12 THE RED DEER OF EXMOOR. 



just make out the dim outline of Brown Willy afar 

 off in Cornwall, 



But let us look closer home, for there at our feet lies 

 spread out what we have come so far to see. Exmoor 

 lies before us, fold upon fold, ridge after ridge, purple 

 heather and long yellowy-green grass in countless 

 succession, till afar off one sees the rounded top of 

 Exe Head Hill, where amid the boggy ground, much 

 to be avoided by the uninitiated, the Exe, the Barle, 

 the Bray, the Lyn, and many lesser waters take their 

 rise and hurry down steep-sided combes on their way 

 to the cultivated valleys below. Chapman's Barrows 

 and Hangman Hill above Combe Martin close in 

 the distant view, but it is here, in the foreground, 

 among those deep combes, which under the now 

 setting sun look but like shadows, that the real 

 home of the red deer lies. Here at our very feet is 

 his birthplace and his nursery, for here on this bleak 

 hillside, among the black soggy ground not half a 

 mile away, and in these narrow combes below us, a 

 vast proportion of the herd of hinds elects to spend 

 the winter. On those heathery moors, secure from 

 disturbance, they lay down their spotted calves and 

 gently tend them during the early summer months, 

 while their lords are in seclusion enduring the agonies 

 entailed by growing a new set of antlers. And here 

 when their appointed day comes, in rain, or hail, or 

 sleet, it may be they show that with the best of 

 hounds and science it may take all day to kill a 

 hind. 



