Dartmoor is a fine-sounding name, and no one would wish to displace it; yet in one sense it is a misleading and inappropriate designation of the great central Devonshire moorland. The moorland is not distinctively the moor of the Dart, any more than of the Teign, the Tavy, or the Ockment; it is the cradle-land of rivers, and there is no obvious reason why the Dart should have assumed such supremacy. But there is historic fitness about the title. It is probable that the Saxons first became acquainted with Dartmoor from the fertile district known as the South Hams, watered by the beautiful reaches of the Dart from Totnes to its mouth. The wide intermediate waste that lay between the North and the South Hams was a region of mystery to them, and they associated it with this swift, sparkling stream that issued from its cleaves and bogs.

Whatever its actual population may have been, imagination would people it with spirits and demons; while it needed no imagination to supply the storms, the blinding fogs and rains, the baying wolves that haunted its recesses. They were content to retain its old Celtic name for the river, and they applied this name to the moor as well; it became the moor of the Dart. The name Dart, supposed to be akin to Darent and Derwent, is almost certainly a derivative from the Celtic dwr, water. The moorland itself is a mass of granite upheaved in pre-glacial days, weathered by countless centuries into undulating surfaces, pierced by jagged tors, and interspersed with large patches of bog and peat-mire. This is the biggest granitic area in England, the granite extending for about 225 square miles; though that which is known as Dartmoor Forest (never a forest in our accepted meaning of the word) is considerably smaller, having been much encroached upon by tillage and enclosure. There is a further protrusion of granite on the Bodmin Moors, and again as far west as Scilly; while Lundy, in the Bristol Channel, belongs almost entirely to the same formation. Beneath the mire and peat, which are the decaying deposits of vegetable matter, lies a stratum of china-clay, which is worked productively to the south of the moors, and still more largely in Cornwall. The average height of the moorland is about 1500 feet, rising in places to a little over 2000. This elevation is exceeded in Wales, in the Lake District, and in Scotland; and nowhere does Dartmoor appear actually mountainous, one reason being that the plateau from which we view its chief eminences is always well over 1000 feet above sea level, and thus a great portion of the height is not realized. But we realize it to some extent when we notice the speed of the moorland rivers; they do not linger and dally like Midland streams, they run and dash and make a perpetual music of their motion. In winter they are strong enough to make playthings of the rough lichened boulders that confront their course; and in the hottest summers they never run dry—the mother-breast of Dartmoor has always ample nourishment. Though there is a lessening in the body of the rivers, and perhaps a surface-drought of the bogs, the moors are never really parched; drovers from the Eastern counties sometimes bring their flocks hither in a summer of great heat, to feed on Dartmoor turfs when their own home-pastures would be arid. Yet the central moor is more like a desolate waste than a pasture. Its rugged turfy surface is scattered with small and large fragments of granite, sometimes "clitters" of weather-worn boulders, sometimes masses that look as though prehistoric giants had been playing at bowls. Often strange and fantastic in shape, as twilight steals on, or the weird gloom of moorland fog, they seem to become animated; they are pixies, brownies, the ghosts of old vanished peoples; wherever we gaze they start before us; prying figures seem to be hiding behind them, ill-wishing us, or eager to lure us into desolate solitudes. The wind sighs with solitary tone through the rough grasses and tussocks; at this height its evening breath is chill even in summer. Some of the stones are shattered monuments of dead men; some perhaps had a religious significance that the world has forgotten. The loneliness of the moor is often a charm, but it can become oppressive and terrible if our mood is not buoyant. In places like these the strongest mind might yield to superstition. We seem to be in a region of the primal world, where ploughshare has never passed nor kindly grain sprung forth for the nourishment of man.

But we do not come to Dartmoor for traces of the earliest man in England; for these we must go to Kent's Cavern, Torquay, or to Brixham, not to the moors. Tokens of habitation on Dartmoor only begin with Neolithic times, and are by no means continuous. At one time there must have been a thick population; but Celt and Saxon have left little trace on the moors, and the Romans none at all. Though the Celts may have conquered the Iberian tribes here, they probably neither exterminated nor entirely dispossessed them. They were content with the fringes of the wilderness, leaving the rest to the mists, the wolves, and the lingering older race. It was man of the New Stone Age who first peopled this upland, leaving remains of his hut-dwellings, his pounds, dolmens, and menhirs, his kistvaens and his cooking-holes. Numerous as the remains are still, they were once far more so; they have been broken up or carted away for road-mending, for gateposts and threshold stones, for building, for "new-take" or other walls, and for any other purpose to which granite can be applied. This central highland may have become a refuge of the later Stone-men against invaders of better equipment: all the traces of camps are on the borders, defensive against an external enemy; within is no sign of anything but peaceful pastoral occupation and tin-streaming.

Place names, of field or of farm, enable us to infer the former existence of primitive relics: wherever there is a Shilstone (shelf stone) or a Bradstone (broad stone) we may be sure there was once a dolmen or cromlech; wherever there is a Langstone or Longstone we guess at a menhir or standing-stone. These early inhabitants of the moor had advanced far from the condition of the rude cave folk; they built themselves low circular huts, generally clustered within pounds (enclosures whose chief purpose here seems to have been the protection of cattle; some of the pounds were clearly for cattle alone). At Grimspound, near Hookner Tor, are traces of twenty-four huts, enclosed in a double wall 1500 feet in circumference. The huts had low doorways, and usually platforms for domestic purposes, with hearthstones and cooking-holes. The food to be cooked was placed in the hole, sometimes in a coarse clay pot, sometimes without, together with red-hot stones from the hearth. Near Postbridge as many as fifteen pounds can be traced, while at Whit Tor are other numerous traces. Those at Grimspound evidently belong to the Bronze Age; like different periods of architecture, the Stone and Metal Ages very much overlapped.

At first the burial of these people was in dolmens, like the fine specimen at Drewsteignton; later, cremation became the fashion, and the smaller kistvaen, or stone chest, was used. The kistvaen was covered by cairns or heaps of stones, probably placed there in tribute to the dead: there are many relics of such on the moors, as in Cornwall, but they have usually been scattered or mutilated, and the contents rifled by seekers after buried treasure. The stone-circles on the moor are, of course, entirely dwarfed by Stonehenge, but when the problem of the greater is solved we shall know that of the lesser; at present we can only conjecture. The Scaur Hill circle on Gidleigh Common is a good specimen, being about ninety-two feet in diameter; near it are several stone-rows or alignments. Dartmoor is famous for these lines of standing-stones, which are generally connected with places of burial; the longest, on Staldon, starting from a circle, runs for over two miles. These, together with the single stones or menhirs, were probably intended as memorials of persons or events, and may also have been used as places of gathering; but their religious significance, if any, can have been little more than a primitive ancestor-worship. At a later period the menhirs were often converted into crosses, and as such they are common in Devon and Cornwall.

Other tokens of the early inhabitants are to be found in the signs of tin-working, but here we have to be careful in assigning dates; much tin-mining was done in the Middle Ages, and it is not always easy to distinguish between traces that date from many years before Christ and those that belong only to the fourteenth or the fifteenth century. The advance in methods of working and in mode of living was very slight, and it is quite possible to confuse a rude hut of the medieval tinners with one of prehistoric origin. We cannot positively state what period of the Bronze Age saw the dawn of tin-working on Dartmoor, but their place in the oldest folklore gives the "tinkards" a great antiquity. The metal was streamed, or washed from the beds of the moorland rivers, cast in rough ingots, and carried on pack horses to the Stannary or mintage towns, where it was stamped and taxed. Parts of the old trackways still remain, often paved; and it was for the use of the pack-horses that the characteristic clapper-bridges were constructed, like those of Dartmeet, Postbridge, and elsewhere. These bridges are quite modern when we compare them with the stone-circles and kistvaens. There was a kind of guild or early trade union between the miners of Devon and Cornwall, reminiscent of the time when both belonged to "West Wales"; and a relic of the old jurisdiction is the Stannary Court still meeting at Truro.

After the Christian era we learn little or nothing of Dartmoor till the time of the Plantagenets, though we can gather a good deal about its border towns. The wild beasts that haunted its desolate recesses brought it some repute as a hunting-ground, and it was not included in King John's act of disafforestation. We must not be led by the term Dartmoor Forest to suppose that the moors were ever covered with woodland—certainly not within historic days; for long centuries they can only have been an almost treeless waste, with patches of trees like the surviving stunted oaks of Wistman's Wood. But the borders and some of the river valleys are beautifully wooded.

It must be confessed that the rarest beauty of the moorland belongs to its fringes, around what may be called the gateways of the moor; in the interior there is the charm of broad expanse, the glorious colour of heather, ling, and gorse, and occasionally a grand desolation of mist and tempest that may almost strike dismay. A guidebook writer has spoken of Dartmoor as "the quintessence of unlovely dreariness"; and perhaps there is some justification for his words in the immediate neighbourhood of Princetown, the solitary town of the moorland proper. In size Princetown is only a village, with a population permanently increased by the presence of about a thousand convicts and their warders; and it may be feared that a majority of visitors to the place, reaching it by train from Yelverton, are drawn by a curiosity to see the prison. They are rewarded by little but a sight of the grim bare walls. Lovers of the moor have never looked with favour either at the prison or at the tortuous little railway line that climbs to it, however much this line may be admired as a feat of engineering; but we must accept the presence of the railway ungrudgingly, for it is a fine convenience for all who wish to reach the central regions of Dartmoor. The wise visitor comes to Princetown in order to get away from it as soon as possible—to get to Two Bridges, and Crockern Tor, long the open-air parliament-place of the tinners—and to find himself in a tract of lonely country perhaps more thickly studded with immemorial remains than any other in the kingdom. The prison itself is about 1500 feet above sea level; and Great Mis Tor, a mile or so to the north, is 1760 feet. It will be realized that if this and other tors rose sheer from a low-lying plain, their height would be much more appreciable. It was Tyrwhitt, Warden of the Stannaries, who suggested that a prison should be built here, to receive the prisoners of war who were crowding the seaports; and the work was begun in 1806. Tyrwhitt lived at Tor Royal, where he entertained the Prince Regent; and tradition suggests that the Prince brought his usual habits of gaiety and dissipation when he thus visited the moorland. Americans as well as Frenchmen suffered the dismal hospitality of the gaol here, as we are reminded by one of Mr. Phillpotts's novels. Of course, the new settlement was named in honour of the Regent. A few portions, such as the granite gateway with its motto Parcere Subjectis, belong to the original buildings; and the inn "The Plume of Feathers" was built by Frenchmen. A writer has spoken of Dartmoor Prison as an example of the power of moral force, as the convicts far outnumber the honest men; but it may be supposed that bolts and bars, and the firearms of the warders, have something to say in the matter. Even with these there are occasional attempts at escape or mutiny.

When the war with France came to an end the young settlement was likely to lapse into complete decay; but in 1855 it was converted into the present convict station. The problem of dealing wisely with crime has not yet been solved; and the best that can be said for Princetown is that it is undoubtedly healthy, in spite of its bitter cold in winter; and in some sort it may be regarded as a compulsory sanatorium. Whether the moral effects are as good as the physical must be left for students of punishment to decide. Whether characters are reclaimed or no, there is an effort to reclaim the moor, which is the typical stony ground of the parable; and the gradual enclosure of parts that were formerly public is a result. But at a step we can pass from present unlovely realities to the remote and traditional.

In Fox Tor Mire, which has been partially drained but has still some ugly patches of bog, we come upon the supposed tomb of Childe the Hunter, a kistvaen, while not far off is Childe's Cross. The familiar legend tells how Childe of Plymstock was hunting on Dartmoor when he was separated from his companions in a snowstorm. He killed his horse and crept into its warm carcass to keep himself from freezing, but the expedient proved of no avail, though it apparently gave him time to scribble a kind of will on a stone, to the effect that—

Laws regarding the witnessing of wills seem to have had no operation in those days. Tidings of his death reaching Tavistock, the monks of the abbey immediately set forth to recover the body and so inherit the estate; but it seems that they were nearly forestalled by the townsmen, and it was only by the craft of the monks, who threw a hasty bridge across the Tavy, that they reached the abbey without having to contest their capture. Some say that their competitors in the race for Childe's body were the monks of Buckland, not the folk of Tavistock. Whatever we may think of the legend, it is certain that the manor of Plymstock was attached to Tavistock Abbey from the time of the Conquest to the Dissolution.

Another local tradition is that of Fitz's Well, by the Blackabrook. It is stated that Fitz of Fitzford, with his good lady, was pixy-led while crossing the moors, and could by no means find the right path. At length they came to this well, and hastened to refresh themselves. No sooner had they drunk of the water than a veil seemed removed from their eyes; they recognized where they were, and reached home in safety. Probably the well had long been esteemed holy, though no name of a saint survives in connection with it. In gratitude Fitz enclosed the spring and placed an inscribed stone above it.

Something strange is also told of the pool Classenwell, sometimes called Clakeywell or Crazywell, which is a mile or two south of Princetown. This pool is certainly more like a lake than the better-known Cranmere, which is little better than a peat bog. Its extent of water is about an acre, lying in a hollow where were formerly mine-workings. The superstitious used to assert that this dismal pond had a voice with which it announced the names of all moor folk who were about to die. Those who passed dreaded to hear the mysterious announcement, always fearing that their own names might be cried. It cannot be doubted that winds intruding to the desolate hollow might produce weird sounds from the water, especially at night; there is a mystery and solemnity about night sounds at all times, and such things have fostered many wild myths. Here, as at Cranmere, there is a legend of a doomed spirit who howls in the darkness, like the Tregeagle of Cornwall; and here also was a belief that the pool was bottomless. There is also a touch of history here: Piers Gaveston, hiding on Dartmoor during his exile from Court, is said to have consulted the oracle of Classenwell, who foretold his fate in ambiguous language which he misinterpreted. The cry of this pool reminds us of the cry of the Dart itself—its call for the human life that it demands each year—

A story tells how a farm lad named Jan Coo was lured to his death by this calling of the river. It is true that when the wind blows strongly down the Dart valley a strange, strangled kind of cry comes from the gorge, which at night-time is well calculated to strike a chill to the soul of the lonely passer. But the wind on Dartmoor can do more than this; it has given us a phantom-chase like that of the Harz Mountains, and the Wish-hounds that hunt the spirits of unchristened babes across the moors.

There is a story of a farmer riding home to Chagford from Widecombe. He heard the demon huntsman pass with his yelling hounds. Perhaps the man had indulged too freely at the village inn; certainly he dared to hail the hunter and ask what sport. "Whatever the sport, you shall have your share," came back the answer; and what he imagined to be a haunch of venison was hurled into his arms. But when he reached home, and his wife brought a light, they found that the supposed game was the dead body of their own little child.

But the moor is not always desolate and haunted; its streams are not always wild dashing torrents, nor do they always trickle through black and treacherous bog. To know the moorland thoroughly we must know it in all its moods. A passing cloud or a glorious sunset can work marvellous transformations.

Two Bridges is a good spot to begin the acquaintance. A bare road runs across the open down to a gentle hollow, where it dips, passes a narrow stream, and ascends again. The slopes around are almost as smooth as if their formation was of chalk, not granite; this might be a corner of the Sussex Downs but for the jagged tors that dream in the blue haze of the horizon. Stand for a few minutes on the bridge and let the spirit of the place steal into your heart; listen to the message of the Dart as it babbles beneath the arches. Brook and nothing more it is at present. But a reverie on the roadway is liable to be disturbed by a sudden dash of dust and savour of petrol. We may be driven from the road by the invasive motor car, but there are still the footpaths and the tameless moorland. Descending to the small stretch of meadow that borders the stream above the bridge, in a few moments we seem far removed from disconcerting evidences of a civilization that is always in a hurry.

We are by the side of a free moorland water, gliding and gurgling and whispering through a valley-bed of rugged and weeded crags, with trees that make a chequered network of the sunlight. It is a paradise of coolness and peace, where there are mossy boulders on which we can rest, or couches of fern and turf on which we can lie. The constant yet changeful music of the waters is in our ears; our eyes are soothed by the sweet umbrage of the branches, conveying the light with an alchemy that transmutes it into a green-tinged wine. Sometimes the water takes an amber tint, coloured by the fragments of rock that in almost any part form stepping-stones from side to side. In winter no such passage would be easy; the brook becomes an angry torrent, leaping with foam and impetuous fury down the rock-strewn gorge: but that which at times can become a relentless giant, at other times is like a playful nursling; the child prattles where sometimes the Titan thunders. There are miniature cascades and tiny waterfalls; the stones that are nothing to the swollen winter stream now cause its baby current to swerve and deviate, seeking for fissures that permit its flowing. It is delightful to lave one's feet in the clear tide, but the weeded stones are slippery and the bed of the stream is rough; this is no quiet sandy brooklet that children may wade in. It does not dally, but flows with a swift current of life. Many of our typical English streams are almost or quite voiceless in their course; we have to bend our heads to catch the low monotone of their flowing. But here is no pastoral brook meandering through meadowy lowlands; it runs with a gush and a tinkle; even in hot days, when the current is slender, there is always spirit and vigour about it. For an angler there is something even better: trout lurk in some of the deeper holes. Truly the desolation of the moor is not to be found by its riversides, unless it be in their boggy cradles. Here by the young Dart is a plentiful growth of trees and luxuriance of plant life; the boulders are draped with weeds and water-mosses. There is variety also in the colouring of the lichens; and in their due season who shall describe the glory of the flaming ferns, the gold of the gorse, the purples of ling and heather? This is the moor and the river in their gentler aspects; there are times when both become a fierce passion, a wild dream, almost a horror.

It is impossible as well as undesirable to mention all the prehistoric remains that cluster so thickly on the central moorland. This is not a guidebook, and there are excellent publications, such as the writings of Mr. Crossing and the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in which all necessary details are given.

For one of the most typical features, the clapper-bridges, we cannot claim the greatest antiquity, as the surviving specimens are on the pack-horse routes, and not on the moor's more ancient trackways. There was one at Two Bridges, but it has gone; and, still nearer to Princetown, there is one over the Ockery, a rugged structure of unwrought boulders, to which later parapets have been added. The true Dartmoor bridge has no parapet. One of the finest is at Postbridge, in the very heart of the moor; there are others at Teign Head and Dartmeet. In these bridges the huge "clappers" or blocks of granite lie absolutely unmorticed. Two of the horizontal blocks at Postbridge are about fifteen feet in length. At Scaur Hill there is a bridge of a single massive boulder. Though essentially characteristic of Dartmoor, there are similar bridges elsewhere, as at Torr Steps over the Exmoor Barle, and in the Peak district.

Another special interest attaches to Postbridge: it is here that the ghostly and indistinct Lych Way starts on its route to Lydford church. By this track in old days burial parties carried their dead to Lydford, which is still the parish church of a larger section of the moorland. Before the year 1260 Lydford had to be resorted to for all religious purposes; from that date permission was given to inhabitants of the eastern moors to use the church of Widecombe. In days before education had done something to kill picturesque imaginings, it is not surprising that many a phantom cortege was supposed to wend its way along this haunted track; and the moor folk were very careful not to pass that way alone at night-time. But the ghosts have been laid now, or men's eyes are sealed by their incredulity; the only night-haunters of Dartmoor are mist, and rain, and storm.

In making a tour of the border villages it is natural to begin with Lydford, the mother-parish, which, with an extent of 56,333 acres, claims to be the largest parish in England. Lydford boasts of importance even as far back as the Roman invasion, but this is very dubious; there is no sign of anything Roman either at Lydford or on the moorland. The town was burnt by the Danes in 997, when they also destroyed Tavistock Abbey. It is certain that Lydford ranked high among the Stannary towns, and was a place of consequence. Its castle, dating from soon after the Conquest, is by no means imposing in its present appearance, but as a Stannary prison it had a terrible reputation. The summary justice executed by the mining and forest authorities gave rise to the term "Lydford law", which was something worse than what we now understand as lynch law. Browne, the Tavistock poet, says:

but it is said that even this swift treatment was better than being cast into Lydford prison.

We have to come to Lydford to find a patron saint for Dartmoor. The moor is scarce in saints, but here in the dedication of the church we find a very suitable patron in the Celtic St. Petrock, who came to Cornwall in the sixth century and founded churches at Padstow and Bodmin. There are other dedications of his on the moor borders. The present church is Perpendicular, but there are traces of a far earlier, possibly Celtic, building. The epitaph to the watchmaker Routleigh in the churchyard should be noticed. Lydford is very beautifully situated, and its ravine, down which the Lyd tumbles through steep wooded clefts, is a perpetual charm. There are two cascades, but that of Kitt's Steps is not so fine as it was once, owing to mining operations. Those who like to make comparisons may see a resemblance between Lydford Gorge and the famous Devil's Bridge of Wales, and they will probably have to admit that the Welsh scene is the grander; but Lydford is very lovely for all that, and its stream is a true child of the moorland. This ravine of the Lyd was once infested by a gang of vicious savages known as the Gubbins. There have been similar reversions to primitive barbarism even within the past century, people inhabiting mud huts and living chiefly by robbing the moormen of their cattle. It is probable that the Doones of Exmoor, though glorified by Blackmore, were simply robbers of this rude type.

Lydford also has a story of a traveller whose horse once cleared the gorge at a leap, the bridge having fallen; the rider, unconscious of his peril, was thus borne to safety across the roaring torrent of the chasm. But the summer visitor must not expect to find the Lyd a roaring torrent.

There are some fine tors near Lydford, though not the highest of the moorland. Brent Tor is singularly picturesque, and is a notable landmark by reason of the Early England church on its summit. The hill was fortified in early times, traces of stone and earthwork remaining; and there is a legend, as so often with high-standing churches, that the devil resented the church being built on what he considered his special domain, but was discomfited by the erection being placed under the patronage of St. Michael. The rock itself is volcanic, so that the Prince of Darkness had a reason for deeming it his private property. The church is said to have been built as a thankoffering for deliverance from the sea. Those who reach it have to do so by a steep and stony path, which we may take, if we will, as a symbol; and it is often difficult to stand in the graveyard because of the fierce winds that beat upon it. In times of storm it might be easy to imagine that St. Michael and the spirits of darkness were waging their ancient conflict. Not many worshippers in England can boast that they attend a church 1130 feet above sea level; but the church at Princetown is higher still. Perhaps it is not surprising that a more accessible church has been built at North Brent Tor, yet after coming here it would seem like a lapse in manhood to attend the other.

As we get northward of Lydford we approach the region of Dartmoor's greatest heights. At Bairdown, near Hare Tor, there is a finely-placed monolith or menhir; but the view from Great Lynx Tor is more impressive than any prehistoric remains can be, and includes both the English and the Bristol Channels. Mist and rain may often obscure the outlook, but there are clear times when the waters beyond Plymouth Sound can be seen to the south, while to the north glimmers the Severn Sea where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. The two highest tors lie beyond Lynx—Yes Tor and High Willhayes; both of these, though High Willhayes has a slight advantage, are well over 2000 feet.

The grand Tavy Cleave, one of the famous beauty spots of the moor, is just south of Amicombe Hill. The Tavy, one of the many rivers that spring from the morasses around Cranmere, here tumbles—in summer a cooling stream, in winter an impetuous torrent—among scattered boulders and crags at the foot of the bare hills. Very different is this scene from Lydford Gorge, but far more typically moorland. There is no woodland here, but the gaunt flanks of granite upheavals, and a restless stream gushing through stark lichened rocks. Grim summits cap the ravine; below are bogs that in wet seasons may be formidable.

Of the peril of losing one's way on Dartmoor we learn something when we come to Amicombe Hill. Here are the stones known as Bronescombe's Loaf and Cheese, which call to memory an adventure of Bronescombe, Bishop of Exeter in the thirteenth century, whose tomb is in the Cathedral. He was much beloved of the people, and the part that he plays in folklore proves how strongly he impressed his personality upon them. It is said that the bishop and his chaplain lost their way in crossing the moorland, and at last found themselves on Amicombe Hill. Tired and hungry, the former said to his companion: "Our Master, when tempted in the wilderness, was offered bread created from the stones. If the same offer was made to me, I doubt if I could refuse."

"Bread with a hunch of cheese as well," suggested the equally hungry chaplain.

"Ah," sighed the bishop, "I could not hold out against bread and cheese!"

While he was still speaking, a limping moorman suddenly appeared, with a wallet on his back, and the chaplain eagerly asked if he had any food to give them.

"Aye," replied the man, "I have some bread and cheese—naught else."

"Give it to us, my son," exclaimed the bishop. "I will repay thee well." But the stranger answered that he desired no payment; he only asked that the bishop would alight from his pony and doff his cap, saluting him as master. The bishop was about to comply, when his comrade noticed that one of the stranger's feet had a curious appearance. In great alarm he cried to the bishop, who hurriedly made the sign of the cross. Immediately the stranger vanished, and the loaf and cheese that he had produced were converted into the stones that we see here.

It is a fashion to go to Cranmere, and even to leave a card as proof that the visit has been paid; but the bogs and mires that surround it always make the approach difficult—in wet seasons dangerous; and except as the source of so many Devon rivers the spot is really unattractive. It is never more than a marshy pool, and sometimes scarcely that. Dartmoor is one of the rainiest spots in England, its height being swept by the moisture-laden winds from both seas; and the rainfall is held in its high-lying hollows by peat bogs. Every hollow is like a granite cup, and where there is not the immediate granite, there is the equally impervious china-clay of its denudations; these basins are perpetually fed by rain or mists, and the rivers thus born never run dry. From the actual pool of Cranmere rises the West Ockment, while the East Ockment, the Tavy, the Dart, the Taw, and the Teign spring from morasses or quags in its neighbourhood. No other spot in the kingdom gives birth to so many rivers of importance—important for their great beauty though only slightly for their navigation. On the moor itself they are rapid streams, sometimes peat-stained, yet always limpid; and this rapidity, especially after rainfall, goes with them to their estuaries, bringing sometimes sudden and dangerous risings of tide. The general Dartmoor watershed is southward; all the streams but the Ockments and the Taw flow to the English Channel. Teignmouth, Dartmouth, Plymouth, are watered by Dartmoor rivers.

Though the mother and nurse of these rivers, Cranmere is disappointing; yet it has loomed large in local folklore. Like Dosmare of the Bodmin Moors, it has been supposed to be bottomless; and the fate of doomed spirits has been to drain it with a leaky shell. One tale is of an old farmer who, after death, here had to expiate his misdoings. His ghost was so troublesome that it took seven parsons to secure it. Being changed into a colt by their pious spells, a servant lad was told to lead him to Cranmere pool, take off the halter, and leave the place instantly, without glancing back. The boy obeyed all the instructions but the last; and on looking back he received a parting kick from the colt, which then plunged into the pool in the form of a ball of fire.

We are indebted to the Ockment Rivers for the name of Okehampton (in Domesday the name is Ochementone), which is perhaps the best centre from which to explore the northern moorland. But the peacefulness and to some extent the security of the district have been affected by the fact that ninety acres of land are leased for the use of the Royal Horse and Field Artillery, whose practice has sometimes jeopardized unwary tourists. Happily the character of Dartmoor saves it from becoming a huge camp and review-ground, like Salisbury Plain; but it needs some patriotism to forgive such military occupation as we find at Okehampton and elsewhere.

The ruins of the castle, on the site of a Celtic settlement, are well placed above the river, surrounded by trees whose foliage is a delight after the barren uplands. Every lover of beauty appreciates the difference between a wooded district and a treeless waste; and this is usually the emphatic distinction between the central moor and its borders. It was a real privilege that allowed some of the French prisoners to reside at Okehampton instead of at Princetown, and a few of their tombs will be found in the churchyard here, so long after it has ceased to matter.

There is older tradition here also. Those who are abroad at night-time will do well to avoid meeting the ghostly equipage of Lady Howard, which drives nightly between the castle and Fitzford. Lady Howard was a much-married woman, daughter of the unhappy Fitz of Fitzford, and her last husband was the infamous Richard Grenville, who sullied a name otherwise greatly ennobled. She chose to retain the title of her third husband, and under this designation popular fancy has dealt very unkindly with her. Her doom is to drive each night to Okehampton Castle in her coach made of dead men's bones—the bones of her murdered husbands, as slander tells; and her phantom hound plucks a single blade of grass from the castle mound. When all the grass has been plucked, her doom will cease. An old Devonshire ballad tells us of her:

It is considered ill-omened to meet this lady, and those who would avoid doing so, as well as evade the firing, may find a pleasant refuge at Belstone, at Sticklepath, or at South Zeal. Belstone has a tor of 1568 feet in height, and also some standing-stones named the Nine Maidens, with their fallen piper. The girls were thus doomed and changed into stone as a punishment for dancing on Sunday. Though their piper is displaced and mutilated, they still dance each day at noon—for those whose faith is equal to the demand. Belstone is one of several "Bels" in the Dartmoor country, such as Bellever and Bel Tor, but we have yet to learn that they have any connection with Baal, in spite of all the nonsense that has been talked.

At Sticklepath, a charmingly pretty village with beautiful flower-gardens, there is a holy well with a curiously inscribed stone; while at South Zeal, near a quaint belfry, is an interesting wayside cross. There are some delightful old houses in the neighbourhood, usually manorial in their origin and now turned into farms, such as North Wyke, West Wyke, and Wykington. It is from this side that the ascent of Cosdon Beacon is often made—Cosdon, sometimes called Cawsand, being noted for the fine stone-rows and other immemorial relics to be found on its slopes. The Beacon has been introduced to literature by novels of Mr. Baring-Gould and Mr. Phillpotts. We are reminded also of fiction—the familiar pages of Westward Ho!—by the name of the Oxenham Arms, preserving the memory of a famous old Devon family, the Oxenhams, with their tradition of the white bird.

By whatever way we pass from Okehampton or South Tawton to Chagford, we are delayed on all sides by numberless spots of beauty or interest. The main road, which branches to Exeter, is served by a motor bus from Moreton, but familiarity with the moorland can never be gained by proceeding along a highroad, whether on foot or awheel. Many as are the remaining standing-stones, circles, and pounds, those that have been destroyed were far more numerous; but the finest monument of the "old people" is rarely as attractive as the natural beauties that surround many of them, and only the professed antiquarian will care to examine them all with patient study. To most of us they are only bare stones. They are so ancient that the human interest has died from them. But we find this human touch at such places as Wonson manor house, now a farm, where an ace of diamonds painted on the woodwork of a bedroom reminds us of a former squire, who had it placed there in order that he might curse it each night for the ruin it had brought him in his gambling.

Gidleigh, which is near, stands high, and has a fine park of oak, birch, and mountain-ash, with ferns and whortles in a rock-strewn undergrowth. Its colouring is especially rich in the fall of the year, with the lovely fading of ferns, the purple of heath, and the red of berries. The North Teign dashes foamingly below, fretful and rock-thwarted. This is really a more beautiful spot than ever was the Holy Street Mill that Creswick and other artists painted; plenty of picturesque mills may be found throughout the country, but scenes of such loveliness are rare. The rhododendrons in bloom add much to the beauty of Gidleigh, which also boasts a small castle with whose ruinous walls the ash trees have incorporated themselves.

At Teign Head (not quite the head of the river) is one of the moorland's clapper bridges; but Leigh Bridge, where the two Teigns meet, though of the common single-arch type, is more charming because its surroundings are wooded. The two rivers unite before reaching Chagford, and beyond that modernized and popular little resort the Teign passes out of the confines of the moor altogether. But at Fingle Bridge, one of the most famous Devon beauty-spots, something of moorland wildness still remains. Almost the whole course of the Teign is of remarkable beauty. It here passes the fine trees of Whiddon Park till it comes to a ravine every yard of which seems to be prehistoric dust. There are earthworks and camps on both sides; while not far off is the great dolmen or cromlech of Drewsteignton, near the small Bradmere pool.

Ancient camps are not common on the actual moorland, but we find them here at the fringe: those Bronze Age moormen appear to have been peaceable among themselves, and only to have raised entrenchments against external enemies. Possibly this lovely valley of the Teign saw a desperate struggle between tribes of an early and a newer civilization, one of the primitive race-strifes that shaped our people. Now it is a haunt of the country-lover and the tourist, many of whom deplore that the banks and hollows have been denuded of their rarer ferns by the depredations of thoughtless visitors. But nothing has killed the charm of the tumbling torrent, the stained massy boulders, the pools and shallows. It is little wonder that Chagford has become a popular holiday place; yet its miry condition in winter was best expressed by the pithy comment of its sarcastic neighbours—"Chaggy-vord—Good Lord!" The "Three Crowns", of which Kingsley spoke as a "beautiful old mullioned and gabled Perpendicular inn", was once a manor house.

From Chagford we reach the open moorland by climbing Tincombe (Teigncombe) Hill, and we must follow the South Teign if we wish to examine the Fernworthy circle or the Grey Wethers. But we shall probably be more attracted by what was once a genuine moor town, as its name implies. Moreton Hampstead, no longer properly on the moor, though it once was, is the starting-place of the single true road that leads across Dartmoor, passing Two Bridges on its way to Buckland, Tavistock, and Plymouth. The ancient central trackway, which is far older, being connected with the Fosseway, also ran from Moreton. Though linked to great roads from the shires, there is nothing to show that the Romans ever used this track, or that they ever entered Dartmoor at all.

Perhaps Moreton is an even better centre for visiting the moor than Chagford, and it is quite as attractive in itself, with its interesting but despoiled church, and its fine arcaded almshouses, dating from 1637. The inhabitants, however, deplore the loss of their old "dancing-tree", an elm growing from the mutilated base of a granite cross. This tree was supposed to be over 300 years old, and it succumbed a few years since to age and many infirmities. Balls and concerts were given on a platform built on the massive branches. The tree has received literary honour in Blackmore's Christowell. It is from Moreton that we can best reach Grimspound, with its twenty-four hut-circles. The pound encloses about four acres, surrounded by a double wall of granite blocks. Scattered in the neighbourhood are other hut-circles, barrows, and stone alignments.

Bowerman's Nose (Celtic veor-maen, or great stone) is nearer to Manaton; it is a natural freak of weathered granite, 40 feet in height, standing at an elevation of about 1300 feet above sea level. Many foolish conjectures have been magnified into supposed fact by those who have taken this and other Dartmoor features to be the work of man. Manaton itself, with its own tor rising behind the church, is a beautiful little village, rendered more lovely by the River Bovey.

It is the fall of the Becka brook into the Bovey that provides the popular Becky Falls; but in summer, as Mr. Baring-Gould says, this is rather a water trickle than a waterfall; in autumn and winter, when fewer visitors see it, the stream is a turbulent torrent. Not far distant is the beautiful Lustleigh Cleave, which though not on the moor is thoroughly moorland in its character and its antiquities. So hugely piled are the boulders at its foot that the river is generally quite out of sight, to be heard but not seen.

But to get to a typical moorland parish we must not linger at Lustleigh; we must go out to Widecombe, and by whatever road we reach it we shall understand the sad fate of Tom Pearce's old mare. Widecombe is in a hollow surrounded by heights and tors (it must be understood that the word tor is only used where the granite actually protrudes from the soil). Bel, Rippon, and Hey Tors are on one side, Hamildon Down on the other. The valley, which is only low in comparison with the surrounding hills, was much worked in days out of date by the tin-streamers, and there is a plentiful growth of pines and sycamores above the traces they left.

The village is a small thing, but it looms large in moorland traditions, not only because of its famous sheep fair, nor because its church is the finest on Dartmoor, but because the Devil himself paid the spot some very personal attentions at one time, and indeed was once reported to have lived here. It was on an October Sunday in the year 1638 that a stranger riding through Poundsgate enquired the way to Widecombe, and, being given a drink, it was noticed that the liquor actually hissed as it passed down his throat. The folk were gathered at afternoon service when there came on a great darkness, followed, as Prince tells us, by a "terrible and fearful thunder, like the noise of many guns, accompanied with dreadful lightning, to the great amazement of the people, the darkness still increasing that they could not see each other". Ere long there came an extraordinary flame, filling the church with a "loathsome smell like brimstone", and a ball of fire fell through the roof. The folk all dropped terror-stricken to the floor. A large beam hurled itself down between the parson and the clerk, yet neither was hurt; others were less fortunate, four being killed and sixty-two injured. At last a man ventured to propose: "Shall we go out from the church?" but the parson answered: "Let us make an end of prayer, for it is better to die here than in another place".

There is little in the present building to recall this terrible visitation, in which it is clear that a most violent thunderstorm has assumed a permanent place in Devonshire folklore; but its story is told in a versified narrative hanging on the tower wall. This tower, though certainly struck by lightning on the occasion, was not destroyed; and it remains, reaching the height of 120 feet, a model of impressive Perpendicular. The woodwork of the roof is also excellent, and the surviving pictured panels show how fine the screen was before being cut down in 1827. So large a church seems to indicate a thicker population in early days, perhaps when the tin working was at its best; and it is stated that the tower itself was erected voluntarily by successful tinners.

At the September fair there is still a lively gathering of moor sheep, moor horses, and moormen, and the chatter has a rich Devonian intonation, with a delightful smack of the soil. Widecombe is one of the so-called Venville parishes, Venville being a word of doubtful origin (sometimes written Wangfield), which probably signifies a kind of feudal tenure. These parishes were freehold with certain attached services, and their inhabitants had a prescriptive right to all uses of the moorland except those of "vert and venison"—that is, of gathering green wood or killing the deer. There was never much green wood to gather on the moor itself, and the deer have long since departed, unless when one occasionally wanders over from Exmoor. The moorland proper, technically the Forest, is surrounded by commons, outside which are the Venville parishes; and these commons were formerly of far wider extent, having been sadly curtailed by "newtakes" and enclosures, sometimes by the authorities of the Duchy, sometimes by lords of the different manors, sometimes by moor-settlers themselves. A small fee is demanded by the Duchy for all cattle pastured on the moor by outsiders, the cattle of the moormen grazing free; and there are periodical "drifts", when each Venville proprietor claims his own, and "foreigners" have to pay the tax.

Widecombe on the Moor
(Page 38)