hurrying to take possession of our haunts. We are grateful to them for not having arrived before.
This year we are on the pilchard coast, according to promise. It is pleasant to see the opening of the herring fishery, and to go out for the night to get the first fish; but it is a different thing from being on the Cornish coast in pilchard season. The sea is like a different object, as seen from St. Agnes Bay in the west and Yarmouth Denes in the east. Here we have a horizon line so high that, when the sun is behind us in the early morning, the depth of the blue is as refreshing to the eye as the green vales seen from a mountain top, while the prodigious distance at which we can descry a white sail is a delicious marvel. We spend the early mornings on one or another of those high downs, being careful then and throughout the day never to be long out of sight of the Beacon, lest we should miss the approach of the pilchards. Beside the Beacon there is a patrol, as also on headlands north and south, and many eyes are turned up towards them from dawn to twilight. And when the flag is waved at last, what a scene it is upon the shore! We are usually on the spot in the shortest possible time from the first wave of the flag, and the signals of the watchmen show us where to look. There it is, that peculiar light on or in the water caused by the shoal of glistening fish! It is very far off yet—very far out, we should say; but we are told that the shallow waters will tempt the fish in, to meet their doom. The silent bustle below is very strange to unaccustomed eyes, the thronging to the beach, the stowing the gear, and then the launching of the boats without an unnecessary sound. This is why there is a flag instead of a gun signal, that the shoal may not take alarm. The very infants learn not to scream at the bustle, or the boys to shout. Very gently the men paddle and dip their oars; and very smoothly they seem to glide to their position ahead of the shoal. One in each boat still gazes up at the Beacon for direction. The excitement of the hour is prodigious, and all the more contagious for working in dumb show. If the fate of the nation hung on that hour the solemnity could hardly be greater. And who can wonder? If the shoal should slip by unseen, while the people were asleep, or at church, or if it should be startled from its course, the Catholic towns along the Mediterranean would be disappointed of thirty thousand barrels of their Lent diet, and the coast population of Cornwall would miss their yearly gains, and be in despair how to pass the winter. At best, times are not so good as they were. The Catholic nations do not keep Lent as formerly; and from one cause or another the fishery falls off, and there must be no further loss from preventible accident. But what a sight it is, even when the old men are saying it is nothing to what it once was! When the boats come heavily in, loaded to the gunwale with the shining heaps of fish, where can there be a stronger illustration of plenty! If we could find some higher headland, whence we might survey the whole coast, we should descry a thousand boats, each with its three or four men and boys, and thousands of women and girls on shore, busy cleaning, salting, and pickling,—very happy amidst the heat and the oily smell, and speculating on a happy return of the escaped part of the shoals in November. In the dog-days we keep clear of the curing department. We watch from the breezy headland, and we go down to see the first boat-loads, and witness the joy. After that, the less seen of the pilchards the better, till they appear as popular food in various parts of the world. It will soon appear whether the new government at Naples will allow the Neapolitans to buy our pilchards as they once did. It is possible that it might answer better to us to keep good deal of our fish at home this particular year, when meat is out of the question for a large proportion of the working-classes; but that is a question which will not be settled before the autumn. It seems strange to see the August sun shine upon, not the harvest-field, but the hay-field; but such a spectacle is not uncommon in Cornwall, any more than in Cumberland. In both, the condensing apparatus of mountains makes the season late, wide apart as they lie. While describing the appearances of the months, I often feel how extensive are the deviations from rule, as we understand it. In this very matter of the hay-harvest,—I have seen it going on from the beginning of April to the end of October. Any traveller who is fortunate enough to see Switzerland in April enjoys a feature of the Alps which later tourists miss. To them there is no motion among those mighty masses except the waterfalls; whereas he sees expanses of rippling grass, disclosing the passage of the winds. In the hot rock-bound valleys, the meadows are mown in April; and the scythe mounts higher and higher, till the last coarse upland hay is carried, just before our English mowing begins. In our northern counties, the grass is seldom all carried: August; and sportsmen who spend their autumn in Scotland see more or less hay still courting the sun and wind in the last days of October, which are there so brilliant. In one year I have known this to be the process of successive haymakings between Venice and Inverness.
The spirit of improvement is, however, bringing my countrymen into obedience to the seasons, even in the remote places of our islands. Even Cornwall the farmers and the miners talk of agricultural shows, and can take to heart what affects them most. Skirting and crossing their bare and dreary downs there are rich valleys and clefts where one meets the rural sights and sounds Old England; and in the most sunny and sheltered of these we find that it is really August. The women and children are giving the last thinning to the turnips. There is great rejoicing at the disappearance of the black caterpillar, which had made skeletons of half a field of root-plants, when a vast flock of starlings alighted upon it, and left all clean when it rose again. We see the cottagers trimming the scarlet-runners in their gardens, and putting in kale or cabbage wherever there is a spare foot of ground for it. We see the boys going after wasps’-nests in the evening,—partly to save the fruit from their ravages, and partly for the sake of the money the fishermen will give for the grubs; but chiefly perhaps for the fun. It is not good fun if the job