The STOUR rises at Six Wells, at Stourhead, in Wiltshire, and joins the Hampshire Avon, as previously stated, at Christchurch, but is essentially a Dorsetshire river. It touches Somersetshire, and receives the Cale from Wincanton, and other small tributaries, passing Gillingham, Sturminster, Blandford, and Wimborne, where it receives the Allen, which flows through More Critchell. Canford Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which received many of the Assyrian relics unearthed by Layard; Gaunt’s House and Park; and St. Giles’ Park, reminiscent of “Cabal” Cooper and the other Earls of Shaftesbury, are also features of the Stour country. The clean little town of Wimborne, where Matthew Prior was born, is made rich and notable by its ancient Minster, which as it stands retains but little of the original foundation, though the fine central tower dates from about 1100, and the western tower from the middle of the fifteenth century.

The next river in Dorsetshire is the FROME, formed, as seems to be the fashion in Wessex, of two branches, both uniting at Maiden Newton. Frampton Court, the seat of the Sheridans, is in this neighbourhood. The county town of Dorchester rises from the bank of the river, and has magnificent avenues as high-road approaches. The Black Downs that interpose between the country that is fairly represented by the Blackmore vale of the hunting men further north, and the sea at Weymouth, are bare enough; Dorchester is surrounded by chalk uplands, and it is, no doubt, because there were few forests to clear that the entire neighbourhood is remarkable for its Roman and British remains. The trees around the town have fortunately been sedulously planted and preserved, and the avenues of sycamores and chestnuts on the site of the old rampart have somewhat of a Continental character. The well-defined remains of ancient camps are numerous on the slopes overlooking the Frome, Maiden Castle and the Roman amphitheatre being wonderfully perfect in their typical character. Yet, old-world as Dorchester is in its associations, it has few appearances of age, standing rather as a delightful example of the clean, healthy, quiet, well-to-do country town of the Victorian era, pleasantly environed, and boasting several highways that were Roman roads.

Flowing through the sheep country so graphically described by Mr. Hardy in his novels, the Frome arrives, after an uneventful course, at Wareham, and is discharged into Poole Harbour, a place of creeks and islands, sand and mud banks, regularly swelling with the incoming tide into a noble expanse of water.

WILLIAM SENIOR.

RIVERS OF DEVON.

AMONG the charms which make Devonshire, in Mr. Blackmore’s words, “the fairest of English counties,” one need not hesitate to give the first place to its streams. They who know only its coasts, though they know them well, may walk delicately, for of much that is most characteristic of its loveliness they are altogether ignorant. But anyone who has tracked a typical Devon river from its fount high up on the wild and lonely moorland to the estuary where it mingles its waters with the inflowing tide, following it as it brawls down the peaty hillsides, and winds its way through glen and gorge until it gains the rich lowlands where it rolls placidly towards its latter end, may boast that his is the knowledge of intimacy. Commercially, the Devonshire streams are of little account, for Nature has chosen to touch them to finer issues. Yet, for all their manifold fascinations, they have had but scant attention from the poets, who, instead of singing their graces in dignified verse, have left them, as Mr. J. A. Blaikie has said, to be “noisily advertised in guide-books.” At first sight the omission seems curious enough, for the long roll of Devonshire “worthies” is only less illustrious for its poets than for its heroes. Perchance the explanation of what almost looks like a conspiracy of silence is that the streams, full of allurement as they may be, are not rich in associations of the poetic sort. Of legend they have their share, but for the most part it is legend uncouth and grotesque, such as may not easily be shaped into verse. Their appeal, in truth, is more to the painter than to the poet. For him they have provided innumerable “bits” of the most seductive description; and neither against him nor against the angler—the artist among sportsmen—for whom also bountiful provision has been made, can neglect of opportunity be charged.

It is in the royal “forests” of Exmoor and Dartmoor that nearly all the chief rivers of Devon take their rise. Of these moorland tracts, the one extending into the extreme north of the county from Somersetshire, the other forming, so to speak, its backbone, Dartmoor is considerably the larger; and in High Willhayse and in the better known Yes Tor, its highest points, it touches an altitude of just over 2,000 feet, overtopping Dunkery Beacon, the monarch of Exmoor, by some 370 feet. Between the two moors there is a general resemblance, less, however, of contour than of tone, for while Exmoor swells into great billowy tops, the Dartmoor plateau breaks up into rugged “tors”—crags of granite that have shaken off their scanty raiment and now rise bare and gaunt above the general level. Both, as many a huntsman knows to his cost, are beset with treacherous bogs, out of which trickle streams innumerable, some, like the Wear Water, the chief headstream of the East Lyn, soon to lose their identity, others to bear to the end of their course names which the English emigrant has delighted to reproduce in the distant lands that he has colonised. Not strange is it that with loneliness such as theirs, Exmoor and Dartmoor alike should be the haunt of the mischief-loving pixies, who carry off children and lead benighted wayfarers into quagmires; of the spectral wish-hounds, whose cry is fearsome as the wailing voice which John Ridd heard “at grey of night”; and of the rest of the uncanny brood who once had all the West Country for their domain. Exmoor, too, is almost the last sanctuary, south of the Tweed, of the wild red-deer; and hither in due season come true sportsmen from far and near to have their pulses stirred by such glorious runs as Kingsley has described.

Of the streams that have their springs elsewhere than in the moors, the Axe, which belongs more to Dorset and Somerset than to Devon, may, like the Sid, be passed over with bare mention. But the OTTER must not be dismissed so brusquely, for though it cannot vie with its moorland sisters in beauty of aspect, it has other claims to consideration. Rising in the hills that divide Devon from South Somerset, it presently passes Honiton, still famous for its lace, and a few miles further on flows by the knoll which is crowned by the massive towers of the fine church of Ottery St. Mary, the Clavering St. Mary of “Pendennis.” It was here, in 1772, that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, most gifted scion of a gifted stock, was born. His father, vicar of the parish and headmaster of the Free Grammar School, and withal one of the most amiable and ingenuous of pedants, whose favourite method of edifying his rustic congregation was to quote from the Old Testament in the original Hebrew, as “the immediate language of the Holy Ghost,” died when Samuel Taylor was in his ninth year; and the pensive child, who yet was not a child, was soon afterwards entered at Christ’s Hospital. A frequent resort of his was a cave beside the Otter, known as “The Pixies’ Parlour,” where his initials may still be seen. Nor is this his only association with the stream. “I forget,” he writes, “whether it was in my fifth or sixth year ... in consequence of some quarrel between me and my brother, in the first week in October I ran away from fear of being whipped, and passed the whole night, a night of rain and storm, on the bleak side of a hill on the Otter, and was there found at day-break, without the power of using my limbs, about six yards from the naked bank of the river.” The experience may well have left its mark upon his sensitive nature, but it is clear that he carried with him from his native place a store of agreeable recollections of the stream, of whose “marge with willows grey” and “bedded sand” he afterwards wrote in affectionate strains.

Leaving the Otter to pursue its pleasant, but not exciting, course to the English Channel, we pass at a bound from the sunny south to one of the weirdest parts of Exmoor, where the most important of the streams that rise in the northern “forest” have their birth. The chief of them, and, indeed, the longest of all the Devonshire rivers, the EXE, which has a course five-and-fifty miles long, oozes out of a dismal swamp known as The Chains, in Somerset county, some two or three miles north-west of Simonsbath; and within a space of not more than two miles square are the sources of three other streams—the Barle, which merges with the Exe near Exbridge; the West Lyn, which flows northwards to the finest spot on the Devon coast; and the Bray, a tributary of the Taw. Looking around, one sees in every direction a waste of undulations rolling away to the horizon like a deeply-furrowed sea. Far away eastwards rises Dunkery, his mighty top now, as often, obscured by clouds which the western winds are slowly driving before them; on the other hand stretches the North Molton Ridge, culminating in Span Head, which comes within about fifty feet of the stature of Dunkery himself.

The infant Exe and the Barle are both brown, peaty streams, and their valleys, separated from each other by one of the Exmoor ridges, and following the same general south-easterly trend, have much in common, though that of the Barle is the less regular and more picturesque of the two. It is when they have each sped in the merriest-hearted fashion somewhere about a score of miles that they meet, forming a current which, as it rushes tumultuously beneath the arches that give to Exbridge its name, must be a full fifty yards wide. Now the Exe becomes a Devonshire stream, with a predominantly southerly course; but as it approaches Oakford Bridge it bends to the west, then curving round to the east to meet the Batherm, fresh from its contact with Bampton, an old market town celebrated all over the West Country for its fairs and markets, whereat are sold the shaggy little Exmoor ponies and the bold and nimble Porlock sheep. The main stream still shows no disposition to play the laggard, but by this time it has left the moorland well behind, and, as we follow it among luxuriantly timbered hills, it presently brings us to Tiverton, agreeably placed on its sloping left bank. Here it takes toll of the Loman, which has been in no haste to complete its course of ten miles, or thereabouts, from the Somerset border.

Of Twy-ford-town—for so the place was called in former days, in allusion to its fords across the Exe and the Loman at the points where now the streams are spanned by bridges—the most salient feature from the banks of the larger water is the Perpendicular tower of the Church of St. Peter. The body of the church was virtually reconstructed in the ’sixties, with the fortunate exception of its most interesting feature, the Greenaway Chapel, founded nearly four hundred years ago by the merchant whose name it shares with the quaint almshouses in Gold Street. What remains of the ancient castle, which stood hard by the church, has been converted into a modern dwelling and a farmhouse. The old Grammar School, too, on Loman Green, is now divided up into private houses, a more commodious structure, in the Tudor style, having been reared a mile or so out of the town to take its place. Who will begrudge good old Peter Blundell the immortality which this famous school has conferred upon his honest-sounding name? A native of Tiverton, he began life as an errand-boy. With his carefully-hoarded earnings, as Prince tells the story in his “Worthies,” he bought a piece of kersey, and got a friendly carrier to take it to London and there sell it to advantage. So he gradually extended his operations, until he was able to go to town himself, with as much stock-in-trade as a horse could carry. In London he continued to thrive, and in due course was able to fulfil the ambition of his life by establishing himself in the town of his birth as a manufacturer of kerseys; and here he remained until his death, at the ripe age of eighty.

“Though I am not myself a scholar,” the good old man would say with proud humility, “I will be the means of making more scholars than any scholar in England.” And the school founded under his will in 1604 has not failed to justify his boast. The roll of “Blundell’s boys” includes a brace of bishops and an archbishop, the present occupant of the throne of Canterbury, who, before his translation to London, ruled with abundant vigour the diocese to which Tiverton belongs. Yet, without disrespect to spiritual dignities, one may be pardoned for remembering with deeper interest that it was here that “girt Jan Ridd” had his meagre schooling, and fought his great fight with Robin Snell. John, by the way, who left Blundell’s at the age of twelve, must have been considerably less stupid than he appeared to his contemporaries, for when long afterwards he came to describe the combat he was able to say that he replied to his antagonist “with all the weight and cadence of penthemimeral cæsura”; and although he modestly protests that he could “never make head or tail” of the expression, it is clear from his epithets that he knew perfectly well what he was writing about.

But we have paused at the town of the fords too long, and must gird up our loins to follow the Exe southwards to the county town, through scenery which, if on the whole less picturesque than that above Tiverton, is pleasing as one of the most fertile of Devonshire vales cannot but be. Four miles lower down we find ourselves at Bickleigh Bridge, one of the prettiest spots in this part of the Exe valley. Close by is Bickleigh Court, long a seat of the Devonshire Carews, and still belonging to members of the family, though sunk to the uses of a farmhouse. Bickleigh is of some note as the birthplace, towards the end of the seventeenth century, of Bampfylde Moore Carew, “King of the Beggars.” Son of the rector of the parish, he was sent to Blundell’s School, whence he ran away to avoid punishment for some trifling escapade, and threw in his lot with a tribe of gipsies. Next he emigrated to Newfoundland, but after a time came back, and soon signalised himself by eloping from Newcastle-on-Tyne with an apothecary’s daughter, whom, however, he was afterwards good enough to marry. Having rejoined the gipsies, he became their king, and ruled over them until he was transported to Maryland as an incorrigible vagrant. Before long he contrived to escape, and lived for a while with a band of Red Indians. When he returned to civilisation it was in the guise of a Quaker, a part which he successfully played until he grew weary of it, and once more came back to his native land and his nomadic life. Some say that he was afterwards prevailed upon to adopt more settled habits, but of his closing years little is known.

The hill to the right, a little below Bickleigh Bridge, is known as Cadbury Castle, a Roman encampment, and from its summit may be seen, away to the south-east, athwart the river, Dolbury Hill, which, according to the legend, shares with Cadbury a treasure of gold, guarded by a fiery dragon, who spends his nights flying from one hoard to the other. Now the Exe, flowing with a dignity befitting its maturity, receives the tribute of the Culm, which comes from the Blackdown Hills, on the Somerset border, passing Culmstock and Cullompton, and Killerton Park, a finely placed and magnificently wooded demesne of one of the most honourable of Devonshire houses, the Aclands. Over against the point of junction is Pynes, the seat of another family of high repute, the Northcotes, now Earls of Iddesleigh, looking down on the one side upon the valley of the Exe, and on the other upon that of the Creedy, a western affluent after which the town of Crediton is named.

As it approaches the ever-faithful city, lying like Tiverton on the left bank, the Exe is bordered by a green strath, with swelling hills on either hand. No sooner is the suburb of St. David passed than there comes into view the eminence which formed the limits of the ancient Exeter, its summit crowned with trees that half conceal the meagre remains of the Norman castle, while from its southern slope rise the mighty towers of the Cathedral. Pointing out that, although surrounded by hills higher than itself, Exeter is seated on a height far above river or railway, Freeman remarks that we have here “what we find so commonly in Gaul, so rarely in Britain, the Celtic hill-fort, which has grown into the Roman city, which has lived on through the Teutonic conquest, and which still, after all changes, keeps to its place as the undoubted head of its own district. In Wessex such a history is unique. In all Southern England London is the only parallel, and that but an imperfect one.” And he goes on to say that the name teaches the same lesson of continuity that is taught by the site. It has been changed in form but not in meaning. Caerwise, “the fortress on the water,” as it was in the beginning of things, “has been Latinised into Isca, it has been Teutonised into Exanceaster, and cut short into modern Exeter; but the city by the Exe has through all conquests, through all changes of language, proclaimed itself by its name as the city on the Exe.”

The Castle of Rougemont is represented by not much more than an ivy-clad gateway tower of Norman date, and portions of the walls, which on one side have been levelled, and the timbered slopes converted into a pretty little recreation ground, known as Northernhay, where, among the statues of men whom Devonshire delights to honour, is one of the first Earl of Iddesleigh, gentlest of protagonists. Of the cathedral little can be said in this place except that it admirably exemplifies the development of the Decorated style, which here reaches its culmination in the venerable west front, its lower stage enriched with figures of kings and apostles and saints. The massive transeptal towers that distinguish Exeter from all other English cathedrals, and, indeed, from all other English churches, with the single exception of that of Ottery St. Mary, built in imitation of this, are much earlier than the rest of the fabric, for they were reared early in the twelfth century by Bishop Warelwast, nephew of the Conqueror, and were left standing when, towards the end of the thirteenth century, the reconstruction of the rest of the fabric was begun. Disproportionately large they may be, in relation both to their own height and to the body of the church; but, if they cannot be said to contribute to the harmony of the design, it must be allowed that in themselves they are exceedingly impressive.

The transformation of the cathedral, begun by Bishop Bronescombe, was continued by his successor, Peter Quivil, whose plans appear to have been pretty faithfully followed by those who came after him. Not until the year 1369 was the nave finished, under Grandisson, the bishop who re-built the church of Ottery St. Mary in its present form; and even then it was left to Bishop Brantyngham to add the rich west front. What most strikes one about the interior, which was restored with no lack of vigour by Sir Gilbert Scott, is the prolonged stretch of graceful vaulting, extending through all the fourteen bays of nave and choir, with, of course, no central tower to break the line. There is much beautiful carving, both ancient and modern, in the church, but the bishop’s throne, attributed to Bishop Stapledon (1307–26), is perhaps of rather diffuse design, although the craftsmanship merits all the admiration that has been lavished upon it.

Around the Close, and in a few of the older streets, some interesting specimens of domestic architecture are to be seen; but, the cathedral and its adjuncts apart, Exeter is less rich than might be expected in memorials of the distant past. Of its public buildings, the only one which may not be ignored is the Guildhall, a stone structure dating from the end of the sixteenth century, with a balustraded façade resting on substantial piers, and projecting over the pavement. The ancient bridge over the Exe, connecting the city with St. Thomas, its western suburb, was destroyed in 1770, and replaced by the present one.

Hundreds of years have come and gone since the cliffs of Exeter were lapped by salt water. Towards the end of the thirteenth century Isabella de Redvers, Countess of Devon, was pleased to cut off the city from the sea by forming the weir which has given name to the village of Countess Weir, and it was not till the reign of Henry VIII. that, by means of a canal to Topsham, communication was re-established. Early in the present century this waterway was widened, and now Exeter is accessible to vessels of about 400 tons. It is at Topsham, four miles below the city, that the river, augmented by the waters of the Clyst, expands into an estuary. From this point to the embouchure its course lies through delightful scenery. On the right bank are the woods of Powderham Castle, the ancestral seat of the Earls of Devon, stretching from the water’s brink to the summit of the high ground behind; away to the west, Haldon’s long ridge rises as a sky-line, dividing the valley of the Exe from that of the Teign; and finally comes Starcross. On the left bank, about midway between Topsham and Exmouth, is Lympstone, a pretty, straggling fishing village. To Exmouth, lying over against Starcross, belongs the distinction of being the oldest of the numerous tribe of Devonshire watering-places. A port of some consequence in very early days, it presently fell into an obscurity from which it was only rescued in the last century through the agency of one of the judges of assize, who, sojourning here for the good of his health while on circuit, was so advantaged by its genial breezes that he spread abroad its praises, and so gave it another start in life. Its attractions may be less insistent than those of other places that were mere fishing villages long after it had become a popular resort, but it has a pleasant beach and a very respectable promenade, and with still more reason is it proud of the views to be had from The Beacon.

The LYN, sometimes called the East Lyn, to distinguish it from the West Lyn, is one of the shortest as it is one of the most wilful of the Devonshire streams, its length not exceeding a dozen miles, while in a direct line its outlet is only half that distance from its source. Rising on Exmoor, a little to the north of Black Barrow Down, its upper valley is bleak and bare, and in this part of its career there is little to differentiate it from other moorland waters that hurriedly leave the dreary solitudes in which they have their birth. Above Oareford it dashes and splashes along over boulders and rocky ledges, the hills that rise from either bank being bare of aught but ling and brake and heather, save that the lower slopes bear here and there a group of wind-swept scrub-oaks; it is only lower down that the ravine assumes the combination of wildness and luxuriance in which Lyn is excelled by none of its sister streams. How can we pass Oareford without recalling that we are in the country of John Ridd and the Doones? It was in the parish of Oare that the giant yeoman was born and bred; it was in the little Perpendicular church of St. Mary that he married the lovely but elusive Lorna Doone; it was from its altar that he sallied forth to pursue the man whom he believed to have slain his bride, his only weapon the limb of a gnarled oak which he tore from its socket as he passed beneath it. Many there be who come into these parts to spy out the land, and to such it is a pleasant surprise to find that there are still Ridds of the Doones engaged upon the soil at Oare. Less palatable is the discovery that Mr. Blackmore has thought fit to mix a good deal of imagination with his word-pictures. The Badgworthy “slide,” in particular, which the hero was wont to climb in order to get speech of the captive maiden, has been the occasion of grievous disappointment. It is at Malmsmead that the Badgworthy Water—the dividing line between Devon and Somerset—falls into the Lyn, and “makes a real river of it”; the “slide,” a mile or so up the “Badgery” valley, as they call it hereabouts, is simply a succession of minute cascades formed by shelving rocks over which a little tributary stream glides down out of the Doone Valley.

The novelist has not scrupled to take ample liberties with such of his characters as are not purely imaginary, as well as with his scenes; but, unless tradition is a very lying jade, the Doone Valley really sheltered a gang of robbers, said to have been disbanded soldiers who had fought in the Great Rebellion. One may still see traces of what are believed to have been their dwellings, though one writer profanely identifies them with pig-sties; and it is credibly stated that the destruction of the miscreants by the country-folk was provoked by the cruel murder of a child, as described in the romance. Nor may one doubt that the mighty John was an actual personage, though it were vain to seek for his history in biographical dictionaries. As to Lorna, what if Mr. Blackmore has invented her? Is that to be counted to him for unrighteousness?

From Malmsmead, with its primitive bridge of two arches, to Watersmeet, where the Brendon Water plunges down a charming glen on the left to lose itself in the larger stream, the Lyn ravine is a very kaleidoscope of beauty and grandeur. Watersmeet, “an exquisite combination of wood and stream, the one almost hiding the water, the other leaping down over rocky ledges in a series of tiny cascades,” must tax the painter’s pencil, and is certainly no theme for a prosaic pen; and of Lyndale the same despairing confession must be made. Every turn in this lovely glen reveals some new beauty, until, with Lynton lying in the cup of a hill on the left, one reaches Lynmouth, where, just before the river plunges into the sea, it receives the waters of the West Lyn as they merrily tumble out of Glen Lyn. Southey, whose description of these and other features of the place has been quoted to the point of weariness, was one of the first to “discover” Lynmouth; and in these days it has no reason to complain that its unrivalled attractions are not appreciated. For some years it has had its little mountain railway, to spare those whose chief need is exercise the fatigue of walking up the hill to Lynton; and now the lines have been laid which bring it into touch with the South Western and Great Western systems at Barnstaple. Let us hope that it will not presently have to complain of defacement at the hands of the lodging-house builder, and of desperation inflicted upon it by hordes of day-trippers, with their beer-bottles and greasy sandwich-papers!

Dartmoor is a much more prolific “mother of rivers” than Exmoor. In one of the loneliest and dreariest regions of the southern “forest,” no great way from its northern extremity, is the quagmire known as Cranmere Pool, and from this and the sloughs that surround it ooze all the more important of the Devonshire streams except the Exe and the Torridge. Out of Cranmere Pool itself—a prison, according to local legend, of lost spirits, whose anguished cries are often borne on the wings of the wind—the West Okement drains, to flow northwards to the Torridge; and at distances varying from half a mile to a couple of miles, the Teign, the Dart, the Tavy, and the Taw have their birth. The Okement will be noticed presently, when we have to do with the Torridge; of the other rivers, the TEIGN rises in two headstreams, the North and the South Teign, near Sittaford Tor. As is the way of these moorland waters, they are soon reinforced by tributary rills, among them the Wallabrook, which flows by Scorhill Down to join the North Teign. Scorhill Down has in its stone circle one of the most remarkable of those mysterious relics of an immemorial past in which Dartmoor abounds. At one time all such remains were regarded, like those at Stonehenge, as Druidical monuments, but this theory of their origin is no longer in fashion, and antiquaries now prefer to say nothing more specific than that they usually have a sepulchral significance, and betoken that regions now abandoned to the curlew and the buzzard once had a considerable population. Near Scorhill the Wallabrook is bestridden by a “clam” bridge, which, interpreted, means a bridge of a single slab of unhewn stone resting on the ground, as distinguished from a “clapper” bridge, consisting of one or more such slabs pillared on others, with no aid from mortar.

The North and the South Teign merge at Leigh Bridge, close by Holy Street and its picturesque mill, which has furnished a theme for the pencil of many an artist besides Creswick. Then the Teign flows under the old bridge at Chagford, a village overhung on one side by two rocky hills. The fine air of the place and its convenient situation for the exploration of Dartmoor bring to it many visitors in the summer; but it is certainly no place for a winter sojourn. The story goes—and racy of the soil it is—that if a Chagford man is asked in summer where he lives, he replies, as saucily as you please, “Chaggyford, and what d’ye think, then?” But if the question is put to him in winter, he sadly answers, “Chaggyford, good Lord!”

At Chagford the valley broadens out, but soon it again contracts, and, sensibly quickening its speed, Teign plunges headlong into what is perhaps the very finest of all the gorges in Devonshire. Near the entrance is a “logan” stone, a huge boulder of granite about a dozen feet long, so finely poised that it may with a very moderate exercise of force be made to rock, though it is less accommodating than when Polwhele, a century ago, succeeded in moving it with one hand. The finest view of the gorge is that to be got from Fingle Bridge, a couple of miles lower down, where, looking back, one sees how the stream has wound its way amid the interfolded hills, of which the steep slopes are clad with coppice of tender green. Here, on the left, is Prestonbury, and on the right the loftier Cranbrook, each crowned with its prehistoric “castle.” Of the narrow, ivy-mantled bridge, simple and massive, an illustration is given (p. 57) showing the wedge-shaped piers which serve to break the fury of the torrent in time of spate.

But we must hurry on past Clifford Mill and its bridge to Dunsford Bridge, another spot of singular beauty. On the right Heltor, on the left Blackstone, exalt their towering heads, both crowned with large “rock basins,” in which the rude fancy of our forefathers saw missiles that King Arthur and the Great Adversary hurled at each other athwart the intervening valley. So, passing more and more within the margin of cultivation, we come to Chudleigh, with its Rock, yielding a blue limestone, known to the builder as Chudleigh marble, and its lovely, richly-wooded glen, down which a little tributary dances gaily into the Teign. Not a great way beyond, our river is swollen by the waters of a more important affluent, the Bovey, which, from its source on Dartmoor, has followed a course not dissimilar from that of the Teign, lilting along through a rich and often spacious valley, past North Bovey, Manaton, Lustleigh, with its “Cleave,” and Bovey Tracy. At Newton Abbot, pleasantly placed a little to the south of the Teign, in a vale watered by the Lemon, we may have fine views of the valleys of the Teign and the Bovey by ascending the hills up which this neat little town has straggled. Its most memorable association is with the glorious Revolution, and there still stands in front of a Perpendicular tower, which is all that is left of the old Chapel of St. Leonard, the block of granite from which the Prince of Orange’s proclamation was read.

Now swerving sharply to the east, the Teign develops into an estuary, and with a background of hills on either hand, those on the left rising into the broad downs of Haldon, hastens to discharge itself into the sea, flowing beneath what claims to be the longest wooden bridge in England, which connects Teignmouth on the north with Shaldon on the south. Teignmouth is an ancient fishing-village which has grown into a watering-place. If the story that it suffered at the hands of Danish pirates in the eighth century is an error due to confusion between Teignmouth and Tynemouth, it was indubitably ravaged by the French at the end of the seventeenth century. In these days its chief feature is the Den, a sandbank due to the shifting bar that obstructs the mouth of the river, but now converted into an esplanade, whence, looking inland, one sees the twin peaks of Heytor and other outlying hills of Dartmoor, while to the south, along the shore-line, appears the bold promontory known as The Ness, and on the north stand out the quaint pinnacles of red rock which the patient waves have carved into shapes that have won for them the designation of the “Parson and the Clerk.”

The DART may be said to attain to self-consciousness at Dartmeet, where in a deep and lovely valley the rapid East and West Dart mingle their foaming waters. The two streams rise at no great distance from each other, in the neighbourhood, as we have seen, of Cranmere Pool; and they are never far apart, but the western water follows a somewhat less consistently south-east course, past Wistman’s Wood—a grim assemblage of stunted, storm-beaten oaks, springing up amidst blocks of granite—and Crockern Tor and Two Bridges; while the eastern stream, from its source at Dart Head, speeds by Post Bridge and Bellaford, crossed at both places by “clam” bridges. Hurrying impetuously along over a shallow rocky bed, with a monotonous clatter which is locally known as its “cry,” Dart washes the base of Benjay Tor, and rushing beneath New Bridge—a not unpicturesque structure, despite its unpromising name—enters a richly timbered glade. Presently, as its valley deepens, it makes a wide circuit to wander past the glorious demesne of Holne Chase. Beyond the woods which stretch away for miles to the north-east, Buckland Beacon rears his giant form; on the other side of the stream is the little village of Holne, birthplace of Charles Kingsley, whose father was rector here. A mile or so above Buckfastleigh, on the right bank, are the ruins of Buckfast Abbey, consisting of little more than an ivy-clad tower and a spacious barn. Originating in the tenth century, this house was re-founded in the reign of Henry II., and grew to be the richest Cistercian abbey in all Devon. From the Dissolution till the beginning of the present century the site remained desolate. Then a mansion in the Gothic style was built upon it, and this is now occupied by a community of Benedictine monks from Burgundy, who have in part re-built the monastery on the old foundations.

Beyond smoky Buckfastleigh and its spire, the Dart flows among lush meadows and around wooded hills, past Dean Prior, with its memories of Herrick, and Staverton, where it is crossed by a strongly buttressed bridge. Now it again makes a bend eastwards to enclose the fine grounds of Dartington Hall. The house, partly in ruins, is commandingly placed high above the densely wooded right bank; and the oldest part of the structure, the Great Hall, dates from the reign of Richard II., whose badge, a white hart chained, appears on one of the doorways. Soon Totnes comes into view, climbing the steep right bank and spreading itself over the summit, its most salient features the ruined ivy-draped shell of the Norman castle on the crest of the hill, and the ruddy pinnacled tower of the church.

Totnes has not scrupled to claim to be the oldest town in England, and, quite half way up the acclivity, far above the highest water-mark of the Dart, they show the stone on which Brute set foot at the end of his voyage from ruined Troy. Few places can better afford to dispense with fabulous pretensions, for the evidences of its antiquity declare themselves on every hand. Its name is allowed to be Anglo-Saxon, and it is thought to be not improbable that its castle mound was first a British stronghold. A considerable part of the ancient wall is left standing, and the East Gate still divides High Street from Fore Street. Very quaint and charming are many of the old houses in the High Street, with their gables and piazzas; and the venerable Guildhall preserves its oaken stalls for the members of the Corporation, with a canopied centre for the Mayor. Below the town is the graceful three-arched bridge which connects it with Bridgetown Pomeroy, on the left bank; and from this one may descend by steps to the tiny island in mid-stream, some years ago laid out as a public garden.

It is the ten miles or so of river between Totnes and Dartmouth that have earned for the Dart the title of “the English Rhine.” The absurdity of likening the inconsiderable Dart, with its placid current and its backing of gently-sloping hills, to the broad and rushing Rhine, flanked by lofty, castle-crowned steeps, has before been exposed, but the nickname is still current, and while it remains so the protest must continue. Yet how manifold and bewitching are the graces of the stream in these lower reaches, where it curves and doubles until from some points of view it appears to be resolved into a series of lakes, embosomed among hills of softest contour, their braes either smooth and verdant as a lawn or rich with foliage! Not long after leaving Totnes one sees, on the right, Sharpham House, surrounded by lawns and parterres and by magnificent woods, which border the stream for at least a mile. Sandridge House, on the opposite bank, is notable as the birthplace of John Davis, the Elizabethan navigator, who discovered the Straits which are known among men by his name; and presently we shall pass the well wooded grounds of Greenway, where was born Sir Humphrey Gilbert, another of the heroes of great Eliza’s “spacious days,” who established the Newfoundland fisheries. Between these two points comes Dittisham, with its grey church tower, its famous plum orchards, and its bell, which is rung when one wants to be ferried over to Greenway Quay. Soon the Dart begins to widen out, and, threading our way among yachts and skiffs, we come within sight of the Britannia training-ship, and find ourselves betwixt Dartmouth on the right, and Kingswear on the left.

Dartmouth, rising from the bank in terraces, wears an aspect hardly less ancient than that of Totnes. It was incorporated in the fourteenth century, but for hundreds of years before that was of note as a harbour. William the Conqueror is said to have sailed herefrom on his expedition for the relief of Mans; a century later the English fleet, or a part of it, gathered here for the third Crusade; and did not Chaucer think that probably his shipman “was of Dertemuthe”? The castle, close to the water’s edge, at the mouth of the harbour, is something more than the picturesque remnant of an ancient fortress, for the wall and foss which surround it enclose also a casemated battery of heavy guns. On the crest of the hill behind are the ruins of Gallant’s Bower Fort. Nearly opposite is Kingswear Castle, which claims an even more remote origin; and crowning the hill at whose base it lies are some remains of Fort Ridley, which, like Gallant’s Bower, was wrested from the Parliamentarians by Prince Maurice, both strongholds, however, being afterwards stormed by Fairfax. The harbour, though a fine, broad sheet of water, is almost landlocked, and the entrance to it is through a strait channel known as “The Jawbones,” which in more primitive days than these was protected by a strong chain stretching from one bank to the other.