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FROM HAYLE TO PERRAN 257 now ; the place is interesting enough without them, and the view from the summit is magnificent, reaching as it does from sea to sea. Clusters of hut circles and signs of neolithic military entrench- ment are very obvious, and a number of pure gold coins have been discovered here. There is also a mediaeval castle, restored, and, of course, the inevitable logan-stone. Nearer to Redruth is one of the Cornish "places of play" (jihin-an-guare), known as Planguary. These rounded hollows, such as the famous Gwennap Pit, were formerly used for sports and dramatic performances ; they played an important part in the social life of the past, and Cornwall had its own speciality in miracle-plays or interludes. Carew tells us that "the Guary Miracle is a kind of interlude compiled in Cornish out of some Scripture history. For representing it they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, leaving the diameter of the enclosed plain some forty or fifty feet. The country people flock from all sides to see and hear it, for they have therein devils and devices to delight the eye as well as the ear. The players speak not their parts without book, but are prompted by one called the ordinary, who foUoweth at their back with the book in his hand and telleth them softly what they must pronounce aloud. The dramas were acted at one time for several days together and were similar in character to the English mysteries of the same period." The parish of lUogan was the birthplace of the engineer Trevithick, who was born here in 1771. His father, a prominent manager of local mines, was a Methodist, often visited by Wesley. The boy, educated at Camborne, was bright and pre- cocious ; he is said on one occasion to have