We stood at last on the brow of the vast gorge, and full five hundred feet above the sea, where church and tower crowned the cliff like a crest. The scene we looked upon was indeed exhilarating, stately, and grand. On the right hand, and to the west, arose and stood the craggy heights of Dundagel, island and main, ennobled by the legends of old historic time. To the left, a boundless reach of granite-sprinkled moor, where barrow, logan rock, and cromlech stood, the mute memorials of Keltic antiquity.[132] Beneath, and afar off, the sea, at that silent hour, like some boundless lake, "its glad waves murmuring all around the soul;" near, and at our feet, the jumbled village, crouching on either side of the steepy road, and clinging to its banks as if the inhabitants sought to secure access for escape when the earthquake should rend or the volcano pour. We prepared to return and descend; but this was by no means an easy feat, from the extreme angle at which the roadway fell. At the first look on the inclined plane it seemed easier to sit down and slide; but on the whole we thought it better to walk, and pause, and creep.
Another and a new feature in the scene now met our gaze. Annexed to every human abode a small hut had been stuck on to the walls for the home of the "gentleman" that, in Cornwall as in Ireland, pays the rent--_Keltice_, the pig. The hovels of these bristly vassals, like the castles of their lords, were cabined and circumscribed in the extreme. There was just room enough to breathe, but not to snore without impediment of tone. A sudden inspiration awoke in our minds. Surely it would be an act of humanity and kindness to enable these poor suffocating creatures once in their lives to taste the balmy breath of a summer morning. It will be to us, we said and thought, a personal delight to see them emerge from their close and festering abodes and rush out in the free, soft radiance of the dawn! Action followed close on thought. Hastily, busily, every rude rough bar was drawn back, door and substitute for door unclosed; and a general jail-delivery of imprisoned swine was ruled and accomplished on the spot. Undetected by a single human witness, without interruption from slumbering master or lazy hind, the total deed was done. Gradually descending the hill, and scattering, like ancient heroes and modern patriots, freedom and deliverance as we went, never did the children of liberty so exult in their unshackled deliverance as these Boscastle hordes. There was one result, however, which we had not foreseen, and its perilous consequences had quite escaped anticipation. The inmates of every sty, as soon as their opportunities of egress had been ascertained by marching out of their prison-doors and arriving unchecked at the roadside--when they looked upward and surveyed the steep and difficult ascent, and counted mentally the cost of attempting to surmount the steep, they all, as with one hoof and mind, turned down the hill. Sire and dam, lean and corpulent, farrow and suckling, all _uno impetu_, selected and rushed down the _facilis descensus Averni_; and although, in all likelihood, they had never pondered the contrast of the Roman poet, yet they spontaneously moved and seconded, and carried the unanimous resolution that _revocare gradum, his labor, hoc opus est_. The consequence of this choice of way was too soon apparent. Just as we had drawn the last bar, and were approaching the bottom of the steep, we looked back and saw that we were pursued, and should speedily be surrounded, by a mixed multitude of porcine advocates for free discussion in the open air, such as might have gladdened the heart of any critic on the original and cultivated breeds of the west of England. Prominent among them the old Cornish razor-back asserted its pre-eminence of height and bone, nor were punchy representatives of the Berkshire[133] and Suffolk genealogies absent on this festive occasion. Growing now apprehensive of the consequences of discovery, if an early rising owner should ascertain the authors of this daring effort to "deliver their dungeons from the captive," we hastened to secure ourselves in the shelter of our hostelry of the Ship, and fortunately found, on reaching our "little chamber on the wall," that the widow and her household were still fast asleep. We fastened the door and listened for results. The outcries and yells were fearful. By-and-by human voices began to mingle with the tumult; there were shouts of inquiry and surprise, then sounds of apparent expostulation and entreaty, and again a "storm of hate and wrath and wakening fear." Many a battle of soldiers must have fought and ended with less uproar. At last the tumult pierced even the ears of our hostess Joan Treworgy.