202 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



The fishing villages that listen all day bordered with tufts of branching fern, or 



to the Atlantic swell are steeped in a gush in foaming cascades between rocks 



tangle of blossom and verdure. The fleeced with damp moss. Through 



fuchsias climb to the roofs and myrtles these secret ravines, full of the stir of 



luxuriate in the moist west wind, summer foliage and the inarticulate 



You open up, if you are coasting, murmur of water, you slowly ascend, 



these little Edens tucked into cracks while the wildness of the scenery 



and crevices of gaunt cliffs that have increases and more closely envelops 



sent many a stout ship to the bottom, you and the orchards and strips of 



The difference between them and their pasture bordering the river, where you 



surroundings seems the difference be- walked knee-deep in grass, diminish 



tween southern warmth and northern and at last cease, and clumps of furze 



bleakness, and the fishermen who get and bracken and heath overspread 



their living out of this stormy sea put the hill-sides, and the covert grows 



in at night to homes and havens that shaggier and the way rougher, until at 



remind one of olive-shaded Sorrento last you emerge on to the great bare 



or the vine-trellised slopes of Amain, sweeps of heather and the stream at 



This combination of a framework your feet becomes a moorland burn, 



and setting of great strength and and the way you have come by stretches 



ruggedness, filled in with detail of a behind you, a narrowing and winding 



warm and rich fertility, constitutes estuary of green woodland pushed 



what one may call the note, I think, far in among the dark curves of the 



of West Country scenery, and I dare- moor. 



say has not been without its effect Thus to climb up from valley to 



on West Country character. moor is to change a scenery, a 



It is the consciousness of this mingling climate, and a whole environment of 



of influences that lends such a charm to influence and suggestion for its 



a ramble up one of the slowly ascend- exact opposite. In a half-hour you 



ing valleys which penetrate Exmoor have passed from a nature all soft- 



from the south. I know no walks in ness and gentleness to a nature all 



England more lovely than those which toughness and sternness. There is 



unravel the windings of the Exe or about these bold slopes of heather, 



Barle, where they shine in clear pools, where the plough has never been and 



shaded by gnarled oak branches and man has made no mark, a sense of 



