Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/230

 224 THE CORNWALL COAST once -frequent, and would be still if not shot off by the usual insensate "man with a gun." The small church is Perpendicular, with a pinnacled tower. In this parish is the magnificent Chun or Chywoon castle, on a hill about 700 feet high. This western extremity of Cornwall was guarded by a line of hill forts, of which this Chun, if not the most powerful, remains in best preser- vation. We cannot speak with decision as to the date of their earliest use, but this stronghold of Chun was almost certainly utilised as late as the fifth or sixth centuries, and may have seen fight- ing during the days when Irish invaders, even if they came as travelling saints, were not always welcomed. The first and second vallum can be traced with their ditches, and there was doubt- less an inner wall. The masonry is of different character from that cyclopean piling of boulders which was all the earlier men had known of building. Of such cyclopean style, though it is a small specimen, is the Chun cromlech, standing near. In the near neighbourhood are the Men Scryfa (the inscribed stone), the Men-an-tol (the holed stone), the Nine Maidens, the Lanyon Quoit,* the huts of Bosportheunis, the Mulfra Quoit — all being monoliths, or other survivals of wonder- ful interest, with the strange fascination of their mystery. Cairns, barrows, sepulchral monuments, we can understand, for death and burial are ever with us ; but what was the meaning of these circles and standing-stones — who built them, and for what purpose ? They are interpreted astro- nomically now — the latest, perhaps the correct, theory. The earliest peoples who brought any culture to these shores came from the East,
 * See illustration, page 181.