As to the picaroon or privateer, she was able to do little
in the matter, not daring to come so near the men-of-war as to take
a broadside, which her thin sides would not have been able to bear,
but would have sent her to the bottom at once; so that the English
men-of-war had no assistance from her, nor could she prevent the
taking the two merchant-ships. Yet we observed that the English
captains managed their fight so well, and their seamen behaved so
briskly, that in about three hours both the Frenchmen stood off,
and, being sufficiently banged, let us see that they had no more
stomach to fight; after which the English--having damage enough,
too, no doubt--stood away to the eastward, as we supposed, to
refit.
This point of the Lizard, which runs out to the southward, and the
other promontory mentioned above, make the two angles--or horns, as
they are called--from whence it is supposed this county received
its first name of Cornwall, or, as Mr. Camden says, CORNUBIA in the
Latin, and in the British "Kernaw," as running out in two vastly
extended horns. And indeed it seems as if Nature had formed this
situation for the direction of mariners, as foreknowing of what
importance it should be, and how in future ages these seas should
be thus thronged with merchant-ships, the protection of whose
wealth, and the safety of the people navigating them, was so much
her early care that she stretched out the land so very many ways,
and extended the points and promontories so far and in so many
different places into the sea, that the land might be more easily
discovered at a due distance, which way soever the ships should
come.
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