We did not search our road-maps for Polperro because of anything the guide-books say about it, for these dismiss it as a “picturesque fishing village on the South Devonshire coast.” There are dozens of such villages in Devon and Cornwall, and only those travelers whose feet are directed by some happy chance to Polperro will know how much it outshines all its rivals, if, indeed, there are any worthy to be styled as such. Our interest in the quaint little hamlet was aroused at a London art exhibit, where a well-known English artist showed some three score clever sketches which arrested our attention at once.

“I made them last summer during a stay at Polperro,” he said in answer to our inquiry.

“And where is Polperro, pray?” we asked with visions of Italy or Spain and were taken aback not a little to learn that a Devonshire village afforded subject matter for the sketches. And forthwith Polperro was added to the list of places we must see on our projected Land’s End tour. A diligent search of our maps finally revealed the name and showed the distance about twenty miles from Plymouth. The road is steep and winding and there is only a network of narrow lanes for some miles out of the village.

We leave Plymouth after a night’s sojourn at the Grand Hotel and cross the estuary at the Tor Point ferry, which makes trips at frequent intervals. A flat-bottomed ferry boat, held in place against the strong tides by heavy chains anchored at either end, takes us across for a moderate fare and we set out beneath a lowering sky to explore the rough and difficult but beautiful bit of country stretching along the coast from Plymouth to Fowey Harbor. Indeed, we had in mind to cross the estuary by ferry at the latter place and asked a garage employee about the facilities for so doing.

“Hi wouldn’t recommend it, sir. Last week a gent with a motor tried it and the boat tipped and let the car into the water. Hi went down to ’elp them get it out and you could just see the top sticking out at low tide.”

And so we altered our route to go around the estuary—some fifteen miles—rather than chance repeating the exciting experience of our fellow-motorist of the week before. But this is a digression—I had meant to say that there is little to engage our attention for several miles after crossing at Tor Point. The country is studded with rough hills and our route cuts across some of these, a wide outlook often rewarding the steep climb to the summits. We cautiously follow the sinuous road until it pitches sharply down into the ravinelike coomb occupied by the Looes, East and West, according to their position on the river. These villages cling to the steep hills, rising from either side of the river, which we cross by a lichen-covered bridge hung with a multitude of fishing nets. We see a confused medley of houses elbowing one another out into the roadway until their sagging gables nearly meet in places, built apparently with sublime disregard of the points of the compass and without any preconceived plan. Once it was a famous fishing port, but now the industry is conducted on a small scale only and the Looes have to depend largely on vacationists from Plymouth in summertime. We do not linger here, but after crossing the bridge we enter the narrow road that cuts straight across the hills to Polperro. It is a rough, hilly road and the heavy grades shift the gears more than once; but it carries us to splendid vantage-points where we pause to glance at the landscape. There are wide expanses of wooded hills with lovely intersecting valleys, the predominating green dashed with broad splotches of purple heather—the rankest and most brilliant of any we saw in a land famous for its heather! Over all stretches the mottled sky, reflecting its moods on the varied scenes beneath—here a broad belt of sunlight, yonder a drifting shower, for it is one of those fitful days that alternately smiles and weeps. We descend another long hill and enter the lane which runs down the ravine into the main street of Polperro.

I think we can truthfully declare that of all the queer villages we saw in Britain—and it would be a long story to tell of them—no other matched the simple, unpretentious fisher-town of Polperro. No huge hotel with glaring paint, no amusement pier or promenade, none of the earmarks of the conventional resort into which so many fine old towns have—shall I say degenerated?—are to be seen; nothing but the strangest jumble of old stone houses, wedged in the narrow ravinelike valley. So irregularly are they placed, with such a total disregard of straight lines and directions, that it seems, as one writer has remarked, that they might originally have been built on the hillsides at decent distances from each other and by some cataclysm slid down in a solid mass along the river. The streets are little more than footpaths and wind among a hundred odd corners, of which the one shown in our sketch is only typical. We cross the river—at low tide only a shallow stream—by the narrow high-arched bridge, whose odd design and lichen-covered stones are in perfect keeping with the surroundings, and come out on the sea wall that overlooks the tiny harbor. A dozen old salts—dreaming, no doubt, of their active younger days on the blue sea stretching out before them—are roused from their reveries and regard us curiously. Evidently tourists are not an everyday incident in Polperro, and they treat us with the utmost civility, answering our queries in broad Cornish accent that we have to follow closely to understand. A few fishing boats still go out of the town, but its brave old days are past; modern progress, while it has left Polperro quite untouched, has swept away its ancient source of prosperity. Once its harbor was a famous retreat for smugglers, who did a thriving business along the Cornish coast, and it is possible some of these old fellows may have heard their fathers tell thrilling tales of the little craft which slipped into the narrow inlet with contraband cargos; of wrecks and prizes, with spoils of merchandise and gold, so welcome to the needy fisherfolk, and of fierce and often deadly conflicts with the king’s officers.

“In the time of storm,” he writes, “Polperro is a striking scene of bustle and excitement. The noise of the wind as it roars up the coomb, the hoarse rumbling of the angry sea, the shouts of the fishermen engaged in securing their boats, and the screams of the women and children carrying the tidings of the latest disaster, are a peculiarly melancholy assemblage of sounds, especially when heard at midnight. All who can render assistance are out of their beds, helping the sailors and fishermen; lifting the boats out of reach of the sea, or taking the furniture of the ground floors to a place of safety. When the first streak of morning light comes, bringing no cessation of the storm, but only serving to show the devastation it has made, the effect is still more dismal. The wild fury of the waves is a sight of no mean grandeur as it dashes over the peak and falls on its jagged summit, from whence it streams down the sides in a thousand waterfalls and foams at its base. The infuriated sea sweeps over the piers and striking against the rocks and houses on the warren side rebounds towards the strand, and washes fragments of houses and boats into the streets, where the receding tide leaves them strewn in sad confusion.”

A brisk rain begins as we saunter along the river, and we recall that the car has been left with top down and contents exposed to the weather. We hasten back only to find that some of the fisherfolk have anticipated us—they have drawn the top forward and covered everything from the rain as carefully as we could have done—a thoughtfulness for the stranger in the village that we appreciate all the more for its rarity. And though we left the car surrounded by a group of merry, curious children, not a thing is disturbed.

Lansallos Church is a splendid edifice surrounded by tall trees beneath which are mouldering gravestones upon which one may read queer inscriptions and epitaphs. There is also an ancient water-mill just where the road enters the village, which still does daily duty, its huge overshot wheel turning slowly and clumsily as the clear little moorland stream dashes upon it. No famous man has come forth from the village, but it produced a host of hardy seamen, who, under such leaders as Drake and Nelson, did their full share in maintaining the unbroken naval supremacy of England. And not a few of those who fought so valiantly for their country gained their sea training and developed their hardihood and resourcefulness in the ancient and—in Devon and Cornwall—honorable occupation of smuggling.

We follow narrow, hedge-bordered lanes northward for several miles to regain the main road from Liskeard to Lostwithiel; for while we should have preferred the coast route, we have no desire to try conclusions with the ferry at Fowey. The fitful weather has taken another tack and for half an hour we are deluged, the driving rain turning the narrow roads into rivers and making progress exceedingly slow. When we reach the main highway the rain abruptly ceases and the sky again breaks into mottled patches of blue and white, which scatter sunshine and shadow over the fields. The country is intensely green and we are now in a spot which a good authority declares the loveliest inland scenery in Cornwall. It is the pleasant vale of the River Fowey, in the center of which stands the charming old town of Lostwithiel, surrounded by luxuriant pastures which stretch away to the green encircling hills. There is a fourteenth-century bridge in the town which seems sturdy for all its six hundred years of flood and storm; and the church spire, with its richly carved open-work lantern, has been styled “the glory of Cornwall,” and we will agree that it is one of the glories of Cornwall, in any event. It shows marks of cannon shot, for considerable fighting raged round the town during the civil war.

So narrow and steep is the street that pitches down the hill into Fowey that we leave the car at the top and make the descent on foot. Indeed, the majority of the streets of the town are so narrow and crooked that it is difficult for a vehicle of any size to get about easily. From the hill we have a fine view of the little land-locked harbor, dotted with fishing vessels. It shows to-day a peculiar color effect—dark blue, almost violet, out seaward, while it fades through many variations of greens and blues into pale emerald near the shore. The town is clean and substantial-looking and it must have presented much the same appearance two hundred years ago—no doubt most of the buildings we now see were standing then. It is now a mere fisher village, somewhat larger and not quite so primitive as Polperro, though in the day of smaller ships it contended with Plymouth and Dartmouth for distinction as chief port of Cornwall. It was during its period of prosperity and maritime importance that the two towers, yet standing, were erected to guard the entrance of the harbor. A chain stretched between these made the town almost impregnable from attack by sea. Here the old-time seamen dwelt in security and plotted smuggling expeditions and raids upon the French—gentle occupations which greatly contributed to the prosperity of the town. These profitable trades about the middle of the fifteenth century proved Fowey’s undoing. Peace had been declared with France, but the bold sailors went on with their raids and captured French vessels quite regardless of the treaties with that nation. This so incensed King Edward IV. that he caused numerous “leading citizens” of Fowey to be summarily hanged, levied a heavy fine on the town, and handed its ships over to the port of Dartmouth. The last proceeding seems like a grim bit of humor, for Dartmouth sailors were no less offenders against France than their unfortunate neighbors. After this sad experience it was long ere Fowey again held up its head and in the meanwhile it was far distanced by its former rivals. Its sailors, who had wrought many valorous deeds in the English navy, were little heard of afterwards and the rash, foolish action of the king practically wiped out an important port that would still have bred thousands of bold seamen to serve their country.

“Own a house?” he echoed in surprise at our ignorance. “Nobody owns a house here; the squire who lives in the big place on the hill yonder owns the town—and everybody in it. A common man hasn’t any chance to own anything in England. It doesn’t seem fair and I don’t understand it—but we live by it in England—we live by it in England.”

We divert his bitter reflections by asking him about the town.

“Don’t forget the old Ship Inn,” he said, “and the church—it has the tallest tower in Cornwall. You can see through the big castle on the hill if you get permission. Any famous people?—why, yes—Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch lives here. He’s our only titled man and some of his books, they say, tell about Fowey.”

We thank our sailor friend and repair to the Ship Inn, as he counseled us. They show us the “great Tudor room,” the pride of the house—a large beamed and paneled apartment with many black-oak carvings. But the chief end of the Ship to-day appears to be liquor selling, and not being bibulously inclined, we depart for the church. It was built in the reign of Edward IV., just before that monarch dealt the town its death-blow as a port and marked the end of Fowey’s prosperity. The timber roof, the carved-oak pulpit and stone baptismal font are all unusually fine and there are some elaborate monuments to old-time dignitaries of the town. Place House, the great castellated palace on the hill, with immense, elaborately carved bow-windows, is the dominating feature of the town. Inside there is some remarkable open timberwork roofing the great hall and much antique paneling and carving. There is also a valuable collection of furniture and objects of art which has accumulated in the four hundred years that the place has belonged to the Treffry family. It is more of a palatial residence than a fortress and it appears never to have suffered seriously from siege or warfare.

We are soon away on the highroad to Truro, which proves good though steep in places. There is a fine medieval church at St. Austell and another at Probus has one of the most striking towers we saw in England. It is of later origin than the main body of the church; some two hundred feet high, and is surmounted by Gothic pinnacles, with carved stone balustrades extending between them. Near the top it is pierced by eight large perpendicular windows, two to each side, and it is altogether a graceful and imposing edifice. Such churches in the poor little towns that cluster about them—no doubt poorer when the churches were built—go to show the store the Cornishmen of early days set by their religion, which led them out of their poverty to rear such stately structures; but it is quite likely that a goodly part of the profits of their old occupations—wrecking, smuggling and piracy—went into these churches as a salve to conscience. Nor is the church-building spirit entirely extinct, as proven by the magnificent towers of Truro Cathedral, of which I shall have more to say anon and which soon breaks into our view.

As a matter of variation we take the southern route by the way of Helston from Truro to Penzance. This is rougher and has more steep hills than the direct road through Rudruth. Helston is some ten miles north of the Lizard Peninsula, where there is much beautiful coast scenery—especially Kynance Cove. Coming up the road along the coast toward Marazion, one gets a perfect view of the castle-crowned bulk of the Cornish St. Michael’s Mount, the seat of the St. Aubyns. In the distance it stands like an immense pyramid against a wide reach of sunset sky, but as we come nearer the towers and battlements of the castle come out weird and strange; in the purple shadows the whole vast pile savors of enchantment. Beyond it shimmers the wide calm of Penzance Harbor—as it chances, dotted with the dark forms of some fifty leviathans of the British navy. For there is to be a great naval review in Penzance the coming week; the king and queen and a host of celebrities are expected. The town is gay with decorations and delirious with expectancy of the big events to come. Graham-White, the famous aviator, is to appear and there are to be many thrilling evolutions and much powder-burning by the royal fleet. Hotels and lodging-houses are crowded to the limit and if we have ever been somewhat dubious whether to try the hospitality of Land’s End for the night, it is settled now—we could hardly stay in Penzance unless we camp on the street. It was indeed a bitter disappointment to Penzance that the capricious Cornish weather completely ruined the expected fete. Furious winds and continual rain drove the fleet to the more sheltered Tor Bay and the programme, on a greatly reduced scale, took place there. Aside from the disappointment, the people of the town suffered a heavy loss in the large sums they had spent in anticipation of the event. But Penzance is all unconscious of the fate in store for it; its streets are thronged and it is fairly ablaze with the national colors and elaborate electrical decorations. We thread our way slowly through its streets into the lonely indifferent lane that winds over steep and barren hills to Land’s End.