BUCKLAND BEACON. 393 



We descend perilously, for the granite is angular 

 and rugged, and the short wiry turf particularly slip- 

 pery. Besides this there is little vegetation, save the 

 tiny bedstraw, profuse in white bloom, crowding the 

 rocky crevices, and the rosy white stars of the English 

 stone-crop, and a twine or two of ivy mantling the 

 gray stone, and abundant lichens completely covering 

 the old weather-worn surfaces. A pretty little yellow 

 cinque-foil studs the short turf with its flowers, and 

 on the rounded hill there is the furze. This is sin- 

 gularly close and dense, forming rounded knobs, as 

 even and shapely as the well-shorn shrubs in a Dutch 

 garden; the wind doubtless having performed the 

 shearing operation here. 



The mass of granite has a very noble and impres- 

 sive aspect, as we gaze up upon it from the point 

 where it breaks out of the turf. It takes somewhat 

 of the form of an immense table, rising to a low cone 

 in the middle, or something like a huge loaf that has 

 wink in the baking. The vast block of primeval 

 sfcone, naked and hoary, is imposing in its severe 

 simplicity, as it stands out broad against the sky, with 

 no object around on the bare hill to distract the 

 attention ; and it derives a great extrinsic interest 

 from its associations with early, perhaps even pre- 

 historic, times. This is Buckland Beacon; and I 

 picture to myself the pile of combustibles, which in 

 seasons of danger or other expectation was wont to 

 stand on that massive table, and the wild form of the 

 appointed watcher, possibly the bearded Druid him- 



