2 STAG- HUNTING ON EXMOOR. 



leaping bar" which Kingsley loved so well; just 

 short of which another broad stream comes in from the 

 southward, and the whole lose themselves in the blue 

 waters of the Severn sea. 



The river which we have followed is the Taw ; the 

 connecting link of the two great watersheds of Dart- 

 moor and Exmoor. It rises high up in the Dartmoor 

 range, and travelling ever north and westward picks 

 up Okement on its way and bears it along, whither we 

 have seen, to meet sister Torridge at Appledore Bar ; 

 but first catching up the waters of a stranger river, 

 the Mole, from Exmoor, twenty miles or more to the 

 northward. The great rivers of both watersheds, Exe, 

 Dart, Tamar, and Tavy, run away to the south coast, 

 but the minor streams, the Mole and the Yeo, the Oke- 

 ment, the Taw, and the Torridge, flow into the Bristol 

 Channel. 



This length of the Taw, from a little east of Egges- 

 ford to Barnstaple, forms the southern boundary of the 

 red deer's domain ; and the names of the families that 

 live on its banks are nearly all connected with the 

 ancient sport of stag-hunting. First, there is Egges- 

 ford, better known, perhaps, for its fox-hunting 

 under the Wallops than for stag-hunting under the 

 pellowes's. A little farther down is Umberleigh, the 



