The Wizard of West Penwith

Book excerpt: In writing my Cornish Tales I have always endeavoured to pourtray the Cornish character in all its native wit and humour, for which the genuine west-country miners are so proverbial. And I have generally taken for the foundation of my Stories incidents which have really happened in the localities wherein the actions of my little dramas have been laid. The scene of my present story is laid in the neighbourhood of the Land's-End, and most of the characters were well-known there in days gone by;-the names only being fictitious. The fall of the horse over the cliff is still in the remembrance of some old people in the neighbourhood; and the circumstance is related by the Guides who shew the beauties of the Land's-End scenery to strangers. The marks of the horse's hoofs in the grass at the edge of the cliff are preserved to this day. The Wizard (or Conjuror as he was called) was a notorious character at St. Just, some fifty years ago; and the horrid murder related in these pages; and the mistaken identity of the guilty parties are also veritable facts.