nd Land's End,
but the county also includes the Scilly Isles (q.v.), lying 25 m. W. by
S. of Land's End. No county in England has a stronger individuality than
Cornwall, whether in economic or social conditions, in history,
nomenclature, tradition, or even in the physical characteristics of the
land. Such individuality is hardly to be compassed within political
boundaries, and in some respects it is shared by the neighbouring county
of Devon, yet the traveller hardly feels its influence before passing
west of the Tamar.

Physically, Cornwall is a great promontory with a direct length of 75 m.
from N.N.E. to S.S.W., and an extreme breadth, at the junction with
Devonshire, of 45 m. The river Tamar here forms the greater part of the
boundary, and its valley divides the high moors of Devonshire and the
succession of similar broad-topped hills which form the backbone of the
Cornish promontory. The scenery is full of contrast. To the west of
Launceston the principal mass of high land rises to 1375 ft. in Brown
Willy, the highest point in the county. This district is broken and
picturesque, with rough _tors_ or hills and boulders. A remarkable pile
of rocks called the Cheese-wring, somewhat resembling an inverted
pyramid in form, is seen on the moor north of Liskeard. This district is
for the most part a region of furze and heather; but after passing
Bodmin, the true Cornish moorland asserts itself, bare, desolate and
impracticable, broken and dug into hillocks, which are sometimes due to
early mining works, sometimes to more modern search for metals. The
seventy miles from Launceston to Mount's Bay have been called not
untruly "the dreariest strip of earth traversed by any English high
road." There is hardly more cultivation on the higher ground west of
Mount's Bay, or in the Meneage or "rocky country," the old Cornish name
for the promontory which ends in the Lizard. Long combes and valleys,
however, descend from this upper moorland towards the coast on both
sides. These are in general well wooded, and, in the luxuriance of their
vegetation, strongly characteristic. The small rivers traversing them in
several cases enter fine estuaries, which ramify deeply into the land.
Such are, on the south coast, the great estuary of the Tamar, and other
streams, on which the port of Plymouth is situated (but only the western
shore is Cornish), the Looe and Fowey rivers, Falmouth Harbour, the most
important of the purely Cornish inlets a