46 CORNWALL castle, and in passing over to the peninsula visitors cross the first line of defence or earthworks, though few would notice it. From Penzance we might run out by any one of the diverging roads across the peninsula, and be sure of coming upon some relic of the most ancient race inhabiting these islands. By way of Madron we should pass the Lanyon Quoit or Cromlech, a great slab of rock 18 feet long, supported on three other slabs which are just a little too low to allow a man to stand upright beneath it. In 1816 it fell or was blown down ; before this a mounted man could sit under it. When Lieutenant Goldsmith in 1824 committed the silly trick of upsetting the Logan Rock, and was condemned by the Admiralty to rebalance it at his own expense, the apparatus brought down to the duchy for the purpose was also used to replace the cap of the Cromlech, though why it should be of less height now than before is not known. Amid the bleak hills around are to be found con- stant remains of ancient British villages, rather in the manner of the Picts' houses of Scotland. That the strange people who lived in them thrashed corn for food and kept cattle, there is plenty of evidence. They lived in these little beehive huts, which were
