exist there. Along one side is a strip of sand, and from that the floor
slopes upwards at an angle of about sixty degrees. Whether by years of
practice the women have attained such perfection in the art of
balancing their bodies that they go to sleep on the slanting rock
without fear of falling, or whether they rest on the sand (wet when I
saw it from a late storm), I was not informed; but it is evident that
they know no comfort at any time. When I came suddenly upon the cave
one morning in October, the smouldering ashes of a drift-wood fire, a
kettle, a teapot, and two cups were dotted about just inside. Further
up the floor their 'cupboards'--a couple of iron boilers--were
standing, and in a niche near the fire was a pipe--short, dark, and
odorous. The women who have made this their dwelling are Irish widows,
'born in Ireland and married in Ireland,' as one of them said. They are
between fifty and sixty years of age, and for the last thirty years
have managed to gain a subsistence by gathering limpets week after week
and taking them to Plymouth. When the sea is rough they obtain few or
no fish, but under favourable circumstances the two sometimes get
fourteen shillings a week between them. In fine weather, when from Rame
Head to Looe Island the sea lies calm and glistening under a summer
sky, this smoke-blackened cave is an uninviting hovel; and in the
winter, especially when there is a gale from the south-east, the women
must be almost blown out of the hollow or frozen to death. On such
occasions they are forced to leave the cave, and then they go to a
disused pigsty near by. In talking with them while they dexterously
chipped limpets from the weed-mantled rocks, I mildly remarked that
workhouses were now very comfortable. Immediately the younger woman
stood erect, and with something akin to pride and determination,
exclaimed in a voice more than tinctured by the Irish patois, 'Never,
sir, will us go to the workhouse while us can get as much as an crust
in twenty-four hours.' Hitherto I had seen her only in a stooping