CORNWALL quote from Swinburne, we may indeed call Scilly " A small sweet world of wave-encompassed wonder ". But there are other admirers of Scilly to be quoted. Mr. Baring-Gould says : " With its amount of sunshine, with its equable tempera- ture, and its air charged with ozone, I believe Scilly will be the sanatorium of the future ". The late Sir Walter Besant loved the isles dearly. He said : " At first the islands dis- appoint ; the scenery is small ; the roadstead is broad; no point is higher than i6o ft.; most of the cliffs and rocks are indeed very much less ; but day by day as one is borne along from one islet to another, through narrow channels where the dark water races and roars ; across broad stretches of ocean ; along white sands, under black cliffs, with a breeze that never fails; over shallows of sapphire hue ; the islands take such a hold of the imagination and the affec- tions that they can never be forgotten or lost ". The name Scilly is something of a perplexity. It has been variously explained as deriving from a Celtic word sulleh, the " sun rocks " ; from s'l^a or selU, meaning " conger eels " ; and from the ancient race of the Silures. Many authorities think the latter derivation the true one, but we are still left in the dark as to the origin and meaning of the term Silures. But the original forms of the name are to be considered. The Romans usually called the isles SiUi-ni-r, but 270
