I had for long years wished to come to Prussia Cove, but for one reason and another had always fallen short of it. If you are staying, for example, at Penzance, Prussia Cove is a little beyond your ken; and if Lizard Town or Mullion is your headquarters, then again the place is remote. Therein you perceive at once a survival of its ancient solitary and out-of-the-way situation, which made the place an ideal smugglers' resort. For Prussia Cove is famous above all other places in Cornwall in smuggling annals. Not, mark you, the mere legendary smuggling tales, but sheer matter-of-fact details about the shy industry: details that are so hard to come by; facts for which the historian of smuggling cries aloud, and rarely gets. There are two coves: Prussia Cove, originally named Porth Leah, and Bessie's Cove, separated from one another only by a projecting reef. Bessie, who gave her name to the westerly of the two inlets, was one Bessie Burrow, who kept an inn called the "Kidleywink," on the cliff-top. "Kidleywink" was not precisely the sign of the house: it appears to have been an old slang Cornish term for a public-house.
The "King of Prussia" who imposed that title upon the erstwhile Porth Leah was not in the first instance Frederick the Great, but John Carter, the eldest of a family of that name who were settled here in the eighteenth century. Among the eight Carter brothers and two sisters, children of one Francis Carter, miner and small farmer, who died in 1784, we hear in detail only of the three brothers, John, Henry, and Charles. Ostensibly all small farmers and fisherfolk, they were really smugglers on an extensive scale; "free-traders" in a bold and open way, greatly respected round about by all the squires and considerable people who knew them. They had, each one of them, the reputation of being honest men who would touch nothing that was not their own, and sold excellent cognac, hollands, and other articles at fair prices. Very well thought-of men, I assure you, with whom some "great men," darkly hinted at, did not disdain to enter into partnership.
John Carter took his nickname of "King of Prussia" from the boyish games of "King of the Castle" in which he and his brothers used to fleet their youth away, and the name stuck to him in after life, as often is the way with great and celebrated personages. Even so, Dickens, the "Boses" (for Moses) of his and his brothers' games, became "Boz"; and Louisa de la Ramée, who as a baby lisped her name, "Ouida," became in after years famous in that signature. So the "King of Prussia," i.e. John Carter, is in good company. In 1770 he built a substantial stone house on the cliffs, and appears to have used it in part as a residence, partly as a store for smuggled goods, and in some degree as an inn (I fear quite unlicensed) known as the "King of Prussia." There he lived until 1806, and from a small battery he had constructed he had the impudence to fire on one occasion upon the Fairy revenue sloop, which had chased a smuggling craft into the cove and had sent in a boat-party. The boat retreated, and notice being given to the collector of customs at Penzance, a military force was despatched to reduce his fort, by taking it in the rear. The smugglers retreated to the "Kidleywink" and the soldiers then left for Penzance, perhaps having demolished Carter's emplacements.
Elsewhere than in Cornwall all these things would have produced bloodshed; but nothing more seems to have been said about the affair, which is delightfully, entirely, and characteristically Cornish; own cousin to Irish escapades, just as the Cornish might, if they cared to do so, even call cousins with the Irish themselves.
Of Charles Carter we hear little, but of Henry—"Captain Harry"—a good deal. He had many adventures; was "wanted" by the excise and fled to America; returned and recommenced adventurous smuggling voyages to Roscoff in Brittany; was made prisoner of war in France, and then settled as agent for his brothers in Roscoff. He had all his life been troubled by the qualms of religious fear, and had in 1789 become converted. In after years he retired and lived in a small way as a farmer in the neighbouring hamlet of Rinsey, where he died in 1829. He wrote his Autobiography, a human document of singular interest, and preached fervently while still actively a smuggler, doubling the parts of saint and sinner in the most extraordinary way; entirely without suspicion of false dealing. He feared God and failed to honour the King, in the important respect of chousing him out of his inland revenue as far as it was possible for him to do. He lived respected and died lamented. I have had occasion to refer to him at length elsewhere[B] and I have no doubt that, according to his lights, he was an entirely honest man.
Prussia Cove at the present time of writing is a place wholly uninteresting. The "King of Prussia's" house was pulled down in 1906, and a new road is on the site of it. Caverns, said, of course, to have been the Carters' storehouses, yawn darkly in the low cliffs, above high-water mark. A barbed-wire squalor abounds along the winding road, and through the garden of an uninviting residence you come down to Bessie's Cove and the dark rocks going sheer into the water; always with "Trespassers will be Prosecuted" staring you in the face from makeshift posts and notice-boards.
Going up out of the region of these singular developments, I met a man raking over some stones recently placed in the road: a good-looking man, with a beard and an indefinable air of being a retired officer of the Royal Navy. He asked what I wanted there, a question I thought impudent; but giving the inoffensive answer that I had been seeking Prussia Cove, the scene of Carter, the smuggler's activities, and could not find Carter's house, he replied that he thought people coming to see the place for that reason was sheer morbidness.
"How so?" I asked.
"Oh!" said he, "all that kind of thing is past and done away with; and besides, I've had the house pulled down; and this is a private road."
"Oh!" I rejoined, "the deuce it is, and you have! Who does it belong to, then?"
"To me; but don't you trouble about that. Go just where you like."
I told him, as nicely as possible, that this was precisely what I intended to do; and then this apparently contradictory but not unamiable person began to dilate upon the want of respect the Cornish had for antiquity. The text for this was the cantankerous nature of two old maiden ladies, who jointly owned an old wayside smithy on the high road between Ashtown and Germoe. When one had agreed to sell it to my informant, if he could obtain her sister's consent, he went to the other sister with the proposition.
"What does my sister say?" she asked.
"She agrees."
"Then I won't!"
And as neither would agree upon anything concerning it, the building was unsold and went tenantless. Thenceforward, it fell into disrepair, and eventually fell down altogether.
Laughing at this ridiculous, but true, story, I went my way. I discovered afterwards that the narrator of it was the locally famous Mr. Behrens, who has purchased the land in and about Prussia Cove and has figured in some bitterly fought right-of-access cases here.
The headland beyond Prussia Cove, forming the eastern horn of Mount's Bay, is Cuddan Point. The meaning of "Cuddan" is said to be dark, or gloomy, but there is nothing exceptionally so in this not very striking point, and the autumn corn-fields render the approach to it even cheerful. But there is nothing gained by toiling to its extremity. The embattled granite house looking over Mount's Bay from hence is known as Acton Castle. From it the coastline can be plainly seen for miles.
Whichever way you go, by cliffs or by the high road, to Perranuthnoe, the way is extremely dull, and Perranuthnoe—now called locally merely "Perran"—is a dull little village. According to a wild legend, it was to the shore by Perranuthnoe that an ancestor of the Trevelyans came on horseback from the submerged land of Lyonesse between Land's End and Scilly. The roaring waters that had engulfed that fabled land and its 140 churches could not keep pace with his marvellous steed.
The scenery has for several miles past been distinctly inferior in interest and beauty to that of Mount's Bay and westward; but as it is the most truistic of truisms that every eye forms its own beauty, there may conceivably be those who can find it otherwise. The proof, or disproof, of the assertion lies with the explorer; he is a poor creature that takes his opinions ready-made.
Regaining the dull high road from Perranuthnoe, the very considerable village of Marazion is met, fringing the highway. There is very much more of Marazion than those who look at it from below would suppose, but as the view from Marazion is infinitely better than any view of it, there need be no curiosity cherished by Penzance visitors looking eastward, as to what is there, immediately over the shoulder of the hill, beyond the Mount. Yet, if there can be no interest in Marazion, there is plenty of the antiquarian kind in its parish church of St. Hilary, over a mile distant, away back in a north-easterly direction, in a lonely situation off the road. It was in 1853 that the body of the church was burnt down, with the exception of the Early English tower, with stone spire, remarkable in Cornwall, where spires are rare. In the rebuilt church, removed from the churchyard, now stands the famous "Constantine stone," inscribed
IMP . CAES . FLAV . VAL . CONSTANTINO . PIO .
CAES . NOB . DIVI . CONSTANTI . PII . AVG . FILIO.
Rendered in full, this, the longest Romano-British inscription in Cornwall, becomes a dedication to the Emperor Constantine the Great. The date has been fixed at A.D. 307. The stone was perhaps a milestone, but there is very much more about the ruling monarch than modern travellers would welcome, and if there was ever a mileage inscription as well, it has wholly disappeared. It will probably be conceded by all that in the matter of milestones, at any rate, we are superior to the Romans. It is a somewhat curious coincidence that a contemporary milestone has in recent years been discovered at Tintagel, bearing an inscription to Licinius, co-ruler with Constantine.
A more mysterious stone exists at St. Hilary. This is the well-known but imperfectly understood "Noti-Noti stone" a seven-foot long block of granite, inscribed with those two words and six not very distinct symbols supposed to represent masonic tools. Some antiquaries are disposed to regard it as the tombstone of an unknown Notus, the son of Notus; but the meaning is quite uncertain.
But to return to Marazion, where another insoluble problem awaits us and wordy warfare continually rages around the derivation of the place-name. It was once alternatively, in the local speech, "Market Jew," and thus arose the popular legend that the Jews anciently established here a market for tin. But it seems reasonable to suppose that "Market Jew" was only a corruption, by people who had almost wholly forgotten the now extinct Cornish language, of the Cornish words marghasiou, signifying "markets." Those "Jews" are supposed to have really been Phœnician traders. A further theory, that the name derived from Margha-ziawn, meaning "market-strand," deserves consideration. But whatever may be the truth, there is no doubt that here was situated a tin-smeltery in very remote times, for in 1849 the ruins of such a building were discovered. The Marazion people styled it, of course, the "Jews' House," and some of the "Jews' House tin" found there is to be seen in the museum at Penzance. A great deal of ingenuity, unsupported by any real evidence, has been employed in attempts to solve the meaning of the place-name, and it has been put forward that the spot was originally inhabited by a colony of Jews, who handed down the bitterness of their exile by styling it "Mara-Zion," i.e. "Bitter Zion." Still another theory has been advanced, namely that St. Michael's Mount was the original Marazion, from the Hebrew, "marath-aiyin," "the landmark"; the Mount being the most prominent object for many miles out to sea. So it will be perceived that there is no lack of choice.
Coming down the long street of Marazion to the shores of Mount's Bay, the most remarkable scene in Cornwall opens out before you. There stretch the flat curving shores of the bay, fringed with sands, but for the most part solitary, with the last miles of the Great Western Railway running along the levels, just above high-water mark; and Penzance town showing white in the distance, three miles away. There are more beautiful bays in Cornwall, and better sands, and repose rather than ruggedness is the note of the scene; but the great distinguishing feature of Mount's Bay—the feature that gives the bay its name—is St. Michael's Mount, rising majestically in the sea off Marazion, half a mile distant from the mainland, with its castle and priory, now the residence of Lord St. Levan, cresting the rocky pyramid with a coronet of towers and pinnacles. St. Michael's Mount is an inspiring sight, whether you are in expectation of seeing it or not. But nothing is unexpected in the way of scenery nowadays. You know what lies round every bend of the road. If we could only recapture the unexpected, how fine that would be!
But, whether you first see St. Michael's Mount at high tide, when it is an island, or at the ebb, when it is joined to the land by half a mile of slimy, seaweedy causeway, it is grand.
At the same time, I like best to think of St. Michael's Mount as I first saw it, on first coming into Cornwall. I had come by train from Paddington, and the day had long given place to night. The weary train pulled up for the ticket-taking at Marazion Road, and in the quiet interval the wind boomed about the station buildings, and the wash of the waves could be plainly heard on the sands. Eagerly one looked out upon the night for a possible glimpse of the famous Mount, and there indeed, guided by a twinkling light so high that it looked like a star, the eye saw vaguely a monstrous pyramidal bulk, a something darker than the surrounding darkness. "It is the Mount," I said, and a thrill of romantic delight possessed me.
Well, you know, St. Michael's Mount is 231 feet in height. It is no mean altitude, and the rise is so sharp up its sides that one need not be of the Falstaff kind, fat and scant of breath, to find the climbing it something tiring on a hot day. But St. Michael's Mount the next morning was a less impressive object than that darkling glimpse gave warranty for. It was inevitable. Just as the impression overnight had been finer than expected, so the reality suffered. But ordinarily St. Michael's Mount does not disappoint; always with this proviso, that you do not see its bigger brother, Mont St. Michel, on the coast of Normandy, first.
An ingenious eighteenth-century writer remarked of St. Michael's Mount that "it seemed emblematic of a well-ordered State, its base being devoted to Trade and Commerce, its sides to the service of the country, and its summit to the glory of God." By "trade and commerce" he indicated the little village and harbour at the foot of the Mount, and the reference to the glory of God was of course an allusion to the remains of the Abbey, but what he could have meant by "the service of the country" I cannot tell, unless by any chance it was an allusion to the ineffectual popgun battery mounted on the crags.
The history of St. Michael's Mount begins like most history, in uncertainties. It is supposed—and much criticism has not destroyed the supposition—that it is the place called Iktis, referred to by Posidonius, who travelled in Britain during the first century before the Christian era. He spoke of the "little islands called Cassiterides, lying off the coast of Iberia," from which much tin was obtained, and then mentioned the isle of Iktis, in Britain. It is quite clear, therefore, that the supposition that by the Cassiterides he meant the Scilly Islands, or any islands in Britain, must be baseless. They were what we know as the Balearic Islands, off the coast of Spain, the Iberia of the ancients. But in other writers we find the Cassiterides to indicate tin islands in general.
Diodorus Siculus, who was contemporary with Julius Cæsar, and wrote a Universal History, a considerable undertaking for one man even then, appears to have copied a good many of the statements made by Posidonius, in addition to having described places seen in his own travels. He is not always regarded as a reliable authority, but there seems no reason to doubt the essential truth of his statements. Referring to "Belerion," otherwise Cornwall, he says: "The inhabitants of that extremity of Britain both excel in hospitality and also, by reason of their intercourse with foreign merchants, are civilised in their mode of life. These people prepare the tin, working very skilfully the earth which produces it. The ground is rocky, but has in it earthy veins, the produce of which is wrought down and melted and purified. Then, when they have cast it in the form of dice-shaped cubes, they carry it into a certain island adjoining Britain, and called Iktis. For, during the recess of the tide, the intervening space is left dry, and they carry over abundance of tin to this place in their carts. And there is something peculiar in the islands of these parts lying between Europe and Britain, for at the full tide the intervening passage being overflowed, they appear islands, but when the sea retires, a large space is left dry, and they are seen as peninsulas. From them the merchants purchase the tin of the natives and transport it into Gaul, and finally, travelling through Gaul on foot, in about thirty days they bring their burdens on horses to the mouth of the river Rhone."
That Diodorus should refer to "islands," rather than the one island that becomes a peninsula at low water, has been held as a proof that he knew nothing at first hand about this coast, but it may well be that in the changes known to have taken place here, other islands have disappeared. Quite apart from the fantastic legends of the lost land of Lyonesse between Scilly and the Land's End, where the lone waters, empty except for a few intervening reefs, now roll, it is quite certain that at some early period what is now Mount's Bay was a forest. Hunt, in his "Popular Romances of the West of England," tells us—not romancing: "I have passed in a boat from St. Michael's Mount to Penzance on a summer day, when the waters were very clear and the tide low, and seen the black masses of trees in the white sands, extending far out into the bay. On one occasion, while I was at school at Penzance, after a violent equinoctial gale, large trunks of trees were thrown up on the shore, just beyond Chyandour, and then with the other boys I went at the lowest of the tide, far out over the sands, and saw scores of trees embedded in the sands. We gathered nuts—they were beech-nuts—and leaves in abundance." I, too, have found, cast upon the shore, traces of this submarine forest.
Now it is a curious thing, in this connection, that, among the various names by which St. Michael's Mount has been known, including the earliest of all, "Din-Sûl," or the "Fortress of the Sun," is that of Carregloose-in-coes, which, spelled in slightly different ways, means the Hoar Rock (that is to say the grey rock) in the Wood. "Coes" appears to have been a form of the early British "coed," for woodland. The town of Cowes, for example, in the Isle of Wight, takes its name from the woodlands that once occupied its site. St. Michael's Mount was once, therefore, a part of the mainland, and if we observe, still further, that the Chapel Rock on the approach to it, and the great pyramidal form of the Mount itself are hard greenstone and granite, resting upon slate and clay, we shall see exactly why they remain whence all other land has disappeared.
That foreigners, in times long before the Romans came to Britain, were accustomed to resort to this neighbourhood for tin has already been shown, and that they were Phœnicians is certain. Many people dismiss the Phœnicians as a people almost as mythical as the phœnix itself, but they were the earliest maritime traders. They were the people who founded Carthage, and they penetrated to the ends of the known world. Also they were of a strongly marked Semitic, or Jewish type; and thus ancient Cornish traditions about "the Jews" are well based on facts.
As "St. Michael's" Mount the island became early known. At some uncertain time the Archangel is said to have appeared here to some hermits, and the place was therefore already holy when St. Keyne came from Ireland in A.D. 490 and visited it. Edward the Confessor, in the eleventh century, granted St. Michael's Mount to the Benedictine Abbey of Mont St. Michel in Normandy, and until the reign of Henry the Fifth it remained the property of that Abbey, with a priory established on its summit. It was then transferred to the Abbey of Sion, in Middlesex.
The Abbey of Mont St. Michel and the Priory of St. Michael's Mount were fortresses, as well as religious establishments. The monks had fortified themselves for their own protection, and the strongholds seemed so useful to men of strife that we early find St. Michael's Mount seized and held by them when trouble was brewing. Thus, when Richard Lion-heart was a prisoner abroad, one Henry de Pomeroy got possession of the Mount on behalf of John. But when Richard, contrary from all reasonable expectation, returned, the position became untenable, the garrison yielded, and Pomeroy opened one of his veins and bled himself to death; a more excellent way than reserving himself for the picturesque and long-drawn agonies that in those times were the penalty of high treason.
A more desperate affair was that of 1471, when the Earl of Oxford, and a party of fugitives from the Yorkist crowning mercy at Barnet, fled from the vengeance of Edward the Fourth and took possession of the Mount. They came as pilgrims. You may quite easily picture them coming to the shore, pausing a moment at the Chapel Rock, then with a chapel on it; and thence walking the causeway to the Mount, kissing the relics at the foot of it, praying at the two wayside crosses up its steep sides and then admitted to the Priory itself, where, with drawn swords, produced from beneath their travel-stained pilgrims' garb, they soon made themselves masters of the place. Sir John Arundell, sheriff of Cornwall, was sent to dislodge them, and was after several attacks slain on the sands. According to the received account, Edward the Fourth pardoned the Earl of Oxford, on account of his so gallantly defending himself here; but we may well suppose that he "pardoned" him because he could not by other means dislodge this valorous rebel.
The Priory became a sanctuary for Lady Catherine Gordon, wife of Perkin Warbeck, in the time of Henry the Seventh, but sanctuaries were generally violated, and this was no exception. She was dragged out and sent to London.
During the west-country rebellion against the reformed religion in 1549, the Priory having by that time been dissolved and the property granted to the Arundells of Lanherne, Humphrey Arundell held it for the rebels. It was taken and retaken in the fights that followed, and Arundell at last was captured and put to death. The last warlike operations at St. Michael's Mount were the defence by the Royalist, Sir Francis Basset, and the capture by Colonel Hammond, on behalf of the Parliament. Since 1660 it has been the property of the St. Aubyn family.
The village at the foot of the Mount, with its little harbour, occupies a humble feudal situation beneath the castle of my Lord St. Levan. If you would seek revived mediævalism in a democratic age, then St. Michael's Mount is the place to find it, for Lord St. Levan maintains a body of gorgeously liveried boatmen to row him across, to and from his island hold; and nowadays, instead of being free to ramble about the craggy sides of the Mount, the stranger must resign himself to a guide. Whether wanton mischief on the part of holiday-makers, or the scattering of sandwich-papers, has aught to do with this changed condition of affairs, or whether it is merely due to the increased consideration the St. Aubyns cherish for themselves since the barony of St. Levan was conferred upon the family in 1887, I will not pretend to say.
The interior of the castellated residence is of somewhat varied interest. The chapel, although originally of Perpendicular architecture, was so altered in the "restoration" of 1826 that it is now merely a melancholy example of what was in those days considered to be Gothic. It is chill and bare and quite without any feature of note, with the exception of one thing that, being just a hole in the floor, can scarce be described as a "feature." This is an oubliette, discovered during the works of 1826.
Romantic novelists have been largely responsible for a general indifference to the very real mysteries and tragedies of ancient buildings, and the public, unable to distinguish between fact and fiction, have agreed to look upon everything out of the common as fiction. Yet here, the workmen of some eighty years ago, removing the old woodwork, discovered a walled-up door in the south wall, and, opening it, a narrow flight of stone steps was revealed, leading down into a grim stone cell, six feet square, without any window or other opening than the door by which they had entered. They were horrified by stumbling in the darkness of that dreadful place upon what proved to be the skeleton of a man of extraordinary height. Who that unfortunate wretch was, flung into this living tomb, to be conveniently "forgotten" and to die of starvation, has never been discovered. The appalling cynicism that constructed this particular example of an oubliette beneath the chapel floor is worthy of remark. While the doomed man lay there, above him the pious castellan and his fellow-villains were praising God.
The Chevy Chase Hall, a room formerly the refectory of the Priory, but remodelled in the seventeenth century, is a small apartment with timber roof. The name now given it refers to a curious plaster frieze representing hunting scenes. The Tower is the oldest portion of the buildings, rising to a total height of 250 feet from the sea. A projecting granite framework, looking out from the south-west angle of the battlements, is known popularly as "St. Michael's Chair." It is really the frame of an ancient lantern, beacon, or cresset, lighted in former times to guide the fishing-boats safely into harbour; but a legend has obtained currency that any sweetheart, or husband, or wife, first taking a seat in it will be "master for life." It is not a difficult matter to edge into the "chair," but it requires rather more agility, and a cool head, to return. In spite of this, very many women do perform the act; which shows at once their superstition and the real keenness they have to obtain the upper hand. But at the same time, it may not inaptly be supposed that, to any contemplative and philosophical man, the spectacle of his chosen one attempting the hazardous feat will be something in the nature of a danger-signal. If the loved one be now ready to risk a broken neck for this supposed advantage, what, he might suppose, will be his chance of happiness?
The church-tower peeping over the hill-top on the right hand, as you proceed along the dull flat road to Penzance is that of Ludgvan, and the marshes are those of Ludgvan Leaze. Ludgvan church, although an extremely blue-mouldy edifice, is not without interest and has a particularly good tower. Moreover, there are tablets in it to the memory of the Davy family, of whom the celebrated Sir Humphry, born at Penzance in 1778, is the most notable. Dr. Borlase, who may be described as the father of Cornish archæology, was rector here for fifty-two years, and died in 1772. A well in Ludgvan has, by ancient tradition, the curious property of insuring whosoever drinks of its water from being hanged. It may be testimony to the law-abiding character of the Ludgvan people that they do not set much store by the virtues of their well; but at the same time they are somewhat sly humorists, as perhaps any stranger not duly forewarned may discover, on asking if there is anything of interest in the place. "Oh! yes," you are likely to hear; and then comes the story of the well and an urgent invitation to drink of it, by way of insurance. The origin of this legend is altogether unknown, but may be an entirely distorted recollection of some special property connected with a holy well of St. Lidgean, one of the numerous Irish saints of Cornwall, whose name survives in that of the village.
Behind Ludgvan, rising to a height of 765 feet, is the hill of Castell-an-Dinas, not perhaps so much a hill as a culmination of the downs stretching between the north coast of Cornwall and the south, a distance from sea to sea of only five miles between Marazion and Hayle, and between Penzance and St. Ives of only seven miles. From the hill-top both the Bristol and the English Channels can at once be seen. Castell-an-Dinas is a prehistoric camp, with a modern roughly constructed stone tower, locally known as "Roger's Tower," in its midst. It seems to have been built about the time when one "J. H., aged 63" was buried, in 1823. This person, together with three others of his family who died in 1812, lie within a little walled enclosure on the hillside. He had some dispute with the vicar of Gulval, and so refused to allow any of his family to be buried in the churchyard. Something of a key to his sentiments will be found in the inscriptions within the enclosure: "Custom is the idol of fools," and "Virtue only consecrates this ground."
As Penzance is approached, Gulval appears on the right, its church-tower glimpsed from amid its surrounding trees. The flat fields are devoted to the cultivation of broccoli, and early vegetables, fruits, and flowers for the London market. The saint whose name is hidden in that of Gulval is said to be Wulvella, a Welshwoman, sister of St. Pol de Leon to whom the church of Paul near Mousehole, is dedicated. It is also said to indicate St. Godwald, a sixth-century Welsh bishop-hermit.
Gulval is one of the prettiest churchyards in Cornwall, beautiful with subtropical plants and pampas grass. Behind Gulval, on the little Trevaylor brook, is Bleu Bridge, a footbridge only remarkable for a tall granite pillar at one end, inscribed lengthways QVENATAVCI ICDINVI FILIVS.
Penzance is reached past the fringe of houses called Chyandour, on the level, approaching the railway station, where the Trevaylor brook enters the sea. "Chyandour" means "the house by the water," and probably marks the site of a prehistoric settlement of tin-streamers. Tin-smelting works are now situated on the brook.