AMONGST THE HEATHER. 49 



England, are more perfectly acquainted than any other men 

 with every nook and corner of this waste of 130,000 acres, and 

 one of them writes : " Dartmoor is throughout a district of 

 heather ; and it is only over a very small portion of the Lake 

 country that either the ling or the common heath is to be found, 

 and then only in patches. The many lichens that attach them- 

 selves to the granite, staining and marking it, and often hang- 

 ing from it in long, grey beards ; the stretches of rush, fern, 

 and bent grass ; the beds of white, fluttering cotton reed (the 

 1 cana grass ' of the Highlands) ; these, with the broken rocks 

 and the tors themselves, supply the neutral tints of the wild 

 landscape, lighted and set off in due season by the glow of 

 heather, the golden blaze of furze, and along the stream and 

 towards the border country, by regiments, and squadrons of 

 tall foxgloves. Many plants common in Wales and the North 

 do not occur here. This alone is sufficient to give a special 

 character to the colouring." 



From these artistic pleasures we descend the other side of 

 the high-land, and lo ! fiom the opposite shoulder of thinly- 

 covered granite the world breaks in upon the dreamer in the 

 shape of a coach and four, crammed inside and out with 

 tourists, crossing the moor by the great central track from 

 Tavistock to Moreton Hampstead, and Exeter. When the un- 

 welcome dust subsides we pass the Vitifer Tin Mine, where the 

 hills are seamed with the excavations of the ancient "streamers" 

 (as the primitive Keltic miners are here called), and breast the 

 hill amidst the whistling of numerous ring-ousels to Grims- 

 pound. A chimney of the mine, seen on the opposite side of 

 the valley, links the men of to-day with the primitive tin-smelters 

 who probably inhabited this British village. Or the mind may 

 pierce still further the mist of ages, and view the men of the 

 Bronze or even the Stone period within this fort, for no iron 

 weapons have as yet been found near the ancient monuments 

 of Dartmoor. What a retrospect to call up as we stand within 



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