Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/315

THE PADSTOW DISTRICT 309 sand that is so extensive in this part of Corn- wall rose some 8 to 10 feet above the graves, but when the original hardly compressed sand was reached, the great slates with which the kists were carefully formed were often not more than 2 feet below this surface." Dr. Beddoe pronounced the remains to be neolithic, and the persons here interred were of a dolichocephalic or long-skulled race — sometimes known as the long barrow-builders, who gene- rally buried their dead without cremation. There were some tiny kists for children, but a great number of the bodies had been buried uncoffined. The district had afforded earlier similar traces of pre-Roman interment, but nothing on so large a scale as this. Although a great deal of excavation has gone on since, and there is a small museum erected close by to contain the more striking finds, much more may yet be done and other secrets be revealed. It is not quite certain yet where the persons lived whose bones have thus been uncovered to the gaze of a late generation of sight-seers, but it is supposed that their habitations must have been near this site. They were, of course, in a higher state of civilisation than mere cave- dwellers, but their huts may have been of perish- able wattle, or they may have come from some of the hut-circles of the Bodmin Moors. The remains, like those around St. Piran's, bespeak a somewhat dense population. As Harljm Bay has become popular for picnic parties from Padstow and elsewhere, this old necropolis often resounds with laughter and merry-making ; but in winter and in rough weather it is left to its own solemnity. A spirit of awe broods above it;