120 Dr. BergePv on tJjc physical Structure 



visible horizon. The face of the country is formed by swellings 

 and undulations gradually overtopping each other without ever 

 forming very distinct mountains. There is neither vegetation nor 

 any human dwelling ; we tread upon a boggy soil of very little 

 depth, and scarcely furnishing sufficient food to support some dwarf 

 colts, wild as the country they inhabit. 



The Erme rises about nine miles north of Ivy-Bridge, and one 

 thousand one hundred and thirty-one feet above the level of the 

 sea ; the land gradually rising as we approach its source. This 

 however is not the most elevated point of this part of Dartmoor 

 forest ; as far as I can judge, that point is near a place three miles 

 south-east of Two-Bridges, where some tin mines are worked, and 

 where that metal is found disseminated in the granite, as one of its 

 integrant parts. 



Two Bridges is fourteen miles to the north of Ivy-Bridge. 

 There is but one house, and that an inn,* which stands nearly in 

 the middle of this vast mountain plain, wdi'ch contains, I believe, 

 nearly three hundred and fifty square miles of surface, f Two 

 Bridges is one thousand one hundred and forty-eight feet above the 

 level of the sea. To the north of this place, the granitic country 

 appears to extend as far as the neighbourhood of Oakhampton, 

 but I cannot speak of that with certainty, as I did not trace it my- 

 self over the whole of that extent ; I can only say, that according 

 to the course of the rivers, the only mountain of any consequence 



* There has been lately erected in the neighbourhood, a vast stone building, where 

 it is intended to convey the greatest part of the French prisoners now confined in Mill 

 prison at Plymouth. There are also at some distance from the inn at Two Bridges sonio 

 houses on the high road from Tavistock to Ashburton, and Mor^ton llampstead, which 

 crosses this part of Dartmoor forest. 



+ It contains about 80,000 acres, Maton's Survey of the Western Counties, vol. I. 

 p. 299. 



