The rocks
at this extremity rise about 250 feet above the stormy sea below, and
are surmounted by a modern lighthouse.
Originally there was only a beacon light with a coal fire fanned with
bellows, but oil was afterwards substituted. The Lizard Point in those
days, with the neighbouring rocks, both when submerged and otherwise,
formed a most dangerous place for mariners, especially when false lights
were displayed by those robbers and murderers, the Cornish wreckers.
The Lizard, the Corinum of the ancients, is the most southerly point in
England, and the fine rock scenery on the coast continues from there all
the way to the Land's End, while isolated rocks in many forms and
smugglers' caves of all sizes are to be seen. Weird legends connected
with these and the Cornish coast generally had been handed down from
father to son from remote antiquity, and the wild and lonely Goonhilly
Downs, that formed the centre of the promontory, as dreary a spot as
could well be imagined, had a legend of a phantom ship that glided over
them in the dusk or moonlight, and woe betide the mariners who happened
to see it, for it was a certain omen of evil!
The finest sight that we saw here was in broad daylight, and consisted
of an immense number of sailing-ships, more in number than we could
count, congregated together on one side of the Lizard.
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