Isles of Scilly

“ These visitors are neither so many nor of such a kind as to take away from the peaceful charm of the place. You can always get peace and quiet in Scilly, even in the most “tripperish” season, for the trippers follow a beaten track which it is easy enough to avoid. And the islands are, fortunately, quite unspoilt by any efforts to cater for their supposed wants. Not a single penny-in-the-slot machine flaunts its vermilion and yellow in your face; there are no niggers on the beach, nor brass bands, nor cinematographs; no dancing on the pier ”

“ The gorse is one of the great glories of the islands; it grows on almost every open down, and on the slope of almost every hill. On a calm summer’s day, when the hot sun brings out the sweet and heavy odour, and the drowsy hum of myriads of bees, garnering their store from the golden blossoms, mingles with the gentle lapping of the sea upon the shore, then Scilly becomes a veritable land of the lotos-eaters, and one feels content to do no more than lie upon a slope of springy heather, and “watch the crisping ripples on the beach, and tender curving lines of creamy spray.” ”

“ And strangers tend to increase in Scilly and its surrounding seas, in spite of the voyage from Penzance. The isles, truly the Fortunate Isles, where there is no income-tax and there are no motor-cars, and the post comes but once a day—and sometimes not even then—and the only police-force necessary is one officer, who combines all ranks, and even then has little to do, are further blest with a delightfully equable climate, and good hotel and other accommodation. They look with some pity upon the turmoils of the adjacent island of Great Britain. ”

“ To most people it seems a far cry to the Scilly Isles, and it is therefore all the more desirable that some competent person should try and realize for us the atmosphere, colour, and outstanding features of such a story-haunted nook. ”

“ The names of the Scilly rocks and islets are themselves a pure delight, compact of romantic suggestion. There, off Bryher, exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic, are the two grim rocks called Scilly, that confer a name upon the entire group ”

“ In Scilly no two fields are alike, and it is difficult to find one that is flat and uninteresting. They cover the slopes facing to the west and south; very often they run down almost to the edge of the sea, with only a low stone hedge to divide them from the shore. What would Wordsworth have felt, I wonder, to see these waves of dancing daffodils? Perhaps he would have preferred the scattered groups and clusters that spring up of themselves in the hedges by the wayside, or even on the beach itself. ”

“ The Scilly Isles, just off the Land's End, are very numerous, but only five are inhabited; some are mere rocks in the sea, and, counting ihose, they are said to be a hundred and fifty. The largest is St. Mary's, and the dwellers on it are apt to look with contempt on the inhabitants of the other islands (the Off Islands) . The word Scilly is sometimes derived from Sulleh, rocks dedicated to the sun, and sometimes from Sillyas, a conger. ”

“ Let us visit the islands on an April day, and see for ourselves [Pg 13] this harvest of gold and silver. For once we will be day-trippers in fancy though we would scorn to be in fact.
Here in Scilly we find land and sea flooded with spring sunshine, while on the “adjacent island” which we have just left every one is lamenting the cold and the rain. The flower-harvest is nearly over, yet still there are wide fields of dazzling white and yellow, and many hundreds of boxes will yet leave the quay for the mainland. ”

“ Visitors to Scilly, who commonly travel in summer and autumn, see nothing of these activities. Then, if ever, the islanders who are flower-farmers take things easily, and the little fields where the daffodils and the narcissi grow are of comparatively small interest, being bare of leaves or blossoms. ”

“ Whether or not these stories have a foundation of truth, no one can say; but there is certainly a general resemblance in character and formation between Scilly and the Land’s End.
The whole of the islands are composed of granite, which is seen cropping up everywhere through the soil. Huge blocks and boulders of it lie scattered all along the coast, many of them of weird and fantastic shapes. The strangest have been given special names, more or less appropriate. On the peninsula of Peninnis, St. Mary’s Island, there is the “Tooth,” a slender conical rock 30 feet high ”

“ The Isles of Scilly have never been too remote for conquerors to descend upon and subdue them. Thus Athelstan not only subjugated Cornwall in the tenth century, but subdued Scilly as well; and they were fortified in the time of Queen Elizabeth, when the still-existing Star Castle, overlooking St. Mary's, was built, as the initials, E. R. and the date 1593, remain to prove. Scilly was not a safe place of refuge for Prince Charles in 1645. He landed at St. Mary's from Falmouth on March 4th, but the fleets of the Parliament rendered it advisable for him to depart for Guernsey on April 17th. ”

“ Any one who knows the Scillonians and their sense of humour will guess there was a twinkle in his eye as he said it.
Marguerite-daisies also grow into large woody shrubs, in perpetual bloom, and are often seen bordering the fields of daffodils.
In his Observations on the Ancient and Present State of the Isles of Scilly, published in 1756, Dr. Borlase strongly recommends the planting of “shelters of Elder, Dutch elm, Sycamore, and the like, in clumps and hedgerows,” for he notices that everything which rises not above the hedges does very well ”

“ ANNET AND THE SEA-BIRDS THE sea-birds are everywhere in Scilly. All the year round the gulls fill the air with their cries, and cormorants and shags skim the water and dive beneath its surface.
No “Scilly-scape,” if I may use the word, seems complete without a few gulls. We see them circling and wheeling high above us; dropping, suddenly, to rest upon the dancing waves; chasing each other in turn from the tops of the chimneys; sitting in rows on the ridges of the roofs; quarrelling for fish over St. Mary’s Pool ”

“ Geologically, we are still on the mainland when we reach the isles of Scilly; they belong to the axis of the Cornish peninsula, and are in what may still be called, comparatively, the narrow seas. The hundred-fathom line lies far beyond them; these waters, though thoroughly oceanic in character, are not oceanic in depth. We may regard the islands as the last upward thrust of the granitic backbone that runs, at a diminishing gradient, from Dartmoor to Land's End, while the submarine plateau follows a similar gradient. ”

“ Martin’s seems to be less visited than the other islands. It certainly is not less attractive, and those who go there soon find that it has a charm of its own. Its inhabitants are very proud of their island, and very willing to give a welcome to strangers.
There is at least one man on St. Martin’s who has never been to the mainland, and to whom motor-cars and trains would be a great novelty. For motor-cars are never seen in Scilly except in the form of wreck-salvage! ”

“ It sways like a tree in the wind during one of the terrific storms which sometimes beat upon it.
Altogether there are seven sea-lights to be seen [Pg 168] gleaming out round the islands after night has fallen. There is this of the Bishop, away among the western rocks; the new light on Peninnis; the ruby glow from Round Island; the light-ship moored by the Seven Stones; the “Wolf” Lighthouse, half-way between Scilly and the mainland; and the lights of Longships and Pendeen, off the Cornish coast. ”

“ ST. MARY’S WHEN you come to Scilly you naturally land first upon St. Mary’s Island, for there is the quay, where the steamer from England unloads her passengers and cargo.
You may or you may not on first arriving feel capable of appreciating the picturesqueness of the stone walls and gateway of the quay, with Star Castle appearing on the hill behind; but through this gateway you must pass in order to enter the town. The pier now in use has only been built just over seventy years, and was lengthened twenty years ago ”

“ The desire for local bits of news must have been very much fostered in the islands by the difficulty there used to be in obtaining any from the outside world. It is said that Queen Elizabeth had ascended the throne for several months before the news of the death of Queen Mary arrived in Scilly! Nowadays the telegraph keeps them well in touch with everything that is going on, and acquaints them with the state of the markets for their produce. ”

“ Formerly Scilly was a favourite breeding-place for birds, but now they no longer employ it for this purpose, or do so to a very minor degree.
There are traces of streaming for tin in some of the isles, but no mineral veins are now known to run through the Scilly granite. Ferns abound, but [Pg 337] the islands are a little disappointing to the botanist, though to a florist they are a paradise.
To give a true idea of Scilly I must quote from Armorel, for such as have not the book:—​
“The visitor who comes by one boat and goes away by the next thinks he has seen this archipelago. ”

“ From Hugh Town one comes to all that is left of it by a road bordered (as most roads are in Scilly) by flower-fields on the right and on the left; past masses of fragrant wallflowers and beds of sweet violets, until the curve of Old Town Bay is reached, with the houses of Old Town grouped together at its farther end.
The Castle Rocks rise steeply from the midst of the houses, and up them one must clamber. There is nothing whatever to show what was the original way of entrance into the fortress, but probably it was on the east side, where the ground slopes up more gently. ”

“ Even the fishermen and farmers put on azure! especially those on St. Agnes, whose blue linen blouses are quite distinctive of the island.
[Pg 80]
VI
THE ISLAND-FOLK: THEIR WAYS AND CUSTOMS HERE in Scilly, where so many of the place names are Celtic and there is certainly some Celtic blood, one would expect to find abundant traces of folk-lore and superstition. But these are very few, and any that remain are fast dying out.
The people have been educated out of any old fancies they may have had, for education, as is well known, has a way of killing imagination. ”

“ There are about four dozen bunches to a box, and 240 boxes to a ton. Often the packing is continued all night and into the early hours of the morning. Steam-launches bring laden boats in from the out-islands by nine o'clock in the morning, and an hour later there are perhaps fifty tons of flowers aboard the steamer.
Such are now the chief activities of the Scilly Isles, and they, with fishing and piloting, make up the entire life of the archipelago. Formerly it was new potatoes, and before that a little kelp-burning, and before that a good deal of smuggling kept the islanders alive. ”

“ For then the men, women, and children would gather and build the kilns—pits scooped in the sand, measuring about seven feet across and three feet deep in the centre. While the men finished lining the sides of the kiln with stones, the women and girls would leap into it with armfuls of furze, which they lighted, and so, strewing the dried ore-weed upon it, built little by little into a blazing pile. The great sea-lights which ring the islands now make a brave show and one which the visitor carries away as the most enduring, most characteristic recollection of his sojourn ”

“ Scillonians read of it in the newspapers that occasionally come their way, and ask visitors what it is!
Every one works in Scilly. I have seen it stated that Scillonians never hurry. The person who made that statement can never have witnessed the desperate efforts often made to pack the flowers, and get them on to the quay at St. Mary's in time for the steamer, which, in winter, when the flower-harvest is at its height, sails only thrice a week. If the steamer is missed, that consignment is worth just nothing at all, for it has to be on sale in London the next morning. ”

“ The Scilly Islands are not less remarkable for rock-scenery than the mainland, and weirdly imitative piles of granite abound. There is a rock, or rather a heap of rocks, on Peninis Head, called the "Pulpit Rock," which at evening looks less like a pulpit than a naval gun; and elsewhere are the "Punch Bowl," on St. Mary's, the "Nag's Head," on St. Agnes, and many others. Not least among these is the Logan Rock, on Peninis Head, which weighs over three hundred tons, and "logs" in a most satisfactory manner, when once started. ”

“ THE FLOWER INDUSTRY IT is barely thirty years since first the sweet flower-fields began to cover the islands; but it is possibly nearly a thousand years since the original bulbs were introduced.
There are several reasons why it is thought likely that Scilly owes her semi-wild narcissus to the Benedictine monks, who brought some with them, so it is supposed, from the South of France, and planted them on this alien soil to which they have taken so kindly. ”

“ I have just come in from the wreck; we went to Bryher this afternoon. The ‘Minnehaha’ is this side of the Scilly Rock, resting on a plateau of rock not far from Hell Bay. She does not look a bit as if she were wrecked. I believe they are putting bags of air under her in hopes of raising her to float her off on some high tide. The divers are at work, but many do not expect to get her off unless they cut her in halves. One diver landed on an old wreck—one that had struck on Scilly some time ago. ”

“ A bunch in Scilly is a dozen blooms; and therefore those fortunate few took twopence-halfpenny apiece for narcissi. It seems almost too good to be true, and still the Scillonians (there are no "Scilly people," as Sir Walter Besant makes Armorel say, in his delightful "Armorel of Lyonesse") talk in reverential tones of those wonderful days.
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At that time the islanders were making a moderate livelihood out of growing early potatoes; I have seen the quays of St. Mary's heaped high with boxes of them. But nowadays let those grow "new potatoes" who will. ”