Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/274

210 Despatch, in January, 1809, when, two days before Sir John Moore's death, three officers and seventy-two non-commissioned officers and privates were lost on Lowland Point; and almost simultaneously the Primrose, with 120 officers and men and six passengers, was wrecked on the Manacles. About half-way across the mouth of the harbour is the Black Rock, exposed at low water, but covered when the tide rises. An eccentric Mr. Trefusis, of Trefusis, opposite Falmouth, one day invited his wife to boat with him to the Black Rock and picnic there. She incautiously accepted, and when he had landed her, he made his bow, and rowed away with, "Madam, we are mutually tired of each other, and you will agree with me that it were best to part."

Fortunately a fishing-smack picked her off just as the tide was flowing over it, and brought her back to Trefusis. "Be hanged to you rogues," said the husband. "I 'd have given you a guinea each to let her drown; now you shan't have a shilling from me.

S. Mawes Castle commands the harbour entrance from the other side, as also that to S. Mawes Creek. The long promontory, over four miles in length, that intervenes between the creek and the sea is Roseland. The neck of land dividing them is in two places very contracted. Roseland was a great harbour for smugglers, whose headquarters were at Porthscatho. When employed in conveying their goods ashore in Gerrans Bay, they always had their scouts on the hills, and as the customs station was at S. Mawes, no sooner did the preventive boat put forth, than