walls of granite, built of blocks so ponderous as to suggest that
only giants could have reared such cyclopean masonry. Every chink
between the stones was fringed with fern and bilberry. Clinging
lichens made the grey faces of the granite greyer still; while
others, nestling in mossy hollows, were tipped with scarlet,
recalling the vivid touches of colour over the eyes of a moorfowl.
High up on the moorland, looking down on one of the most beautiful
of its many river valleys, we came on a great stone circle, known
to the moor men as the Roundy Pound--a double ring of unhewn,
irregular blocks of granite, shaggy with ages' growth of lichens,
and with a single thorn tree standing in the midst, mantled from
base to crest with grey--a hoary patriarch, like the lone priest
of long-forgotten rites. Far below lay the valley of the Teign,
winding away into the hills. To the right rose the sad-coloured
slopes of the moorland, here darkened with dead bracken, and there
brightened by pale sheets of withered grass. On the left was a
birch wood, with a rare purple bloom upon its leafless boughs,
like the purple of far hills at sunset. Here and there a dead
birch stem glimmered white against the dark. And about the feet of
the bare trees was a wealth of colour almost more marvellous
still--the rich brown, lustrous velvet of mosses and dead leaves,
the fiery red of withered brake fern, beaten down by wind and
rain. Below the wood, on a little island in the river, was a group
of old Scotch firs, with the water gleaming white between the
ruddy branches. Over all there stretched away the far-reaching
wastes of the moorland, lifeless, desolate, with a fringe of mist
along the sky line.
Night closed in grey and wet. As the hours passed, I woke at times
to hear the rush of the rain, the growing sounds of multitudinous
streams, the deepening voice of the river roaring through its
wooded passes. Morning broke on a day of undoubted Dartmoor
weather--no gleam of sunshine anywhere; cold, clinging mists on
every hand; grey sheets of rain stalking like ghosts across the
landscape.
The day was at its very worst when the keeper, who had been at
work since daylight rescuing trout that, in struggling up the
swollen streams, had got themselves into difficulties in
unexpected shallows, came up to the house and stood for a minute
in the rain, the water streaming from every outlying point in his
figure, and looked inquiringly at the Master of the House. The
Master groaned. But he threw on his old shooting-coat, picked up a
handful of cartridges, and took his gun from the corner, and the
two men sallied out into the rain.
It was, in truth, a dreary morning. There was no sunshine now to
light the dripping birch stems. But even under that grey sky there
was marvellous beauty in the bare boughs, in the brown oak leaves,
in the streaming ferns on the green bank below. Under the bank was
a new gleam of silver, where the swollen brook went swirling by
under a grey brow of granite. Hour after hour fell the pitiless
rain. Every thread of water on the hillside was a headlong
torrent. The road below the house was deep under a rushing flood.
It was late when the little shooting party came back, their coming
heralded by the screaming of a troop of jays that apparently kept
pace with them as they plodded through the underwood. But the
birds were not inveighing against the sportsmen. When my friend
returned, he told me that as he passed under a pollard oak an owl
flew out, almost brushing him with its wings. The jays, who were
hanging about among the thickets on the edge of the wood, espied
it in a moment. And, raising a hue and cry that was caught up by
every finch and tit and blackbird within hearing, they chased the
bewildered bird from tree to tree, scolding and storming, and
buffeting it with their wings. Earlier in the afternoon a rabbit
passed, unnoticed by the dogs, not running, but leaping, across
the wood; and close at its heels a weasel, following in hot
pursuit.
The rain was slackening a little as we turned into the hut. But a
heavy fog was closing in from the moor, blotting out even the near
woodland with its wall of grey. Pleasant, indeed, after the mist
and the rain was the glow of lamplight. And pleasanter still the
glow of roaring oak logs, as we sat that night, each with a
terrier on his knee, before the great wood fire. The dogs have
taken kindly to the casual stranger, and one of them in particular
is fond of sitting by me on a chair at meal times, resting her
head on my arm in the most engaging manner. The two are on the
best of terms for the most part, but a little attention paid to
one is apt to lead to trouble with the other. I am told that there
is sometimes a good deal of jealousy shown in the retrieving of a
rabbit--a circumstance which, as may readily be guessed, does not
tend to improve the condition of the game. And the slippers which
we threw to distant corners of the hut for the dogs to bring back
to us suffered severely in the bringing.
As we sat by the fire I heard something of the dangers of the
moor, and of the reality of getting lost at night or in a Dartmoor
fog. The oldest hand, said the Master of the House, would be
helpless in such a fog as now lay round the house. A good plan, he
added, is to follow a stream if you are fortunate enough to find
one. Sooner or later you are sure to come to a house. He himself
was on the moor once, with two companions, far away from any path,
when a dense mist came on. After long walking, he happened, by
great good fortune, on the wall that bounded his own common, and
came at length to a familiar gate that he knew was only half a
mile from home.
The three wanderers drew a breath of relief. They were all right
now. The haunting fear of having to pass a night upon the moor, as
many a lost wayfarer has done, was forgotten in a moment. With
confident steps they marched through the mist straight down the
slope towards this bungalow. But after going steadily for three
hours, with a gradually growing conviction that something after
all must be wrong, they found themselves back at the same wall,
and at the very identical gate. They had been walking in a
circle--an experience only too familiar to travellers who have
lost their way in the desert. They now followed the wall until it
turned abruptly down the hill. My friend then walked close to it,
while the others kept abreast of him, at a distance of a hundred
yards or so, that they might avoid a bog which skirted the
enclosure. In this way, shouting to each other now and then, they
reached here in safety, not having seen each other since they
parted company.
[Illustration: DARTMOOR--EVENING: TAKING HOME THE SHEEP.]
Another man, well known in the district--a man who rather prides
himself on his acquaintance with Dartmoor--will not soon be
allowed to forget how he set off on horseback one day in the mist,
taking a short cut across the moor, by which he expected in half
an hour to strike the Princetown road, and how, after an hour and
a half of pretty hard riding, he too, found himself at the spot
from which he had started.
[Illustration: A WEST COUNTRY COTTAGE.]
WYCHANGER: A FAR RETREAT.
On the northern edge of Exmoor, parted from the outer world by a
long ridge of wooded hills that die away into a bold headland by
the grey sea, there lies a spacious valley--fair even for the West
Country, a valley that for its beauty of broad fields and noble
trees and old-world villages, may rank among the fairest in all
England. The traveller by the well-kept coach road that passes
along the foot of the hills, almost from end to end of it, looking
across its green meadows and its red corn-lands to the
deer-haunted heights of Dunkerry, sees something of its beauty, of
its picturesque cottages, its wooded slopes, its rich pasture
lands; may even catch a glimpse in passing of that old mill that,
with its pointed gables, its rambling outbuildings, its rude
bridges, and its
"Dark wheel that toils amid the hurry
And rushing of the flume,"
is like an artist's dream.
He who fares through on foot will know more of its charm, but even
he is hardly likely to discover the best of its lovely lanes, deep
set under over-arching hedgerows, the oldest and most magnificent
of its trees, the most picturesque and retiring of its cottages.
While hidden behind a rampart of low hills on the very skirts of
Dunkery, the most beautiful village of all, an ideal West Country
hamlet, will escape him altogether:--a village in a nest of hills,
with brown gables all embowered in green. By the church, whose
grey tower rises in the midst, two poplars stand, their young
leaves trembling in the sunshine, their tall forms just swaying in
the wind.
The old manor house, whose traditions go back beyond the days of
the Armada, seems to stand at the very limit of the world. So near
the wilderness is it that the creatures of the wild, the birds,
the beasts, share with man the possession of its barns and
outbuildings. Its lawns, its thick-growing bays and laurels, its
broad eaves, the masonry of its old walls are haunted by
innumerable birds.
In the early morning, an hour or more before the sunrise, the
whole air about the house is filled with sweet sounds, with the
sunny ripple of the goldfinch's song, with the mingled chorus of
thrush and blackbird, of wrens and robins and warblers, with the
call of the cuckoo, the pipe of the wryneck, the croon of doves
among the larches on the hill. At times, from far up the moorland
comes down even the strange cry of a buzzard, or the croak of a
wandering raven. All day the garden is full of pleasant sounds and
sweet suggestions of the woodland, of the hushed whispers of swift
moorland streams, of the stir of winds among the restless pines.
Even after sundown life is still stirring. Long after the mists of
evening have begun to gather on the darkening hills the cuckoo
calls. The musical halloo of wandering owls breaks in through the
vespers of the blackbird, and the shrill challenge of the
black-cock sounds loud on the fringe of the moorland. Instead of
the swallows, that all day float singing round the eaves, the bats
come out of hiding in old barns and ruinous outbuildings, and
flutter on silent wings through vacant windows.
In the twilight even the wild red deer stray down from their
fastness to the very precincts of the garden. It is not long
since, in the hind-hunting time, the "tufters" broke away after a
stag and followed it, in spite of all the efforts of the huntsmen,
far across the moor and down into the lowland. And, when at length
the hounds were beaten off, two sheep-dogs from the village took
up the chase and drove the stag up here to the Manor House. There
it stood for hours in a narrow passage near the stables, showing a
bold front to its pursuers, and undismayed by the curious
villagers who came thronging up to gaze at it--a noble beast, with
all its honours. Someone at length opened the door of an empty
stable, and the stag walked quietly in. Tired out with the long
chase over the slopes of Dunkery, it stayed in its strange asylum
two days and nights, entirely unmoved by efforts to dislodge it,
but lowering its antlers in a moment if one of its visitors made
an attempt to cross the threshold; though when one of the men,
thinking it had gone, went into the stable after dark and actually
brushed against it, the stag, happily for him, took no notice. The
door was left open; the noble beast was free to go when it would.
On the third morning the stable was empty; the strange guest had
gone. A line of footprints across the lawn to the fence that parts
the garden from the paddock, and up the long meadow towards the
hanger, showed how it had made its way back unmolested to its
haunt upon the moor.
Guests almost as strange are two wild ducks that built a nest in a
pool in the field below the house. The eggs were hatched not many
days since, and the young brood were caught and given in charge to
a hen, who, so far, has proved herself but an indifferent
foster-mother. The drake, after the manner of his kind, has
another mate, and she is still sitting on her eggs on a small
island in another pond near by. And he and the mother of the lost
family still linger about the farm. You may see them flying past
the windows on their way down from one of the moorland streams,
or watch them in the meadow by the empty nest. Or you may even
chance upon them among the outbuildings, the drake a little way in
advance, walking slowly forward, looking this way and that,
pausing now and then at some strange sound; while his sober-tinted
mate follows meekly a yard or so behind him. Now they stand
doubtful, uncertain whether or no it is safe to enter the
precincts. At length they venture in. Now walk quietly after them.
There they stand, a gallant pair, he splendid with the rich green
velvet of his glossy head, the white ring about his neck, the dark
chocolate of his breast, his brilliant orange legs, and all the
exquisite shades of grey upon his beautiful back: she with quiet
plumage, streaked and mottled with soft tones of brown, looking
for all the world like a dry heap of reeds and withered sedges. In
a moment they are aware of danger. They move closer together. The
drake utters a low warning call, nodding his head, slowly at
first, then faster and faster until, with a loud note the two
birds spread their beautiful wings, wheel round the house, and
sail down to their old haunt by the pool.
By the same pool, not fifty yards from the road, there is another
nest--a moorhen's; and if you creep quietly up you may see the
old bird on her nest of rushes under the bank, her dark figure
looking little more than a patch of shadow in the heart of the
bramble bush that overhangs her home. Her, too, you may watch in
the early mornings wading among the long grass of the meadow, or
you may even catch a glimpse of her as she paddles fast across the
pool, keeping time with her glossy head to the rapid movement of
her feet.
Hood has told us how, in his "Haunted House,"
"A wren had built within the porch, she found
The quiet loneliness so sure and thorough."
It is almost more strange that here a pair of chaffinches have
made a sanctuary of this porch, and have built their nest just
over the door, within arm's reach of every passer-by. It is an
exquisite work of art, whose moss and lichen, felted with cobwebs
and fine strands of wool fitted deftly on the curve of a level
larch pole, and woven among the young shoots of the climbing rose
tree, whose leaves hang down as if to hide it, might have escaped
notice altogether were it not that the little builders are busy
all day upon the grass before the windows, now taking short
flights among the laurels or the branches of the old arbutus, or
the great bay tree that overhangs the lawn, scenting all the air
with its abundant bloom, and that now and then they fly up to
their nest over the doorway.
A far retreat--a spot in which the lover of nature would only too
gladly settle down, content, amid this gracious scenery and these
pleasant sights and sounds, to end his days in one of the little
old-world cottages of "the sweetest village in the world," with
their tiny windows, their quaint gables, their roofs of russet
thatch. A far retreat, upon whose dreamlike quiet no ripple of
unrest could surely enter.
We can hardly realise that it was a lord of this very manor who,
though long past his three score years and ten, held a fortress
for King Charles until the last extremity, marching out at length
with all the honours of war.
It is stranger still that a marble tablet on the chancel wall of
the old church records how a rector of this peaceful parish left
his charge and followed his master to the war; how he raised a
troop of horse for the King's service; how four of his sons were
captains in the Royal army; and how he himself, after Worcester's
Crowning Fight, went with the second Charles across the sea,
giving up all, with a devotion worthy of a better cause, for a
prince whom the clearer vision of our time justly brands as
"immoral, dishonourable, and contemptible."
[Illustration: THE OLD MILL: TWILIGHT.]
LUCCOMBE: TWILIGHT IN THE HOLLOW.
Round the old mill that stands like a drowsy sentinel at the gate
of the valley, quiet reigns. Silenced is the plash of the wheel;
hushed the low rumble of the rude machinery. Through the rich
grass of the meadow by the stream the red cattle are trooping home
in answer to the milking call. The sun, already sunk below the
fringe of woodland on the hill, shows like a fiery cloud through
the dark lattice work of branches. Light still lingers on the
steep slope across the glen, on tawny grass and golden furze, and
on points of grey rock that here and there break through the short
turf. There is sunshine still upon the dark tops of the highest
ridge of pines, and there are lines of silver on the branches of a
giant oak whose crest towers far above his fellows. But here in
the hollow the mist of evening gathers. All along the stream are
drawn grey lines of vapour that, in the far recesses of the
valley, deepen to a shadowy gloom.
The birds, with whose notes the whole glen was ringing, grow
silent one by one. Their brief vesper hour is almost over. The
hush of night is settling on the woodland. Far up the slope there
still sounds the clear whistle of a blackbird. A thrush, too, is
singing, as if moved to rivalry. His is a song less wild and
thrilling, less powerful and passionate, yet a masterpiece of
melody. Still through the deepening shadows rings the clear treble
of the robin, and through all, like a whisper of peace, one hears
the slumbrous voices of the doves.
Two cuckoos are still calling; one near at hand, whose loud notes,
clear and mellow, seem to linger among the trees, dying slowly,
like music in the roof of a cathedral. Another, more distant,
answers him. They keep such perfect time that the stronger voice
overpowers half the answer, and, for the most part three notes
alone are audible, the last one faint and low, and like a soft
refrain:
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Cuckoo!
The cuckoo's life is like that of no other bird that flies. There
are no household cares for him; no nest to build, no eggs to warm,
no brood to forage for. His sole business seems but to call his
own name all day among the tree tops. It is a beautiful sound. And
yet there are times when the cuckoo, as much as any bandit of the
air, any crow, or sparrow-hawk, or prowling magpie, breaks the
peace of the sylvan solitude. He may call all day if he will,
without let or hindrance, or the least attempt at interruption.
The birds pay little heed to him, save now and then in an idle
moment to mob him and jeer at and hustle him, as they love to do
to an owl, who by some mischance has sallied out into the
daylight.
But the moment his mate is suspected of designs on the nest of
some defenceless hedge-sparrow, or robin, or wagtail, with an eye
to finding foster parents for her own discarded offspring, the
whole neighbourhood is up in arms. A few days since a cuckoo, who
had evidently set her heart on a robin's nest in the thick growth
of ivy round the chimney of one of the houses in the village,
alighted in the top of a tall aspen that overlooked the spot. She
settled on the roof of the house to reconnoitre. She even perched
on the ledge of the garret window to get a better view. And all
the while she was followed by an excited mob of redstarts,
wagtails, and robins, scolding, storming, chattering. Sometimes,
as if dismayed by their persistent clamour, the cuckoo made a half
circuit of the garden, diving in and out among the bushes,
swooping down to avoid the attack of some pursuer more importunate
than the rest, and uttering now and then a strange, inarticulate
cry, as if--which is likely enough--she were carrying in her mouth
the egg she wanted to leave in the robin's nest. She gave it up at
last, plunging down into a great bay tree, seeking in its
thick-growing foliage some respite from pursuit.
The darkness deepens. But there is still light enough to follow
the deer-path among the trees, whose thick carpeting of brown dry
pine-needles is soft as velvet to the feet. It is not yet too dark
to see the black-cock that gets up from the bilberry jungle by the
path, or the wood pigeons that, when you pause beneath their
roosting place, go crashing out from the branches overhead. You
can still watch the two squirrels that chase each other round the
stem of a giant ash tree; can follow them, when, startled from
their frolic, they take a short cut homeward through the
larch-tops. They leap from the firm footing of one tree to the
drooping bough beyond, and when it goes down, down beneath them
like a blade of grass, they go on, without a moment's pause,
towards their nest in the heart of the wood. So few wayfarers
disturb the quiet here--or else the brown woodlanders have had
such scant experience of the ways of man, of his love of capture
and annexation--that the squirrels have not thought it worth while
to build their stronghold high among the trees. It is not twenty
feet from the ground. It is like a great wren's nest, a ball of
moss, thick and closely felted, and marvellously laced round and
round with long pliant larch twigs, and with only the least trace
of an entrance at the side.
A flock of swifts are careering down the glen, like a troop of
noisy revellers; their wild chorus sounding shrill and clear in
the deepening hush of night. They wheel, with loud rustle of keen
wings, and dash upwards towards the moor. Again that swift career
along the grass-grown road; again that wild exultant scream, so
fierce, so beautiful. Deride it if you will. Call it hoarse,
discordant, savage. It is a victorious pæan, a song of triumph, an
exultant chorus proclaiming the empire of the air.
The dark forms vanish; the wild notes die away. It is the last
sound of daylight.
"Far away, some belfry chime
Breathes a prayer across the moors."
The last sound of daylight. The children of the night are abroad.
White moths, painted boldly on the shadows, flit by like phantoms.
Ghost-like, too, is the soundless flutter of a bat that, by the
dark archway of the old bridge, chases the insects that hover on
the stream. The long, low, monotonous call of the
grasshopper-warbler among the furze bushes on the edge of the
wood, is a strange sound;--the voice of a cricket, one might
think, and not of a bird at all. Strange, too, is the droning note
of a nightjar, rising and falling as if the bird, wheeling this
way and that, were chasing moths among the trees. The bats have
voices, though their flight is soundless, and their faint shrill
cries grow in the stillness louder and more clear. At intervals an
owl hoots, startling from their half sleep the drowsy birds among
the thickets over which he passes, so that one may follow his
flight by the clamour he leaves behind him. Among the trees there
sounds at times the crash of a belated ring-dove, settling down
for the night, followed by a murmur of soft love notes, an
answering whisper, and then silence.
Yet the air is full of faint, indistinguishable sounds, the
opening of leaves perhaps, the patter of spent petals, the fall of
pine needles, and the movements of night-wandering creatures. And
to every sound the darkness lends a touch of mystery. Fancy could
paint almost anything of strange and startling among the black
shadows of the wood. You stop, almost in terror, when a pheasant
rises, under your very feet, with a great rush of wings, and
vanishes into the gloom. A blackbird, flying over unseen, sounds
his loud alarm in passing, ringing, musical, metallic, like the
throbbing string of some wild instrument.