the silk and thrust it into the first hiding place that came to mind, which happened to be the oven. Copping kept his promise, and led the officers to the brandy casks; but he had failed to mention that they were quite empty. Furious at being thus fooled, and smarting under the raillery of Copping and his neighbors, the officers hurried off, and the smuggler returned to his home. But the joke was on him. In her hurry and confusion, his wife had forgotten that the oven was heated for baking, and the precious silks were done to a turn!

Perhaps the most amusing anecdote of the Cornish smugglers is the story told of an excise officer named Roger Wearne. During a gale, a smuggling vessel was driven on the rocks, and Wearne, hoping to find evidences of smuggling, commandeered a boat and was rowed to the wreck. The crew, however, had all left her in the night, and had taken the vessel's papers with them, thus destroying all evidence of ownership. Her cargo proved to be fine French porcelain, and Wearne, thinking some of the dishes would be most useful and ornamental in his own home, surreptitiously filled his baggy trousers with the chinaware. Incommoded by the cargo he was carrying on his person, the excise officer was a bit slow in descending the ladder to the waiting boat, and one of the boatmen becoming impatient, exclaimed: "Look alive, Wearne!" at the same time raising an oar and slapping the other playfully on

the seat of his trousers. With a crash such as might have been made by the proverbial bull in a china shop, and with cries of agony as the shattered bits of filched crockery cut into his flesh, Wearne came tumbling head-over-heels into the small boat. For years thereafter, the life of the officer was made miserable by the smugglers, for wherever he appeared along the coast, he was invariably greeted by: "Look alive, Wearne!"

As proof of the honesty of the Cornish smugglers, one incident will serve. One of the most famous of the smugglers' resorts was a spot known as Prussia Cove on whose shores dwelt the Carter family, famous as smugglers. On one occasion, when the elder Carter was absent, the officials raided the spot, found a quantity of brandy, and confiscated it, placing it among other seized contraband in the government warehouse. When Carter returned he was furious, not that he resented the excise officers taking the brandy so much as the fact that, as he put it, he would be unable to deliver the spirits to his customers and they would think him dishonest and unreliable. Quite wrought up over the matter, he determined to raid the warehouse and recover his brandy, which he did, meticulously removing only his own casks. When day dawned and the outrage was discovered, the officers instantly averred that Carter was the culprit, and when asked why they were so sure, they declared that "No one else would

have been honest enough to have taken only his own spirits."

The

Unfortunately, history contains very little about the Cornish smugglers. Perhaps the government was too busily engaged trying to put a stop to the smugglers nearer London and the centre of things to bother much about the wild Cornishmen in a far-off corner of the empire. Or possibly, as the local officials were apparently hand in glove with the smugglers, they decided that the less said about the activities of the Cornishmen the better. Mayor of St. Ives, for example,-the worthy John Knill, who conceived the brilliant idea of commissioning privateers to prey on the smugglers and then used the vessels for his own profit by running contraband under protection of the British flag, would hardly be likely to prepare voluminous reports on the industry and its suppression in his district. But whatever the reason, there is far less. in the way of records dealing with the smugglers of Cornwall than with those of any other portion of the coast. And this is a great pity for, if we are to believe half the stories of the Cornish smugglers, and the historical facts and documentary evidence available, then they were most certainly and assuredly the most romantic and picturesque of their profession. Just how much of the literature and tradition dealing with the Cornish smugglers is truth, and how much is fiction, is difficult to say.

As is the case with nearly all dare-devilish, law breakers, the people regarded their smuggler compatriots with no little pride. Much the same feeling in fact as a community will have towards a native son who has become a famous ball player or a champion pugilist, or as the small boy of a generation ago had for Jesse James. A man, who could run contraband successfully, became quite the local hero, and, in many cases, his fame spread far and wide along the coasts. And as is ever the case, tales of his doings, stories of his narrow escapes from capture, yarns of the manner in which he evaded and hoodwinked the authorities, became vastly exaggerated as they were passed by word of mouth from hamlet to hamlet, from person to person, from father to son, until the exploits of smugglers, which in reality may have been nothing remarkable, were transformed into romances equalling those of Rob Roy, Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, Claude Duval or other half fictional gallant and picturesque rascals.

Quite naturally, too, such stories, reaching the ears of those who knew nothing of smugglers or the facts about them, were swallowed hook, line and sinker, and inspired many a tale in prose and verse to add to the smugglers' fame and to immortalize them. A century and more ago, authors had a habit,-even more prevalent than today-of weaving a deal of wholly imaginary romance about a few facts, and of combining a dozen or more char

acters, with their manifold adventures, to form a single hero and his story. Not only was this done in acknowledged works of fiction, but in supposedly historical works as well. Hence, we cannot be sure that many of the so-called true stories of the smugglers are not in reality composite pictures of a large number of the gentry and their deeds covering a wide area of country and a period of many years. But even so, there can be no doubt that the stories were mainly founded on facts, and that the Cornish smugglers were quite the ideal smugglers of our imagination. Had they not been exceptionally brave, reckless, picturesque fellows, quixotic, paradoxical, they would not have stood out in relief and have been remembered for so long. Such men, for example, as Montmorillon, who, to make an Irish Bull of it, was a woman; Neville of Guernsey; Dick of the Downs; Peter Trent and others.

Montmorillon, whose headquarters were near St. Malo, was a veritable Robin Hood among the smugglers; ever a benefactor of the poor; going out of his or rather her way to help the unfortunate and the oppressed, and defying the authorities for years. Her smuggling operations were conducted on a far larger scale than most of the smugglers. She commanded a good sized brig, and never hesitated to show fight when chased or cornered by a cruiser. With a cargo of contraband, she would run to the Channel Islands, meet confederates there, tranship