410 DARTMOOR AND THE DART. 



A strange feeling pervades the mind as one stands 

 thus amid the memorials of a hoary and dim antiquity, 

 and calls up the gathering assembly, with its stoled 

 priest and its sucking lamb, and perhaps other sacri- 

 fices, from which imagination hides her face, dripping 

 blood on these huge stones, perhaps at the very time 

 that Samuel was judging Israel in the circle of Gilgal, 

 and obtesting at the stone of Eben-ezer. The naked- 

 ness and utter desolation of the region still and so- 

 lemnise the mind, notwithstanding the cheerful sun 

 and the swift chequering clouds. In the shadows of 

 evening it must be an awful place, when fancy would 

 people it with the shadowy ghosts of four thousand 

 years, and every stone would take form and life. 



Again we descend to the river at a place called 

 Two Bridges. There is, indeed, but one bridge that 

 I could see or hear of ; and the only way I can account 

 for the name is by supposing that there existed, 

 coevally with this modern structure, one of those 

 very ancient ones, usually described as " Cyclopean," 

 made by upright monoliths for piers, and enormous 

 slabs of granite made to rest on these horizontally, 

 the stability of the whole depending on the immense 

 weight of the blocks. Several of these interesting 

 bridges yet remain to attest the solidity of their con- 

 struction, particularly one over the East Dart, near 

 Post Bridge. 



Close to the river, at Two Bridges, a country inn 

 of more than usual pretensions, surrounded by its 

 offices, gives animation to the scene. The sign, once 



