134 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



Head, from Westcote's words : We will haste from Strich- 

 wood, alias Straight-wood Head, as speedily as we may, for 

 many have feared and shunned it, and others have paid heavily 

 lor their passage or before they were suffered to pass; for in 

 former times it was very infamous for sheltering of thieves " 

 (p. 231). Hard by Fenny Bridges may be noticed the quaint 

 modern parsonage of Affington, built in strict mediaeval fashion, 

 with its adjoining little church. A sad interest attaches to 

 these, for it was here that the good Bishop Patteson, recently 

 murdered by the South Sea Islanders, held his first cure. From 

 this little patch of grey, as it seems from this height, the eye 

 falls on the dark masses of fir-trees in Escot Park, where Locke 

 would often wander, and, as tradition tells, laid out several of 

 the clumps and other sylvan beauties of that charming piece of 

 landscape gardening. In the west are the wild moors and 

 woodlands which surround Bicton House, whose elms are 

 gigantic even amongst the elms of Devon. And so the mind 

 returns from the varied survey to the termination of the range 

 on which we stand towards Sidmouth, the Beacon, as it is called, 

 from its prominent form and the stories which connect it with 

 the distant heights, as forming the first in a series of beacons 

 which flashed onwards news of any descent made on the coast, 

 and which, if they were not lighted on the occasion of William's 

 landing at Torbay, we may be certain announced to " the wide 

 vale of Trent " the approach of the Armada. 



In this wide expanse of country, however, there is one 

 characteristic feature of which nothing has yet been said. 

 Every farm-house, every hamlet below us is surrounded, nay 

 smothered, in its orchards. They climb every hill and descend 

 into every " goyle " adjacent to the dwellings of man, and em- 

 brace, as it were, the farms with the spreading wings of plenty. 

 For they are symbolical of substance and happiness in this 

 county, where so many quarts of cider per week still supple- 

 ment the labourers' wages. We can see one of these orchard- 



