Sanitate Sacrum:  Sacred to Health! Obstructum reserat, It removes obstruction. Durum terit, It crushes the hard, Humida siecat, It dries the moist, Debile fortificat, It strengthens the weak, Si tamen arte bibis.  Provided thou drinkest with knowledge.

The water rises from some subterranean source in the sandstone rock and enters with considerable force into the receptacle prepared for it, which is about five feet deep.  The water was always beautifully clear and cool, and visitors often amused themselves by throwing halfpennies into the bath and watching them apparently being transformed into shillings as they reached the bottom—­a fact attributed to the presence of lime in the water.

In striking contrast to this was the water afterwards brought through the district from a watershed on the distant Welsh hills, which depended for its supply almost entirely on the downfall from the clouds.  The difference between that and the water from the Roman well was very marked, for while the rainwater was very soft, the other that contained the lime was very hard, and therefore considered more conducive to the growth of the bones in children.  Our personal experiences also with the water at Inverness, and in the neighbourhood of Buxton in the previous year, which affected us in a similar way, convinced us that water affected human beings very markedly; and then we had passed by Harrogate and Leamington, where people were supposed to go purposely to drink the waters.  Even the water of the tin-mining district through which we were now passing might contain properties that were absent elsewhere, and the special virtues attributed to some of the Saints’ Wells in Cornwall in olden times might not have been altogether mythical.

Besides the four Stannary towns in Devon there were originally four in Cornwall, including Liskeard, where all tin mined in their respective districts had to be weighed and stamped.  Probably on that account Liskeard returned two members to Parliament, the first members being returned in 1294; amongst the M.P.’s who had represented the town were two famous men—­Sir Edward Coke, elected in 1620, and Edward Gibbon, in 1774.

Sir Edward Coke was a great lawyer and author of the legal classic Coke upon Littleton.  He became Speaker of the House of Commons, Attorney-General, and afterwards Chief Justice, and was the merciless prosecutor of Sir Walter Raleigh, and also of the persons concerned in the Gunpowder Plot; while his great speech against Buckingham towards the close of the career of that ill-fated royal favourite is famous.

Edward Gibbon was the celebrated historian and author of that great work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  The history of his Parliamentary connection with Liskeard was rather curious.  One morning in 1774, when in London, he was asked if he would like to enter the House of Commons, and when he consented, the “free and independent electors” of Liskeard were duly “instructed” to return him.  But it was very doubtful whether he ever saw any of the electors, or had any dealings with the Constituency whatever, although he acted as one of their members for about eight years.  Possibly, as there were two members, the other M.P. might have been the “acting partner.”