A HOLIDAY IN DEVONSHIRE. 71 



Tavistock I noticed the foxgloves, in regular red-coated 

 battalions, standing at ease in the hedgerows, while all 

 ■descriptions of flowers were blooming in the profuse natural 

 ferneries so, common to Devonshire banks and woodlands. 

 As the milestones were left in the rear, the foxglove bells 

 became less open, until on Dartmoor they had not begun to 

 expand into blossom. Up amongst the billowy downs, 

 blocks of granite, wild ravines, shaggy sheep, and brawling 

 brooks, we followed the road, now this, now that Tor 

 challenging attention. Why this was ever called the Royal 

 Forest of Dartmoor it is hard to say, although the bogs 

 ■suggest forests primeval, and some years since no incon- 

 siderable traces of tropical trees and plants were discovered 

 in one part of the moors. It is the general absence of wood 

 that is the primary characteristic of Dartrnoor. 



But then the place is a puzzle from first to last. The 

 masses of granite, cast, apparendy, in Titanic volleys out of 

 the bowels of the earth, and the Tors crowning the summits 

 of the downs, as if systematically placed there for specific 

 purposes, may well account for the theories and supersti- 

 tions and dogmatisms associated from time immemorial 

 with them. The coachman — all the Devonshire drivers are 

 civil and intelligent — pointed out the various objects of 

 interest as our gallant grey plodded upwards. Pulling up at 

 the top of the first hill, he bade me look behind. Tavistock 

 appeared in its hollow like a snug bird's-nest. Cornwall, its 

 Jiills crowned with mine shafts instead of granitic masses, 

 confronted us. Far away over the end of a long, wooded 

 ■valley, and sparkling like silver beyond the radiant woods, 

 was Plymouth Sound. Ahead and around were the endless 

 (risings and fallings of the moor, now fresh and green ; and 



