ANOTHER book showing signs of having been through the wars is the above 1911 volume which somehow got across the Little Darwin protective moat full of saltwater crocodiles , the drawbridge up and the rusty portcullis down .
It is to be expected that in such an olde guide to tramping about Cornwall there is much mayhem and murder mentioned in its pages ; bloody battles, fortified castles , ruined churches, smugglers caves ; the Civil War , encounters between Roundheads and Royalists , a warrior more than 7ft tall .
It is to be expected that in such an olde guide to tramping about Cornwall there is much mayhem and murder mentioned in its pages ; bloody battles, fortified castles , ruined churches, smugglers caves ; the Civil War , encounters between Roundheads and Royalists , a warrior more than 7ft tall .
A confrontation which grabbed our attention involved that at Basil or Trebasil, in the parish of St. Clether, long the seat of the Trevelyans . The Trevelyans , like most Cornish gentry , were cavaliers and a party of Cromwell's Roundheads attempted to seize the squire in his own house . The response to this life threatening situation was like something out of Blackadder or Monty Python .
He warned the Roundheads that if they attacked , he would send out his "spearmen" . As no such force could be seen to back up this threat, come on they did . "Whereupon , he (squire) up with a teeming beehive and threw it among them . Not a man-jack waited for the onslaught of those spearmen ."
It must be said that right from the foreword to the book intending visitors could be put off by the fact times were tough in Cornwall due to the collapse in the price of tin and competition from other producing countries. As a result , many tin miners , Cousin Jacks , including Poldark , had gone overseas and were sending back money .
Nevertheless,author Catharine Amy Dawson Scott, informed readers Cornwall , a half smiling , half frowning land , was such an enchanting , rugged country , with so much to offer , it could attract you back time and time again , and its people had "forgiven you " for being a "foreigner ".
Even if a map showed what appeared to be a largish town along the way it could not guarantee there would be a tavern offering accommodation for travellers . This was due to the fact that the cheerful , pleasure- loving Cornishman was generally a Nonconformist and Sabbatarian , thinking fewer inns the better . Therefore, while a map could indicate a large place , it could materialise into a few cottages , a lonely farmhouse , or a rocky gorge with never an inhabitant . Boating and bathing was "unsafe" on the northern and western shores , cliff paths with sinister cavities other dangers.
