Part 4
It is, however, in marine zoology, for which few other parts of England afford so rich a field, and for which its bays and inlets, its rock-pools and stretches of sand provide ideal hunting-ground for the naturalist, that Devonshire is most distinguished. Many famous zoologists, such as Leach, Montagu, Parfitt, Gosse, and Kingsley have won renown both for themselves and for the county by their researches; while the Marine Biological Laboratory at Plymouth is constantly adding to our knowledge of the multitudinous inhabitants of the sea. The subject is so vast that only a few chief points can here be touched upon.
The sea-fish differ in marked degree from those of the east coast of England. Plaice and cod, for example, are smaller here than those caught in the North Sea and the latter are scarce; and the haddock, one of the most important of east coast fish, is here almost unknown. Two characteristic fish of the south coast of Devon are the pollack, which reaches a great size, and the pilchard, confined to this county and to Cornwall. Many southern and even Mediterranean species find their way to these waters: notable examples are the gigantic tunny, one specimen of which weighed 700 pounds, the beautiful rainbow wrasse, one of the most brilliantly-coloured of all fish, and the boar-fish, which is sometimes quite common. A number of rare species, such as Montagu's sucker and the crystal goby, were first made known as British through being taken off the Devonshire coast. Stray examples of the tropical bonito, the flying-fish, the electric torpedo, and the sun-fish, one specimen of which weighed 500 pounds, and the splendidly-coloured opal or king-fish, have been recorded. Several kinds of sharks have been caught in these waters, including the blue shark, the spinous shark, covered all over with sharp prickles, the rare and formidable hammer-head, the huge thresher, and the still larger basking-shark. The latter is, indeed, the largest of British fish. Specimens have been caught measuring 30 feet in length, and weighing more than eight tons. Marketable marine-fish will be treated of in a later chapter.
Rich as are the Devonshire seas in fish, they are richer still in crustaceans--crabs, lobsters, prawns, shrimps and their allies; and in this respect ours is the premier county of England. Among a multitude of species, two which have occurred nowhere else in Britain may be specially singled out. One of these is the burying-shrimp, _Callionassa subterranea_, a little creature something like a very small lobster, with one claw--sometimes the right and sometimes the left--very much larger than the other. It was one of Montagu's many discoveries, and was found two feet deep under the sand of the Kingsbridge estuary. The other rare species is the turtle-crab, _Planes minutus_, a few specimens of which have been drifted ashore on fronds of Sargasso weed. The "small grasshoppers" which Columbus saw floating in the sea a few days before he sighted the New World, were, it is believed, not grasshoppers, but turtle-crabs.
Other and very beautiful forms of marine life, such as starfish, anemones, corals and other zoophytes, and sea-shells are very abundant. And in spite of the comparative scarcity of lime in the soil of Devonshire, the list of land and freshwater shells is a long one. It is remarkable that _Limnaea stagnalis_ and _Planorbis corneus_, two water-shells that are common in Somerset, are unknown in Devon. The pearl-bearing mussel, _Unio margaritifer_, is found in both the Taw and the Teign.
The county is rich in insects, especially as regards butterflies, moths, and beetles; but several of the first-named which have been caught in Somerset have not been recorded here. The black-veined white (_Pieris crataegi_), once a common insect, has disappeared within the last forty years, and the greasy fritillary (_Melitaea Artemis_)--another vanishing species--is now almost extinct. Neither insect can have been hunted down for the sake of its beauty or its rarity, and the reason for this disappearance is unknown.
As in the case of birds, the county is, from its position, a favourite alighting-place for insects coming from abroad. Between 1876 and 1890 large numbers of a very striking and beautiful American butterfly, _Danais plexippus_, appeared in England, having apparently crossed the Atlantic, and three specimens were caught in Devonshire. The Lulworth skipper (_Hesperia Actaeon_), a small butterfly which elsewhere is only found in Dorset, occurs along the south-east coast of this county. Moths are very abundant, and the first recorded British examples of several species were taken in Devonshire.
About a hundred years ago, caterpillars of the spurge hawk-moth (_Deilephila euphorbiae_) were very plentiful on spurge plants growing among the sand-hills near Barnstaple. Many of these caterpillars were taken by naturalists, and were reared, and ultimately turned into perfect insects; although neither there nor anywhere else in our island was a wild example of this very beautiful moth ever seen alive. The spurge plants were long ago covered up by drifting sand, and the caterpillars were all destroyed. No other locality for them has been found in England, and as far as this country is concerned the spurge hawk-moth appears to be extinct.
As might be expected in a district of such varied physical features, with so mild a climate and such an ample rainfall, the flowering plants of Devonshire are very numerous, no fewer than 1156 species having been recorded. The abundance and beauty of its wild-flowers is one of the characteristics of the county. No one who has ever seen them will forget the wonderful wealth of primroses in some of the river valleys--at Holne, for example--or the splendour of the ling-empurpled sweeps of Dartmoor, or its sheets of golden gorse; or the marvellous mist of bluebells upon woodland slopes or in the shelter of straggling hedgerows. Each several district, sea-shore and salt-marsh, moor and bog, wood and valley, has its own distinct and characteristic flora. One Devonshire plant, the Romulea or gênotte, _Romulea columnae_, a Mediterranean species with very small pale blue flowers, is abundant on the Warren at the mouth of the Exe, but grows nowhere else in England, although it is found in Guernsey. Several plants occur in only one other English county; such for instance are the white rock-rose, _Helianthemum polifolium_, and the Irish spurge, _Euphorbia hibernica_, which are confined to Devon and Somerset, and the "flower of the Exe," _Lobelia urens_, which grows only in Devon and Cornwall. Three plants, which are very abundant in Somerset, the cowslip, the sweet violet, and the mistletoe, are rare in this county, although not unknown. The first plants of sea-kale ever brought into cultivation were originally dug up on Slapton sands; and the vegetable came into note in Bath about 1775.
Ferns are characteristic of Devonshire. Not only are most of the familiar kinds abundant, but rarer species as the true maiden-hair, two filmy ferns, and the parsley fern (_Cryptogramme crispa_) are to be found. The magnificent royal fern, _Osmunda regalis_, still grows in some of the river valleys, and especially in Holne Chase, but it has suffered much from the greed of collectors, and the raids of unscrupulous dealers. A great variety of spleenworts has been recorded for the county, and one of the characteristic hedgerow ferns is the pretty little _Asplenium adiantum-nigrum_. Mosses, also, are very abundant, and there is one kind which occurs nowhere else in Britain. In sea-weeds Devonshire is richer than any other county except Dorset. Among its 468 different species is the Sargasso or Gulf-weed, sprays of which are sometimes thrown ashore after rough weather.
Except on the moors Devonshire is well timbered. The elm is perhaps the most conspicuous tree, but the beech and the ash are also very abundant. There is a very fine wych-elm, with a trunk 16 ft. in circumference, in Sharpham Park. The sycamore, which when well-developed is a very beautiful tree, here attains to fine proportions, and there are noble examples at Widecombe-in-the-Moor. The oak, although it grows freely, does not, as a rule, reach a great size, though there are some well-grown specimens at Tawstock Court. There is an oak at Flitton, near North Molton, which is thirty-three feet in circumference, and the Meavy oak is twenty-five feet in girth. An oak-tree thirteen and a half feet in diameter was cut down at Okehampton in 1776, and there is a tradition that two couples danced upon its stump. There are no very remarkable yews in Devonshire. Probably the finest are at Stoke Gabriel, Kenn, and Withycombe Raleigh, but the first of these is only fifteen feet in girth at the level of the ground. There is a story that, under the yew-tree at Mamhead, Boswell vowed that he would never get drunk again. At Bowringsleigh there is a magnificent avenue of lime-trees, and the avenue of araucarias at Bicton, planted in 1842, is said to be the finest in the kingdom. Several manor-houses possess one or more noble old mulberry-trees planted in the time of James I, with a view to encourage the cultivation of silk. At Buckland Abbey, once the home of Sir Francis Drake, there are some beautiful tulip-trees. Palms and other sub-tropical trees grow without protection at several places on the south coast; and at Kingsbridge and other towns pomegranates, oranges, lemons, and citrons will ripen their fruit in the open air.
A good many places in Devonshire take their names from trees. Thus Ashburton is named from the ash, Egg Buckland from the oak, Bickleigh from the beech, and Holne from the holly.
8. A Peregrination of the Coast: 1, The Bristol Channel.
Devonshire, like Cornwall and Kent, is remarkable in having both a northern and a southern seaboard; a peculiarity shared by no other English county. Its two shores present striking points of difference. The south coast-line is broken by many estuaries. On the other shore there is only one important river mouth. There are, it is true, many little coves and inlets on the Bristol Channel, some of them of great beauty; but they make little show upon the map of England, and the stern outline of the North Devon coast affords no harbour of refuge.
Both shores are rock-bound. But while the southern cliffs are, in great measure, of warm-hued and even brightly-coloured stone, those on the north are dark and gloomy; and their tones, although in some places very beautiful, are set in quieter key--in grey or brown or even verging upon black. Again, the southern shore is fringed at some points with sandy beaches; while on the north coast there are no sands at all, except on the western side of Bideford Bay.
Along the northern seaboard of Devon there runs a series of magnificent cliffs, in parts heavily wooded, whose dark walls, sloping steeply to the shore and with projecting bases suggestive of the ram of a battleship, are relieved at many points by deep, rocky clefts, known variously as combes or mouths; each with its stream, each green with ferns and oak-coppice and thickets of thorn and hazel, and each with its butterfly-haunted clumps of tall hemp-agrimony.
Down such a hollow, the deep and finely-wooded valley of Glenthorne, runs the border-line that divides Somerset from Devon. Rather more than three miles west of it there stands out into the Bristol Channel the dark mass of Countisbury Foreland, the most northerly point in the county, and one of the highest along its coast, 1100 feet above sea-level. Four miles beyond the Foreland, at the mouth of a deep and well-wooded valley, down which runs the beautiful trout-stream from which it takes its name, is Lynmouth, famous for its scenery, of which two striking features are the Watersmeet on the river, and the Valley of Rocks on the coast. A port and fishing-village up to the close of the eighteenth century, its small tidal harbour is visited now only by a few small coasting vessels. About four miles west of Lynmouth is Heddon's Mouth, a little bay at the foot of towering cliffs, with another trout-stream flowing down to the sea through one of the loveliest combes in North Devon. Five miles of cliff stretch from Heddon's Mouth to Combe Martin Bay, a little inlet lying in the shelter of two conspicuous heights, the Great Hangman and the Little Hangman--names associated with no tragic story, but derived, like many others round our coasts, from the Celtic _maen_, a stone--and with its village, once famous for its rich silver-mines, running a mile inland. Two miles of rock-bound and dangerous coast, swept, especially off Rillage Point, by a strong tide-race, extend from Combe Martin Bay to the ancient port of Ilfracombe, whose mild yet bracing climate and beautiful surroundings have made it the most popular seaside resort in North Devon. Its little land-locked harbour is almost surrounded by lofty hills and rugged cliffs, whose beauty is greatly heightened by the varied colouring of the rock and by the vivid green of the abundant vegetation.
Ilfracombe is a place that has played a part in history. In the fourteenth century it provided six ships towards Edward III's expedition against Calais. It was from this port that Queen Elizabeth sent troops to Ireland during the rebellion of the Earl of Tyrone. In the Civil War it was taken alternately by Royalists and Parliamentarians. It was from Ilfracombe that Wade and Ferguson and other Sedgemoor fugitives tried in vain to escape by sea. And it was here, in 1796, that the French squadron which afterwards landed 1000 scoundrels of the _Légion noire_ at Fishguard, on the opposite coast--the last hostile invasion of these islands--burnt the fishing-smacks lying in the harbour. The French ships were in the end taken by Lord Bridport.
A short distance west of Ilfracombe is Wildersmouth, a beautiful bay, with a gravelly beach, famous for its richness in the lower forms of marine life, and three miles farther down the coast juts out Bull Point, a bold headland guarded by a powerful lighthouse, marking the north-eastern limit of the most dangerous part of the coast, which here turns abruptly southward, facing squarely to the open Atlantic. A little farther on is Morte Point, whose name the popular fancy regards, although without foundation, as hinting at the deadly character of its black, jagged, sea-swept rocks. The village of Mortehoe, a few hundred yards inland, was the property in the thirteenth century of the de Traci family, one of whom was among the murderers of Thomas à Becket. But there is no ground for the legend that he was buried here, or for the traditions of him that are current in the district. A tiny little cove on the south side of Morte Point, called Barracane Beach, was once famous for its rare and beautiful shells; but it is now so widely known, and its charm is so completely lost, that it has been said of it that there are more collectors than specimens.
Beyond Morte Point is Morte Bay, most of whose shore lies low, and is fringed throughout almost its entire length by the broad expanse of Woollacombe Sands, along whose margin, at heights varying from eight to fifteen feet above high-water mark, may be traced at intervals a raised sea-beach. At the southern extremity of Morte Bay is the noble headland of Baggy Point, a magnificent piece of cliff, haunted by crowds of sea-birds, and pierced by many caves. The shore of Croyde Bay, beyond the Point, is famous for its fertility; and from the crest of Saunton Down, the last headland before the estuary formed by the waters of the Taw and the Torridge, is a view which, embracing sea and coast-line, rich expanses of farm-land, the distant heights of Dartmoor and the faint shape of Lundy on the far horizon, is one of the finest in all Devon. Along the shore to the south of Baggy Point, where Saunton Sands form the seaward fringe of Braunton Burrows, is another long stretch of raised sea-beach, from two to fifteen feet above high-water mark. And in this beach, not far from Saunton, is a large boulder of red granite, a rock unknown in the district, which may have been stranded here by floating ice.
Braunton Burrows is a long, wide tract of sand-hills, some eighteen square miles in area, stretching far inland, and reaching to the estuary of the Taw and the Torridge, with deep hollows among which, without a compass, it is quite possible to get completely lost. It is a place of much interest to the naturalist and the antiquarian. A number of rare plants are found here, great quantities of primitive flint implements have been discovered in the sand, and at low water the remains of a submerged forest are to be seen along the shore.
The estuary formed by the combined streams of the Taw and Torridge, the former of which is also known as the Barnstaple River, flows into Barnstaple Bay at the south end of Braunton Burrows. There is no port on the open coast; but just inside the estuary are the quaint old town of Appledore and the equally ancient village of Instow, on the left and right banks, respectively, of the river Torridge. In the mouth of the same stream, a little to the south of Appledore, is a long flat rock called the Hubblestone; named, according to tradition, after the viking Hubba, who pillaged this coast in the reign of King Alfred, and fell in battle at the mouth of the Parrett, in the adjoining county of Somerset.
Blocking up a great part of the river mouth, and stretching down the coast past Westward Ho! a distance of about two miles, is the Pebble Ridge, a remarkable bank of shingle and sea-worn boulders, some of which are of great size, though the majority are not more than a few inches in diameter. The sea has gradually shifted it further and further inland, and it now covers what was once a long stretch of good pasture-ground. On its landward side are the golf-links of Northam Burrows, considered to be among the finest south of the Tweed.
Westward Ho! a modern watering-place named in honour of Kingsley's great romance, is chiefly interesting on account of its submerged forest, in whose peat and clay, deeply covered by the sea at high tide, have been found, not only the trunks of large oak and fir-trees, and bones of the wild boar, stag, horse, and dog, but bones of man, together with charcoal, pottery, and implements of flint.
Six miles south-west of Westward Ho! and in the centre of the curve that marks the southern shore of Barnstaple Bay, is the prettily situated fishing-village of Buck's Mill, with red and wood-crowned cliffs behind and beyond it, and extending to Clovelly, the famous little town that may truly be called one of the most remarkable spots, not in Devonshire only, but in all England. Crowded in a hollow in the cliff, with woods on either side, and with an air of climbing up from its little tidal harbour sheltered by a rough stone pier of the time of Richard II, it consists of one long, winding, pebble-paved street, too steep for wheeled traffic, with quaint and irregularly-built cottages to left and right, beautiful with creepers and myrtles, fuchsias and geraniums. Not only is Clovelly intimately associated with the memory of Charles Kingsley, whose father was rector here, but it is the original "village of Steepways," in Dickens and Collins' Christmas story, _A Message from the Sea_.
A long stretch of wild and magnificent coast-line extends from Clovelly to Hartland Point, where the shore again turns southward, and again from Hartland to the county border; a wall of precipitous black cliffs, relieved here and there by bands of red schist, and broken at intervals by green combes such as are characteristic of the seabord of Devon; a terrible coast, strewn with fragments of wreckage from ill-fated ships.
Hartland Point, believed to be the Promontory of Hercules alluded to by the geographer Ptolemy, is a noble headland, whose dark steeps rise 350 feet sheer up out of a dangerous and ever restless sea. Perhaps there is not, in any other part of North Devon, more striking evidence of volcanic upheaval and disturbance than is to be seen in the curved and gnarled and twisted strata of the cliffs that tower above Hartland Quay.
Six miles south of Hartland the northern seaboard of the county ends, as it began, in a deep hollow in the cliffs, Marsland Mouth, a beautiful combe, down which, under storm-beaten oaks and thickets of thorn and hazel, there winds the stream that forms the border-line between Devonshire and Cornwall.
9. A Peregrination of the Coast: 2, The English Channel.
The points that specially characterise the southern seaboard of Devonshire, and distinguish it from the northern shore, are its many estuaries, its numerous bays and bold headlands, the strong, deep red, in some places, of its rugged cliffs, and, in a minor degree, the sandy beaches which lend an added charm to many of its seaside towns.
No natural feature marks the spot, half-way between Lyme Cobb and the Seven Rocks Point, where the border-line between Dorsetshire and Devonshire begins. But all that part of the coast, almost as far as the mouth of the Axe, shows signs of having been broken away by repeated landslips; one of the most serious of which happened in 1839, when a vast mass of cliff, extending all the way from Pinhay (or Pinner) to Culverhole Point, slipped bodily down some 300 feet, carrying with it fields and houses; and it now lies in most picturesque ruin on the beach.
The mouth of the Axe, above whose eastern side rises the Haven Cliff, a fine mass of red sandstone crowned by white chalk, has long since been silted up by pebbles, and no ships now visit either Axmouth or Seaton, the latter of which was once of sufficient importance to contribute two vessels towards Edward III's expedition against Calais, but is now only a watering-place. Beyond the mouth of the Axe, separated from it by a mile of low-lying shore, the White Cliff, also a scene of many landslips, rises sheer up out of the sea; a fine piece of cliff-wall, the effect of whose bands of red and white, of brown and grey, is greatly heightened by the green of its abundant vegetation. More striking still is the white precipice of Beer Head, the most southerly outcrop of chalk in England, worn above into picturesque and ivy-mantled crags, and hollowed at its base into many caves. From its summit, 426 feet above the sea, is a far-reaching view of the coast, covering the 50 miles from Portland on the east to the Start on the west. Half-way between the mouth of the Axe and Beer Head is the quaint and old-world village of Beer, famous for its labyrinthine quarries tunnelled deep into the hill, for its fisheries and lace-making, and, formerly, as a special haunt of smugglers. From Beer Head, past the little openings of Branscombe Mouth, Weston Mouth, and Salcombe, to Sidmouth, is a range of magnificent and picturesquely-coloured cliffs, white and grey and yellow, and at some points rising straight up from the sea-line.