POPULAR IDEAS OF CORNWALL 7 moment you are over head and shoulders in the smother of their foam, and the next stand naked to the winds, with a villainous undertow sucking away the pebbles from beneath your twitching soles. Carew, Cornwall's best-known historian, speaks of the Duchy's " long, naked sides." The writer on geology in the Victoria County History says : " It has been calculated that a single roller of the Atlantic ground-swell (20 feet high) falls with a pressure of about a ton on every square foot." Places where such forces are felt are the Poles apart from the usual English seaside resort, sarcastic- ally described by " Q " as " A line of sea in front, a row of hotels and lodging-houses behind, all as flat as a painted cloth, with a brass band to help the morality." Yet even in Cornwall if you want sandy beach you can have it. There are sands that stretch for miles, firm and flat, such as the famous beaches at St. Ives ; and in most places, even the rocky ones, there is some provision made for bathing of a sort. I think the reason why a small proportion of people are disappointed in Cornwall is that the advertise- ments are focussed on one aspect only. In almost every one of them is the mildness of the climate insisted on, and this gives rise to semi-invalidish
