FURTHEST WEST AND FURTHEST SOUTH 55 on the calmest day, when the wolves might be supposed to be sleeping, the sudden baring of a fang in the whitening of some jagged rock, a moment before invisible, shows the lurking danger. But what perhaps catches the imagination most sharply at that " raw edge " is the tradition of the Land of Lyonnesse, lying between here and the Scilly Isles. There seems very little foundation for this poetic fable and though, as already said, the roots and trunks of trees have been found in Penzance Bay and it is possible there may have been some landslip on a large scale in prehistoric times, there seems geologically nothing to point to a complete sub- mergence of miles of land at the extremity of Cornwall. Tradition speaks of a land covered with villages and churches indeed, no less than a hundred and forty churches all buried in the shifting water by reason of one great convulsion, and Tennyson has placed here the scene of Arthur's rule and his last battle : " For Arthur, when none knew from whence he came, Long ere the people chose him for their King, Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse, Had found a glen, grey boulder and black tarn."
