g him. From here
to the mouth of the Fal there is a raised beach, more or less perfect;
in fact, all along this Cornish coast there are plentiful signs that
the shore contours have been by no means permanent. When we reach the
Helford River we have come to another rival of the Fal, with creeks
and inlets, wooded banks and fields, differing in size but hardly in
degree of beauty. Strictly, the name Helford only applies to the
little ferry town; the river is the _Hel_, or Hayle, and affords
comfortable harbourage to many craft. There is a literary association
here of some interest; for Kingsley tells us how Hereward the Wake
sailed up this river to Gweek, hungry for adventure. "He sailed in
over a rolling bar, between jagged points of black rock, and up a tide
river which wandered and branched away inland like a land-locked lake,
between high green walls of oak and ash, till they saw at the head of
the tide Alef's town, nestling in a glen which sloped towards the
southern sun. They discovered, besides, two ships drawn up upon the
beach, whose long lines and snake-heads, beside the stoat carved on
the beak-head of one, and the adder on that of the other, bore witness
to the piratical habits of their owner. The merchants, it seemed, were
well known to the Cornishmen on shore, and Hereward went up with them
unopposed; past the ugly dykes and muddy leats, where Alef's slaves
were streaming the gravel for tin ore: through rich alluvial pastures
spotted with red cattle; and up to Alef's town. Earthworks and
stockades surrounded a little church of ancient stone, and a cluster
of granite cabins, thatched with turf, in which the slaves abode." If
this is a picture of Gweek, the church must be imaginary; the nearest
churches are those of Constantine and of Mawgan. This is
Mawgan-in-Meneage, so called to distinguish it from the
Mawgan-in-Pydar, near Newquay. The Meneage, which we find affixed to
several other parish names immediately north of the Lizard, clearly
derives from the Cornish _men_--a stone--and denotes the "stony
district"; just as Roseland signified the heath or moorland district.
Whenever we find _man_ in an early place-name, we can feel pretty
sure that it has no reference to the human species. Defoe, who took
Helford in the way of his journey to the Land's End, speaks of it as
"a small but good harbour, where many times the tin-ships go in to
load for London; also here are a good number of fishing-vessels for
the pil