54 CORNWALL usually the " trip " element occupies a very small part of the day and of the year ; and for the greater part of the time the place is strangely solitary. When the storms beat on the coast, driven by the wild west winds, the boom and clangour is heard as far inland as Lamorna Cove. The chief characteristic of the weather is its un- certainty ; there are clear bright intervals when the sea and sky are of electric blue and the head- lands are etched out on them in black, and then all in a moment the lowering wall of storm comes up visibly ; the outlines of everything are obliter- ated in one sweep, and a squall of hail as big as peas shrieks around, whitening the ground, then flies on in its mad course, to be succeeded by the joyous freshness of the clean-washed air and the glory of the vivifying sun. In winter time it is not safe to go two hundred yards from the hotel without a mackintosh, and yet just across the waste of heather along the little sheep tracks on the slopes, what wonderful views are to be seen in the steep-sided bays filled with a smother of foam, where the stones being driven irresistibly against one another grind off their harshnesses. It is a terrible coast, and nearly always, even
