ON OTTERY EAST HILL. 117 



dirty to tempt us to awake him with the orthodox kiss. So we 

 slip a penny into his open hand, and retire, enjoying the thought 

 of his wonder on awaking, much as Goldsmith rejoiced while 

 putting his last guinea in the sleeping beggar's pocket. These 

 children's harvest ripens at Midsummer, when they gather the 

 whortleberries which abound on these heights, and sell them to 

 the visitors at Sidmouth or Budleigh Salterton. Higher, higher 

 yet ! We are now fairly on the waste, struggling through golden- 

 blossomed furze, which is so bright that it seems to wink in the 

 sun's eye, now up a bare gravel slope, now through deep 

 bushes of heather, not without many a prick and stumble. A 

 rabbit darts into a hole, but no other living thing comes in 

 sight. Gentle foretastes of the breeze at the top fan our cheek. 

 One more push for forty yards, and the fresh keen breeze fully 

 greets us. At last we are on the long flat ridge of Ottery East 

 Hill, with a wide panorama of hill and dale below, and far away 

 to the left a glittering blue patch of sea. 



The vegetation up here is very striking ; primroses and dog- 

 violets, the dainty wild strawberry, the shyly-opening wood- 

 sorrel are left below us at the side of the red water-grooved 

 tracks winding between the little strips of cultivation. As far 

 as man presses upon the wild, they lovingly follow his footsteps. 

 The ferns, too, have changed ; Adiantum nigrum, the plumed 

 male fern, and Asplenium Trichomanes have lingered in the 

 grateful moisture below. The curiously dissimilar fertile and 

 barren fronds of the Blechnum spicant may be found instead of 

 them up here under any protecting mound of earth. Those 

 trusty companions of the water-loving ferns, the Chrysosplenium, 

 or golden saxifrage, and the Adoxa Moschatellina, are also 

 chequering the damp moss-tufts in the deep lanes far beneath. 

 A keen eye may notice vegetation varying according to its 

 regular laws even in these comparatively pigmy altitudes of a 

 few hundred feet above the sea-level. Below lies that net- 

 work of lanes which forms a bewildering maze on each side of 



