THE INLETS OF THE SOUTH COAST 117 Polperro, than which no quainter thing exists in Britain. You drop down, down, down, to Polperro until you can look up and see the cows grazing high overhead as you might in an Alpine valley, and then you plunge into the miniature confused streets of the town, and following them at random may or may not come out at the little port, and walking along the rude jetty see the outer harbour and the small beach. The smell of fish is strong in the air ; the fishing-boats lie in neat rows, supported by legs to prevent their heeling over when the tide runs out. The houses cluster on the steep hillside in terraces, and below them a collec- tion of blue-guernseyed stout-booted men, with wholesome sea-tanned faces, lounge about as if they were the idlest set in Christendom, though their work demands the hardest toil and greatest endurance of any calling man can follow. Polperro is strangely like a little town in Brittany and has something about it also which recalls the inland villages tucked away in the spurs of the Alps or Apennines above the Riviera. It is easy to imagine that anyone having visited it and trying to recall where he had looked upon such a scene, would search his memory for tours abroad and never think of England.
