A TRUE Devonshire village, sloping upwards from the Axe. The cottages
are thatched, and the walls are of cobbles, plastered. A little gurgling
stream runs down the village street, and over the stream each cottage on
its bank has a little bridge. The poor brook is much troubled,
unhappily, by cabbage leaves and the like defilement, and does its best
to oversweep them and carry them away, but does not quite succeed. In a
few minutes, however, it will be in the Axe, and in half an hour it will
be in the pure sea. A farmhouse stands at the end of the village with a
farmyard of deep manure and black puddles coming up to the side-door.
The church, once interesting, has been restored with more than usual
barbarity, blue slates, villa ridge-tiles, the vulgarest cheap pavement,
tawdry decorations and furniture, such as are supplied to churchwardens
by ecclesiastical tradesmen. But the tower is still grey, and has looked
unchanged over the Axe estuary for hundreds of years. Turning up from
the main street is a Devonshire lane eight feet wide or thereabouts. It
ascends to a farm on the hillside, and its steep high banks are covered
with ferns and primroses. A tiny brooklet twitters down by its side. At
the top of the down is a line of old hawthorns blown slantingly by
south-west storms into a close, solid mass of shoots and prickles. They
are dwarfed in their struggle, but have thick trunks, many of them
covered with brilliant yellow lichen.
For miles and miles before it comes to Axmouth, and above Axminster, the
Axe flows in singular loops, often returning almost upon itself,
reluctant to quit the lovely land of its birth, youth, and maturity; but
now it is straighter, for it is in the lowlands and feels the tide.
Flocks of seagulls wade or float in it. It passes quietly under its last
bridge, but beyond it is confronted by a huge shingle barrier. Sweeping
alongside it, it suddenly turns at right angles, cuts its way through
with an exulting rush, holds back for a few yards the sea waves that
ripple against it, and is then lost.