Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/284

 278 THE CORNWALL COAST best cities in the Britain of that day, which seems to have been the tenth century. With wealth drawn from a fertile soil, a productive sea, and from rich mines of tin and lead, the inhabitants waxed proud in their prosperity, and revelled in luxurious vice. It would seem that a problem as to the provision of labour for the mines — still a vexed question in parts of the British dominions — led the Government of that day to convert Langarrow into a criminal settlement. There were no opposition newspapers in those times, or their perusal would be deeply interesting. The convicts were not allowed to reside within the town, but had a reservation or compound outside, and they passed most of their time toiling in the mines for the enrichment of others. Such work was probably done chiefly by means of quarrying and " stream- ing," rather than by the burrowing underground which we now generally understand as mining. This importation of criminal labour added greatly to the wealth of the neighbourhood, but it gradually induced its ruin. The daughters of Langarrow began to marry with the convicts ; a slow process of contamination took place among those whose morals were already sapped by luxury. At last the town absolutely reeked with wickedness — so says the highly moral legend. When the sin had reached its utmost the wrath of God descended. The cities of the Plain were destroyed by fire ; this Cornish town was over- whelmed by a terrible uprising of wind and sea. The waves broke angrily over the haunts of man's degradation, followed by driving sands that blotted them out for ever. But perhaps it may not be for ever. Some day the fickle sand may desert that which it once buried, or the spade may lay