Borrow's father was born at
Trethinnick Farm, near St. Cleer, which he also went to see. He left
Liskeard in January 1854 on a tramp through Truro and Penzance to Land's
End by almost the same route as that we were about to follow ourselves.
As he made many notes during his wanderings in Cornwall, his friends
naturally expected him to publish an account of his travels there, after
the manner of a book he had published in 1862 entitled _Wild Wales_, but
they were disappointed, for none appeared.
[Illustration: ST. CLEER'S WELL.]
It was said that Cornwall did not grow wood enough to make a coffin, and
the absence of trees enabled us to see a number of huge,
mysterious-looking stones: some upright and standing alone, others in
circles, or in groups named cists composed of upright stones, forming a
cavity between them in the shape of a chest covered at the top, and not
intended to be opened again, for they had been used as tombs.
Occasionally the stones stood quite near our road, some in the shape of
crosses, while we could see others in fields and on the top of small
hills.
There were some remarkable stones near St. Cleer, including the famous
"Cheesewring," formed of eight circular stones each resembling a cheese,
placed one on top of another and rising to a height of about eight
yards; but the strange part about this curious erection was that the
four larger and heavier stones were at the top and the four smaller ones
at the bottom.
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