Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/218

212 THE CORNWALL COAST headland." To speak of it as wooded now seems inappropriate, though we cannot forget the sub- merged trees of Mount's Bay, nor can we say what might have been beyond when the point reached farther westward. But it is as the last land in England that we cross this windy moor- land to reach the sea ; and beyond, visible on days of rare clearness, lie the Fortunate Isles of our dreams. Many a pilgrimage is made through the length of Cornwall for this sole purpose — to stand here at the dividing point of two channels, the meeting of two seas, the Titanic outermost gate- way that confronts the fury or the rough sport of the ocean gods. The visitors come by car-loads from Penzance or from St. Ives ; not only during the summer season but throughout the year — there are always some who wish to see Land's End. They often bring the vaguest ideas of what the sight will be ; our visions of Land's End before we see it are often dim, immense, mystical. Our dreams turn westward, to the land of the setting sun — to the great ocean of the unknown that hems us in, beyond which lie the promise, the golden hope, that have lured us onward from childhood, through disappointment and failure and the bitter sorrow of loss — " Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade." And so we come to the land's end — the end that is also a beginning. When Tennyson came hither he saw a funeral somewhere near, and he has the brief note, " Land's End and Life's End." The sun had just set in a great yellow flare. There is no spot where sunsets seem more pregnant of