CHAPTER VII
CORNWALL AND THE ATLANTIC COAST
On travelling westward into Cornwall we enter a region which is extremely critical in any enquiry as to the amount of change that the sea-level has undergone. As long as we were dealing with ancient river- channels opening into enclosed seas, like the North Sea or Irish Sea, it might be said that the depth to which the channel was cut was not necessarily governed by the sea-level. It might be governed by the level of an alluvial plain, which then extended for hundreds of miles further, and had its upper edge high above the sea-level.
This cannot be said in Cornwall, for there the sea-bed shelves rapidly into deep water, and the coast would not be far away, even were the land raised 200 feet or 300 feet. The rivers then as now must have flowed almost directly into the Atlantic Ocean, and their channels must then as now have cut nearly to the sea-level of the period.
The Cornish rivers yield most valuable information. It so happens that many of them bring down large quantities of tin ore from the granitic regions, and this ore being very heavy tends to find its way to the bottom of the alluvial deposits, out of which it is
