THE QUANTOCKS. 243 



crossing the moor westward and dying close to Yard Down. 

 Such are runs of which we hear and such we hoped (alas !) 

 to see to-day. To watch a stag hunted to death through brake 

 and coppice, gullies and streams, roads and cramped country, is 

 a sight, and a study, interesting of itself and peculiar in scene 

 and feature. But the good bold gallop over the forest is the 

 western staghunter's hope, the object for which he cheerfully 

 jogs his five-and-twenty miles to covert. It is this that he 

 will tell of as a type of his country's favoured sport ; and his 

 cheek will glow as in description he carries you for two hours 

 over the brushing heather. But he speaks of a rough road- 

 and-covert hunt without enthusiasm ; sighs over the glories of 

 the past, and condoles with you that the present should offer 

 samples so inadequate. 



To-day was by no means without its incident, though wanting 

 in the special event with which we had hoped to connect it. 

 Stags were roused, a stag was run, and a stag was "pulled down 

 in the open " by no means a common occurrence with an 

 animal that usually awaits the huntsman's knife in the water. 

 Yard Down is, to all appearance, represented only by a farm- 

 house, situated just below the extreme south-western edge of 

 the Forest of Exmoor some nine miles, as the crow would fly, 

 to the south of Linton and Lyn mouth, and about the same to 

 the east of Barnstaple. From Lynmouth the road first winds 

 upwards through a lovely wood (to-day fresh and dripping from 

 last night's rain, and now gleaming in every leaf under the 

 brilliant sunshine) ; then, leaving the brawling trout stream 

 behind it, breaks at once on to wide-stretching moorland, bare of 

 heather here, but boasting of a soft covering of coarse, and 

 fairly firm, turf. So on past Mole, which tradition assigns as 

 the bog in which a man and horse were swallowed, to be found 

 perfectly preserved in death fifty years afterwards. And of 

 course tradition must always be held true, or how would any 

 history fare ? 



You can't quite travel as the crow (though the ill-luck which 

 has so persistently accompanied your presence with the Devon 



B 2 



