Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/128

CHAPTER VII.

CALLINGTON

A town with a past—The principality of Gallewick—A royal residence—The Boy and the Mantle—Caradock and Tegau—Arthur and Guenever—Southill—S. Samson—Callington Church—The Borough—Dupath Well—Hingesdon Hill—S. Ive—Linkinhorne—Story of S. Melor—The Cheesewring—Camp—The Hurlers—Trethevy stone—S. Cleer—The Tamar—Arsenic manufacture—Poisoning —Production—Pentillie.

CALLINGTON is a town with a past; whether it has a future is problematical. Its past is remote; and if it has a future, that will be equally distant. Issachar was a strong ass couching between two burdens; and Callington lies low between the great bunches of Caradon and Hingesdon, two great masses of moor said to be rich in minerals. In the times of Callington's prosperity it throve on these lodes of tin and copper. But now the mines are abandoned and the population has leaked away. Should the two mountains be again worked, then the profits will go to Liskeard, seated on a railway, on one side, and to Gunnislake, planted on the Tamar, on the other.

Callington occupies the site of the royal residence of the kings of Cornwall as princes of Gallewick. Here Selyf and his wife S. Wenn had their residence, and here S. Cuby was born. Here it is asserted