In spring tens of thousands of visitors arrive in flocks, for the breeding-season—puffins, Manx shearwaters, guillemots, razor-bills, terns, storm-petrels, and many non-resident gulls.

The island of Annet (i.e., Little Agnes) is the largest breeding-ground. It is a low-lying, sandy tract, serpentine in shape, rising towards the north to a height of sixty feet, and surrounded by dangerous rocks. It is covered with bracken and tufts of the sea-thrift, which latter is in full flower during the breeding-season, making a bright pink background for the white and black plumage of the birds.

Annet is known by the name of “Bird Island,” from the immense numbers that breed there. In the early summer the sea all round is black with puffins and razor-bills, their white breasts being hardly noticeable as they sit on the surface of the water; and the air above is dark with clouds of gulls, and full of their ceaseless cry. Puffins (also called sea-parrots) have bred on the islands from time immemorial. An old name for them was “Coulter-neb,” from the peculiar shape of their beaks, which were thought to resemble the coulter of a plough.

They were formerly much esteemed for food, chiefly pickled and salted, because by this means their rank and fishy flavour was disguised; and one imagines the three hundred puffins payable at Michaelmas for the rent of the islands in the time of Edward I. must have been destined for treating in this way rather than for eating fresh.

William of Worcester, writing in 1478, records the presence of “pophyns” on Rascow (i.e., Tresco); and Richard Carew (1602) says: “The Puffyn hatcheth in holes of the cliffe, whose young ones are thence ferreted out, being exceedingly fat, kept salted, and reputed for fish, as comming nearest thereto in their taste.”

Their flesh used to be allowed by the Church on Lenten days.

It is a most ludicrous-looking bird during the breeding season, for then its beak becomes enlarged to double its usual depth, quite out of proportion to the dimensions of its owner. And not only is the size of the beak remarkable, but it is gorgeously coloured with carmine, blue-grey, and yellow; so that for a bird which carries a sober yellow-brown beak all the winter it must be almost embarrassing to appear in such a garish guise! The legs are a bright orange-red, a ring of carmine encircles the eye, and altogether, with his black coat and white waistcoat, he presents a very striking appearance.

The puffin is entirely an oceanic bird, only coming to land to breed. It lays its solitary egg at the end of a long burrow dug in the sand or peat. The isle of Annet is simply honeycombed with these burrows, so that it is impossible to walk even a few steps without finding the ground give way beneath one’s feet, and sinking, sometimes knee-deep, into the soft soil. The springy tufts of sea-pink which cover the island offer more resistance and a firmer foothold than the sandy earth.

By the end of April the birds are busy digging a new hole with their sharp nails, or overhauling that of the previous year. In making the hole they throw themselves upon their backs, and with their bills and claws burrow inwards, until they have made a hole perhaps eight to ten feet long, and sometimes with several windings and turnings.

A week or ten days after the hole is ready a single round white egg is laid. Both birds assist in digging the burrow, and also in hatching, which takes about a month. Sometimes a forsaken rabbit-hole will save the pair the labour of digging out a habitation for themselves; and occasionally, where a spot between three stones has been carefully chosen for excavation, one may see a lintel and door-jambs of granite forming the entrance into the burrow! Puffins and Manx shearwaters will sometimes share the same hole; or they will have a common entrance with passages branching out in several directions, as in some of our “desirable residential flats.”

They feed their young on the fry of certain fish, and are particularly fond of the lance, or sand-eel. The parent bird may be seen returning to the burrow, with numbers of small fish hanging from its bill. How it could retain its hold of, say, the first nine caught while capturing the tenth used to be a subject for wondering conjecture: but an examination of the inside of the beak has shown an arrangement of barbed hooks projecting backwards, on which each fish is speared as it is caught. The discovery of this wonderful provision of Nature is due to Mr. C. J. King of St. Mary’s.

Visitors are only allowed to stay an hour at a time on Annet during the breeding season, out of consideration for the birds; and the Governor strictly forbids the shooting of the birds or the taking of their eggs. If, in defiance of this or out of curiosity, you thrust your hand into one of the burrows, you will very likely get a piece bitten out of it, and it will serve you right!

The shearwater becomes very eloquent when disturbed in its hole, and pours forth guttural melodies, the sounds of which are imitated in the nicknames of “Cockathodan” and “Crew,” bestowed upon it by Scillonians. Goldsmith compares the disagreeable sound they make when taken to “the efforts of a dumb person attempting to speak.” This bird is largely nocturnal in its habits, resting or sleeping on the water during a part of the day, and fishing chiefly at night.

The guillemot breeds on several of the rocky islands, Gorregan and Mincarlo among the number. It lays its large and beautiful egg on narrow ledges of the bare rock, without any sort of protection, so that it soon gets dirty and can sometimes hardly be distinguished from a lump of clay. But for the long and pointed shape of the egg, which causes it to roll round in a circle when disturbed, it would probably never remain on the ledge long enough to be hatched; for if it were round, like puffins’ eggs, at the slightest touch it would roll over into the sea beneath. The colour of the egg varies very greatly; it is dark blue, a lighter or greenish blue, white, or even claret colour, but always covered with black spots and markings.

The graceful terns, or sea-swallows, visit Scilly in great numbers in the spring, as also do the razor-bills (otherwise known as the common or black auk). The latter may be seen sitting in rows on the rocks in company with puffins and shags. The ledges of rock rising one above another, and the birds sitting on them, have been compared to the shelves and pots of a chemist’s shop. Like the puffin and the storm-petrel, razor-bills rarely leave the sea except for breeding.

The storm-petrel is a visitor in Scilly, and may be seen there “walking on the water” in the strange way peculiar to it; and on account of this habit it is supposed to derive its name from that of the Apostle Peter.

The scarlet-legged oyster-catcher, or “sea-pie,” makes Annet its breeding-ground; as also do many of the terns. The oyster-catcher’s eggs are laid on the loose shingle, and from their close resemblance to the rounded pebbles of the seashore they are not easily noticed, even if you search carefully for them.

Any one who has not before had the opportunity of seeing a breeding-ground of the sea-birds will find a visit to Annet in the early summer quite a revelation, for no imagination could picture these myriads of birds, darkening the air with their wings, as they wheel and hover, screaming, over their temporary home.

IX
ST. MARY’S

WHEN you come to Scilly you naturally land first upon St. Mary’s Island, for there is the quay, where the steamer from England unloads her passengers and cargo.

You may or you may not on first arriving feel capable of appreciating the picturesqueness of the stone walls and gateway of the quay, with Star Castle appearing on the hill behind; but through this gateway you must pass in order to enter the town. The pier now in use has only been built just over seventy years, and was lengthened twenty years ago; yet already again the sand is silting up against it, and making it less serviceable.

From the pier you can see the houses of Hugh Town stretching in a long line round the curve of St. Mary’s Pool, the back walls of many of them rising straight out of the sea, if it happens to be high-water of a spring-tide.

This Hugh Town on St. Mary’s Island is the metropolis, port, and shopping centre of the little archipelago, and, generally speaking, the hub of the Scillonian universe. Formerly the presence of the fort behind it gave it yet another kind of importance, and made it the centre of the military as well as of the civil life. It is built chiefly on the narrow sandy neck which unites the promontory of the “Heugh” or “Hugh” (now better known as Garrison Hill) to the rest of the island.

Over and over again the prophets of evil have foretold that one day there would come some big sea and wash the little town away. Several times in days gone by the sea has entered the houses, carrying off the furniture, and driving the inhabitants to the upper floors; the waves have even swept across the isthmus from Porth Cressa to St. Mary’s Pool; but the banks have been raised since then, so still the little town stands, and the inhabitants seem to entertain no fears for their safety. The houses were built when the people feared foreign foes more than they feared the sea, so they clustered close under the shelter of Garrison Hill and Star Castle that crowns it.

The formation of Hugh Town is of necessity strictly determined by the shape of the land on which it is built. There is a group of houses just under Garrison Hill; and then a narrow, winding street runs the length of the sandy strip between the two bays, with a few short branch-streets where there happens to be room. As the isthmus widens out to join the main island the principal street also widens and divides into two branches, one of which soon ends in the country road leading to “Old Town” (of which more anon), and the other follows for a short distance the curve of St. Mary’s Pool, but also soon becomes a country road, and leads into the heart of the island.

It has been suggested that the Hugh, which gives its name to the town, was once, like Plymouth Hoe, the station for the “huer,” who stands on high places to indicate to fishermen by a particular “hue” or cry the approach and direction of shoals of fish; and that the Gugh, a similar promontory connected with St. Agnes, is a corruption of the same word.

At the fork of the main street there is an open space known as “The Parade,” because it was there that the soldiers used to drill. When the garrison no longer existed this space was used as a dumping-ground for salvage from wrecks, and for years it looked like an untidy shipwright’s yard, with all manner of appurtenances and portions of ships laid out to be sold by auction. In the houses on all the islands you may often come across relics of the wrecks; perhaps a lock from a cabin-door, or even a whole door; and sometimes the partition between two rooms will show clear signs of a nautical origin. “The inhabitants,” says Lieutenant Heath, “have wreck-furniture of various kinds sent them by the hand of Providence.”

Now the centre of the Parade is a grass-plot, surrounded by shrubs and beds of flowers, and is dignified by the name of “The Park.”

Nearly all the houses in Scilly are built of the grey granite of which the islands are formed. They are generally roofed with tiles or slate, to which a hoary appearance is given by the addition of a coat of cement as an extra protection against the weather. The old way of roofing was with thatch, tied on with ropes, crossed in a chessboard pattern and fastened to iron or wooden pegs driven into the chinks of the stone walls a little way below the eaves. This was necessary to keep the roof from being blown away. Still here and there in Hugh Town, and more frequently in Old Town and on the off-islands, these picturesque thatched cottages are to be seen.

Duke Cosmo, to whom a thatched roof was quite unknown in his native Italy, was much impressed by those he saw in Scilly, but he altogether misunderstood their construction! He says: “The house-roofs are nothing but a simple mat, spread over the rafters, drawn tight all round, and fixed firmly to the top of the walls.”

On one of the off-islands there is a very primitive device for weighting down the slate roof of a chapel by the sea—just a stout rope thrown across the ridge, and tied at each end to a large mass of granite on the ground, with sods placed underneath the rope at the sharp edges to prevent its being cut.

It is said that formerly the houses of Hugh Town were built of turf with thatched roofs; but once in the summer, when all the men were out at sea, a fire broke out and the town was burned to the ground; so since then the houses have been built of stone.

The streets of Hugh Town are lighted with oil lamps, for which the necessary funds were partly raised by means of a concert. The inhabitants paid for music, and they got illumination into the bargain! These lamps are not burned in the wasteful way to which we are accustomed in London and elsewhere. I asked a Scillonian, half in fun, whether they always kept their lamps alight as late as half-past nine. He replied in sober earnest: “Oh no, only if there is no moon; and on clear moonlight evenings we do not light them at all.”

But though the lights are put out early, the lamp-lighter is (to use a mixed metaphor) no cut-and-dried automaton, bound with red tape, and devoid of human feelings. If he sees you returning home as he goes his round, he will wait to see you safely indoors before letting the velvet dark drop down like a veil over the streets.

Not far from the quay a steep little hill bordered by trees leads up to the Garrison, which is entered through a strong stone gateway. Above it hangs a bell, used formerly when there was no public clock, to announce the time of day. There is a tablet beneath the bell with the inscription “G.R. 1742. F.G.” Lower down are two larger initials, “A.T.,” those of Abraham Tovey, the master-gunner, under whose direction the works were constructed, and who, being the “man on the spot,” saw to it that his memory should be kept green by letters of a larger size than those which commemorated the King and the Governor.

Star Castle, on the top of Garrison Hill, is not a very imposing building. Its name, which used to be “Stella Mariæ” (Star of Mary), is derived from the star-like plan of its projecting bastions, which surround a dwelling-house with corresponding projections. The walls are loopholed for musketry at every possible point, ninety-six loopholes altogether. Above the entrance are the initials of Queen Elizabeth, “E.R.,” and the date, “1593,” when the Castle was built.

Prisoners from the mainland have been confined here from time to time; Dr. Bastwick, of Colchester, in 1637, by order of the Star Chamber, for writing against the Church and Government; in 1655 John Biddle, the Unitarian, was sent to Scilly by Cromwell to keep him out of the way of his persecutors, and allowed a pension of 10s. a week; and in 1681 seven “Popish priests” were removed thither from Newgate.

It is a very beautiful walk round Garrison Hill—a walk of which one can never tire. Heath compares it to “the Mall at St. James’s, where people walk for health and amusement”; but to the Nature-lover the Mall is dull indeed compared with Garrison Hill. The circuit can easily be made in half an hour, for the distance is not more than a mile and a half; and yet in that short time a sight of nearly all the islands, and a good idea of their relative position, can be obtained.

From the north one looks down on St. Mary’s Pool, full of brown-sailed fishing-boats in the early summer, and never without a sprinkling of craft, large or small, upon its bosom. Beyond the Pool, to the right, may be seen the country-side of St. Mary’s, and following on, one after the other from east to west, St. Martin’s Isle; Tean; St. Helen’s, with the lighthouse tower of Round Island showing over its head; the wooded slopes of Tresco, and Cromwell’s Castle low down on its western shore, clearly visible across three miles of sea; green, hilly little Bryher; and the twin peaks of Samson.

As one bears round to the west and south-west, there are St. Agnes, and Annet, and the grim rocks of the western archipelago, with the white foam ever, even in the calmest weather, playing round their feet, and flying over their heads. On clear days the waves may be seen leaping up the slender shaft of the Bishop Lighthouse, more than five miles away.

On the south there is the illimitable ocean; and as the east side is reached there come into sight, first the rocky head of Peninnis, and then the curve of Porth Cressa, overlooked by Buzza Hill and the ruined windmill that crowns it. A little farther on, and the massive walls of the Garrison reach their highest, and are draped and curtained with mesembryanthemum; while beneath their shelter there are orchards full of fruit-trees, carpeted with daffodils; and one can see the columns of blue smoke rising from the chimneys of Hugh Town, which lies below.

In making the circuit of the hill we have kept our eyes fixed seaward all the way; but if we turn towards the hill itself we see that almost everywhere it is afire with gorse: and sorely it tempts me to tell again the oft-told tale of Linnæus and Putney Hill!

The gorse is one of the great glories of the islands; it grows on almost every open down, and on the slope of almost every hill. On a calm summer’s day, when the hot sun brings out the sweet and heavy odour, and the drowsy hum of myriads of bees, garnering their store from the golden blossoms, mingles with the gentle lapping of the sea upon the shore, then Scilly becomes a veritable land of the lotos-eaters, and one feels content to do no more than lie upon a slope of springy heather, and “watch the crisping ripples on the beach, and tender curving lines of creamy spray.”

It is only since the latter part of the sixteenth century that Hugh Town has become the capital of the islands. Before that time there was another town whose houses clustered round the Castle of Ennor, a mile away from the present capital. The village that now remains is known as Old Town, and the bay on which it stands as Old Town Bay.

There is a tradition that when Old Town was the chief town of St. Mary’s, and when the chief landing-place of the island was in this bay, the monks levied a toll on all persons landing, and a chain was stretched across from Tolman Head to bar their entrance until the toll had been paid.

Great complaints were made to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, of the burden of this charge, which was levied even on priests and pilgrims, and on every fisherman when he came in with his catch. In answer to these complaints the Earl came himself, disguised as a pilgrim; and being refused entrance, he leaped over the chain, and in the heat of his anger struck the Prior who had thwarted him a mortal blow. The old priest with his last breath called down vengeance on his murderer, and to this curse was attributed the gradual decay of Old Town and its castle.

A portion of the old church near Old Town is still standing, but it now serves chiefly as a mortuary chapel. It dates from very early times, for there is a Norman arch at one end; and it was used, although sadly in want of repair, until a new church was built in Hugh Town in 1838. This little churchyard by the blue waters of Old Town Bay is still the burial-ground of St. Mary’s, and contains sad memorials of many wrecks. The graves are overshadowed by dracæna palm-trees, and round them grow aloes and euonymus-shrubs, all symbols by their evergreenness of the immortality of the soul; while the elm-trees which look so dead and lifeless now, but which will soon burst into fresh life at the touch of Spring, remind us of the old story which is ever new, and speak to us of the hope of resurrection.

Of the Castle of Ennor, which was built probably by the Earls of Cornwall under the Norman kings, and where, as we know, Ranulph de Blankminster lived six hundred years ago, scarce one stone is left upon another. From Hugh Town one comes to all that is left of it by a road bordered (as most roads are in Scilly) by flower-fields on the right and on the left; past masses of fragrant wallflowers and beds of sweet violets, until the curve of Old Town Bay is reached, with the houses of Old Town grouped together at its farther end.

The Castle Rocks rise steeply from the midst of the houses, and up them one must clamber. There is nothing whatever to show what was the original way of entrance into the fortress, but probably it was on the east side, where the ground slopes up more gently. On the north and west the approach would be impossible, for there a mass of solid granite rises boldly from the plain below.

When Leland visited the islands, somewhere about 1539, this castle was a “moderately strong pile,” but it is said that many of the stones were carried away for the building of Star Castle, later in the same century. Now the pile of rocks, and the slopes leading up to the rocks, are all covered with vegetation, beds of narcissi and daffodils, sheltered by veronica hedges, and large patches of carnations, not yet in flower; while mesembryanthemum ramps all over the place, covering nearly every bit of wall and uncultivated ground, and pouring itself down in thick cascades of green from the topmost summit of the Castle Rocks.

From half-way up can be seen, spread out beneath, field upon field of yellow daffodils, stretching away across the island almost as far as to Porth Mellin; and beyond the streak of blue sea are the twin hills of Samson.

It is very quiet and peaceful up here, and yet if one sets oneself to listen, numberless sounds may be heard, so many that it is difficult to disentangle them.

There is the gentle plash of the waves on the sands of Old Town Bay behind; the shrill cry of the gulls, sounding for all the world like the clamour of children let loose from school; the distant panting of the fussy little motor-boat which takes the trawlers out to sea; the lowing of cattle in the neighbouring farmyard, with pigs and poultry joining in the chorus; the twitter and rustle of birds in the veronica hedge; the liquid love-song of a thrush as he puts the important question, “Will you, will you, will you?” and answers it himself with a sudden change of note, “She will, she will, she will.” And lying beneath and all around all other sounds are the myriad gentle murmurs of the Spring, that wondrous stirring and pulsation of life which can be felt but cannot be defined. And now a human note breaks in upon the rest. From a cottage near by there rises the song of a little girl, mingling with the clatter of cups and saucers as she washes up the breakfast-things, because mother is busy in the tying-shed.

shrills the childish voice; and so on through every verse to the end, till she finishes with a quaintly quavering and long-drawn-out, “A-a-amen.”

There is a very human legend which connects this old Castle with the convent that is said to have stood in Holy Vale.

The story runs that the Earl of Cornwall once had a young and beautiful ward, whom he kept shut up in the Castle of Ennor in charge of an ancient duenna. No one knew who the lovely girl was, but she was thought to be of noble birth.

There was a page in attendance at the Castle; and it is not to be wondered at if the hearts of this young pair, isolated as they were from others of their age and station, were drawn together by a mutual attraction.

Signs of this did not escape the lynx-eyes of the ancient dame, and she straightway sent a message to the Earl in Cornwall by the hands of the page, who little knew that he was the bearer of that which sealed his own fate and that of her he loved. He was detained on the mainland, and made an esquire in the Earl’s following, while she was ordered to be sent at once to the convent of Holy Vale.

She remained sad and silent during the year of her novitiate, taking interest in nothing except the tending of a rose-bush, which she made her special care. When the time came for her to take the vows, she mysteriously disappeared from the chapel where she was keeping midnight vigil, and was seen no more until, many years later, she was found in that same chapel, lying dead before the altar, with no sign of age upon her pure face, and with a cluster of roses in her bosom.

Her lover is said to have been killed in battle many years before.

There is still a rose-tree growing up between the stones at Holy Vale, which the children used to look upon as the bush of Sister Mary.

There are no remains of the convent at Holy Vale, and there is only tradition to tell us that it ever existed. Whitfeld, writing in 1852, does indeed speak of the top of a freestone arch which he saw there, covering the entrance of a pig-sty, and which he supposes to have been a relic of the ancient monastic buildings. It is a beautiful sheltered spot, the most sheltered in the island, hidden away in a hollow, and surrounded by tall trees. Two farm-houses lie close together in the valley, near to a pond of fresh water under the trees; and on every side there are the fields of flowers, now the chief produce of the farms.

One of the pioneers of the flower industry, Mr. Mumford, used to live at Holy Vale.

The other, Mr. William Trevellick, lived at Rocky Hill on St. Mary’s until his death, in 1910, and was always ready to show his beautiful gardens to any one who wished to see them. Rows of palm-trees grow along the hedges at Rocky Hill, and form the boundary lines. “Look well at this,” Mr. Trevellick used to say. “It is not often that you will see in the British Isles a field surrounded by palm-trees.” He dearly loved his garden, and spent most of his time there. The robins knew him so well that even in summer-time at his call of “Dick, Dick” they would come and eat from his hand the food he kept ready for them in his capacious pockets.

Mr. Trevellick was also keenly interested in antiquities, and had collected at Rocky Hill a number of relics of the past of every description—ancient stone querns, quaint gaily-coloured figureheads from wrecks, Parliamentary cannon-balls, and a Druid trysting-stone, through the hole in which lovers used to clasp their hands when they plighted their troth. This last is in two halves, both of which had been built into a stone hedge; the second half was not discovered till many years after the first, and if you know anything of antiquarians, you can picture the joy with which its discovery was hailed! It was a day’s work to pull down the stone hedge, to secure the treasure, and then to build the wall up as before.

It was always a matter of great interest to Mr. Trevellick that an old Roman road runs through the Rocky Hill gardens, the large, evenly laid paving-stones showing very few signs of their age.

St. Mary’s Island is supposed to be nine miles round, but I would defy any one to restrict his first walk round it to nine miles. One is sure to be decoyed into many a By-path Meadow—but not of the kind in which there lurks a Giant Despair!

For beauty-spots are to be found in such plenty on St. Mary’s that it would be impossible to name them all. I have already spoken of the gorse-covered Garrison Hill, which is itself a little nest of beauty-spots. So in its way is Peninnis, “head of the island,” that wild and rugged peninsula which juts out between Porth Cressa and the Old Town Bay, and is sometimes thought to be the most beautiful part of St. Mary’s. It is strewn and scattered all along its coast with rocks and boulders of immense size, and of endless variety of form. I have already referred to two of these, which go by the names of the Pulpit and the Tooth. Close to the Tooth, on the head of Peninnis, there rises from the sea a huge rock, which is known as the Monk’s Cowl, from the fancied resemblance of the summit to a hooded head. From this point there is one of the finest views of the many-coloured rocks, covered here and there with shaggy grey-green lichen, standing boldly out of the sea or tumbled about in every direction, and with the little island of St. Agnes bordering the horizon. During a big storm the waves will dash right over the top of the Monk’s Cowl, and will swish along the top of the down behind it, before retreating in cascades of foam.

Not far away, hidden amongst a mass of other rocks, is the largest logan-stone in Scilly, which is estimated to weigh 313-1/2 tons. It is at least 15 feet high, and forms one side of a cavity, known as “Sleep’s Abode.” It can easily be rocked by two or three persons together, but was only discovered to be a logan-stone in 1893, when a man who was leaning against it in a high gale, felt it moving gently to and fro beneath him.

A small iron lighthouse has recently been erected on Peninnis, to take the place of the St. Agnes Tower, which has been declared superannuated.

The rugged coast-line of Peninnis may be followed, past the Pulpit Rock, to where the ground slopes down towards the Old Town Bay, on the shores of which will be seen the old church, partly hidden in palm-trees.

There are many other spots on St. Mary’s which are well worth a visit. There is the beautiful, peaceful bay known as Porth Hellick, almost closed across its mouth by a reef of rocks, so that when the sea is raging without it may be quite calm in the bay. But peaceful as it looks, it has now and again seen some sad sights.

It was here that the body of Sir Cloudesley Shovel was washed up, and found, but not recognised, by a soldier and his wife, who gave the great Admiral a nameless grave in the sand of the seashore. Later the body was dug up, and identified by means of a ring on one finger; and now it is buried, as all the world knows, in Westminster Abbey. But it is said that the hollow in the sand would never fill up, and the grass would never grow again over the place where the grave had been. Within recent years two blocks of quartz have been placed to mark the spot.

There was another remarkable happening at Porth Hellick in 1840. A vessel was found on the rocks, bottom upwards, by some farmers gathering seaweed for manure. One of them thrust his hand into a hole in her side, and was terrified to feel it grasped from within. This capsized vessel had entombed four men for three days and nights! They were crouched close together under the keel, with the water up to their waists. They had tried to cut a hole in the hull for the sake of getting air, but fortunately their knife broke, for the confined air alone prevented the vessel from sinking altogether.

Some pilot-boats had taken her in tow the previous afternoon, and brought her in towards the islands; but having no suspicion that she bore a living freight, they had abandoned her on account of bad weather.

Porth Hellick may be reached from Old Town over Sallakee Downs, following the line of the wild and rocky coast, and then past Giant’s Castle, the ruined remains of one of those ancient “cliff-castles,” such as are common on the Cornish coast.

The beautiful bay with its sandy beach comes upon one with quite a surprise, when first from the top of the downs its shimmering blue waters are seen.

Or it may be approached another way, through the undulating flower-fields of Sallakee Farm, past the whitewashed farm-house and its gnarled pollard elm-trees, and along a narrow lane whose hedges in summer are sweet with honeysuckle and pink with campion. This lane will bring one right out on the low grassy moorland which borders the bay.

Porth Hellick is the mouth of a valley which cuts into the island at this point, and in which lies the pond of the Upper Moors, the largest expanse of fresh water on St. Mary’s, surrounded by marshy ground grown with reeds, and the home of many water-fowl.

Overhanging the bay there is a fine carn of rocks, known as Dick’s Carn, also called “The Loaded Camel,” from its shape.

The rocky ramparts of the isle begin again immediately beyond the bay, with a wild confusion of mighty boulders, trembling on the brink of precipices, or poised upon the grassy slope, as if ready at any moment to crash into the seething waters. Here one may listen to the booming of Nature’s guns, as the sea thuds into the caverns it has hollowed out for itself.

And then, farther to the north, there is Toll’s Island, in Pelistry Bay, at low water joined to the main island, like the Gugh of St. Agnes, by a narrow strip of white sand, which is covered at high tide by the waves. Here, if one is young enough for such employ, one may build on the sand Hugh Towns in miniature, with Toll’s Island to represent Garrison Hill, and then watch the waves creeping, creeping slowly up on either side until they meet and embrace, and mingle and merge into one even flow over the ruins of the sand-houses. Or one may seek for shells on the sandy strip, and small as is the hunting-ground the variety is infinite—deep golden yellow, coral-pink, purple, and blue. There are remains of an old battery on the island, “Pellew’s Redoubt,” so called after the captain who commanded in Scilly during the last French War.

Here, as everywhere, there are flowers. The daffodil-fields run down close to the sea, and the little lane leading to Toll’s Island blazes with gorse on either side, so that the blue waters of the bay are seen set in a frame of gold.

Watermill Bay is another beauty-spot, with no watermill, but only a tiny stream trickling down to the sea, through the midst of bracken and bramble.

I must not try to describe it all, or I would tell of the lovely walk along the west coast of St. Mary’s, where the golf-links are, whence one can look back on Hugh Town, which from here seems to be a slender thread linking Garrison Hill with the main island.

And I would tell you, if I could, of the gorgeous, indescribable sunsets, which turn sea and sky into flaming fire, and cast a magic glow over the land, bewitching and glorifying even commonplace things, and making each little distant island a fairy palace of enchantment, to which one longs to sail.

But long, long before it could be reached the illusion would have faded, the sun would have set, and no enchanted palace would be found, but only a barren rock set in a dangerous sea, with the darkness gathering around.

X
TRESCO

IN old days the island of Tresco was singled out from all the others to be the site of a monastery and its accompanying church, and on this account it acquired a reputation differing from, if not greater than, that of the other islands.

Nearly three hundred years after the departure of the monks, Tresco was again singled out from all the others, this time by Mr. Augustus Smith, the Governor, who made his home there, building a house near the ruins of the old abbey church, and planting round it the gardens which have since become famous far and wide.

Two determining factors were probably common to both decisions—the central and sheltered position of the island, and the abundant supply of fresh water in the large “Abbey” Pond and its smaller neighbour.

Of the Abbey of St. Nicholas, built by the Benedictine monks of Tavistock, no signs are to be seen. Only two pointed arches of reddish stone and about 25 feet of granite wall are left to show us where the abbey church once stood; the monastery itself has entirely disappeared. In point of decoration, these arches are so very plain that it is not easy to date them; but, judging from their proportion, we cannot be far wrong in assuming that they were built during the fourteenth century. At that period the abbey must have reached the zenith of its prosperity, declining again to what Leland calls “a poor celle of monks” before the dissolution of the monasteries.

The church is thought to have been burnt down—perhaps by Cromwell’s forces in the Civil War. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a large piece of a bombshell and some charred timber were found amongst some stones and rubbish at the west end of the ruins, by a man who was clearing the ground to make more room for burying the dead; and cannon-balls have been dug up near by in the gardens from time to time.

As late as 1820 the people of Tresco were still burying their dead by the ivy-covered ruins of the old church, with the idea that its great age gave the neighbouring ground a greater sanctity than the churchyard of their parish church. Troutbeck tells us that in his time the earth upon the old flagstones of the floor was sufficient in depth to dig a reasonable grave.

Flowers now run riot round the tombstones—agapanthus, blue and white; hydrangeas bearing pink and blue blossoms on the same bush; and the sweet-smelling lily-of-the-valley: cluster-roses try to bury once more with their petals the already buried dead, or thrust out their branches and tender young shoots to creep beneath the covering slab, forcing it up by slow degrees, as if they would anticipate the general resurrection.

The gardens which surround the old ruins contain all manner of rare tropical plants, shrubs, and trees, which in this warm corner only of the British Isles will consent to grow and flourish out of doors. I cannot attempt by any description to do justice to these marvels of the vegetable world. The botanist who can recognise at sight a podocarpus andina or a pittisporum tobia will here find himself in paradise; but to the uninitiated the homelier and more familiar growths are more attractive—the blazing masses of rhododendrons and azaleas, the sheets of narcissi under shadowing palm-trees, the tall hydrangeas and camellias, fuchsias and myrtles that border the paths.

And what no one can fail to appreciate is the situation of the gardens, which rise in terraces from very little above the sea-level up to the height of 100 feet. As you mount to the upper terraces and look back, you will catch sight of the sea, through and beyond the masses of flower and leaf; and from the very top you will see spread out beneath you the surrounding islands, showing pearly grey-green or with a tender warmth of colour against the sea, and each with its little rim of white sand at low tide, except where the rocks run down to the water’s edge.

We have come to stay on Tresco, and have landed at the pier beneath Carn Near, with almost as large a boat-load of people as the dinghy of the launch will hold. We have to go and look for lodgings, so we soon part company from the rest, who turn off to the right for the Abbey Gardens, while we keep to the left. We have been recommended to stay at the “Canteen,” in other words, the “New Inn,” but it is enough to call it the Inn, for Tresco boasts no other; and this one combines the advantages of a general shop as well.

It is about a mile’s walk to the Inn—a lovely walk by the sea, and one that we know well, but cannot know too well. It takes us first over sandy downs, covered with long grass, and a little farther on with sheets of the mesembryanthemum edule, whose mass of fleshy green spikes will soon be spangled with large pale yellow blossoms. In the autumn the air is full of a sweet and rather sickly smell (something like American apples) given out by the Hottentot fig, which is the sequel to the yellow blossom. As the fruit ripens, the green spikes around it turn to flaming orange and crimson, so that the plant seems almost to have burst again into bloom. The soft and creamy-coloured fruit, which will readily shell out from its enclosing green case, is in shape very like the sycamore fig. It contains a mass of brown seeds, like the seeds of a fig, held in a thick, sweet, transparent juice.

I may say of it, as Mark Twain said of the tamarinds of Honolulu, that only strangers eat it, and they only eat it once! I always like to speak from experience where possible, so I played the stranger’s part and tasted the sticky mess, but I cannot honestly recommend it!

Our path still follows the coast-line; and soon Cromwell’s Castle comes into view in the distance, and plays bo-peep with us round the headlands for the rest of the way. This old fortress in its beautiful setting seems to have the art of always looking its best. Whether it shows up pearly white in the distance against the blue of sea and sky, or grey-brown in the diffused light of a cloudy day; touched with warm glow by the sunset, or stern and gloomy beneath the thunder-cloud; whether one catches sight of it from above or below, from sea or shore, from Tresco or Bryher, from north, south, east, or west, it always has the same indefinable attraction.

Presently we see before us the harbour of New Grimsby, with houses built round the bay, on the shores of which the Parliamentary forces encamped in 1665. The large fresh-water pond a little farther inland is known as the Abbey Pond. Those old monks might always be trusted to settle near a good supply of water, and the eels and tench it contained would not be despised by them. The reeds which grow round this pond are used by Tresconians for making very high fences to protect their flower-fields from the wind—very like the fences of African villages, so that one could almost imagine Kaffir kraals instead of flowers to be hidden behind them.

The skeleton of an old derelict still hangs together on the shore of the bay. She was a coal-schooner, carrying a cargo of furnace-coal, and was dismasted outside the islands one New Year’s Day about eighteen years ago. The crew were at breakfast when she came to grief, but they hurriedly left their tinned meat and coffee (left also, I regret to say, their dog, which was found on the wreck), took to their small boat, and were picked up by a passing vessel. The derelict was found by men of Bryher, and was afterwards towed into New Grimsby Harbour. Thither came her captain to examine her, but he found her not worth repairing, and sold her as she stood to the Governor. Now her cargo has been used up, and she herself has contributed to the making of fences, etc., and is pretty nearly used up too.

But we are a long time getting to our inn; and when we do at last arrive it is only to find that every room is occupied. Until yesterday they were without visitors, but a recent influx of two ladies has been sufficient to fill all their available space! So we are fain to seek elsewhere.

And it requires some search, for the flower-season is not the best time for getting rooms on the off-islands. Space, as well as time, is much occupied with the flowers; and sometimes every downstairs room is stocked with pots and basins, jars and bottles, full of daffodils and narcissi, while the ordinary furniture is pushed just anywhere to get it out of the way.

We are beginning to lose hope. Every one is very kind, but “no space,” “no time,” or “no food” is always the difficulty. (Provisions, as a rule, are obtained weekly from Penzance.)

Must we retrace our steps to the little post-office, and ignominiously wire to the launch to come and fetch us and our baggage back again to St. Mary’s? But no; at last, in a little four-roomed thatched cottage at the farthest extremity from the beginning of our search, we find a refuge.

We are now on the east side of Tresco, on the shores of “Old Grimsby,” which is almost opposite the harbour of New Grimsby on the west side. From the windows of the little cottage there is a lovely view across the bay. On the headland which shuts it in on the south there are the ruins of an old fortress, called by Troutbeck “The Block-house”; in the distance is St. Martin’s Isle, with other smaller islets—mere barren rocks—dotting the intervening sea. I know not when the view is lovelier—when the fortress stands out dark against a rosy dawn, or when it glows red in the shafts of the setting sun.

All round this part of Tresco, on the waste lands, and at the edges of the sea, grow great bushes of the tree-mallow, or lavatera arborea, covered in summer with purple and mauve blossoms. (Is it as bad to talk of a “mauve mallow” as of a “pink pink” or a “violet violet”?)

When the seed-vessels are formed the rats will run up the woody stems, and eat the green “cheeses,” as we used to call them as children. It is a pity all their tastes are not as innocent, for they are a menace to the young chickens, besides stealing eggs and robbing potato-sacks when they can. But I do not think there are any rats nowadays so voracious as those that Leland describes on Rat Island—rats that would think nothing of eating a live horse!

Here also are fringes of tamarisk, and other low trees, along the shore. St. Martin’s men come over in boats and cut off the branches for making crab and lobster-pots—“trimming our trees for us,” as the Tresconians put it.

Of course every cottager has his patch of flowers. One may see the cut blossoms, in pots and bottles, set outside the cottage doors, or in the windows, to open in the sunshine, before being sent to “England.”

The Tresco flower-fields are, perhaps, on the whole, less picturesque than those on the other islands, on account of the careful way in which they are protected from winds and storms; but you may find many a cluster of narcissi of Nature’s own planting, wayward ones that have preferred to choose their own shelter in the lee of a pile of grey rocks jutting out into the sea, or hidden in a little copse of trees by the shore—trees slender of girth and small of stature, and destined, like Peter Pan, never to grow up.