CHASE OF THE WILD RED DEER 12 



properly so called, once, as has already been said, 

 a royal forest, consisted some forty or fifty years a^o 

 of about 16,000 acres of moorland, lying parallel 

 with the Bristol Channel, covered with long, rank, 

 sedgy grass, and surrounded on all sides by waste 

 or common lands, of nearly the same character and 

 extent. Before the year 18 18, these wilds were 

 traversed by few save the hunter, the sportsman, 

 who roamed in quest of blackcock or other game, 

 the fisherman, who plied his gentle art by the side of 

 picturesque mountain streams, the shepherd, who 

 tended the small moor sheep and cattle which in the 

 spring and summer months cropped the scanty herb- 

 age of the wastes, and the herdsman, who wandered 

 in search of the ponies which roamed at large in a 

 wild state over the moors. In a wild ' coombe ' may 

 still be seen the remains of some buildings once the 

 stronghold of the Doones of Badgeworthy, ' a daring 

 gang of robbers who infested the moor in the time 

 of the Commonwealth, and of whom the tradition is 

 still extant. They are said to have been natives of 

 another part of England, and to have entered 

 Devonshire about the time of Cromwell's usurpation. 

 It is certain that for many years they were a terror 

 to the neighbourhood of Lynton, and long succeeded 

 in levying blackmail on the farmers, and in escaping 



