It was a mystery how in such remote times the builders
could have got those immense stones to the top of the others and there
balanced them so exactly as to withstand the storms of so many years.
[Illustration: THE CHEESEWRING]
Near this supposed Druidical erection was a rough cave known as "Daniel
Gumb's House," formerly inhabited by a man of that name who came there
to study astrology and astronomy, and who was said to have had his
family with him. He left his record by cutting his name at the entrance
to the cave, "D. Gumb 1735," and by inscribing a figure on the roof
representing the famous 47th proposition in the First Book of Euclid.
The Trethevy Menhir, a cromlech or "House of the Dead," which George
Borrow went to see, consisted of seven great hewn slabs which formed a
chamber inside about the height of a man; over the top was an enormous
flat stone of such great weight as to make one wonder how it could have
been placed there so many centuries ago. At one corner of the great
stone, which was in a slanting position, there was a hole the use of
which puzzled antiquarians; but George Borrow was said to have contrived
to get on the top of it and, putting his hand through the hole, shouted,
"Success to old Cornwall," a sentiment which we were fully prepared to
endorse, for we thought the people we saw at the two extremes of our
journey--say in Shetland, Orkney, and the extreme north of Scotland, and
those in Devon and Cornwall in the South of England--were the most
homely and sociable people with whom we came in contact.
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