ON OTTERY EAST HILL. 12$ 



the wooded hill-sides and fertile vales in front. There the 

 little river Sid cuts it way through holly, ferns, and bracken. 

 Wolfersly, said to have been the lair of the last wolf in this dis- 

 trict, lies in one direction ; Penhill stands above it. The green 

 plovers are so tame that you can discern their crests as they 

 daintily pick their way over the herbage on the right. Even 

 thus early in the year the wood-pigeon's coo falls with its inex- 

 pressible home-like associations on the ear. A dozen fir plan- 

 tations and as many lanes lead each into its own little world of 

 peace below us, where as Herrick (himself a Devonshire parson) 

 sang, 



" The damaskt medowes and the pebbly streames 

 Sweeten and make soft your dreames." 



Now a couple of jackdaws launch themselves overhead into 

 the blue cloud-depths beyond, while the bleat of lambs, the 

 banging of a gate, the roar of a distant train float upwards from 

 the world of man. Verily, Devonshire is the pearl of English 

 counties, so far as regards soft pastoral beauty, aerial distances, 

 and the rounded hills which so insensibly please the eyes and 

 through them soothe the mind. 



But it possesses other interests to which we will now turn. 

 What can be learnt of the ancient inhabitants of these vales ? 

 Not much beyond the scattered scraps of information which 

 may be picked out of the early writers as to the names of the 

 tribes, the stature and complexion, &c., of the men. As for 

 particulars of their domestic life and social state, which would 

 be so interesting, we are left to collect what little can be re- 

 covered of these, by our knowledge of the Kelts elsewhere. They 

 were a people, Aristotle tells us, brave even to rashness. It is 

 fair to assume that here, as at other places in England, the 

 Romans inherited from them the occupation of that chain of 

 conical hill-tops which stretches in front of us. Four such 

 summits at least are visible, stretching away from Black Hill 

 near the sea, through Woodbury and Cadbury to Hembury 



