to regard Pistol Meadow with feelings of awe and
horror, and fear to walk near the graves of the drowned men at night.
Nor have many of the inhabitants yet forgotten a revolting circumstance
connected by traditional report with the burial of the corpses after the
shipwreck. It is said, that when dead bodies were first washed ashore,
troops of ferocious, half-starved dogs suddenly appeared from the
surrounding country, and could with difficulty be driven from preying on
the mangled remains that were cast up on the beach. Ever since that
period, the peasantry have been reported as holding the dog in
abhorrence. Whether this be true or not, it is certainly a rare
adventure to meet with a dog in the Lizard district. You may walk
through farm-yard after farm-yard, you may enter cottage after cottage,
and never hear any barking at your heels;--you may pass, on the road,
labourer after labourer, and yet never find one of them accompanied, as
in other parts of the country, by his favourite attendant cur.

Leaving Pistol Meadow, after gathering a few of the wild herbs growing
fragrant and plentiful over the graves of the dead, we turned our steps
towards the Lizard Lighthouse. As we passed before the front of the
large and massive building, our progress was suddenly and startlingly
checked by a hideous chasm in the cliff, sunk to a perpendicular depth
of seventy feet, and measuring more than a hundred in circumference.
Nothing prepares the stranger for this great gulf; no railing is placed
about it; it lies hidden by rising land, and the earth all around is
treacherously smooth. The first moment when you see it, is the moment
when you start back instinctively from its edge, doubtful whether the
hole has not yawned open in that very instant before your feet.

This chasm--melodramatically entitled by the people, "The Lion's
Den"--was formed in an extraordinary manner, not many years since. In
the evening the whole surface of the down above the cliff was smooth to
the eye, and firm to the foot--in the morning it had opened into an
enormous hole. The men who kept watch at the Lighthouse, heard no sounds
beyond the moaning of the sea--felt no shock--looked out on the night,
and saw that all was apparently still and quiet. Nature suffered her
convulsion and effected her change in silence. Hundreds