XIII St. Martin’s and Its Neighbours
Nowhere do the flowers bloom so early as on the sunny southern slopes of St. Martin’s Isle; and as one draws near from St. Mary’s one may see the varied colours of the flower-patches, from palest lemon through all the shades of yellow down to deep orange, clothing the face of the hills.
It is a great advantage to St. Martin’s, this long series of slopes on the south, facing towards the roadstead, warm and sunny and sheltered. At one time the drifting sand from the flats had so covered the soil as to make much of it barren, but it seems fertile enough now. The sand-flats extend for a mile in the direction of St. Mary’s, and at very low water of a spring-tide it is possible to walk across them, and to wade through the remaining mile of separating sea.
The Eastern Islands are well seen from the flowery slopes. They run in pairs of “Great” and “Little”—Ganilly, Ganinick, Arthur, and Innisvouls—there is a Great and a Little of each. Hanjague, the “sugar-loaf” island, away to the very east, stands quite alone—in name, and character, and situation. I remember being asked by a boatman soon after I first came to Scilly whether I knew “Ann Jigg.” I knew the sugar-loaf well by sight and its name on paper, but the orthodox pronunciation was strange to me, and I replied with puzzlement that I had never met the lady!
The northern slopes of St. Martin’s, exposed to all the fury of the Atlantic gales, are almost uncultivated, possessing one little flower-farm only, at Pernagie. On this coast, “at the back of St. Martin’s,” there are caves which were formerly thought to be old tin-workings.
It is a wild and beautiful and lonely coast, with rounded bays, shut in by rocky headlands, and slopes clad with heather and gorse between the patches of bare grey granite. The bold mass of St. Martin’s Head is nearly the highest point of the islands, and from it what old Leland calls “the very westeste point of Cornwalle” can often be clearly seen. The Cornish hills are plainly visible on a very clear day, even from an open boat in the roads.
On the summit of St. Martin’s Head is the “Day-mark,” built in 1683 by Thomas Ekins, the first steward of the Godolphins to reside on the islands. It is a round tower with a conical top, painted all the way up with alternate bands of white and Indian red, and it is quite the most hideous object to be seen in Scilly! But we must forgive its ugliness, for no doubt it has done good service to seamen in times past; and though the neighbouring lighthouse on Round Island has made it less necessary, still it is a “land-mark,” and as such it must remain. It was used as a signal-station in the last French War, a century ago; near by are ruins of the houses occupied by the soldiers.
These downs around St. Martin’s Head are beautiful in their autumn garb of purple; they are no less beautiful in the spring, when the heather forms a carpet of velvety-brown, here slightly greenish, there again rich as burnt-sienna in colour, with bushes of gorse scattered about upon it; and around them always lies the blue and emerald circle of the sea.
St. Martin’s men are great potters, and divide their time between this work and farming. Piloting used to occupy them a great deal; and still standing all along the shore, but fast falling into ruin, are the rows of sheds where the pilot-boats were kept.
White Island, the most northerly of the Scillies and a wild, weird spot, can be reached on foot from St. Martin’s at low tide. It contains yet a third “Piper’s Hole,” better known as “Underland Girt,” a dark and gloomy chasm, frequented by sea-birds.
There are three little rocks off the south coast of St. Martin’s, which bear the sinister name of “The Three Damned Sinners.” One can fancy that the name goes back to the time when superstition was rife in the islands, and when it was thought that the spirits of the shipwrecked who had done evil in this life would never rest; and the shrieking and skirling of birds around these rocks would have been attributed to the yelling of restless spirits, till the rocks themselves came to be called after them.
I do not know why it is, but St. Martin’s seems to be less visited than the other islands. It certainly is not less attractive, and those who go there soon find that it has a charm of its own. Its inhabitants are very proud of their island, and very willing to give a welcome to strangers.
There is at least one man on St. Martin’s who has never been to the mainland, and to whom motor-cars and trains would be a great novelty. For motor-cars are never seen in Scilly except in the form of wreck-salvage! And trains are, of course, unknown. But perhaps he would as resolutely refuse to be surprised as the sturdy Scillonian who, on his first visit to England, would only say, “Everything is very like Scilly, only bigger, and more of ’em.”
St. Helen’s Island lies off to the north-west of St. Martin’s; but St. Helen has by rights neither part nor lot in this island which bears her name. It appears to have been originally dedicated to St. Elidius, who, as William of Worcester tells us, was buried in Scilly, and very likely on this island.
In Leland’s time the name had been shortened to St. Lide’s, and the sex of the Saint was already forgotten, for he speaks of “Saynct Lides Isle, wher yn tymes past at her sepulchre was gret superstition.”
St. Elidius was Bishop of Llandaff in the sixth century, and during the yellow plague he went to stay in Brittany with his friend St. Sampson, the Bishop of Dol, to whom the neighbouring island of Samson is dedicated. He was in his old age called Elios, “for that his doctrine shone like the sun.” This name, St. Elios, appears to have become, by different stages, St. Teilo, St. Dillo, and St. Dellan, whence it easily passed into St. Helen.
Dr. Borlase mentions a church on St. Helen’s as the most ancient Christian building in Scilly. He thus describes it as it stood in 1756:—
“It consists of a South Isle, 31 feet 6 inches long, by 14 feet 3 inches wide, from which two arches, low and of uncouth style, open into a North Isle, 12 feet wide by 19 feet 6 inches long. There are two windows in each Isle; near the Eastern window in the North Isle projects a flat stone, to support, I suppose, the image of the saint.”
Little but the foundations of the church can now be traced, which is all the more to be regretted, since it probably dated back to the eighth century, or earlier. Many of the stones were taken away early in the last century, to build a garden wall for a naval officer stationed in the island.
St. Helen’s Pool was appointed the quarantine station in 1756. The Council of Scilly had appealed two years before that it might be made so, in the stead of New Grimsby Sound, where the presence of infected persons was a great source of danger to the inhabitants of Tresco and Bryher. The Pesthouse on St. Helen’s, standing deep in bracken, is now in a state of ruin, and it is hardly safe to enter on account of the falling of slates through holes in the roof. It seems a gruesome sort of place to have been used by picnic-parties, but in its better days, we are told, they often boiled their kettles in the hospital ward!
Rats abound on St. Helen’s, as a foolish pair of honeymooners discovered when they went to spend the night there a short time ago. In the morning they found their basket of provisions had been quite emptied by the rats, “and it’s a wonder the rats had not eaten them up too,” said she who told the tale.
Not far from the Pest-house there is a deep well of water; and the surface of the island is scattered thick with limpet-shells—two facts which may seem to have little connection, but which I have reason to associate.
We had come to St. Helen’s by sailing-boat, and I was preparing to sketch Round Island from the northern shore when I found my water-bottle was empty. This was a great damper, for the water in the old well was much too far down to be reached without a rope. But we happened to notice the limpet-shells. There had been a heavy shower in the night, and every little shell was brimful of rain-water, so by collecting a number of them and straining out the dead ants, my wants were easily supplied.
We wondered whether modern scientists might not consider this decoction of ants a likely cure for rheumatism, on account of the formic acid it must have contained!
There are fine views of Round Island and Menavawr from St. Helen’s, the best that can be had, unless one went quite close in a boat, and this is only possible in very calm weather.
Menavawr, with its three jagged peaks, is one of the grandest of the barren rocks, and towers up to a height of 140 feet, on one side almost sheer from the sea. It is cleft with two channels, the wider of which, like that which divides the Scilly Rock, can be navigated, with great care, after a long spell of calm weather.
The name means simply “Great rock,” from the Celtic “men,” a rock, and “vawr,” great; but it has been corrupted to “Man-o’-War,” from a fancied resemblance to a ship in full sail, and this is the only pronunciation one ever hears.
It is but a barren rock, but it is wondrously beautiful. It is seamed and scored and weatherworn with thousands of lines and markings, and touched with many tints of colour, which make it look in the sunshine like a mighty precious stone with the light gleaming on its facets.
And round this opalescent jewel the sea-birds are ever whirling and skirling, and flying in and out of its crannied sides; and round it, too, the sea is ever dashing and foaming, as the waves chase each other through the channels that divide it.
Round Island, less than a century ago, was described as “utterly inaccessible,” and “truly appalling”; but now, with a turn of Fortune’s wheel, its character is quite different. For more than twenty years it has had a claim to be reckoned as one of the inhabited islands, since two men are always living on its rocky summit. They are the keepers of the lighthouse, which flashes forth its ruby light as soon as darkness begins to fall.
Scarcely a blade of grass will grow on this barren rock; and it is said that the few rabbits which exist there have learnt to gnaw bones like a dog, on account of the scarcity of other food.
One hundred and sixty rough-hewn steps lead up to the top of the island, but even with this artificial aid it is not an easy ascent.
Compared with the Bishop, this is a paradise to live upon; for the men have plenty of room to walk about on the rock, instead of being always confined in a slender tower, and the storms do not assail them with such terrifying violence.