Part 37

The port of Plymouth comprises what are called the "Three Towns"--Plymouth proper, covering about a square mile, Stonehouse, and Devonport, where the great naval dockyard is located. Plymouth Sound is an estuary of the English Channel, and receives the Plym at its north-eastern border and the Tamar at its north-western, the sound being about three miles square and protected by the great breakwater a mile long, with a lighthouse, and defended by forts. The Plym broadens into the Catwater, used as a haven for merchant-vessels and transports and capable of furnishing anchorage to a thousand ships at one time. The Tamar broadens into the Hamoaze, which is the naval harbor, and is four miles long, with sufficient anchorage-ground for the entire British navy. Sutton Pool is a tidal harbor now used by merchant-vessels. The coasts of Plymouth Sound are rocky and abrupt, and strong fortresses frown at every entrance. It is the naval dockyard that gives Plymouth its chief importance: this is at Devonport, which is strongly fortified by breastworks, ditches, embankments, and heavy batteries. The great dockyard encloses an area of ninety-six acres and has thirty-five hundred feet of water-frontage. There are here five docks and also building-slips, where the great British war-ships are constructed. Another enclosure of seventy-two acres at Point Keyham is used for repairing ships, and a canal seventy feet wide runs through the yards to facilitate the movement of materials. Immense roofs cover the docks. East of Devonport, divided from it by a creek, and adjoining Plymouth, is Stonehouse. Here are the great victualling yard, marine barracks, and naval hospital. The Royal William Victualling Yard occupies fourteen acres on a tongue of land at the mouth of the Tamar, and cost $7,500,000 to build. Here the stores are kept and naval supplies furnished, its great features being the vast government bakehouse, the cooperage, and the storehouses. Its front is protected by a redoubt, and to the eastward are the tasteful grounds of the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe's winter villa. The marine barracks, which have the finest mess-room in England, will accommodate fifteen hundred men; the naval hospital, northward of Stonehouse, will furnish beds for twelve hundred. There are three thousand men employed about these great docks and stores, and they form the most extensive naval establishment in the world. Near Mount Wise are the Raglan Barracks, where there is a display of cannon taken from the Turks.

In Plymouth Sound is a bold pyramidal rock, the Isle of St. Nicholas, which is a formidable fortress. Mount Edgcumbe is on the western shore, and on the eastern side is Plymouth's pretty park, known as the Hoe, where the old Eddystone Lighthouse will be set up. Having come down the Plym, we will now ascend the Tamar, past the huge docks and stores, and about five miles above see the great Albert Bridge, which carries a railway, at a height of one hundred feet, from the hills of Devon over to those of Cornwall on the western shore. It is built on nineteen arches, two broad ones of four hundred and fifty-five feet span each bridging the river, the entire structure being two thousand two hundred and forty feet long. Out in the English Channel, fourteen miles from Plymouth, is its famous beacon--the Eddystone Lighthouse. Here Winstanley perished in the earlier lighthouse that was swept away by the terrible storm of 1703, and here Smeaton built his great lighthouse in 1759, one hundred feet high, which has recently been superseded by the new lighthouse. The Eddystone Rocks consist of twenty-two gneiss reefs extending about six hundred and fifty feet, in front of the entrance to Plymouth Sound. Smeaton's lighthouse, modelled after the trunk of a sturdy oak in Windsor Park, became the model for all subsequent lighthouses. It is as firm to-day as when originally built, but the reef on which it rests has been undermined and shattered by the joint action of the waves and the leverage of the tall stone column, against which the seas strike with prodigious force, causing it to vibrate like the trunk of a tree in a storm. The foundation-stone of the new lighthouse was laid on a reef one hundred and twenty-seven feet south of the old one in 1878. It is built of granite and rises one hundred and thirty-eight feet above the rock, its light being visible seventeen miles: it was first lighted May 18, 1882.

TAVISTOCK.

A short distance up the Tamar it receives its little tributary the Tavy, running through a deep ravine, and on its banks are the ruins of Tavistock Abbey, founded in the tenth century and dedicated to St. Mary. Orgarius, the Earl of Devonshire, was admonished in a dream to build it, but his son Ordulph finished it. He was of great strength and gigantic stature, could break down gates and stride across a stream ten feet wide. They still preserve, we are told, some of Ordulph's huge bones in Tavistock Church. The Danes plundered and burned the abbey, but it was rebuilt in greater splendor, and its abbot sat in the House of Peers. When it was disestablished, like Woburn it fell to Lord Russell, and it is now owned by the Duke of Bedford. The remains of the grand establishment, however, are but scanty, and its best memory is that of the printing-press set up by the monks, which was the second press established in England. The Duke of Bedford's attractive villa of Endsleigh is near Tavistock, and a short distance south of the town is Buckland Abbey, built on the river-bank by the Countess of Devon in the thirteenth century. This was the home of Sir Francis Drake, and is still held by his descendants. Drake was born in a modest cottage on the banks of the Tavy about the year 1539. North of Tavistock, on the little river Lyd, are the ruins of Lydford Castle, surrounded by a village of rude cottages. Here originated the "law of Lydford," a proverb expressive of hasty judgment:

"First hang and draw, Then hear the cause by Lydford law."

One chronicler accounts for this proverb by the wretched state of the castle jail, in which imprisonment was worse than death. At Lydford is a remarkable chasm where a rude arch is thrown across an abyss, at the bottom of which, eighty feet below, the Lyd rattles along in its contracted bed. This is a favorite place for suicides, and the tale is still told of a benighted horseman, caught in a heavy storm, who spurred his horse along the road at headlong speed to seek shelter in the village. Next day it was found that the storm had swept the bridge away, and the rider shuddered to think how his horse on that headlong ride through the tempest had leaped over the abyss without his knowing it.

THE NORTHERN COAST OF DEVON.

Exmoor is a broad strip of almost mountainous moorland extending through the northern borders of Somerset and Devon and down to the coast of Bristol Channel. Its hills descend precipitously to the sea, so that only small brooks flow northward from them, excepting the Lyn, which manages to attain the dignity of a river by flowing for some distance among the hills parallel to the coast. It was but recently that good roads were constructed across this lonely moor, and on its northern edge, where the craggy headland of Greenaleigh is thrust out into the sea, is the harbor of Minehead, with a little fishing-village skirting its shores. A short distance inland, and seated at the bases of the steep Brendon Hills, which rise in sharp wooded slopes above its houses, is the little market-town of Dunster. On an outlying hill, projecting from the mass, the original lord of Dunster built his castle, perching it upon a rocky crag that Nature herself designed for a fortress. The Saxons called it their "Hill-tower." Its picturesque mass of buildings is of various dates, but much more modern than their early day, most of the present structure having been built in Queen Elizabeth's reign. The castle was held for King Charles in the Civil War, and besieged by the Parliamentary troops, whose commander sent this bloodthirsty message to its governor: "If you will deliver up the castle, you shall have fair quarter: if not, expect no mercy: your mother shall be in front to receive the first fury of your cannon." The governor promptly and bravely replied, "If you do what you threaten, you do the most barbarous and villainous act that was ever done. My mother I honor, but the cause I fight for and the masters I serve are God and the king.--Mother, do you forgive me, and give me your blessing, and let the rebels answer for spilling that blood of yours, which I would save with the loss of mine own if I had enough for both my master and yourself." The mother also without hesitation answered him: "Son, I forgive thee, and pray God to bless thee, for this brave resolution. If I live I shall love thee the better for it: God's will be done!" Whether the atrocious threat would have been put into execution was never decided, for a strong Royalist force soon appeared, routing the besiegers, capturing a thousand of them, and releasing the lady. But the castle was soon afterwards taken for the Parliament by Colonel Blake, subsequently the admiral. It was then demolished, and now the summit of the flat-topped hill, where formerly was the keep, is devoted to the peaceful amusement of a bowling-green, from which there are exquisite views of the Brendon Hills and far away over the Bristol Channel to the distant coast of Wales. It was at Dunster Castle that William Prynne was shut up a prisoner by Cromwell. Prynne had been pilloried, shorn of his ears, and imprisoned by King Charles I. for his denunciations of the court, and then indulging in the same criticism of the Protector, he was confined at Dunster. It is now the head-quarters for those who love the exciting pleasures of stag-hunting on Exmoor.

Journeying westward over the hills from Minehead, which is just now endeavoring, though with only partial success, to convert itself into a fashionable watering-place, Dunkery Beacon is seen raising its head inland--a brown, heathy moorland elevated seventeen hundred feet above the sea. There is a grand panorama disclosed from its summit, though it is a toilsome ascent to get up there and overlook the fifteen counties it can display. Far below is the level shore of Porlock Bay, with the little village set in at the base of the cliffs. Here Southey was sheltered at its inn, and wrote a sonnet while he was "by the unwelcome summer rain detained;" and here the village has slept ever since the Danes harried and Harold burned it. Then the road climbs laboriously up the hill again to Porlock Moor, and as the top is reached, far away is seen a little grassy basin running like a streak off towards the north-west, and enclosed by steep hills, in which it is ultimately lost. This is the valley of the Lyn, and joining it is another little glen, with a hamlet of white cottages at the junction: this is the Oare valley, the centre of some of the most stirring traditions of Exmoor, embodied in Blackmore's novel of _Lorna Doone_. Two centuries ago a lawless clan established themselves in this lonely glen, from which issues the Bagworthy Water not far away from the little village of Oare. Here was Jan Ridd's farm, and near it the cataract of the Bagworthy Water-slide, while above this cataract, in the recesses of Doone Glen, was the robbers' home, whence they issued to plunder the neighboring country. The novel tells how Jan Ridd, who was of herculean strength, was standing with his bride Lorna at the altar of the little church in Oare when a bullet wounded her. Out rushed Jan from the presence of his wife, dead as he thought, to pursue the murderer. He was unarmed, and rode after him over the moorland, tearing from an oak a mighty bough as he passed under it. To this day the rent in "Jan Ridd's tree" is shown. Then came the struggle, and an Exmoor bog swallowed up the murderer, who was the last of the robber chieftains; and afterwards the bride recovered and the happy pair were united. Exmoor is the only place remaining in the kingdom where the wild stag is still hunted with hounds, the season being in the early autumn, when all the inns are crowded, and on the day of a "meet" all the country seems alive.

LYNTON AND LYNMOUTH.

From Oare the valley of the Lyn can be followed down to the sea, flowing through its wooded gorge and disclosing many pretty views. It runs rapidly over the rocks, and, when at last seeking the sea, the little stream manages to escape out of the hills that have so long encompassed it, we again find coupled together an upper and a lower town--Lynton, perched hundreds of feet above on the crags, and Lynmouth, down by the water's edge, both in grandly picturesque locations. Crowded between the bases of the crags and the pebbly beach is the irregular line of old cottages beside the bubbling stream, with creeping vines climbing over their walls and thatched roofs, while beyond is thrust out the ancient pier that made the port of Lynmouth. Up on the crags, with houses nestling here in nooks and perched there upon cliffs, Lynton mounts by zigzag paths, until, on a rocky terrace above, it gets room to spread into a straggling street. The two streams called the East and West Lyn unite here before seeking the sea, and join their currents at the edge of the town. Here they leap over the boulders:

"Cool and clear, cool and clear, By shining shingle and foaming weir, Under the crag where the ouzel sings, And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings."

Southey rapturously described the East Lyn Vale as the "finest spot, except Cintra and Arrabida, that I ever saw." It is like a miniature glen in the Alps or the Pyrenees, and every turn in the road up to the Waters-meet, where the Brendon joins the Lyn, discloses new beauties. It is an exquisite combination of wood, rock, and stream that baffles all description. Gentle flowers grow here to luxuriant perfection, protected from all chilling blasts and with ample moisture to assist the sunshine in their cultivation. But barely a mile east of Lynton on the coast there is told a different story: there is a valley of rocks, where between two ridges of hills the vale is covered with stones and almost completely laid bare, a terrific mass of boulders, the very skeleton of the earth. Overhanging the sea is the gigantic "Castle Rock," while facing it from the inland side, at an elbow of the valley, is a queer pile of crags known as the "Devil's Cheese-Ring." From the castle is a view over the sea and of the romantic towns, with the little river flowing alongside and the tower on Lynmouth beach, while far westward the moorland spreads away towards those other romantic spots, Ilfracombe and Clovelly.

COMBE MARTIN AND ILFRACOMBE.

Let us skirt along the precipitous Devonshire coast westward from the Lyn, where the cliffs rise high and abruptly from the water, with foliage on the hills above them and sheep browsing like little white specks beyond. Thus Exmoor is prolonged westward in a broad and lofty ridge of undulating hills, through which a stream occasionally carves its devious course in a deep and sheltered valley that comes out to the sea between bold, rocky headlands. Far out over the sea loom up the coasts of Wales in purple clouds. Soon in a breach in the wall of crags we find Combe Martin, its houses dotted among the gardens and orchards clustering thickly around the red stone church. Here were silver-mines long ago, and here lived Martin of Tours, to whom William the Conqueror granted the manor which to this day bears his name. The neighboring hills grow the best hemp in Devon, and the crags guarding the harbor are known as the Great and Little Hangman, the former, which is the higher, standing behind the other. The local tradition says that once a fellow who had stolen a sheep was carrying the carcase home on his back, having tied the hind legs together around his neck. He paused for breath at the top of the hill, and, resting against a projecting slab, poised the carcase on the top, when it suddenly slipped over and garroted him. He was afterwards found dead, and thus named the hills. Near here was born, in 1522, Bishop Jewel of Salisbury, of whom it is recorded by that faithful biographer Fuller that he "wrote learnedly, preached painfully, lived piously, died peacefully." To the westward are Watersmouth, with its natural arch in the slaty rocks bordering the sea, and Hillsborough rising boldly to guard a tiny cove. Upon this precipitous headland is an ancient camp, and it overlooks Ilfracombe, the chief watering-place of the northern Devonshire coast. Here a smart new town has rapidly developed, with paths cut upon the cliffs and encroachments made along the shore. High upon a pyramidal headland stands the ancient chapel where in the olden time the forefathers of the village prayed to St. Nicholas for deliverance from shipwreck. Now a lighthouse is relied on for this service. The promontory is connected with a still bolder and loftier headland, the Capstone Rock. The town is built on the slope of the hills overlooking these huge round-topped crags, but its streets do not run down to sand-beaches. There is little but rocks on the shore and reefs in the water, worn into ridges of picturesque outline, over which the surf breaks grandly in time of storm. We are told that in a cave near by, Sir William Tracy, one of the murderers of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, concealed himself while waiting to escape from England. He and his accomplices were ordered to purge themselves by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but Tracy was not able to accomplish it. The winds of heaven always drove him back whenever he tried to embark, for he had struck the first blow at Becket. He was buried in Morthoe Church beyond Ilfracombe.

MORTE POINT AND BIDEFORD.

A few miles westward the coast-line suddenly bends to the southward, the angle being marked by a wild, rocky headland known as Morte Point, which the Devonshire proverb describes as "the place on earth which Heaven made last and the devil will take first." It is a chaos of rock-ridges, the sea washing against it on three sides, and is a noted place for wrecks. Far out at sea can be seen a half-submerged black rock which the Normans christened the Morte Stone, or "Death Rock." To the southward sweeps a fringe of yellow sand around Morte Bay, and behind the headland is the little village of Morthoe, where Tracy is buried. Beyond the boundary of the bay, at Baggy Point, is another and broader bay, whose shores make a grand sweep to the westward again. This is Barnstaple Bay, into which flows a wide estuary forming the outlet of two rivers: the northernmost is the Taw, and at the head of its estuary is Barnstaple. The other is the Torridge, and upon it, at about nine miles distance from Barnstaple, is the small but prettier town of Bideford. This is described by Kingsley as a little white town, sloping upward from its broad tidal river, paved with yellow sands, and having a many-arched old bridge towards the uplands to the westward. The wooded hills close in above the town, but in front, where the rivers join, they sink into a hazy level of marsh and low undulations of sand. The town has stood almost as it is now since Grenvil, the cousin of William the Conqueror, founded it. It formerly enjoyed great commercial prosperity under the patronage of the Grenvilles, reaching its height in the seventeenth century. The old quay remains. The ancient bridge, which is a remarkable one, was built five hundred years ago, and is constructed on twenty-four piers, firmly founded, yet shaking under the footstep. The superstitious say it is of miraculous origin, for when they began to build it some distance farther up the river, each night invisible hands removed the stones to their present position. It is also a wealthy bridge and of noble rank, having its heraldic coat-of-arms (a ship and a bridge proper on a plain field) and owning broad estates, with the income of which "the said miraculous bridge has from time to time founded chantries, built schools, waged suits-at-law, and, finally, given yearly dinners, and kept for that purpose the best-stocked cellar of wines in all Devon."

CLOVELLY.

The coast of Barnstaple Bay sweeps around to the westward again, and here, under the precipitous crags, nestling in one of the most picturesque nooks in all England, is Clovelly. From an inland plateau of considerable elevation the land falls steeply to the sea, with a narrow strip of sand or shingle sometimes interposed, whereon the surf dashes before it reaches the rocks. Dense foliage, with here and there a protruding crag, overhangs the cliffs. Ravines occasionally furrow the rocky wall, and in one of these Clovelly is situated, beginning with some scattered houses on the margin of the plateau above, descending the cliff in one steep street, and spreading out about a miniature harbor on the edge of the sea. There are few such streets to be seen elsewhere--not made for wheeled vehicles, but paved in a series of broad steps, over which the donkeys and the population plod with the produce of the fleet of fishing-boats the village owns. It is narrow, with strangely-shaped houses jumbled together alongside, and balconies and bay-windows, chimneys and gables--all mixed up together. Here Kingsley spent most of his boyhood, and hither flock the artists to paint odd pictures for almost every British art-exhibition. Its little pier was built in Richard II.'s time, when as now it was a landing-place for the mackerel-and herring-boats. This quay has recently been somewhat enlarged. Clovelly Court, the home of the Careys, is near by, with its beautiful park extending out to the tall cliffs overhanging the sea. On one craggy point, known as Gallantry Bower, and five hundred feet above the waves, was an old watch-tower of the Normans, now reduced to a mere ring of stones; and to the westward a few miles the bold rocks of Hartland Point mark another angle in the coast as it bends southward towards Cornwall. Eleven miles out to sea, rising four hundred feet and guarded all around by grim precipices, is Lundy Island. Here in a little cove are some fishermen's huts, while up on the top is a lighthouse, and near it the ruins of the old Moresco Castle. We have already referred to Sir Walter Raleigh's judicial murder: it was accomplished mainly through the treachery of his near kinsman, Sir Lewis Stukely, then vice-admiral of Devon. This and other actions caused Stukely to be almost universally despised, and he was finally insulted by Lord Howard of Effingham, when he complained to the king. "What should I do with him?" asked James. "Hang him? On my sawl, mon, if I hung all that spoke ill of thee, all the trees in the island were too few." Being soon afterwards detected in the royal palace debasing the coin, he fled to Devon, a ruined man. But he found no friends, and, every door being closed against him, he sailed out to Lundy Island, and died alone in a chamber of the ruined castle.

CORNWALL.