III.—Typical Specimens of Cornish Barrows

Extract

The coast-line of the extremity of Western Cornwall has been so often laid under contribution of late by the artist's pencil, that its general features are familar to many who have never paid the country a personal visit. The fantastic forms which the weather-worn granite assumes as it rears itself in bosses (or “karns” as they are locally termed) between the deeply-cleft gullies down which the streams of red mine-water find their broken way, are the characteristics of that portion of the cliff which, lying between the promontories of the Land's End and Cape Cornwall, are turned most directly towards the setting sun. It is along this line of coast—some six or seven miles in extent—that the stone cairns which formed the burying-places of an early population are found in greater abundance than is the case in any other portion of the district. Along this same strip of sea-board are no less than three of those fortifications known as cliff castles, defended in each case by lines of ramparts crossing the necks of headlands from side to side, terminating at either end in the abrupt precipice of the cliff, and always intended to resist attack from the land side. Within these lines stone cairns are frequently found—a fact which seems to point to the conclusion that the latter are the more recent of the two; since, were it not so, the castle-builders would have availed themselves of the pile of stone already on the spot and ready to their hand.