[Illustration: ILFRACOMBE.]
Let us skirt along the precipitous Devonshire coast westward from the
Lyn, where the cliffs rise high and abruptly from the water, with
foliage on the hills above them and sheep browsing like little white
specks beyond. Thus Exmoor is prolonged westward in a broad and lofty
ridge of undulating hills, through which a stream occasionally carves
its devious course in a deep and sheltered valley that comes out to the
sea between bold, rocky headlands. Far out over the sea loom up the
coasts of Wales in purple clouds. Soon in a breach in the wall of crags
we find Combe Martin, its houses dotted among the gardens and orchards
clustering thickly around the red stone church. Here were silver-mines
long ago, and here lived Martin of Tours, to whom William the Conqueror
granted the manor which to this day bears his name. The neighboring
hills grow the best hemp in Devon, and the crags guarding the harbor are
known as the Great and Little Hangman, the former, which is the higher,
standing behind the other. The local tradition says that once a fellow
who had stolen a sheep was carrying the carcase home on his back, having
tied the hind legs together around his neck. He paused for breath at the
top of the hill, and, resting against a projecting slab, poised the
carcase on the top, when it suddenly slipped over and garroted him. He
was afterwards found dead, and thus named the hills. Near here was born,
in 1522, Bishop Jewel of Salisbury, of whom it is recorded by that
faithful biographer Fuller that he "wrote learnedly, preached painfully,
lived piously, died peacefully." To the westward are Watersmouth, with
its natural arch in the slaty rocks bordering the sea, and Hillsborough
rising boldly to guard a tiny cove. Upon this precipitous headland is an
ancient camp, and it overlooks Ilfracombe, the chief watering-place of
the northern Devonshire coast. Here a smart new town has rapidly
developed, with paths cut upon the cliffs and encroachments made along
the shore. High upon a pyramidal headland stands the ancient chapel
where in the olden time the forefathers of the village prayed to St.
Nicholas for deliverance from shipwreck. Now a lighthouse is relied on
for this service. The promontory is connected with a still bolder and
loftier headland, the Capstone Rock. The town is built on the slope of
the hills overlooking these huge round-topped crags, but its streets do
not run down to sand-beaches. There is little but rocks on the shore and
reefs in the water, worn into ridges of picturesque outline, over which
the surf breaks grandly in time of storm. We are told that in a cave
near by, Sir William Tracy, one of the murderers of St. Thomas a Becket
at Canterbury, concealed himself while waiting to escape from England.
He and his accomplices were ordered to purge themselves by a pilgrimage
to the Holy Land, but Tracy was not able to accomplish it. The winds of
heaven always drove him back whenever he tried to embark, for he had
struck the first blow at Becket. He was buried in Morthoe Church beyond
Ilfracombe.