ry to see them may reach the place
where the lost child was spirited away in an hour and a half's walk from
Truro, Cornwall's cathedral city, which is at the head of one of the
most beautiful rivers in the world.

The trip from Truro down the Truro river and the Fal to Falmouth
at any time of the year is a pleasurable experience that can never be
forgotten. Truro is an ideal centre for South Cornwall. Wild sea coast
and moorland, and woods and sheltered creeks, are all close at hand, yet
the city itself has the cloistered calm peculiar to all our cathedral
towns.

The tourist neglects Truro too much, for as a lover of the Duchy once
said: "It is the most convenient town in Cornwall; it seems to be within
an hour and a half's journey of any part of the county."

[Illustration: _Truro Cathedral_]

[Illustration]

THE GIANTS WHO BUILT THE MOUNT

St. Michael's Mount, that impressive castle-crowned pyramid of rock that
rises from the waters of Mounts Bay, was not always an island. In fact,
it is not always an island now. At low tide you may reach it from the
mainland along a causeway. But once upon a time the Mount stood in the
midst of a forest; its old name, "Caraclowse in Cowse," means "the Grey
Rock in the Wood," and that was at the time when the Giants built it.

Cormoran was one of the Giants; he lived in this great western forest,
which is now swallowed up by the sea, and there he determined to erect
for himself a stronghold that should rise well above the trees. So he
set to work to collect huge stones from the neighbouring granite hills,
and his new home grew apace.

But the labour of searching far afield for suitable stones, and of
carrying them to the forest and piling them one upon another, was a
wearying task even for a giant, and as Cormoran grew tired he forced his
unfortunate Giantess wife, Cormelian, to help him in his task, and to
her he gave the most toilsome of the labour.

Was there a gigantic boulder in a far part of the Duchy that Cormoran
coveted, unhappy Cormelian was sent to fetch it; and she, like a dutiful
wife, never complained, but went meekly about her work, collecting the
finest and biggest stones and carrying them back to the forest in her
apron. Meanwhile Cormoran, growing more lazy, spent much of his time
in sleep, waking up only very occasionally to admonish his wife or to
incite her to greater efforts.

One day, when Cormelian had been twice as far as the Bodmin moors