Inland the little towns are of slight interest, with the exception of the old cross at Lambrenny, but the walk along the cliffs--and the Cornish are amiably ignorant that trespassers ought to be prosecuted--presents an ever-changing panorama of lichened rocks and lacy surf and every shade of wonderful blue. In Trevalga Church is some old woodwork that has been carefully placed against the east wall of the church, and presently we are crossing the neck of the Rocky Valley on our way to derelict Bossiney--Bossiney once having mayor and officers and represented in Parliament by Sir Francis Drake, but now only a sleepy lovely nook in a quiet corner of the land! At the head of the Rocky Valley is St. Nechtan's Kieve, a fine but broken waterfall of some 40 ft. A legend is told of two unknown ladies who inhabited a cottage near by and who died without ever having revealed their names, but the legend sprang like so many others from the fertile brain of the Rev. Robert Hawker. He thought the place looked as if it ought to have a legend, and not finding one was both ready and able to supply the deficiency. A cross which was formerly part of the garden gate and was supposed to be of the ninth century has been taken to Tintagel, and is now to be seen in the garden of that comfortable old-fashioned hostelry, the Wharncliffe Arms.
The far-famed "Dundagel" consists of a single grey street, lined in irregular fashion with grey cottages and houses. In this land of stone you sigh for the cheerful sight of a red-brick building or a glowing tiled roof; but the stone used is grey, and where the roofs are not of a cold blue slate, they are of a thatch held on by ropes that are heavily weighted. The place is still primitive. Until recently the nearest baker lived at Delabole, and to judge by the prizes (instead of cakes) on view in his window, he must have been the king of pastry cooks. In Cornwall, however, the housewife still bakes her own bread and is in other ways more self-sufficing, and let us add more thrifty, than elsewhere.
"Who Arthur was," says Milton, "and whether any such person reigned in Britain hath been doubted heretofore and may again with good reason." We must remember that the traditions concerning him were not reduced to writing until centuries after his death, while Gildas, who was born according to his own account in what would be Arthur's lifetime, does not mention him.