Page:Cornwall (Mitton).djvu/43

 18 CORNWALL they usually exhausted themselves before reaching this remote corner, into which the oldest island stock was swept up. This probably accounts for the queer impression one often gets in Cornwall of being abroad. It comes suddenly, rising like one of the Cornish mists and enveloping one, until suddenly the con- viction that one is across the sea, far from home, flows almost overwhelmingly over the mind. There is much more likeness and kinship between parts of Cornwall and parts of Brittany than between Corn- wall and most of the rest of England. There is no doubt that Cornwall difFereth not as " one county from another county," but as one county from all the rest. Here, where the British race had its last stronghold, the stamp of the national characteristics was retained in its effects much longer than else- where. Nowadays of course there is intermarry- ing and travelling, and frequent streams of new blood coming in half the people you speak to are not Cornish at all but still there is something remaining which stamps them as a whole. It has often been noticed that there are traces of Spanish blood to be found in the dwellers in the extreme west where many of the great Spanish galleons were wrecked in bygone days; just as there are