[Illustration:  MONUMENT TO HENRY TRENGROUSE. (Inventor of the rocket apparatus.)]

We had seen many fine monuments to men who had been instrumental in killing thousands of their fellow creatures, but here was Trengrouse who had been the humble instrument in saving thousands of lives, and (though a suitable monument has since been erected to his memory) only the commonest stone as yet recorded his memory and the inestimable services he had rendered to humanity:  the only redeeming feature, perhaps, being the very appropriate quotation on the stone: 

   They rest from their labours and their works do follow them.

Helston was another town where a lovely double stream of water ran down the main street, rendering the town by its rapid and perpetual running both musical and clean.  The water probably came from the River Cober, and afterwards found its way into the Looe Pool at the foot of the town.  This pool was the great attraction of Helston and district, as it formed a beautiful fresh-water lake about seven miles in circumference and two miles long, winding like a river through a forked valley, with woods that in the springtime were filled with lovely wild flowers, reaching to the water’s edge.  It must have been a paradise for one fisherman at any rate, as he held his tenure on condition that he provided a boat and net in case the Duke of Cornwall, its owner, should ever come to fish there; so we concluded that if the Duke never came, the tenant would have all the fish at his own disposal.  The curious feature about the lake was that, owing to a great bank of sand and pebbles that reached across the mouth, it had no visible outlet where it reached the sea, the water having to percolate as best it could through the barrier.  When heavy rain came on and the River Cober delivered a greater volume of water than usual into the lake, the land adjoining was flooded, and it became necessary to ask permission of the lord of the manor to cut a breach through the pebbles in order to allow the surplus water to pass through into the sea, which was quite near.  The charge for this privilege was one penny and one halfpenny, which had to be presented in a leather purse; but this ancient ceremony was afterwards done away with and a culvert constructed.  On this pebble bank one of the King’s frigates was lost in 1807.

[Illustration:  A STREET IN HELSTON. (Showing the running stream of water at the side of the street.)]

There is a passage in the book of Genesis which states that “there were giants in the earth in those days”—­a passage which we had often heard read in the days of our youth, when we wished it had gone further and told us something about them; but Cornwall had been a veritable land of giants.  The stories of Jack the Giant-Killer were said to have emanated from this county, and we now heard of the Giant Tregeagle, whose spirit appeared to pervade the whole district through which we were passing.