Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/227

 FROM LAND'S END TO ZENNOR 221 name for smuggling and piracy. Curving north- ward is the beautiful and partially sheltered Whitesand Bay, which has memories of some historic landings — Athelstan, Stephen, John, Perkin Warbeck ; but the coast is very danger- ous, and is rendered more so by off-lying rocks such as the Brisons. It is singular that Cornwall should begin and end with a Whitesand Bay. Inland rises the height of Chapel Carn Brea, which must be distinguished from the Carn Brea of Redruth ; it reaches about 660 feet, but Bartinney, or Bartine, is still higher. Both are crowded with prehistoric remains, but Carn Brea is the more interesting in this respect, for its cairn, whose lower layer held the bones of some Stone Age chieftain, was crowned at the summit by a Christian oratory. It is a great pity that this chapel, probably one of the oldest religious structures in the kingdom, was not preserved. Above the Stone Age burial was a dolmen of the Bronze Age ; and above this were layers that told of Romano-British civilisation. But the antiquities of this district really need a book to themselves. When we reach Cape Cornwall we are in the immediate neighbourhood of mining again, and the fine headland itself is crowned with an old mine-stack. Its formation gives Cape Cornwall the appearance of reaching even farther westward than Land's End, and the view from its summit is grandly impressive. This is the parish of St. Just-in-Penwith (so called to distinguish it from St. Just-in-Roseland). Mr. Hind thinks St. Just the dreariest town in Cornwall, and its best friends do not call it lovely ; but there is a rather interesting Perpendicular church, with some earlier relics, and there is also a pldn-a7i-guare,