THE WILD PONIES OF EXMOOR. 221 



round the house, where the number of stock grazing 

 showed that more than ordinary means must have been 

 taken to improve the pasture. 



We started on Exmoor ponies to ride to Simon's Bath. 



Exmoor, previous to 1818, was the property of the 

 Crown, and leased to Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, who 

 has an estate of a similar character close adjoining. He 

 used its wild pasture (at that time it was without roads) 

 for breeding ponies and feeding Exmoor sheep. There 

 are no traces of any population having ever existed on 

 this forest since Koman times. The Eomans are be- 

 lieved to have worked iron-mines on the moor, which 

 have recently been re-opened. 



Exmoor consists of 20,000 acres, on an elevation 

 varying from 1000 to 1200 feet above the sea, of un- 

 dulating table-land, divided by valleys, or " combes," 

 through which the Eiver Exe which rises in one of its 

 valleys with its tributary, the Barle, forces a devious 

 way, in the form of pleasant trout-streams, rattling over 

 and among huge stones, and creeping through deep 

 pools a very angler's paradise. Like many similar 

 districts in the Scotch Highlands, the resort of the red 

 deer, it is called a forest, although trees with the ex- 

 ception of some very insignificant plantations are as 

 rare as men. After riding all day with a party of ex- 

 plorers, one of them suddenly exclaimed, " Look, there 

 is a man !" A similar expression escaped me when we 

 came in sight of the first tree a gnarled thorn, standing 

 alone on the side of a valley. 



The sides of the steep valleys, of which some include 

 an acre, and others extend for miles, are usually covered 

 with coarse herbage, heather, and bilbeny plants, spring- 

 ing from a deep black or red soil : at certain spots a 

 greener hue marks the site of the bogs which impede, 



