them at the Land's End. It is a
favourite spot with artists, many of whom come year after year to depict
its frowning cliffs and heaving belt of sea, for, curiously enough, the
grandest effects of the waves are frequently seen in calm weather, when
the heavy ground swell causes the waves to break with great force on the
rocks.

In his criticism on Turner's picture of the Land's End, Ruskin wrote:

"At the Land's End there is to be seen the entire disorder of the
surges, when every one of them, divided and entangled among
promontories as it rolls, and beaten back post by post from walls
of rock on this side and that side, recoils like the defeated
division of a great army, throwing all behind it into disorder,
breaking up the succeeding waves into vertical ridges, which, in
their turn, yet more totally shattered upon the shore, retire in
more hopeless confusion, until the whole surface of the sea becomes
one dizzy whirl of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected rage,
bounding and crashing, and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power,
subdivided into myriads of waves, of which every one is not, be it
remembered, a separate surge, but part and portion of a vast one,
actuated by eternal power, and giving in every direction the mighty
undulation of impetuous line, which glides over the rocks and
writhes in the wind, overwhelming the one and piercing the other
with the form, fury, and swiftness of lambent fire."

[Illustration: PENZANCE FROM NEWLYN HARBOUR]

LAND'S END TO NEWQUAY

No visitor to Cornwall can fail to notice the remarkable number of
wells, situated near stone circles, dolmens, cromlechs, or churches that
have replaced them in more modern times, for well-worship was
undoubtedly one of the most persistent of the pagan customs with which
the early Christian missionaries had to deal. Sir Norman Lockyer
writes:--"It seems to be accepted now that well-worship in Britain
originated long before the Christian era; that it was not introduced by
the Christian missionaries, but rather they found it in vogue on their
arrival, and tolerated it at first and utilized it afterwards, as they
did a great many other pagan customs."

It is of course quite easy to understand how a once devout custom
degenerated into mere superstition, how some wells came to be called
"wishing wells", &c., in which the modern village maidens drop their