ren peep out at you in
astonishment; and hard-working men and women greet you with a hearty
Cornish salutation, as you pass near their cottage doors.

You walk a few hundred yards inland, up the valley, and discover in a
retired, sheltered situation, the ancient village church, with its
square grey tower surmounted by moss-grown turrets, with its venerable
Saxon stone cross in the churchyard--where the turf graves rise humbly
by twos and threes, and where the old coffin-shaped stone stands midway
at the entrance gates, still used, as in former times, by the bearers of
a rustic funeral. Appearing thus amid the noblest scenery, as the simple
altar of the prayers of a simple race, this is a church which speaks of
religion in no formal or sectarian tone. Appealing to the heart of every
traveller be his creed what it may, in loving and solemn accents, it
sends him on his way again, up the mighty cliffs and through the mist
driving cloud-like over them, the better fitted for his journey forward
here; the better fitted, it may be, even for that other dread journey
of one irrevocable moment--the last he shall ever take--to his
abiding-place among the spirits of the dead!

* * * * *

These are some of the attractions which home rambles can offer to tempt
the home traveller; for these are the impressions produced, and the
incidents presented during a walk to the Land's End.

IX.

BOTALLACK MINE.

I have little doubt that the less patient among the readers of this
narrative have already, while perusing it, asked themselves some such
questions as these:--"Is not Cornwall a celebrated mineral country? Why
has the author not taken us below the surface yet? Why have we heard
nothing all this time about the mines?"

Readers who have questioned thus, may be assured that their impatience
to go down a mine, in this book, was fully equalled by our impatience to
go down a mine, in the county of which this book treats. Our anxiety,
however, when we mentioned it to Cornish friends, was invariably met by
the same answer. "Wait"--they all said--"until you have turned your
backs on the Land's End; and then go to Botallack. The mine there is the
most extraordinary mine in Cornwall; go down that, and you will not
want to go down another--wait for Botallack." And we did wait for
Botallack, just as the reader has waited for it in these pages. May he
derive as much satisfaction from the present descripti