EXMOOR 207 



twos from western fishing hamlets in close touch with their neighbours, 

 to watch the Carribbean Sea for ingot- part and parcel of the local life, long 

 laden galleons, or raid the main and after their kind had, in most parts of 

 loot Spanish settlements ; the men England, broken such ties. Of old 

 who started English colonizing off families, they were destitute of that 

 their own bat ; who hung, fierce and in- kind of breeding which results from 

 domitable, on the skirts of the Armada the association of a number of people 

 until the great fleet went to pieces devoted to the art of self-amusement, 

 under the strain, these men were not Their manners were the manners of 

 slow to move, soft and sluggish as it the countryside, rather than of a class 

 is rather the custom to paint West apart. They spoke the Devonshire 

 Country folk. I do not know that they tongue, and were representatives of the 

 have changed much. When, on that sports and interests indigenous to the 

 fateful sixth of January, the word was country. All of them kept open house, 

 given and the Devons rushed through and most of them kept hounds. They 

 hail and lightning to the attack that were all as like as peas, and their 

 saved Ladysmith it was something unfailing characteristics were an un- 

 more, I imagine, than a bucolic good- failing geniality and good humour corn- 

 nature that backed their bayonets. bined with an extraordinary toughness 



Take the general view of the men and endurance. Their hospitality was 



and their doings and the stauncher, only equalled by their boundless capa- 



sterner elements come out in them, city for galloping, 



just as they come out in the scenery The record of many a hard sportsman 



as from Dunkery you cast a bird's-eye of those rollicking days still feebly 



glance over it. survives in local anecdote ; but one 



Fifty years ago or less these influ- among them is lifted into more general 



ences that I have been attempting to recognition. The fame of Jack Russell 



describe were visible enough in the is the fame that belongs to a type, 



manners and character of a kind of He had in him, and both at their best, 



local West Country aristocracy in the sweetness and toughness of the 



which they had culminated. Modern West. One could fill a book with the 



progress with its disintegrating ten- stories told of him illustrating both ; 



dencies, came very slowly up this stories of how the very gypsies counted 



way, and the western gentry lived on on his kindness and protection, and 



