SANDY BEACHES OF THE NORTHERN COAST 95 station, facing Porthminster Bay, where terraces of houses exist for the sole purpose of providing accommodation, but there is a secondary part above Porthmeor Bay where rows of neat little houses claim their share. Down on the harbour front and curving round behind it is the old town with its indescribable jumble of what can scarcely be called architecture ; where outside staircases, and overhanging first-floor rooms with no visible means of support, twisted archways and narrow passages are inextricably mingled. The names of some of these places are quite delightful, Pudding- bag Lane, Chy-an-Chy, Street-an-Garrow, Bunkers' Hill, and the Digey, while away westward is Clodgy Point. The old inhabitants must have had a genius for nomenclature. St. Ives is the haunt of a colony of artists who rival those at Newlyn, and what with artists, fish- ing and visitors, the rest of the inhabitants manage somehow to live. But the fishing is not what it was ; gone are the golden days when the shoals of pilchards announced by the " huers " from the Malakoff bastion were sufficient to provide a good livelihood for the whole town : " The pilchards are expected on the coast in October, when their appearance gives rise to general
