Page:Cornwall; Cambridge county geographies.djvu/30

 14 CORNWALL The Camel rises in the windswept, sodden, clay land above Boscastle, and dribbles down to Camelford, passing under Slaughter Bridge and the stone of LATEINOS which traditionally mark the scene of King Arthur's last fight and death. After leaving Camelford, it plunges through a beautiful wooded valley, under Helsbury Castle occupy- ing a bleak conical hill a castle of the Dukes of Cornwall, but consisting only of a stone camp of prehistoric date and a ruined chapel in the midst dedicated to St Sith or Itha, an Irish saint. It passes Lavethan, a hospitium of the monks of Bodmin, and between wooded banks through Pencarrow and Dunmeer woods, and having run south, it now turns north to meet and mingle waters with the Allan, which has cleft for itself a very similar and equally beautiful valley. The Allan rises near the slate quarries of Delabole, and glides down by St Teath, and by St Mabyn on its bleak stormbeaten height, itself snug between beautiful hanging woods and with sweet old-world manor houses clustering near, and meets the Camel at Egloshayle. Thence they flow away into the Padstow estuary under the old 1 5th century bridge at Wadebridge, past the Camclot of legend the only streams of any consequence that flow north. With regard to the Tamar, we may call it as we please a Devonshire or a Cornish river. It divides the counties through the principal part of its course, but it has its source in Morwenstow, on a wretched moor, in Cornwall. Not much can be said in its favour till it reaches Bridgerule. From that point past North Tamerton (and Vacey, which although on the left bank was included