Coverack village, down upon the Cove, was the scene of the _Dispatch_ transport wreck in January 1809. A monument in St. Keverne church narrates how over sixty were lost on that occasion, including Major-General Cavendish. They were fresh from the blood-soaked fields of Spain and the retreat upon Coruña.
Those who originally named Black Head, beyond Coverack, could scarce have had any choice in the matter, for it is a lowering, sullen-looking point. But the rock is rather a dark green in its original tone, when closely examined. It is, in fact, the famed "serpentine" rock that extends all the way from this place, past the Lizard, to Mullion.
The way round by the cliffs to the next headland, Pedn Boar, and beyond it to Caraclowse Point, where there is a "cliff castle," is wearying in its ups and downs with a stream to cross in one rugged valley, without being exceptionally fine; but the paths or ragged grasslands on the way to Kennack Sands give easier going. Kennack Sands form the only available sandy foreshore for many miles along this rugged coast, where the savage cliffs descend as a rule sheer to the water, and the jealous sea generally leaves but a narrow sandy selvedge at the ebb. Small wonder, then, that bungalows for summer bathers have appeared here.
But the trivial urbanities of Kennack soon fail him who fares by the cliffs on to Caerleon Cove and Poltesco. Brambles clutch at his clothes and bid him stay; stones, loose and knobbly, and tripsome, lie along the path the coastguards seem to patrol all too seldom, and presently the small cove of Caerleon appears, with a stream running down to it and the derelict works of an abandoned serpentine factory on the shore. Up inland, past a cottage, with a notice declaring that trespassers will be prosecuted (which of course the wise pedestrian treats with contempt), and then past a tree-surrounded farmhouse, displaying the more hospitable intimation of new milk being sold, the watery valley of Poltesco is reached, where a great mill-wheel, amid a paradise of ferns, is worked by the spattering stream. I should think Poltesco might be a very tedious place on a wet November day, and not good for rheumatism; but, as an American girl tourist remarked, in summer it is "just heavenly."