22 MY DEVON YEAR 



of North Devon in the Olden Time to the archives 

 of the Devonshire Association. 



That our lanes are the lineal descendants of the 

 deep, pack-saddle tracks, it seems reasonable to 

 believe, and I know of such that even to this day 

 are in a transition stage, or, being arrested in their 

 development by disuse, stand screened and hidden 

 in lonely spots, half lane, half old-time trackway. 

 For the earlier lines of communication only developed 

 where their evolution was demanded, and many have 

 wholly vanished under Nature's busy fingers ; while 

 not a few still seam the country and steal through 

 sequestered glens, the fringes of heaths, the hearts 

 of placid pasture lands. " Mere clefts " are these 

 sometimes, " which it is impossible to imagine can 

 have been formed otherwise than by the attrition 

 of the feet of men and cattle for ages ; and yet now 

 they are never used nor traversed, and form concealed 

 nooks thickly covered with vegetation and ferns, 

 particularly the scolopendria, growing in the utmost 

 luxuriance ; while others, still in use, bear similar 

 unmistakable marks of extreme antiquity." 



So Mr. Chanter ; and next he discusses the Dart- 

 moor trackways, a theme not less interesting but more 

 obscure. On the moorland these paved ways may 

 still be traced for many a mile, save where they 

 vanish under the bogs ; but upon enclosed country 

 indications of such old roads are now, of course, most 

 rare. 



Devonshire lanes, probably, come nearer to the 



