If we journey on south-west beyond the chalk ranges of Wessex we come
to a very different country indeed: we enter on a land of granite
hills. The granite rocks are as different as possible from the chalk
heights. Instead of rounded slopes, we see sharp, jagged peaks and
broken, rocky ridges. The smooth, open stretches of turf are exchanged
for wild, heathery moorland, broken by deep dells, and the waterless
chalk slopes are replaced by glens, through which leap foaming torrents.
The granite hills rise to their wildest at Dartmoor, in the centre of
the county of Devon. Dartmoor is a great tableland, from which spring
granite heights rising to nearly 1,800 feet above the sea. For the
most part Dartmoor is uncultivated, a wilderness of barren moorland,
with lofty hills and jagged tors on every hand, here and there scored
by narrow valleys, which are often strewn with huge boulders of granite.
The tors are huge knobs or humps of granite, and the word has the same
meaning as "tower." The most famous of them all is Yes Tor. Round
these tors stretch great sweeps of moor and morass. Nothing lives here
save the moorland sheep, who crop the rough grass between the tufts of
heather, and the hardy moor ponies--nimble, shaggy, little creatures,
with long manes and tails, quick as deer and surefooted as goats.
In the midst of this desolate country stands a great prison--Dartmoor
Convict Prison. The place was chosen so that no convict could hope to
escape. Many of the prisoners go out by day to work in the fields
around the prison. They are closely watched by warders armed with
rifles. But for all that, now and again a convict makes an attempt to
escape; yet, though he sometimes gets away from the warders and is free
for a few hours, he is almost certain to be recaptured. He finds that
he has only got into a larger prison--the prison of the moorland.
There are no woods, so he cannot hide himself, and he cannot strike
which way he pleases, for there are the bogs to think of.
[Illustration: IN AN ENGLISH LANE]
In many places there are deep morasses in which a man would sink and be
swallowed up by the soft mud. So the escaped prisoner dare not move by
night lest he should run into a bog; then by day, if he attempts to
traverse the country, he is soon seen; so that it is almost impossible
to escape from Dartmoor.
Another stretch of country dotted with tors and covered with moorland
is Exmoor, in the north of Devon. The hills of Exmoor are famous for
their ponies and for being the haunts of the wild red-deer, which are
sometimes hunted with staghounds.
But not all the countryside consists of rocky table-lands, strewed with
craggy masses of granite. Far from it. Round these tors lies some of
the most beautiful and fertile land in all England. North and south of
Dartmoor are sweeps of country which yield the richest farm and dairy
produce to be found anywhere. Famous breeds of cattle and sheep graze
in the pastures. Devonshire "cream" is known and loved wherever it
goes, and luscious cider is made from the apples of its splendid
orchards.
Great numbers of visitors every year are drawn to this fair county to
behold its beauties and to stroll through the Devonshire lanes. A
Devonshire lane in the cultivated portion of the countryside has hardly
its like elsewhere. The land is red, the earth of the soft red
sandstone, and through this land the lanes run in deep, hollow ways,
often so deep that a carriage is quite hidden from the view of one
standing in the fields on either hand. One writer speaks of driving in
a dogcart along one of these deep lanes on a day in late autumn, when
he heard the cry of hounds. The hunt was coming his way, and he drew
rein. Presently the hunt went whirling by, literally over his head.
Horsemen and horsewomen cleared the lane, one after the other, in
flying leaps, the big hunters taking the huge trench with tremendous
bounds.
These trench-like lanes have been formed by the wear and tear of ages
of traffic. In the soft red soil the crunch of wheels and the stamp of
hoofs have worn the surface down and down, and rain has washed away the
loose soil, until the lane itself has become, as it were, one vast rut.
"As lovely as a Devonshire lane" is a proverb; the rich red soil and
the soft warm air of this southern county work together to form a scene
of wonderful charm. The steep banks are one glorious mass of ferns,
wild-flowers, and shrubs during spring and summer; in autumn they burn
with the fires of the fading leaves; in winter they are bright with
berries.
The coast-line of this region is very beautiful, whether it faces north
or south, to the Atlantic Ocean or the English Channel. On the north
there are great beetling cliffs, with lovely valleys, called "combes,"
running down to the sea between them. In describing the port of
Bideford, Kingsley gives us an admirable idea of North Devon scenery on
the first page of "Westward Ho!": "All who have travelled through the
delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know the little white town
of Bideford, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with
yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge, where salmon wait for
autumn's floods, toward the pleasant upland on the west. Above the
town the hills close in, cushioned with deep oak woods, through which
juts here and there a crag of fern-fringed slate; below they lower, and
open more and more in softly-rounded knolls and fertile squares of red
and green, till they sink into the wide expanse of hazy flats, rich
salt marshes, and rolling sand-hills, where Torridge joins her sister
Taw, and both together flow quietly toward the broad surges of the bay
and the everlasting thunder of the long Atlantic swell. Pleasantly the
old town stands there, beneath its soft Italian sky, fanned day and
night by the fresh ocean breeze, which forbids alike the keen winter
frosts and the fierce thunder heats of the midland."
A little to the west of Bideford lies the fishing village of Clovelly,
famous for its striking position and the great beauty of its
surroundings. Clovelly lies in the cleft of a tall cliff, and its
single street straggles up and down the steep rock, upon which the
houses are perched in every nook and corner where room to set a
building could be found. All about the place are wooded cliffs, and
for quaint old-world beauty this village is declared to be unmatched
along the whole English coast-line.
Near Torquay, a well-known watering-place of South Devon, is a very
remarkable cave called Kent's Cavern. You gain it by a hole in the
rock, 7 feet wide and only 5 feet high; but inside you find a great
cavern, 600 feet long, with many smaller caves and corridors branching
away through the limestone rock.
This cavern was once the home of cave-men, those long-vanished
inhabitants of our land. This has been proved by searching the floor
of the cave. Deep down were discovered human bones and the remains of
tools and weapons. Mingled with these were the bones of the elephant
and the rhinoceros, the hyena, the bear, and the wolf. The tools and
weapons were of stone, and it is plain that the men who once lived in
the cave brought thither the wild animals they had slain with their
arrows and spears, headed with flint. All this happened a long, long
time ago, for some of the animal remains belong to creatures who have
long since become extinct.
Torquay is but one of many lovely places lying along a splendid stretch
of coast, for the beauties of South Devon are as striking as those of
the north. Cliffs of bright red sandstone stand above the bright blue
sea, and where the cliffs are absent the land falls easily to the
water, warm and fruitful to the edge of the tide in that mild, genial
climate.
"The rounded hills slope gently to the sea, spotted with squares of
emerald grass, and rich red fallow fields, and parks full of stately
timber trees. Long lines of tall elms, just flashing green in the
spring hedges, run down to the very water's edge, their boughs unwarped
by any blast; and here and there apple orchards are just bursting into
flower in the soft sunshine, and narrow strips of water-meadows line
the glens, where the red cattle are already lounging knee-deep in rich
grass within two yards of the rocky, pebbly beach. The shore is silent
now, the tide far out, but six hours hence it will be hurling columns
of rosy foam high into the sunlight, and sprinkling passengers, and
cattle, and trim gardens which hardly know what frost and snow may be,
but see the flowers of autumn meet the flowers of spring, and the old
year linger smilingly to twine a garland for the new."