of villages and 140 churches were
overwhelmed on that day, over eight hundred years ago, when the angry
sea broke in and drowned fertile Lyonesse, and now, as an old rhyme
has it:

"_Beneath Land's End and Scilly rocks_
_Sunk lies a town that Ocean mocks._"

On that fatal day, November 11, 1099, a mighty storm raged all about our
coasts, but the gale was of unparalleled severity in the West. Those who
have seen a winter gale blowing across the sea that now flows above the
Lost Land will know that it is very easy to believe that those giant
angry waves could break down any poor construction of man's hand
intended to keep the wild waters in check.

For Lyonesse, they say, was stolen by the sea gradually. Here a bit and
there a bit would be submerged after some winter storm, until came this
grim November night, when the sea made a clean sweep of the country and
rushed, with stupendous speed, across the flat wooded lands until it was
brought to a halt by the massive cliffs of what is now the Land's End
peninsula.

There was a Trevilian, an ancestor of the old Cornish family of that
name, who only just escaped with his life from this deluge. He had
foreseen what was coming and had removed his farm stock and his family
from his Lyonesse estate, and was making one further journey to his
threatened home when the sea broke in upon it. Trevilian, mounted
on his fleetest horse, just beat the waves, and there is a cave near
Perranuthnoe which, they say, was the place of refuge to which the
sturdy horse managed to drag his master through the angry waters.

There used to be another memorial of this great inundation at Sennen
Cove, near the Land's End, where for centuries stood an ancient chapel
which it was said a Lord of Goonhilly erected as a thanksgiving for his
escape from the flood that drowned Lyonesse.

To-day all that is left of the lost land are the beautiful Scilly
Islands and the cluster of rocks between the Scillies and Land's End,
known as the Seven Stones. These rocks are probably the last genuine bit
of old Lyonesse, for their Cornish name is Lethowsow, which was what the
old Cornish called Lyonesse. Even now the local fishermen refer to the
Seven Stones as "The City," for tradition tells that there was situated
the principal town of the drowned land, and stories are told of how on
calm days ruined buildings may be discerned beneath the waters near
Lethowsow, and that in times past fishing-nets have brough