1 64 MY DEVON YEAR 



clouds. The Moor rises above this ambient culture 

 like a savage thing in the courts of civilisation. No 

 skill of man has tamed it, no industry has won it to 

 practical uses. We scratch it and water it with our 

 sweat ; we snatch fearfully from it here and there ; we 

 grope in its heart of stone ; but it lifts itself above us 

 and our earth-hunger to the sky ; it rolls upward to 

 the glories of Cosdon Beacon and High Willhayes, 

 to the loneliness of Fur Tor and Yes Tor, to the 

 tremendous ridges of Cut Hill, to the towers and 

 battlements of Wattern, to the turrets of Great Mis 

 Tor, and to the hogged back of this same Hameldon, 

 where now I stand in sunlight and survey the homes 

 of the old men beneath me. I think of these hills as 

 burying-places of a folk nearer the birth of the world 

 by centuries than we are. So seen, they are sacred, 

 and they ennoble the human dust in their hearts 

 and are ennobled by it. Here are pyramids and 

 monuments lifted at creation for a race that then was 

 not, and now is not again ; here are memorials to out- 

 last all human mausoleums and sepulchres that were 

 ever raised toward heaven or sunk into earth by piety 

 and pride. 



The cairns and kistvaens of Dartmoor have been 

 rifled by generations that followed each other before 

 any science of archaeology arose to stand between 

 them and this mortuary of their fathers. Eliza- 

 bethan miners destroyed many a barrow in hope of 

 gain ; while both before and since their time the 

 credulous and greedy savage has braved imaginary 



