avourite spot for smugglers and wreckers, and here Athelstan,
after his final defeat of the Cornish, started to conquer the Scilly
Isles. Stephen landed here on his first arrival in England, as did
Perkin Warbeck when he sought to seize the crown he claimed. King John
is also said to have landed here on his return from Ireland. Cape
Cornwall, a mile and a half from the village, is one of the most
prominent headlands of the western coast, but being in the
neighbourhood of the great mining district it is somewhat neglected by
visitors, a remark that applies to the whole of this portion of the
coast as far as St. Ives, the great exception being Gurnards' Head. The
inland country is bleak and barren, with a number of mining shafts
capping the hillocks, with the result that the uninviting hinterland has
inspired few people with the desire to explore a really grand and rocky
piece of coast.

Nearly a mile south-west of Cape Cornwall are the Brisons, two fearful
and dangerous rocks, rising about seventy feet above high-water mark.
Brison is Cornish for prison, and tradition affirms that these rocks
were once used as prisons.

North of the cape is Kenidjack headland, Porthleden being the name of
the cove that divides the promontories. Skirting the coast from
Kenidjack many fine bits of rocky scenery are passed. Botallack Head,
with its old engine houses perched on its rocky crags, has a singularly
savage appearance. The mine is one of the oldest in Cornwall, and the
ancient workings continued for a considerable distance under the bed of
the sea. The Levant, another submarine mine to the north, has also
considerable workings beneath the sea.

[Illustration: IN THE HARBOUR, NEWLYN]

The next point of interest is Pendeen, or Pendinas, the "castled
headland", near to which is Pendeen House, now a farm, but once a
seventeenth-century manor house, in which the celebrated Cornish
historian and antiquary, Dr. William Borlase, was born in 1695. He
corresponded with Pope to whom on one occasion he sent a Cornish
diamond, which was thus acknowledged by the poet: "I have received your
gift, and have so placed it in my grotto, that it will resemble the
donor, in the shade, but shining". The famous cave called the Pendeen
Vau, was discovered a few yards from his home. For his day he was quite
an enlightened antiquary, and although modern research has shown his
_Antiquities of Cornwall_ to be full of pitfalls for the unwary, it is a
book