Mousehole may be found a little to the westward of Penzance and Newlyn. Like most of its fellows, it lies along the sides and in the bottom of a hollow, where the sea comes in like a pool, and gives more or less shelter to fisher-boats. No one who retains his sense of smell ever has any doubt of Mousehole being engaged in the fish trade, for there are fresh fish continually being brought in, and there are fish, very far from fresh, preserved in the fish-cellars that are so striking a feature of the place, in the olfactory way. In those cellars the pilchards that are the staple of the Cornish fishery are barrelled until such time as they are wanted for export to the Mediterranean, whence, it is commonly believed, they return, in all the glory of oil, tinned and labelled in strange tongues, "sardines."
[Illustration: THE "KEIGWIN ARMS," MOUSEHOLE.]
In midst of the crowded houses, and in the thick of these ancient and fishlike odours, stands this rugged old inn, the "Keigwin Arms," remarkable for its picturesque exterior and for the boldly projecting porch, supported on granite pillars, rather than for any internal beauties. It survives, as it were, to show that not all manor-houses were abodes of luxury, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
I do not know what the Keigwins blazoned on their old coat, for the sign displays no armorial bearings, and the Keigwins were long since extinct. But they were once great here and otherwhere. Here they were the squires, and you read that in 1595, when the Spaniards, grown saucy and revengeful after their Armada disaster of seven years earlier, came and burnt the town while Drake and Hawkins and our sea-dogs were looking the other way, Jenkin Keigwin, the squire, was killed by a cannon-ball, in front of his own house.
[Illustration: SIGN OF THE "SWAN," KNOWLE.]
When the "Swan" at Knowle, near Birmingham, was built, "ever so long ago," which in this case was somewhere about the beginning of the seventeenth century, the neighbourhood of Knowle was wild, open heath. The country round about has long ceased to be anything at all of that nature, but the village has until quite recently retained its rural look, and only in our time is in process of being swallowed by the boa-constrictor of suburban expansion. In a still rustic corner, near the church, the "Swan" stands as sound as ever, and will probably be standing, just as sound in every particular, centuries hence, when the neighbouring houses, built on ninety-nine years leases, and calculated to last barely that time, will be in the last stages of decay. The "Swan" has the additionally interesting feature of a very fine wrought-iron bracket, designed in a free and flowing style, to represent leaves and tendrils, and supporting a handsome oval picture-sign of the "Swan."