The stream invites us to follow: the impulse is so common that it might be set down as an instinct; and certainly there is no more fascinating pastime than to keep company with a river from its source to the sea. Unfortunately this is not easy in a country where running waters have been enclosed, which should be as free as the rain and sunshine to all, and were once free, when England was England still, before landowners annexed them, even as they annexed or stole the commons and shut up the footpaths and made it an offence for a man to go aside from the road to feel God's grass under his feet. Well, they have also got the road now, and cover and blind and choke us with its dust and insolently hoot-hoot at us. Out of the way, miserable crawlers, if you don't want to be smashed!

Sometimes the way is cut off by huge thorny hedges and fences of barbed wire—man's devilish improvement on the bramble—brought down to the water's edge. The river-follower must force his way through these obstacles, in most cases greatly to the detriment of his clothes and temper; or, should they prove impassable, he must undress and go into the water. Worst of all is the thought that he is a trespasser. The pheasants crow loudly lest he should forget it. Occasionally, too, in these private places he encounters men in velveteens with guns under their arms, and other men in tweeds and knickerbockers, with or without guns, and they all stare at him with amazement in their eyes, like disturbed cattle in a pasture; and sometimes they challenge him. But I must say that, although I have been sharply spoken to on several occasions, always, after a few words, I have been permitted to keep on my way. And on that way I intend to keep until I have no more strength to climb over fences and force my way through hedges, but like a blind and worn-out old badger must take to my earth and die.

I found the Exe easy to follow at first. Further on exceedingly difficult in places; but I was determined to keep near it, to have it behind me and before me and at my side, following, leading, a beautiful silvery serpent that was my friend and companion. For I was following not the Exe only, but a dream as well, and a memory. Before I knew it the Exe was a beloved stream. Many rivers had I seen in my wanderings, but never one to compare with this visionary river, which yet existed, and would be found and followed at last. My forefathers had dwelt for generations beside it, listening all their lives long to its music, and when they left it they still loved it in exile, and died at last with its music in their ears. Nor did the connection end there; their children and children's children doubtless had some inherited memory of it; or how came I to have this feeling, which made it sacred, and drew me to it? We inherit not from our ancestors only, but, through them, something, too, from the earth and place that knew them.

I sought for and found it where it takes its rise on open Exmoor; a simple moorland stream, not wild and foaming and leaping over rocks, but flowing gently between low peaty banks, where the little lambs leap over it from side to side in play. Following the stream down, I come at length to Exford. Here the aspect of the country begins to change; it is not all brown desolate heath; there are green flowery meadows by the river, and some wood. A little further down and the Exe will be a woodland stream; but of all the rest of my long walk I shall only say that to see the real beauty of this stream one must go to Somerset. From Exford to Dulverton it runs, singing aloud, foam-flecked, between high hills clothed to their summits in oak woods: after its union with the Barle it enters Devonshire as a majestic stream, and flows calmly through a rich green country; its wild romantic charm has been left behind.

The uninformed traveller, whose principle it is never to look at a guide-book, is surprised to find that the small village of Exford contains no fewer than half a dozen inns. He asks how they are kept going; and the natives, astonished at his ignorance, proceed to enlighten him. Exford is the headquarters of the stag-hunt: thither the hunters flock in August, and spend so much money during thir brief season that the innkeepers grow rich and fat, and for the rest of the year can afford to doze peacefully behind their bars. Here are the kennels, and when I visited them they contained forty or fifty couples of stag-hounds. These are gigantic foxhounds, selected for their great size from packs all over the country. When out exercising these big vari-coloured dogs make a fine show. It is curious to find that, although these individual variations are continually appearing—very large dogs born of dogs of medium size—others cannot be bred from them; the variety cannot be fixed.

The village is not picturesque. Its one perennial charm is the swift river that flows through it, making music on its wide sandy and pebbly floor. Hither and thither flit the wagtails, finding little half-uncovered stones in the current to perch upon. Both the pied and grey species are there; and, seeing them together, one naturally wishes to resettle for himself the old question as to which is the prettiest and most graceful. Now this one looks best and now that; but the delicately coloured grey and yellow bird has the longest tail and can use it more prettily. Her tail is as much to her, both as ornament and to express emotions, as a fan to any flirtatious Spanish senora. One always thinks of these dainty feathered creatures as females. It would seem quite natural to call the wagtail "lady-bird," if that name had not been registered by a diminutive podgy tortoise-shaped black and red beetle.

So shallow is the wide stream in the village that a little girl of about seven came down from a cottage, and to cool her feet waded out into the middle, and there she stood for some minutes on a low flat stone, looking down on her own wavering image broken by a hundred hurrying wavelets and ripples. This small maidie, holding up her short, shabby frock with her wee hands, her bright brown hair falling over her face as she bent her head down and laughed to see her bare little legs and their flickering reflection beneath, made a pretty picture. Like the wagtails, she looked in harmony with her surroundings.

So many are the villages, towns, and places of interest seen, so many the adventures met with in this walk, starting with the baby streamlet beyond Simonsbath, and following it down to Exeter and Exmouth, that it would take half a volume to describe them, however briefly. Yet at the end I found that Exford had left the most vivid and lasting impression, and was remembered with most pleasure. It was more to me than Winsford, that fragrant, cool, grey and green village, the home of immemorial peace, second to no English village in beauty; with its hoary church tower, its great trees, its old stone, thatched cottages draped in ivy and vine, its soothing sound of running waters. Exeter itself did not impress me so strongly, in spite of its cathedral. The village of Exford printed itself thus sharply on my mind because I had there been filled with wonder and delight at the sight of a face exceeding in loveliness all the faces seen in that West Country—a rarest human gem, which had the power of imparting to its setting something of its own wonderful lustre. The type was a common Somerset one, but with marked differences in some respects, else it could not have been so perfect.

The type I speak of is a very distinct one: in a crowd in a London street you can easily spot a Somerset man who has this mark on his countenance, but it shows more clearly in the woman. There are more types than one, but the variety is less than in other places; the women are more like each other, and differ more from those that are outside their borders than is the case in other English counties. A woman of this prevalent type, to be met with anywhere from Bath and Bedminster to the wilds of Exmoor, is of a good height, and has a pleasant, often a pretty face; regular features, the nose straight, rather long, with thin nostrils; eyes grey-blue; hair brown, neither dark nor light, in many cases with a sandy or sunburnt tint. Black, golden, reds, chestnuts are rarely seen. There is always colour in the skin, but not deep; as a rule it is a light tender brown with a rosy or reddish tinge. Altogether it is a winning face, with smiling eyes; there is more in it of that something we can call "refinement" than is seen in women of the same class in other counties. The expression is somewhat infantile; a young woman, even a middle-aged woman, will frequently remind you of a little girl of seven or eight summers. The innocent eyes and mobile mouth are singularly childlike. This peculiarity is the more striking when we consider the figure. This is not fully developed according to the accepted standards the hips are too small, the chest too narrow and flat, the arms too thin. True or false, the idea is formed of a woman of a childlike, affectionate nature, but lacking in passion, one to be chosen for a sister rather than a wife. Something in us—instinct or tradition—will have it that the well-developed woman is richest in the purely womanly qualities—the wifely and maternal feelings. The luxuriant types that abound most in Devonshire are not common here.

It will be understood that the women described are those that live in cottages. Here, as elsewhere, as you go higher in the social scale—further from the soil as it were—the type becomes less and less distinct. Those of the "higher class," or "better class," are few, and always in a sense foreigners.