Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-07-05
TRAMP In CORNWALL.
Wakeman's Loiterings in the Ancient
Seaport Town of St Ives.
GLIMPsES OF GLORIOUS SCENERY.
A Place Famous in the Nursery Rhymes
and Pretty to,See.
THE FOLK ALL CLEANLY AND THRIFTY

CORRESPONDENTS OF THE DrsPArcH.l
ST. IVES, CORNWALL, June 1S.-In the
tender realm of nursery rhyme lore there is
no pleasanter mysticism than that which
clings to the pretty riddle:
AS I was going to st. Ives
Imet man with seven wives.
Each wife had seven sacks;
Each sack had seven cats;
Each cat had seven kits;
Kits, cats. sacks and wives
How many were there going to St. Ives?
So deep and lasting are the impressions of
childhood that as 1 tramped around the
southern reach of st. Ives bay from the
pretty hamlet of St Earth, found myself
uhconsciously scanning the highway. far
,head for this same wicked old fellow who
has pnzzled the head of millions of little
. folk. But he was not to be seen any more
than the exits, cats, sacks and wives" are
TO be taken in to account in the olden
riddle.
In truth, no man, woman or child was
visible upon the white and circling high
wa. st. Earth nestled there silent and
apparently deserted against the copse and
the hillside. The tide was out in the bay.
A few fshermens' boats rocked idly beside
messy old piers. Long reaches of sand
showed here and there shining and brown,
like the backs of huge marine monsters
Gulls wheeled lazily above. Land and sea
fowl chartered in the circling marsh edges,
or dug in the sand and ooze. Only to the
north, through the rift between the head
lands, was there single sign of life. On the
sapphire blue of the Irish sea there were
two far, white sails.
One of England's oldest Towns.
But 1 knew the ancient city lay behind
the huge headland, and quickening my
pace 1 soon stood at its sea-iace and its
highest activity. Here the highway tum-
bles into one of the oldest old towns in all
Europe No wonder that Londoners are
coming this, to them, tremendous journey
of $50 miles tor summer lettering, and the
grand promontories behind the town are
filling up with brilliant terraces; or that
artists swarm to the remote place for its bits
of antique in architecture, its quaint group
ings of fisher folk, and its outreachlngs OF
wild and glorious Cornish coast.
There are pictures and pic lures OF the
Bay of Naples. But were L an artist, 1
would stake nv hope of renown on the
picture l saw as / stood above the bay and
ancient town of ST. Ives. The bay itself
faces the north. At your feet are purple
heather and waving ferns parted from the
crystalline water by glistening sands. To
the right and east, the green hillocks of the
Eastern Shore. Then the broad yellow
beach of Porth-cocking, or the Foresand.
Dominating this is the great headland of
Pednolva Beyond, cleaning like field of
gold, are the magnificent sands of Porth-
minister: and further still, the headland and
rocky islet of Godrevy, with the latter's
white lighthouse setting cameo-like between
the purple of the sea walls and the tremul-
Gus blue of the ocean.
Beautiful Glimpses of the Ocean.
Before you, the silent shimmering bay,
with a few white-winged craft scarcely
moving, it seems, the distance is SO great