Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/221

 FROM LAND'S END TO ZENNOR 215 meaning than here, where winds are more haunted by crying ghosts, where there is a deeper significance in the " murmurs and scents of the infinite sea." But we must come to Land's End in the right mood — with sentiment and inner vision, certainly, but without unrealisable expectations of a mighty gigantic headland, an abrupt tremendous precipice. We shall need the inner vision to contend with some jarring aspects of the reality, which are naturally more aggressive if we come during the holiday season. For the Land's End is a show- place, and we know what that entails. There is a large modern hotel here, just as we find similar edifices in some of the lovely solitudes of the Lizard and confronting the very castle of Arthur at Tintagel. Being there, we must take them philosophically — perhaps even make use of them. The cottage once boasting in the name of the " First and Last House in England " must now take a second place. There are some other aspects of even more definite vulgarisation — the presence of the tripper with his halfpenny news- paper, his bananas, and his mineral waters ; there is also too much building here, and the prospect of more. Mr. W. H. Hudson makes an appeal for a national fund that shall buy Land's End and sweep away much of this. He says : " The buildings which now deform the place, the un- needed hotels, with stables, shanties, zinc bungalows sprawling over the cliff, and the ugly big and little houses could be cleared away, leaving only the ancient village of Sennen, the old farmhouses, the coastguard and Trinity House stations, and the old fishing hamlet under the cUff." It is a dream that should not be impossible