DEVON AND SOMERSET. 59 



and fords are likely to be encountered where 

 the swirling water reaches high enough to 

 touch the saddle flaps. Between Marsh Bridge 

 and Withypool the Barle has many fords, 

 but it is only at Three Waters and Torr 

 Steps and Bradley Clammer that one can ride 

 comfortably through the foaming torrent in a 

 fiood, and even these passages are not un- 

 frequently quite unusable. Many a horse has 

 been led and some have been ridden across 

 the Early British bridge of stones at Torr Steps, 

 but it is by no means a desirable method of 

 crossing, there being a rocking stone in mid- 

 iiood, perhaps purposely constructed so by the 

 prehistoric architect, which is very likely to 

 throw a horse off his balance and send him 

 struggling into the rushing stream. The late 

 master of the Quarme Harriers, in leading his 

 horse across on the occasion of a heavy flood, 

 stumbled over one of his own hounds and fell 

 horse, hound and man with an alarming splash 

 from the causeway. The depth of water was 

 no great matter, being little more than waist 

 high, but the struggling horse came near to 

 causing his master serious injury. Half a mile 

 up the stream at Hindspit there is a much 

 more difficult ford, where at the confluence of 

 the Westwater stream a deep hole with awkward 

 boulders once gave a master of the West Somer- 

 set foxhounds a right good ducking. Here in 



