Michael's Mount, with a man's little castle capping
Nature's gaunt escarpments and rugged walls. Between Marazion and Newlyn
stretches Mount's Bay; while a mile or two of flat sea-front, over which,
like a string of pearls, roll steam clouds, from a train, bring us to
Penzance. Then--noting centers of industry where freezing works rise and
smelting of ore occupies many men (for Newlyn labors at the two extremes of
fire and ice)--we are back in the fishing village again and upon the
winding road which leads therefrom, first to Penlee Point and the
blue-stone quarry, anon to the little hamlet of Mousehole beyond.
Beside this road lay our white cottage, with the sunshine lighting up a
piece of new golden thatch let into the old gray, and the plum-trees behind
it bursting into new-born foam of flowers. Just outside it, above the low
cliff, stood two men looking down into the water, seen dark green below
through a tangle of brier and blackthorn and emerald foliage of budding
elder. The sea served base uses here, for the dust and dirt of many a
cottage was daily cast into the lap of the great scavenger who carried all
away. The low cliffs were indeed spattered with filth, and the coltsfoot,
already opening yellow blossoms below, found itself rudely saluted with
cinders and potato-peelings, fishes' entrails, and suchlike unlovely
matter.
The men were watching a white fleet of bird boats paddling on the sea,
hurrying this way and that, struggling--with many a plunge and flutter and
plaintive cry--for the food a retreating tide was bearing from the shore.
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