"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND. (Specially written for the Witness Ladies' Page.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2690, 4 October 1905, Page 75

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND. (Specially written for the Witness Ladies' Page.)

FROM PADDINGTON TO CORNWALL.

•The dawn of my holiday — and rain. After weeks of blazing sunshine and oppressive heat — rain pouriag in torrents! •But with a packed trunk and seat in tlie Great Western express already booked tliere was no help for it, and at 8 o'clock the porter called for the luggage, and a «tart was made. Paddington Station at 9 .o'clock that wet, summer morning presented, an" indescribable scene of bustle — a small crowd of people stood waiting their turn outside the many booking offices for .(Wales, Scotland, Devonshire, Cornwall, etc. It -is estimated that half a million people left London that week end, and •- some thousands were bustling about that morning under- the' great domed rcof of Paddington, : securing. seats in the -various •expresses, thronging the - platforms, and porters" in generous , eagerness to secure their attention to luggage. Hun.'clreds of ,tho3e who bad omitted the pre- . caution of booking a seat the previous day, .and of paying the extra shilling, found no .unsecured seat in the various expresses, and, wiser and sadder, were left repenting "for a later and slower train. ■ "No. 70; this way, please." and No. 70 iound herself comfortably seated, with a mind at ease- about the luggage, and a prospect' of seven, hours' travelling express speed through a country much talked of, [but as- yet unknown. The morning was .warm though wet, and the waiting interval ■was pleasantly occupied in watching the tusy human hive, buzzing here, there, and everywhere in excited endeavour to find their sea.ts, and to dispose of themselves and their belongings, assisted by self-pos-sessed porters. Piles of luggage, which "looked almost impossible to deal with m the allotted time and space, were skilfully trundled along the platforms and packed into .the train, and punctually to the advertised time the guard signalled, the great engine .gave a grunt, as it, were, of satisfaction at •prospect of the feat to be accomplished, and ;alowly, imperceptibly almost, the station and waiting trains seemed" to glide "past: a shriek of exultation from the iron •monster .rushing to freedom, and we were "off!,. The' long serpentine, corridor train .Sfound itself in- and out, intersecting rails, .bearing its living freight, pale of face, weary of the city din and labour, to where .. fresh breezes "blew over moor and hill and .stream. "And God took the carpet of the -earth and drew it from beneath her. First, -He drew' the city" . . . tie crowded, wonderful "city,* with its teeming, ' tired millions, aiid soon it lay •behind; its mystery and its power potent to draw even the eyes that were, aching: with its labour to look back jwlth pride . at its receding towers and domes. And all the streets and towns of the- suburbs raced to it.; the parks and ■green fields danced after the suburbs; and ..with a. snort of derision the engine tore past 'the last outlying station, which set up a mad scamper to reach the suburb — and there' were ho more houses, except a farmhouse nestling among trees, and we were in the open, emancipated — in a word, -tired; faces turned- to the windows with dawning interest in. life again. People spoke- again ; a waiter and waitress in neat uniform came along the corridor and inquired at each compartment if there .were any there for lunch, which would b& served in the dining saloon from 12. till 2. 'But most of the third-class passengers had supplied their own luncheon baskets ; it - was left for the hundred or so first second class to keep the dining saloon crowded and the waiters as busy as in a restaurant. _- On and on, gathering speed, till Bath was reached — ancient Bath, built on a hill and embedded in tress. As we steamed .through the station, and looked at its church towers and grey old houses, stately and picturesque, its Old World history and its fame as a retiring place for an old-time aristocratic London was not contradicted, and the new Bath spreading ,irp- and down the hills bespoke its present importance and favour. But the old town, with the romance of its royal and historical ' associations, passed into the distance, and we were in- wooded dales, lying under the light of the glorious sunshine', which had burst through the clouds and dispelled them. Green and fertile and fragrant as only /-English country can be, the landscape spread, before and around, widening as we approached and passed through. its wooded undulations. On and on, then steeper cliffs, then Bristol and the sea ; a moving panorama of Bristol on the hill, of ships and boats ; then on and out into the wide country again, hour after hour, with ever-varying, ever-changing scene ; through one county with its. characteristic features to another; through Essex, Wiltshire, Berkshire, without a stop ; through Somersetshire to Devon, with a glimpse of Exeter and its famous cathedral among the hilly • towns en route. Just where green .Somersetshire ends I could not say, bnfe I knew 'when we were in Devonshire — land of hrls and streams. A thousand low hills spread right and left, with their wooded vales intersected by winding red lanes and /'silver streams; miles and miles and miles of undulating country, all cultivated and >in its characteristic English setting of forest. Hundreds of the low hilltops wore a golden crown of ripe corn, the slopes were alternate gold and green, and everywhere the red lanes twisting about the valleys' with their green hedges, looking as though Nature had twined . garlands about the hills and placed laurel wreaths on their brow. Now -the red lanes would dip into a forest-embowered vale and be lost in a stream ; now wind to some old farm or stately mansion in a fold of a hill, tike red ribbons they twisted, linking moor with valley and meadow with crest, and the sheep _ browsing in the green grass had wool tipped red, as the cows, tho

result of the red soil. It was lovely whichever way you turned — a feast of colour. Wherever the naked eai'th. was so?n tlie red road or cliff glowed among the embowering green, and the sky was deeply blue. Trees and hills and streams close at hand and far as the eye could reaoh, around and beyond — not a desolate spot in all those miles of beauty which opened out as we approached. Now we . skirted a harvest hill, now passed through a valley forest of oak and beech and mountain ash; now beneath the train window was a stream covered with water-lilies , now over a gentla eminence we looked down on a sea of little hills, one wave of gold, the -next of verdant green, and everywhere the intersecting red lanes and tho garland-like hedges ; then the red sheep again and the red cliffs, and bow the ■forest again and the fern and rush-fringed streams ! On and on, the panor&na opening, widening, to vistas rolling out to right and left, wooded, verdant, fragrant, rich in colour and blossom and foliage, till at la-st we were at Dawlich, with the blue and silver waves of the bay dancing on one side of the train and the red forestclad cliffs on the other; but still no stop, and we wound round the bay and on to the mouth of the Teign, and there, built high upon the cliffs and overlooking the wide expanse of bhie water, was beautiful Teignmouth, a picturesque aaid favourite watering-place, built of grey and white stone. Soon tha steeples and turrets were behind us, farther and farther a-nay, and there were rocks and trees again. The rocks were more rugged and the sheep were whiter, the earth was not so red ; but the trees and the forest were everywhere, and &t last the train slackened speed, and we saw th« wide bay of Plymouth, with its shipping and white-winged yachts. Here some of the passangers alighted, and, their luggage disposed of, we were oil again, and presently passed! Devonport — a picturesque seaport between fo>rest-clad hills, the bosom of its blue waters picturesque with craft of all descriptions, and nestling in the shadow of the hills and tJrees quaint or handsome grey stone houses, looking down on the bay. We did not stop at this port of Devon, but passed on into Cornwall, and now more often the engine strained at an ascent or descended deeper into the valley. Imperceptibly the characteristics of the country changed ; we lost the vivid loveliness of Devonshire, aaid found the wilder, more rugged, beauty of Cornwall; the red earth was replaced by granite rocks, the hills took a wider sweep, their crests rose higher ; the valleys were longer and deeper, their sHoulders bore larger fiorests of oak and beech, their laps were full of forest ; the streams ran swifter, gorge-like, over boulders and fern, between granite rocks.

Cornwall is a lesser New Zealand — New Zealand in an English setting of its incomparable trees. Mountain ash, oak, beech, maple, chestnut, pine, cedars, an endless variety, in clumps, in twos and threes standing alone in picturesque grandeur — trees everywhere, nnd the velvety lawn-like grass robbing the hills of sombrene<=s, forbidding barrenness. Now some stately mansion of granite and stone overlooked from its wooded eminence a tiny grey-stone hamlet scarce visible through trees, its toy church beside a stream ; a moment, and it disappeared, and the rolling hills were unpeopled, till the woods melted into the gold of coin slopes and a farmhouse appeared — and so, on and on. I had delicious tea in the saloon, with the low, wide windows revealing an expansive view of country on either side, country grand and beautiful, just falling short of majestic and magnificent.

At Truro I alighted, and the great express thundered on its few more miles to Pen2ance, near Land's End — the edge of England.

My host and hostess met me at Truro, from which we took a branch train to Redruth. Redruth is the district of the famous tin and copper lirines, and the granite quarries, and soon the austere nature of the country made itself felt : the trees were fewer, and the great earns and piles of rock towering on all sides ; disused shafts and all the odd, strange erections known to the miner where scattered about the valleys, which, where they were not ironbound and desolate* with the miners' desecration, were gold-crusted with the harvest, ripe for the reapers. But all the little intersecting streams were red with iron and tin wash from the sluices of the mines; indeed, one of them running for nine miles through the country is called the red rker, and tints the harbour where it falls into the sea.

The whole district is rich in ores and granites, and passing Camborne it was pointed out as an. old mining village, underneath which the oarth is tunnelled fathoms deep. Hayle, St. Agnes, Lanner, Troon, Penmarth, Stithians, aie all townships nestling among the hills about Redruth, born of the mines and quariies around the centre of the district, which we X'eachcd in early evening. The rain clouds had gathered again as we walked through the little town, which was a mining village before Charles 11. In the days of Edward 111 it was a town of some importance, for a charter was granted William Basset (whose descendants are ftill squires of their estate) to hold a market several days a week, and two or three fairs a year ; and in the battles of Cressy and Poictiers, in the expeditions to France, the names of Basset, Ciuwys, and Carew are very prominent, and the "Labouring tinners in thesp parts" (miners) are mentioned in a petition "To the King's most excpllent Majestic.'' William of Worcester's "Itinerary" (1478) refers to Redruth by the name "Super Mare A

including it in the list of places visited by Thomas de Waar in 1476, when it is called Redruth. Here William Murdock (a native of Ayrshire) constructed the first locomotive in 1782. There is a tablet on the old house formeily occupied by him —

WILLIAM MURDOCK Lived in This House 1782—1798. Made the First Locomotive Here, and Tested it in 1784. Invented Gas-Lighting, and Used it in This House in 1792.

So with Cam Brae and the old castle swept by the clouds scudding over the hills, I reached raj destination, j> as sing through the quaint little town that has grown from the old village. I lift my eyes from this page to the hill called Cam Brae, now clpar and distinctly oiitlined in the sunshine, with every line of the castle traced against the blue sky. London is far away with its bustle and din — this is the heart of Wesley's country ; the famou? Gwenner pit ; where bo preached, is within walking distance, — and the country still echoes the stern, though simple piety which he taught. The Cockney twang and cultured speech are lost in Cornish dialect, which still lingers among those to whom Cornwall is home. Even now I am interrupted by a soft, persuasive voice,

"Do cc give el up, dear. Ec be turnin' holiday upside down. Iss, do cc give et up an come along weth we, do cc now."

(To be continued.)