We had waited throughout one long rainy day at Helston —“remote, unfriended, melancholy¹, slow”— for a chance of finer weather before we started to explore the Lizard² promontory³. But our patience availed us little. The next morning, there was the soft, thick, misty⁴ Cornish rain still falling, just as it had already fallen without cessation for twenty-four hours. To wait longer, in perfect inactivity, and in the dullest of towns — doubtful whether the sky would clear even in a week’s time — was beyond mortal endurance. We shouldered our knapsacks, and started for the Lizard in defiance⁵ of rain, and in defiance of our landlady⁶’s reiterated⁷ assertions that we should lose our way in the mist, when we walked inland; and should slip into invisible holes, and fall over fog-veiled precipices⁸ among the rocks, if we ventured to approach the coast.

What sort of scenery we walked through, I am unable to say. The rain was above — the mud was below — the mist was all around us. The few objects, near at hand, that we did now and then see, dripped with wet, and had a shadowy visionary look. Sometimes, we met a forlorn cow steaming composedly by the roadside — or an old horse, standing¹¹ up to his fetlocks in mire¹², and sneezing vociferously¹³ — or a good-humoured peasant, who directed us on our road, and informed us with a grin, that this sort of “fine rain” often lasted for a fortnight. Sometimes we passed little villages built in damp holes, where trees, cottages, women

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