Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/41

Rh Work'us, and fourteen from Princetown Prison, and I reckon you could find quarters in any o' they—and suitable."

With regard to the Cornish people, I can but reiterate what has already been said relative to the Western folk generally. What differences exist in character are not due to difference of race, but to that of occupation. The bulk of Cornishmen in the middle and west have been associated with mines and with the sea, and this is calculated to give to the character a greater independence, and also to confer a subtle colour, different in kind to that which is produced by agricultural labour. If you take a Yorkshireman from one side of the Calder or Aire, where factory life is prevalent, and one from the other side, where he works in the fields, you will find as great, if not a greater, difference than you will between a Devonshire and a Cornish man. Compare the sailors and miners on one side of the Tamar with those on the other, and you will find no difference at all.

There will always be more independence in miners who travel about the world, who are now in Brazil, then in the African diamond-fields, next at home, than in the agricultural labourer, who never goes further than the nearest market town. The mind is more expanded in the one than in the other; but in race all may be one, though differing in ideas, manners, views, speech.

I venture now to quote freely from an article on Cornishmen that is written by an outsider, and which appeared in a review.