ore attention than it
deserves in comparison with other places near it; but the rocky and
turf-clad headland, with its traces of a far-distant past, is really
very beautiful, reaching like a couchant beast into the waves that are
sometimes of the purest blue, sometimes white with seething foam.
There was an old chapel on the neck of the promontory, and near are
remains of some rude granite huts. The popularity of the place has
brought a modern hotel.

[Illustration: GURNARD'S HEAD.

_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]

The cove of Porthglaze with its strange turret-like rocks, the coves
of Pendour and Zennor--all these are beautiful, and cannot be seen
from the road; the visitor must explore them by scrambling along the
cliffs, crossing summits and gorges and gullies, not deterred by
difficulties that to a careless or nervous climber might become
dangers. Only so can this fine coast be fully known.

In its situation the village of Zennor is like some of the wild, stony
parts of Ireland; but the cottages are too comfortable to be Irish.
Close to it stretches the stone-strewn moorland. Everywhere we have
proof of the abundance of stone, the scarcity of wood; hedges are of
rough boulders and pebbles; stiles are the charming Cornish
"gridirons"; there is a stream crossed by rugged little stone bridges.
The church is of the thirteenth century, restored in 1890; of course
there had been earlier restoration, for the tower is Perpendicular.
The dedication is to St. Sinara or Senar, a virgin probably of Irish
origin; but we know nothing about her, and little of the early
building itself, except that in 1270 the Bishop of Exeter granted it
to his college at Glassiney near Penryn, and the living seems to have
been starved. Zennor, indeed, was formerly known as the place "where
the cow ate the bell-rope," a sportive neighbourly reference to its
poverty and infertility. But the most famous feature of the church is
its carved mermaid. There are two good old bench-ends, now forming the
sides of sedilia, and of these the mermaid is one, represented with
comb, mirror, and fishy tail. The story tells that the men of Zennor
were very fine singers in the old days, and one, a squire's son who
sang in the choir, had so beautiful a voice that this mermaid came
all the way up from the sea-beach to hear him, Sunday after Sunday.
How she did it is not explained; but at last her importunity
prevailed, and the youth went away with her. She had lured h