SANDY BEACHES OF THE NORTHERN COAST 99 rate, level for Cornwall. At one end is Towan Head not unlike St. Ives' Island, and from thence the bay runs in great scoops or curves cut off from each other except at low tide. These sandy bays, surrounded by high cliffs, resemble to some extent those at Broadstairs, and the aspect of Newquay is the same as that at Broadstairs for it faces mainly north. It is airy and spacious and light, and its signmark of originality lies not in its front so much as in its back, the long estuary of the Gannel River which forms a kind of back-door entrance. But villas and boarding-houses are rapidly springing up along the Gannel estuary, facing south, with their backs to Newquay proper, and thereby a bit of very fine wild land is being spoilt. There are excellent golf-links along Fistral Bay and huge hotels have sprung up to reap what harvest of visitors there may be, indeed it is a stock joke to say of New- quay, as may be said with much truth about Oban, " every second house is an hotel." No one who looks at the map even cursorily can fail to note the extraordinary number of places in Cornwall beginning with the prefix St. This would be natural in Roman Catholic Ireland but it is whimsical in Methodistical Cornwall. It is, however, but one of the many signs of the very
