Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/176

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128
CAMELFORD


not a question we can answer with certainty, for we know that the same methods of construction were observed to a comparatively late period, and that in the Isles of Lewis and Harris, in the Hebrides, precisely similar huts are even now inhabited, and are certainly in many cases of recent construction. But what is extremely interesting to find is the existence in Cornwall of these beehive habitations of man exactly like those found in Scotland; and in Cornwall, as in Scotland, associated with rude stone monuments of pre-Christian times. In the Hebrides the beehive huts still occupied are not stone-roofed. The roof is of straw, and is renewed every year because of the value as manure of the peat smoke that saturates it. But there remain earlier beehive huts in Lewis of exactly the same nature as those in Cornwall. It is therefore by no means unlikely that both belong to the primitive race that first colonised our isles.

Camelford has given a title, and that to a remarkable man, Lord Camelford, the duellist. He was the great-grandson of Governor Pitt, who acquired an ample fortune in India. He was born in 1775, and even when a boy was violent and unmanageable. He was put in the navy, but owing to his refractory conduct was treated with severity by his captain, Vancouver, and on his return home, meeting Vancouver in Bond Street, was only prevented from striking his captain by his brother throwing himself in the way.

In town he was incessantly embroiled. On the night of April 2nd, 1799, during a disturbance