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exaggerate the things that we remember of our boyhood, and certainly the cutting can never have been as frequent as this. C. A. Johns, who knew Helston well, says that it was rarely necessary to cut the Bar more than twice a year, sometimes not even once; and further, describing a cutting, he says: "In a few hours a deep mighty river is bursting out with inconceivable velocity, and engaging in violent conflict with the waves of the ocean; as the two meet they clash together with terrific uproar, while the sea for twenty, or even thirty miles, is tinged of an ochreous hue. Even at the Scilly Islands the cutting of the Loe Bar has been notified by the altered colour of the water." As the pool belonged to the lord of Penrose, it was customary to present him with a purse containing three-halfpence to obtain his permission for the cutting of the Bar. All this is a thing of the past, but Loe Pool remains as the only sheet of water in Cornwall worthy to be termed a lake, with banks finely wooded and carpeted with flowers. In shape it is more like a broad river than a lake, and it is in fact the land-locked estuary of the Cober, cut off from full intercourse with the sea by this pebbly and sandy spit. Helston claims that it was once a seaport, with vessels sailing close up to its walls; and the formation of the Loe Bar, which destroyed all access, is said to have been one of the accidents of the doomed Tregeagle, whose story will be told later. The Pool is about seven miles in circumference, and affords some excellent fishing; it is the one great attraction that Helston can boast. When Tennyson wrote his " Morte d' Arthur," the germ from which all his Arthurian