View of St Michael's Mount in Cornwall

A copper-line engraving of St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall by D. Jenkins, for The Modern Universal British Traveller, 1779.

The accompanying text reads:

"This rock at high water forms an island, but upon the influx of the tide, the people walk to it on foot. At the foot of the mount is a noble and capacious pier, or mole, where a great number of ships may be safely laid up, cleaned, and repaired.

The buildings on the top of the mount are formed with great propriety, being well adapted to the shape of the hill on which they land. The tower of the church is almost in the middle, and rises from the centre of the mountain's base, terminating the whole as a cone does a pyramid: the church, cells, and parapet walls spread themselves around the tower, as to cover the area or top of the hill, the hill-side enlarging itself gradually from the buildings downwards, till it comes near the sea, where it swells into a base of a mile in circumference, so that the most skilful architect could scarcely plan a structure that could better become the shape of this mountain.

The situation is exceedingly agreeable, the rocky precipices from the sides of the mountain being wonderfully grand, and making a most beautiful contrast to the pleasant prospect of the villages and fruitful fields which surround and close Mount's Bay, so called from this Mount, as finding near its center, and making the most remarkable figure of any part of the circuit."- 502. 

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