THE WILD STAG ON EXMOOli. 223 



And from all appearances the convenient delicacies and the 

 champagne at two-and-a-penny found no little favour. 



From 8 a.m. carts and carriages, brakes and omnibuses,, 

 waggonettes and pony traps, passed the Feathers Hotel, laden 

 skyhigh with hampers. By eleven o'clock the town was- 

 deserted, while each road converging to Cloutsham was choked 

 with vehicles and horsemen, hurrying in from every corner of 

 North Devon and West Somerset. It is asserted that neither 

 in Taunton, Dulverton, IMinehead, Porlock, nor Linton did there 

 remain a wheel that would go round or a leg that could move- 

 under a saddle : and the scene at the meet lent probability to 

 the assertion. 



Cloutsham, to the eye of the stranger, appeared to be but a 

 farmhouse surmounting a spur of the main hills, about four 

 miles directly south of Porlock Bay. One more mile to the- 

 south stands Dunkery Beacon, nearly 1700 feet above the sea, 

 and a landmark always strongly impressed upon a new comer,, 

 as the centre point round which his geography may by degrees, 

 extend itself. Green, and on this occasion crowded, lanes take 

 you to the foot of the hills ; and a short but terribly steep 

 ascent lands your panting steed at the top. Lord Lovelace's- 

 shooting box (or rather the drive to it, cut through a deep dark 

 wood) is pointed out to you half-way up the incline ; and your 

 informant next adds to your stock of knowledge the dictum 

 that the great primeval woods of Cloutsham are the property 

 of Sir Thomas Acland — also that these coverts and the equally 

 dense and still more extensive ones of Culbone lining the sea 

 to the west of Porlock are the mainstay of staghunting in this 

 district. 



A lovely spot for a PICNIC truly ! The purple-topped hills- 

 speckled and varied with gold, where the bloom of the gorse 

 trenched here and there upon the smooth surface of the 

 heather ; oak woods of darkest green filling the depths of the 

 precipitous combe at your feet ; in the farther valley rich 

 cornfields ready for the sickle, mapped out in broad inky lines 

 by stone banked hedges : beyond these the solitary height of 



