From here it is a two miles’ walk along the sea-wall into Teignmouth. Time and again, in winter storms, hundreds of feet of massive masonry have been torn down, and often carried away bodily, by the sea, and on two or three occasions great landslips have occurred from the soaring red-sandstone cliffs overlooking the railway. Railway engineering here is no play.

“Teignmouth” (says my BÆdeker) “is a large watering-place, prettily situated at the mouth of the Teign.” Thus far the guide-book. It is a peculiar feature of this class of literature that information is hurled at one’s head in stodgy lumps, in which are embedded measurements and statistics, enclosed in brackets sprinkled over the pages, like—like currants in a penny bun. Yet there are misguided folk who read guide-books continuously: these are people with an insatiable rage for general information, who spout dates at every turn.

But Teignmouth may well be termed a watering-place, if one may take the fact of its being partly surrounded by water as a valid claim to that obscure appellation, although I wot of places bearing it which are like unto the great Sahara for dryness.

The town, which ranks next after Torquay in size, is continually growing, and climbing up the hillsides. They have built in every direction; the tunnels that were used to render its railway station even as the stations of the Metropolitan Railway for gloom have been opened out; the pier has burst into a dreadful variegated rash of advertisements, and the bathing-machines are blatant with the name of a certain Pill.

But with the growth of the town, the local rates, say the ratepayers, with doleful intonation, keep pace, and the ambition of the local governing body accompanies the onward march, and tends to o’erleap itself in matters of public improvements.

There is the market-house for the pointing of an example. I well remember the cavernous ramshackle old place that stood here years ago, a dim and dismal hole, where the blinking, owl-like stall-holders sold beans by the hundred and (so say the malicious) peas by the dozen. The Local Board pulled it down, which was, by itself, a well-advised action; but when there presently arose on its site another building devoted to the same purpose, wiseacres shook their heads and prophesied evil things.

When Teignmouth sages foretold these things, they displayed a foresight that would not have disgraced the Delphic Oracle; for, although the new market was in every way adapted to modern needs, yet in a short while its complete failure, commercially, was sufficiently demonstrated, and, to this day, he who would be alone and shun his fellow-men, betakes himself to the market, and broods there undisturbed. You may wander in the by-lanes of the countryside, or sit upon the hardly accessible rocks beyond the Ness, but, even then, you shall not be so secure from human gaze or so unutterably lonely as in the “market.” Yet the business of the town has not decayed; neither, I suspect, are the tradesfolk less prosperous than of yore: the market simply was not wanted.

When we were at Teignmouth we became of a mildly inquiring turn of mind, and wandered along the sands to where the Teign flows out, across the sandy shifting bar, into the sea. Across the wide estuary is the fishing-village of Shaldon, now growing out of all knowledge, and the bold red front of the Ness, crowned with firs, confronting the waves.

Round here by the sand spit, past the battery pour rire, is the little lighthouse, and behind it the lifeboat-house, with its window illuminated at night, where the barometer and weather-chart are anxiously scanned in the summer months by eager visitors. For the proverbial inconstancy of the weather is very marked here. One may stand looking up the Teign in fine weather, to where the Dartmoor hills loom grey in the distance, and presently see the rain-clouds gather and sweep swiftly down the valley, blotting out the landscape with driving mist; and yet, in a little while, it shall be all bright again with sunshine. It is, indeed, not often that a day in Devon is entirely hopeless, for clouds disperse frequently as quickly as they come. It is to this moist climate that softly beautiful Devonshire owes its fair name.

Behind the lifeboat-house is the harbour, where is to be found the real life of the place, as distinguished from that entirely different existence lived in summer months on the sands, the pier, or the Den, that wide lawn fronting the sea.

Teignmouth, in fact, is not merely a summer resort. It has a select and proper society, which is nothing if not dignified and stately, Teignmouth society being composed of retired half-pay officers and their families, with slim purses and inflated pride—a curious and exceptional combination. The attitude of this circle is one prolonged sniff.

A small shipping trade, and a fairly commodious harbour to accommodate it, together with quays and queer waterside inns and storehouses and a custom-house, are livelier attributes of the town. Also, there are sail-lofts and seafaring smells, and a shipbuilding yard, where I remember, years ago, to have seen a vessel built. Boats there are, and a yacht or two anchored out in the channel, a cluster of ships buoyed out in deep water, and at ebb tide, two or three big vessels heeled over in the ooze. There is a very nautical flavour, figurative and realistic, about the harbour, and an ancient and fish-like smell about the jetty where the fisher-boats land their catches. Hereabouts, in the sunshine, sit rows of amphibious loungers, who smoke, chew tobacco, and curse the livelong day—such of them as have not been converted at the Gospel Hall yonder. Up the river, beyond the harbour and the clustering masts, is the bridge. A remarkable bridge this, built of wood in the first years of the present century, with thirty-four arches, and (to descend to the particularity of the guide-book) a total length of 1670 feet.

Shaldon is reached by it, and the Torquay road. The ferry-boats from the harbour take passengers across for the same toll of a penny either way. We went across by boat, and instead of taking the highroad for Torquay, climbed round under the Ness, among the fallen rocks and seaweed-slippery boulders by the sea.