Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/515

Rh it is midwinter, you will notice that the island is quite free from snow, and that the air is warm and moist. Completely surrounded by the sea, these islands possess a much milder climate than that of Cornwall, and were it not for the fogs that prevail for three-fourths of the year, and the fierce storms that, throughout the whole year, are as sudden and frequent as the anger of the inevitable gouty uncle of the English novel of the last century, invalids would find St. Mary's and its sister islands a pleasant and healthful resort.

It is quite dark by the time we have landed and reached the diminutive inn. The fishing-boats have all come home, and the fisherwomen, instead of sitting up in a tower, as Mr. Kingsley would have us believe is their usual and useless habit, are at home, preparing, doubtless, for bed. At nine o'clock it would not be easy to find ten wide-awake individuals in all Hugh Town. Curiously enough, this early-to-bed and early-to-rise habit of the Scilly fishermen has not yet resulted in the individual wealth which the ancient couplet so confidently predicts. They are plainly healthy, and even wise—in matters of fish and weather—but the only gold that their early-rising has yet brought to their longing gaze is the brilliant sun-gold of the early eastern sky.

In the morning we find that Hugh Town is built on a low neck of land in the centre of the island, between two hills. We capture a stray boy, who roams through the tap-room with pantaloons rolled up to his knees, in preparation for the future fishing which the years will bring to his hard lot, and induce him to act as our guide to the lions of St. Mary's. He is a sharp, bright-eyed, wild-haired, sunburnt little rascal, of twelve or sixteen years of age (the driving spray and the sharp west winds early seam the faces of the Scillyotes, and dim the clear index of youth), and speaks in a usually unintelligible Cornish dialect, that cannot possibly be imitated with type. His name, too, is coquettishly slippery. You fancy that you have caught it, and when, at your request, he repeats it again, you find yourself as wide of the mark as though you had mistaken Marghasjewe for Trenguainton, or Trewarthenich for Perranzabulse. These Cornish names may be musical, but their music is of Wagnerian intangibility and discordance.

Piloted by Barelegs—for we are forced to christen the boy anew —we walk over the uneven pavement of the solitary street of Hugh Town, toward the eastern extremity of the island. On our way, Barelegs, with commendable pride in the beauties of his native city, points out to us the court-house, with its unoccupied prison, and its one-stall butcher-shop (firmly believed by the natives to be a market) in the basement; the new, handsome Gothic church, that seems so out of place in the midst of the primi-