[Illustration: THE GLEN.]
There is a glen above West Dart whence a lesser stream after brief
journeying comes down to join the river. By many reaches, broken with
little falls, the waters descend upon the glen from the Moor; but
barriers of granite first confront them, and before the lands break up
and hollow, a mass of boulders, piled in splendid disorder and crowned
with willow and rowan, crosses the pathway of the torrent. Therefore the
little river divides and leaps and tumbles foaming over the mossy
granite, or creeps beneath the boulders by invisible ways. Into fingers
and tresses the running waters dislimn, and then, that great obstacle
passed, their hundred rillets run together again and go on their way
with music. By a descent that becomes swiftly steeper, the burn falls
upon fresh rocks, is led into fresh channels and broken to the right and
left where mossy islets stand knee-deep in fern and bilberry. Here
spring up the beginnings of the wood, for the glen is full of trees.
Beech and alder, with scrub of dwarf willow at their feet, cluster on
the islets and climb the deepening valley westward; but in the glen
stand aged trees, and on the crest of the slope haggard spruce firs
still fight for life and mark, in their twisted and decaying timbers and
perishing boughs, the torment of the unsleeping wind. Great is the
contrast between these stricken ruins with death in their high tops,
and the sylva beneath sheltered by the granite hill. There beech and
pine are prosperous and sleek compared with the unhappy, time-foundered
wights above them; but if the spruces perish, they rule. The lesser
things are at their feet and the sublimity of their struggle--their
mournful but magnificent protest against destiny--makes one ignore the
sequestered woodland, where there is neither battle nor victory, but
comfortable, ignoble shelter and repose. The river kisses the feet of
these happy nonentities; they make many a stately arch and pillar along
the water; in spring the pigeon and the storm-thrush nest among their
branches; and they gleam with newly-opened foliage and shower their
silky shards upon the earth; in autumn they fling a harvest of sweet
beech mast around their feet. The seed germinates and thousands of
cotyledon leaves appear like fairy umbrellas, from the waste of the dead
leaves. The larger number of these seedlings perish, but some survive to
take their places in fulness of time.
By falls and rapids, by flashing stickles and reaches of stillness, the
little river sinks to the heart of the glen; but first there is a
water-meadow under the hills where an old clapper-bridge flings its
rough span from side to side. This is of ancient date and has been more
than once restored against the ravages of flood since pack-horses
tramped that way in Tudor times. Here the streamlet rests awhile before
plunging down the steeps beyond and entering the true glen--a place of
shelving banks and many trees.
In summer the dingle is a golden-green vision of tender light that
filters through the beeches. Here and there a sungleam, escaping the
net of the leaf, wins down to fall on mossy boulder and bole, or plunge
its shaft of brightness into a dark pool. Then the amber beam quivers
through the crystal to paint each pebble at the bottom and reveal the
dim, swift shades of the trout, that dart through it from darkness back
to darkness again. In autumn the freshets come and the winds awaken
until a storm of foliage hurtles through the glen, now pattering with
shrill whispers from above and taking the water gently; now whirling in
mad myriads, swirling and eddying, driven hither and thither by storm
until they bank upon some hillock, find harbour among holes and the
elbows of great roots, or plunge down into the turmoil of the stream.
The ways of the falling leaf are manifold, and as the rock delays the
river, so the trees, with trunk and bough, arrest the flying foliage,
bar its hurrying volume and deflect its tide. In winter the glen is
good, for then a man may escape the north wind here and, finding some
snug holt among the river rocks, mark the beauty about him while snow
begins to touch the tree-tops and the boughs are sighing. Then can be
contrasted the purple masses of sodden leaves with the splendour of the
mosses among which they lie; for now the minor vegetation gleams at
this, its hour of prime. It sheets every bank in a silver-green fabric
fretted with liquid jewels or ice diamonds; it builds plump knobs and
cushions on the granite, and some of the mosses, now in fruit, brush
their lustrous green with a wash of orange or crimson, where tiny
filaments rise densely to bear the seed. Here, also, dwelling among
them, flourishes that treasure of such secret nooks by stream-side, the
filmy fern, with transparent green vesture pressed to the
moisture-laden rocks.
Man's handiwork is also manifested here; not only in the felled trees
and the clapper-bridge, but uniquely and delightfully; for where the
river quickens over a granite apron and hastens in a torrent of foam
away, the rocks have tongues and speak. He who planted this grove and
added beauty to a spot already beautiful, was followed by his son, who
caused to be carved inscriptions on the boulders. You may trace them
through the moss, or lichen, where the records, grown dim after nearly a
hundred years, still stand. It was a minister of the Church who amused
himself after this fashion; but in no religious spirit did he compose;
and the scattered poetry has a pleasant, pagan ring about it proper to
this haunt of Pan.
Upon one great rock in the open, with its grey face to the south-west
and its feet deeply bedded in grass and sand, you shall with care
decipher these words:--
Sweet Poesy! fair Fancy's child!
Thy smiles imparadise the wild.
Beside the boulder a willow stands, its finials budding with silver;
upon the north-western face of the stone is another inscription whose
legend startles a wayfarer on beholding the bulk of the huge mass. "This
stone was removed by a flood 17--."
On the islets and by the pathway below, sharp eyes may discover other
inscribed stones, and upon one island, which the bygone poet called "The
Isle of Mona," there still exist inscriptions in "Bardic characters."
These he derived from the _Celtic Researches_ of Davies. Furnished with
the English letters corresponding to these symbols, one may, if
sufficiently curious, translate each distich as one finds it. Elsewhere,
beside the glen path, a sharp-eyed, little lover of Nature, tore the
coat of moss from another phrase that beat us both as we hunted through
the early dusk:--