the little ship, fraught with its wonderful destiny. The half day spent
about the old city was full of interest; but the places which we missed
would make a most discouraging list. It made us feel that one ought to
have two or three years to explore Britain instead of a single summer's
vacation.
[Illustration: ROCKS OFF CORNWALL.
From Painting by Warne Browne. Exhibited 1906 Royal Academy.]
From Plymouth to Penzance through Truro runs the finest road in
Cornwall, broad, well kept and with few steep grades. It passes through
a beautiful section and is bordered in many places by the immense parks
of country estates. In some of these the woods were seemingly left in
their natural wild state, though close inspection showed how carefully
this appearance was maintained by judicious landscape gardening. In many
of the parks, the rhododendrons were in full bloom, and their rich
masses of color wonderfully enlivened the scenery. Everything was fresh
and bright. It had been raining heavily the night before and the air was
free from the dust that had previously annoyed us. It would be hard to
imagine anything more inspiring than the vistas which opened to us as we
sped along. The road usually followed the hills in gentle curves, but
at places it rose to splendid points of vantage from which to view the
delightful valleys. Then again it lost itself under great over-arching
trees, and as we came too rapidly down a steep hill on entering Bodmin,
the road was so heavily shaded that we were near our undoing. The loose
sand had been piled up by the rain and the dense shade prevented the
road from drying. The car took a frightful skid and by a mere hair's
breadth escaped disastrous collision with a stone wall--but we learned
something.
After leaving Truro, an ancient town with a recently established
cathedral, the road to Penzance, though excellent, is without special
interest. It passes through the copper-mining section of Cornwall and
the country is dotted with abandoned mines. A few are still operated,
but it has come to the point where, as a certain Englishman has said,
"Cornwall must go to Nevada for her copper," and there are more Cornish
miners in the western states than there are in their native shire.
Penzance is another of the South of England resort towns and is
beautifully situated on Mounts Bay. One indeed wonders at the great
number of seacoast resorts in Britain, but we must remember that there
are forty millions
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