A HOLIDAY IN DEVONSHIRE. 8i 



trees, though not more than seven feet high, put on all 

 the airs of hoary forest patriarchs. In age they must have 

 been the Methuselahs of their tribe; in shape they were 

 the counterparts of the finest and most venerable oaks of 

 AVindsor Forest. Their branches were wrinkled to such a 

 painful extent that various plants and shrubs that usually 

 prefer the ground seemed to have entered into a league to 

 hide the marks of extreme antiquity firom the light of day. 

 Brambles, lichens, ferns, ivy, and other growths had taken 

 root in the branches and covered them with tangle. The 

 roots of the oaks, after centuries of fight with the granite 

 soil, were doing their best either a few inches below, or on 

 the exposed surface. Leaving this extraordinary spectacle 

 we leaped the West Dart where it was a yard wide, and 

 climbed the steep to the Cowsick river, gaining the high 

 road through a wooded glen of the most exquisite love- 

 liness, and passing a rude bridge of slabs said to have been 

 put together by the Ancient Britons. 



The Tamar, I had been informed, is generally fishable 

 when other Devonshire rivers are dry, and to the Tamar I 

 accordingly determined to go. This involved a sunset — 

 and what a sunset! — ^journey back to Tavistock, a night's 

 sleep in that quiet stannary borough, and an early drive to 

 Horsebridge, six miles in the direction of the Cornish hills 

 surmounted with tall chimneys. The experienced super- 

 intendent of the Tamar and Plym district had kindly 

 "coached", me, but my ill-luck doggedly pursued me to 

 the Tamar; the water was in good order, but the north 

 wind blew dead down stream, rendering the likeliest scours 

 and eddies almost unfishable from below. Wading and 

 landing net were here indispensable. 



