WILD LIFE AT THE LAND’S END
Andrew Stevens
WILD LIFE
AT THE LAND’S END
OBSERVATIONS OF THE HABITS AND
HAUNTS OF THE FOX, BADGER, OTTER
SEAL, HARE, AND OF THEIR PURSUERS IN
CORNWALL
BY J. C. TREGARTHEN
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1904
PREFACE
The sports described have led me to some of thewildest and weirdest spots of West Cornwall.There are few tracts in England more ruggedthan the northern part of the peninsula that liesbetween the Land’s End and St Ives. It is possibleto travel across the moors from CrobbenHill to Chapel Cairn Brea without setting foot oncultivated ground. It is a boulder-strewn waste,void of trees, where the grey of the granite minglesin spring and autumn with the gold of the gorsethat, with heather and bracken, clothes the undulatingsurface.
To the lover of nature the wild aspect of thesebreezy uplands is not without its charms; but theglory of the promontory is the ocean in which itis set. The great rampart of cliffs that holds backthe Atlantic is broken here and there by beachesof white sand or minute shells, or by coves intowhich fall the trout-streams that rise in the granitehills above. Along the tangled valleys they water,many an interesting picture arrests the eye; butwhether it be a holy well, an old mill, a grove,a rustic bridge or fishing-hamlet, all is in tenderminiature, like the streams themselves or the modesthills where they bubble to the light.
In these valleys bird-life is rich. On a spitof sand you may chance on the footprints of anotter, whose harbour by day is some rocky holtalong the cliffs; where the blackthorns are densestyou may come across a badger’s earth, and seethe paths he has trodden in going to and fro. Thiscreature is very plentiful—as plentiful indeed as thehare is scarce. Generally he shares the same earthwith the fox. On the north coast the seal showsno sign of decrease; thanks to its tireless vigilance,and the inaccessible caves it frequents.
These surviving mammals add to the attractionsof a coast and countryside over which broods thesilence of a mysterious past. The fascinationwhich these creatures have for me dates from boyhood,when I once caught a glimpse of a badgerstealing over a cairn in the grey of early dawn;and the Earthstopper, wandering with dog andlantern over the moors, presents a picture thathas often appealed to me.
If the descriptions, however crude, serve toawaken old associations in some readers, or toexcite the interest of those who have neve