There were some remarkable stones near St. Cleer, including the famous “Cheesewring,” formed of eight circular stones each resembling a cheese, placed one on top of another and rising to a height of about eight yards; but the strange part about this curious erection was that the four larger and heavier stones were at the top and the four smaller ones at the bottom.  It was a mystery how in such remote times the builders could have got those immense stones to the top of the others and there balanced them so exactly as to withstand the storms of so many years.

[Illustration:  THE CHEESEWRING]

Near this supposed Druidical erection was a rough cave known as “Daniel Gumb’s House,” formerly inhabited by a man of that name who came there to study astrology and astronomy, and who was said to have had his family with him.  He left his record by cutting his name at the entrance to the cave, “D.  Gumb 1735,” and by inscribing a figure on the roof representing the famous 47th proposition in the First Book of Euclid.

The Trethevy Menhir, a cromlech or “House of the Dead,” which George Borrow went to see, consisted of seven great hewn slabs which formed a chamber inside about the height of a man; over the top was an enormous flat stone of such great weight as to make one wonder how it could have been placed there so many centuries ago.  At one corner of the great stone, which was in a slanting position, there was a hole the use of which puzzled antiquarians; but George Borrow was said to have contrived to get on the top of it and, putting his hand through the hole, shouted, “Success to old Cornwall,” a sentiment which we were fully prepared to endorse, for we thought the people we saw at the two extremes of our journey—­say in Shetland, Orkney, and the extreme north of Scotland, and those in Devon and Cornwall in the South of England—­were the most homely and sociable people with whom we came in contact.

[Illustration:  “DANIEL GUMB’S HOUSE,” LISKEARD.]

Some of the legends attached to the stones in Cornwall were of a religious character, one example being the three stone circles named the “Hurlers”; eleven in one circle, fourteen in another, and twelve in a third—­thirty-seven in all; but only about one-half of them remained standing.  Here indeed might be read a “sermon in stone,” and one of them might have been preached from these circles, as the stones were said to represent men who were hurling a ball one Sunday instead of attending church, when they and the two pipers who were playing for them were all turned into stone for thus desecrating the Sabbath Day.