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Carew, Richard, 1555-1620

"The Survey of Cornwall And an epistle concerning the excellencies of the English tongue"

Wherefore the Cornish wonder-gatherer,
thus descrybeth the same,
BE thou thy mother natures worke,
Or proofe of Giants might:
Worthlesse and ragged though thou shew,
Yet art thou worth the sight.
This hugy rock, one fingers force
Apparently will moue;
But to remooue it, many strengths
Shall all like feeble prooue.
Helston, in Cornish, Hellaz, in English, the greene hall, is a well
seated and peopled towne, priuiledged, secundum vsum, with the rest,
and one of the 4. Coynage places.
Vnder it runneth the riuer Lo, whose passage into the sea, is thwarted
by a sandy banke, which forceth the same to quurt back a great way,
and so to make a poole of some miles in compasse. It breedeth a
peculiar kind of bastard Trought, in bignesse and goodnes exceeding
such as liue in the fresh water, but comming short of those that
frequent the salt.
The foreremembred bank serueth as a bridge, to deliuer wayfarers,
with a compendious passage, to the other side; howbeit, sometimes with
more haste then good speed: for now and then, it is so pressed on
the inside, with the increasing riuers waight, and a portion of
the vtter sand, so washed downe by the waues; that at a sudden,
out breaketh the vpper part of the poole, and away goeth a great
deale of the sand, water, and fish: which instant, if it take any
passenger tardy, shrewdly endangereth him, to flit for company:
and some haue so miscarried.


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