390 DARTMOOR AND THE DART. 



burton by another outlet, a street sufficiently sordid, 

 where the little river Yeo purls alongside the cause- 

 way, and disappears from the eyes of passengers to 

 wash the back-doors of the old quaint houses, and 

 where dingy women are ever going up and down steps 

 with pitchers and kettles. We get beyond houses and 

 bridge, and pass as usual between walls bristling with 

 feathery ferns, evidently the invariable in the outskirts 

 of this little town. 



The ground now rises fast, leading us through a 

 high banked road or lane (I scarcely know which), 

 where the male fern is profuse and fine, and the brake 

 is also large and succulent, and delicately green. 

 Ferns appear to have their proper domains. Presently 

 these disappear, and it is all the black spleenwort with 

 enormous fronds, so elegant in their triangular outline, 

 and dark glossy greenness ; and by and by nothing 

 but the hard fern springing out of the loose stone 

 walls. Oaks stretch their arms above the road, and 

 make an almost continuous canopy, through which 

 the twinkling sunbeams struggle and play, with soft 

 pellucid yellow-green light ; anon these give place to 

 sombre firs, dull, stiff, and skeleton-like, the planta- 

 tions of Welster. 



A conspicuous object all the way up has been the 

 works and tall scaffolding of a mine on a hill to the 

 right. We are told its name is Druids' Mine, and we 

 at once think of the Phoenician times ; but no I it is 

 a thing of yesterday ; a London speculation of some 

 five years' starting. 



