Part 8

The drive from Lynton to Barnstaple, though not long, being, we believe, somewhat under twenty miles, brought to us a crowd of half-forgotten associations of early days when coach-travelling was the chief means of locomotion. The coach itself was of the old build, spick and span in its neatness; the coachman was of old-fashioned ways; the four sleek horses were no mere omnibus hacks, but as they warmed to their work up and down hill, showed a mettle akin to that of roadsters in days long ago. Or perhaps we had only imagined until now that the old breed had deteriorated! The villages on the way had no sign of "Station" or "Station Hotel" about them; children ran from the cottage doors to shout after the coach, or to bring primroses and violets to the passengers; rustics gathered for a chat where the coachman pulled up, as he did tolerably often, for time seemed but a small object in that old-world region. And all around was outspread a landscape of rich, ever-changing loveliness, ruddy in soil, rich in verdure, as at one time we descended into lanes half-embowered by the already luxuriant hedgerows, and at another emerged on open moorland swept by soft breezes from the sea, and engirdled by the hazy forms of distant hills. At length the estuary of the Taw came into view, the houses of Barnstaple appeared, the coach drove into the station yard, and we were in the world again.

Another route might have been taken from Lynton to Ilfracombe, by way of Combe Martin, with its fine and rocky bay; but we were anxious to reach less crowded and familiar spots than the famous North Devon watering-place, though this also is in its way delightful. We must, however, see one or two further points on the coast before striking inland again; and accordingly, took up our night's quarters at Bideford, famed for the length of its bridge, and the steepness of its streets. Emerging early in the morning from the highest part of the town, we made our way to Westward Ho! that magnificent possibility, whose stately mansions and hotels, broad quays and pier, surrounded by vessels from all parts, with its broad level plain by the sea and noble background of wooded hills, had so often captivated us--in railway-station waiting-rooms. We found it all there, except the mansions, the quays, and the ships! The bay is glorious, the plain upon the shore stretches far and wide,--to the satisfaction of golfers, for whose favourite game no spot can be better adapted: there is a great pebble-ridge, a natural breakwater two miles long and fifty feet wide, composed of rounded pebbles of carboniferous "grit;" the background of wooded cliffs is magnificent, while a lonely pier, one commodious hotel, a bath-house on a splendid scale, some rows of villas, lodging-houses, and one or two educational establishments give promise of prosperity to come. A great sanatorium or hydropathic institution, to be called "the Kingsley," after the gifted man who has set the stamp of his genius on this whole neighbourhood, has been projected; and certainly for purposes of health as well as enjoyment, no place could be better adapted than the woodland terraces overlooking this most beautiful bay.

The mention of Charles Kingsley reminds us of Clovelly, his early home, and to the last his favourite spot. Early in the morning we started for this unique Devonshire village, with high expectations, and under the auspices of the British Government, as our chosen vehicle was the "mail-cart," in the shape of a very comfortable waggonette filled with pleasant chatty passengers, all the livelier, perhaps, from the good-humoured sense of merit which early-rising is apt to engender. The road was not particularly striking, save for glimpses of the channel seen through the light morning haze: the breath of spring was in the air, and when we alighted at the "Hobby" gate, we were fully prepared for the three miles' walk by which our breakfast was yet to be earned. The path, in reality a broad, well-kept drive, is carried along the face of the cliff, which shelves gradually, covered thickly with trees and brushwood, to the shore, while the bank towers above, soft with moss and beautiful with flowers. The cliff curves in and out irregularly; broken in one or two places by deep glens, over which the road is carried by rustic bridges. Long shadows lay, that morning, across the path; above and below, the tender budding foliage clothed the dark branches of oak and elm, hazel and beech, in every variety of shade; the air was musical with birds, and, stirred by the gentle morning breeze and the whisper of the boughs, blended with the distant murmur of the sea. It was a walk to be remembered. At length, at a turning of the road, Clovelly came into sight, about a mile distant--a seemingly confused heap of houses emerging on all sides from thick woodland, and slanting steeply down to a stone pier jutting out into a little bay. At the end of the Hobby walk, the summit of the village was gained, and we were soon descending its curious steep street, not without longing looks at the quaint little lodging-houses, all untenanted as yet.

Clovelly is a place to linger in, and to dream! The practical need of the hour, however, was breakfast, during the preparation of which meal it was pleasant to sit in the hotel balcony, and look out upon the bay, with its lines of light and shadow, and the long outline of Lundy Island showing clear in the distance; for now the morning mists had lifted, and the brightness of spring was over sea and land. A walk of marvellous beauty followed, into the park of Clovelly Court, over springy turf, through woodlands budding into leaf, and over a stretch of rugged wilderness, preserved with some art in its primitive simplicity. Thence, by a winding pathway, or over a steep grassy slope, the highest point may be reached, a noble cliff, called from some old local story Gallantry Bower. A little summer-house, nestling in the cliff-side, commands a grand range of cliffs, with their curved, contorted strata, peculiar to the carboniferous formation, while many a jutting or broken crag gives a castellated aspect to this magnificent rampart of the coast. Inland, the scene is full of beauties of hill and glen, in almost measureless variety; but we could not linger to survey them all; for our way lay in another direction, before we could feast again on the beauties of cliff and sea.

Hartland Point, a little farther on, is the true "Land's End" of Devonshire, the terminating promontory of Bideford Bay, a tongue of grassy land, not more than thirty or forty feet wide, at the summit of a tremendous precipice on either side, pointing, it is said, to a similar projection on the opposite Welsh coast, like twin pillars of Hercules, * guarding the estuary of the Severn.

* Ptolemy, the geographer (2nd cent.), is supposed to have referred to Hartland Point, as the "Promontory of Hercules."

It would now have been easy to visit Bude Haven, and so to travel south and south-west along the cliffs which fringe the Atlantic, but our present plan was to strike inland to Dartmoor. The little town of Oke-hampton was therefore our first destination, reached by a somewhat dull route,--whichever road may be taken,--but, when gained, most interesting. The town lies in a valley, watered by a swift romantic river which, at one point, sweeping round a wooded hill, crowned by the ruins of an old castle, forms as lovely a picture as anything of the kind in England. Kingsley abuses Okehampton, unjustly, we think: but, whatever may be thought of the town and its immediate neighbourhood, there can be no doubt as to the wonderful interest of the excursions that may be taken from it as a centre. From the castle hill, as from other points in the town, the chief object that arrests the eye is the vast brown sweep of rising ground, suggestive of mysterious desolation beyond, which we know to be the boundary of Dartmoor. Ascending, we find ourselves at first on pleasant, breezy, though treeless heights, but keep to beaten paths, and pursue our onward journey. At length the moorland track over which we have passed seems to rise behind us and shut out the world; and as we gaze around, we feel that all pictures which we had framed to ourselves of wild deserted solitudes are surpassed. "Like the fragments of an earlier world," is the comparison that naturally rises to the lips. We are not unfamiliar with moorland scenery--with Rombald's Moor, for instance, in Yorkshire, beautiful in its variety of colour, from the tender green and softening greys and browns of spring, to the purple heathery splendours of the autumn, while the song of lark and linnet overhead, or the plaintive cry of the lapwing, gives animation to the scene. But at Dartmoor is a new experience of desolation. The stupendous mass of granite which here crops up from hidden depths is covered on its broken surface with thick peat, in whose depths the blackened trunks of trees occasionally give evidence of a time when the range was clothed with wood, but which, for the most part, bears only coarse grass and moss, with heather and whortleberry in the most favoured localities. Broad spaces are covered by morass and bog, dangerous to the unaccustomed pedestrian. Scanty streams break from the heights, and hurry in all directions down to the valley, swollen to wild fury after a storm. The "tor," or shapeless masses of rock, which stand out from the peaty surface in all directions, are but, as it were, the jagged projections from the interior rock-skeleton. Some may be readily ascended; Yes Tor (probably East Tor, pronounced Devonshire fashion) being the highest, and on many accounts the best worth climbing.

The prospect of the moor from this or any other commanding point can only be described as awful in its grim, monotonous, silent desolation, the only beauty being that of swelling distant outline, or frequently that of colour, when the atmosphere is clear between the frequent showers, and the rays of the sun light up the heather and the moss, diversifying the dark shadows of the tors with the various hues of green, with the ruddy gleam of withered fern, and rushes in many a morass. But let not the traveller be too hopeful of sunshine and clear air! For as the local rhyme says:

The south wind blows, and brings wet weather; The north gives wet and cold together; The west wind comes brimful of rain, The east wind drives it back again. Then, if the sun in red should set, We know the morrow must be wet; And if the eve is clad in grey, The next is sure a rainy day."

Still, the slopes by which Dartmoor descends to the lowlands around are beautiful. In fact, the mighty granite mass is girdled by an investiture of fair glens and smiling villages, which make the circuit of it a succession of some of the brightest pictures that England can anywhere present in the same compass. The drive from Oke-hampton to Chagford, or to Moreton Hampstead, for instance, is of wonderful charm. Near the former village, the river Teign descends over rocks and boulders in a richly-wooded glen, as beautiful in parts as Dovedale.

The rivers, indeed, which come down on all sides from Dartmoor, are the glory of Devonshire. Beside the Teign, there is the Dart itself, one head-stream of which rises near the well-known prison at Prince Town, with the Taw, Tavy, Avon, Erme, Plym, and streamlets innumerable.

Travellers in favourable weather will do well to cross Dartmoor by the coach-road, from Moreton Hampstead to Tavistock, past the big, gloomy prison, appropriately placed in the very wildest and most desolate part of the whole region. Or, as we did, making Okehampton their headquarters, they may pass on by train by way of Lidford. The railway is carried in places at a great height, on the open edge of the moor, which it curiously fringes: it seems essentially a holiday line; there is no hurry, and the traveller, as he passes along, may leisurely survey the frowning heights above, or the fair valley below, according to his choice.

Lidford station being reached, we left the train, and found ourselves in an unfinished-looking spot, with little outwardly to attract. Having, however, received directions how to proceed, we crossed a farmyard, where some cattle with stupendous horns looked and lowed at us in a manner trying to the nerves, then, emerging near a river bank, made our way for less than a mile up the stream, on a grassy path beneath overhanging woods, when at a sudden turn up a glen that opened to the main stream, the gleam of waters caught the eye, at the first glance like some tall spirit of the dell, glimmering through the foliage that enshrouded it. A more beautiful cascade is hardly to be seen in England, when Dartmoor has had abundance of rain. At other times they say a friendly miller can turn on a supply of water, else thriftily economised for his needs. Happily, no such artificial arrangement was needful on the occasion of our visit; and we remained long admiring the lovely picture.

Retracing our steps, we climbed to the village, crossing on our way a commonplace-looking bridge, of a single arch, at a clip in the road, with the sound of a great rush of waters beneath.

We looked over the parapet, but could discern nothing, owing to the mass of thick shrubs and foliage which overarched the stream, and made our way uphill to the village. Here the traveller is directed to the churchyard, to see a curious epitaph on a watchmaker, in which some rather obvious allusions to human life are borrowed from his craft. Students of mortuary inscriptions are thankful often for small mercies in the way of wit, and are not always careful to note where the humour degenerates into irreverence or worse. We were more sadly interested in the contrast, which we have also observed in other churchyards, between the old style and the new; the simple piety of our fathers and the mimic popery of some of their descendants. Both are very observable at Lidford. One ancient tombstone bore some pathetic lines, beginning,--

"Praise to our God, whose faithful love Hath called another to His rest."

But the modern fashion was evidently to put up a flimsy cross, with the letters R.I.P., _Requiescat in pace!_ a prayer for the dead, who are beyond our reach, safe in the endless rest, or in a darkness whither our prayers cannot avail them. We left the scene with the feeling deeper than ever, that there are growing up errors among us, against which it becomes all true men earnestly to strive.

Meanwhile we had learned something about the bridge that we had crossed just before, and the rush of waters below. Returning, therefore, and making application at the house close by, we were conducted down into a rocky gorge, through which rushes the Lid, one of the Dartmoor streams, a tributary of the Tamar. The cliffs, irregular and castellated, are seventy feet high; a narrow, dangerous path is carried along one side of the rock, and the wild foaming waters in the dark, narrow glen carry back the traveller's mind to Switzerland. Certainly there is nothing like "Lidford Bridge" elsewhere in England; the Strid in Bolton Woods may equal it in its rush of waters; but the rocks there lie in the open woodland, and the stream is but a few feet below their summit: here the beetling precipices almost meet above, as at the "Devil's Bridge" in Cardiganshire, and there are weird stories at both places of travellers on horseback who have leaped the bridge unconsciously by night, when broken down, only discovering their peril and their escape on the following day.

From Lidford to Tavistock was an easy ride, and we found this pleasant town a place every way suitable for a Lord's Day rest. Outwardly, the great charm of the locality is the meeting-place between the wildness of Dartmoor and the rich cultivation of the valley; while some walks by the river are of a tranquil and serene beauty, only as it seems to us to be found in England, and to be enjoyed on the day of rest. Perhaps our feeling is in a great measure due to association; but if so, we have to thank association for one of the happiest evenings we have known. Next morning we explored the remains of the Abbey--now put to heterogeneous uses--a public library, a Unitarian Chapel, and a hotel, with sundry ruins in the vicarage garden; then a short railway journey carried us across the Cornish border to Launceston, where a short climb through pretty pleasure grounds to the keep of the old castle on the knoll that rises steeply from the town gave us a fine view, from the bulky range of Dartmoor on the one side, to the craggy outline of the Cornish hills on the other.

Our object, however, was now to reach the coast; and, as a good test of our pedestrian powers, already pretty well exercised in the course of this charming: tour, we determined to walk over the hills in the direction of the sea, knowing that even if our powers failed, some passing "van" would take us up, and convey us in a primitive fashion to the nearest town. But we persevered, and, when we had accomplished nine or ten miles of an undulating, monotonous road, were rewarded by the first glimpse of the Atlantic, with the cloud shadows lying afar upon the untroubled sapphire; while, though no breeze stirred, there was a sense of freshness in the air that encouraged us to press on to our journey's end. At length we reached it, in a village to name which is to raise in the minds of those who have visited it memories most delightful; while to the multitude it is and will probably remain unknown. We will not call it Trelyon, after the fashion of a popular novelist, who has given us some of the most charming word-pictures of this scenery which our literature contains. Nor is it unkindness to the happy few who already know Boscastle, and one delightful homelike retreat from the world which it contains, to raise the veil a little farther. That it is several miles distant from a railway station, that there is no public conveyance to it but the "vans" already referred to, that gas is a luxury unknown, are points in its favour to those who think, like the Frenchman:

"How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But give me just one friend in my retreat, To whom to whisper, 'Solitude is sweet.'"

For society may be found at Boscastle--the society of the chosen few. The place itself is unique. Through tiny meadows a streamlet flows swiftly towards the sea, entering a fissure where the hills, swelling upward on either hand, rise to towering cliffs, inclosing a harbour, up which the tide surges restlessly to meet the stream, then as restlessly subsides. Behind the cliff on the western side, up a broad cleft from the brink of the rivulet to the hill-summit, runs the village, inhabited by a hardy, independent, self-contained race of Cornish people, proud of their scenery, as well they may be. The slate cliffs, in endless diversity of craggy pointed form, skirt the sea, which ever chafes against their bases; here and there a little inlet far below shows a surface of smooth white sand, inaccessible from the land, or to be reached only by the surefooted climber, familiar with every step. Broad grassy slopes crown the cliffs, and every turn discloses magnificent views of sea and shore. Our walk along the cliffs to Tintagel, starting from Willapark Point, the headland that rises so grandly to the west of the little bay, was of an interest which perhaps no other coast scene in England can fully match. First, Forrabury Church was passed, with its silent tower; the bells once destined for it lying, according to tradition, close by, at the bottom of the Atlantic. The ship that conveyed them was nearing the port. "Thank God for a fair voyage," said the pilot. "Nay," replied the captain, "thank the ship, the canvas, and the fair wind." It was in vain that the pilot remonstrated; but even while the ship was rounding the point a sudden storm gathered, the vessel was dashed upon the rocky coast, all perished save the pilot, and the bells sinking to the deep tolled solemnly, as if for the fate of those who would not acknowledge God. Still, it is said, when the storm rises high--

"'Those bells, that sullen surges hide, 'Peal their deep notes beneath the tide: 'Come to thy God in time!'--thus saith the ocean chime: 'Storm, billow, whirlwind past, come to thy God at last.'"

Such is a specimen of the tales told at many a Cornish fireside. As we pass on we feel more and more that we are in the country of legend and song. The rolling uplands that stretch inland, with the deep vales and furzy hollows that intersect them, are renowned as the realm of King Arthur, the hero of British history and fable. Here, on the shore of the Atlantic, he may have gathered his good knights around him, to stand with them against the heathen invader; or it may be that here he was born, according to the legend; while "the great battle of the west," in which the hero disappeared, is said to have been fought at Camelford, in the neighbourhood. Local legends are full of this royal name; and if, as some will have it, King Arthur never existed, the universality of the tradition is all the more remarkable. The impress of his memory and life is everywhere. Of a little cottage maiden who guided us, we ask her name. "Jinnifer," was the reply--an unconscious perpetuation of the name of Guinevere, Arthur's Oueen.

A lovely wooded glen breaks the cliff halfway to Tintagel, at the heal of which the explorer will find a waterfall, in a wild forest ravine, both on a somewhat miniature scale; but in the accessories of rock-hewn walks, with clinging shrubs and mountain spring-flowers, watered by the dashing spray, the dell was perfect. St. Nighton's Keive, or basin, as this romantic nook is called, is a sudden and welcome change from the wild sublimity of the rocks above, and the ceaseless thunder of the Atlantic. But we must reascend; and soon, from our turfy path upon the height we come into full view of a stupendous rock, standing a little way out to sea, the home of myriads of seabirds that circle the rock with weird cries, or, descending in flocks, skim the surface of the waves. They have evidently learned to fear the gun, and to distrust mankind.

Tintagel, now approached, is an irregular village, following the lines and descents of the cliff. The church is on a wind-swept headland to the west, and in its stormiest corner we found the grave and monument of Mr. Douglas Cooke, the first editor of the _Saturday Review_. It was curious to be reminded of the conflicts of literature at this meeting-place of storms.

Tintagel Castle itself we approached by a path that looked perilous, but was safe enough, descending from the cliff and rising steeply to a promontory or peninsula of slaty rock, on which the ruins stand. These are jagged, time-worn; little plan or order can be traced; such fragments of building as still exist are no doubt of much more recent origin than Arthur's time: the outward glory of the scene is all in the majestic sweep and serried outline of the stupendous cliffs, with the long roll of the sea breaking ceaselessly into billows at their base. The stillness is unbroken, save for this ocean music, with the hoarse cry of sea-birds, and the occasional bleating of the few sheep who pasture here. The sense of isolation becomes at last oppressive, and we gladly retrace our steps to the mainland.