Identifier: fromgretnagreent00bate (find matches)
Title: From Gretna Green to Land's End : a literary journey in England
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Bates, Katharine Lee, 1859-1929
Subjects: England -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : Grant Richards
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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n to open here and there, giving us vistasof wheatfield, moor, and sea, we found our-selves at Wadebridge, a little town with astreet of ivy-greened houses dignified by agrey church-tower. We crossed a stonebridge of many arches that seemed too bigfor its river, and took train for Camelford.On our right we had the granite masses ofBrown Willy and Rough Tor and presently,on our left, the great gashes of the Delalobeslate quarries. These held the close attention of a Cornishminer who, after forty years of fortune-seek-ing in Australia, was coming home to Camel-ford for a visit. He drove up with us in therattling wagonette, gazing on ragged hedgeand prickly furze as a thirsty soul might gazeon Paradise. The fulness of his heart over-flowed in little laughters, though the tearswere glistening on his lashes, and in brokenwords of memory and joy. He kept pointingout to us, mere strangers that we were, notnoting and not caring what we were, the3tiles and streams and rocks associated with 364
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CORNWALL special events of his boyhood and youth.As we went clattering down into the littlestone huddle of houses, we had to turn awayfrom the rapture in his eyes. Brothers andsisters were waiting to greet him, with tallchildren of theirs that had been to him butnames, yet the human welcome could hardlypenetrate through his dream, through hisecstatic communion with the scene itself.As we were driving out of Camelford earlythe next morning, we caught sight of ourgrizzled Cornishman once again, standingin one of those humble doorways with theshining still upon his face. A man like that would make anybodyhomesick and, to speak impartially, wethought that Camelford was far less worthyof such emotion than two villages we sever-ally remembered over sea. We fell out ofhumour with the poor old town, would nothear of it as the Arthurian Camelot, a city of shadowy palacesAnd stately, and disdained the tradition that the blame-less king fell at Slaughter Bridge. My ath-letic comrade, however, to

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