Exmoor Reclamation. 
73 
Elwortby Turnpike, ten miles west of Taunton on tlie Dunster 
Road, to Bratton Fleming, near Barnstaple, and to the sea at 
Morte, near Ilfracombe. 
Over these wastes there were no roads but the tracks of the 
packhorses ; no enclosures, no cultivation, no dwellings, no 
population except the shepherds who attended to the summer 
feeding of live-stock from the valleys, and the smugglers who 
made temporary depots in the moors on their way from the 
many creeks of the coast, so convenient for their " free-trade." 
The slow, long-eared, deep-voiced stag-hounds of that day, 
often ran their quarry thirty miles without a check, before the 
huntsman could sound the morte. 
The only return obtained from these hill-wastes was an 
almost nominal sum paid for the agistment of the live-stock of 
valley farmers, fed on the Moors in the fine months of the year, 
and- from herds of native ponies, as hardy, and nearly as wild, 
as the red deer. 
Exmoor proper, as distinguished from the heathy commons 
that surround it, lies at an elevation of from 1000 to 1500 feet 
above the level of the sea, so that the elevation is constantly 
increasing as it is approached from Barnstaple, distant sixteen 
miles, Ilfracombe, seventeen miles, South Molton, eleven miles, 
Lynmouth, nine miles, and Minehead, nineteen miles, although 
many narrow intermediate valleys are crossed. Exmoor consists 
of long, green, undulating table-lands, intersected by steep 
gorges, provincially called combes. 
In one of these combes the River Exe has its source, not far 
from that of its yet larger tributary the Barle. After forcing a 
devious way for many miles, being joined at every mile by lesser 
streams, and rolling over pebbly rocky bottoms, these two rivers 
form a junction at Exebridge, a few miles below Dulverton. 
The sides of these steep valleys, running for miles through the 
forest, consist of a brown loam, covering a deep yellow subsoil, 
the debris of the soft Devonian clay-slate rock that underlies it. 
About half of Exmoor is naturally dry, and is covered with 
this brown loam, which becomes fertile on the application of 
lime. Experience has proved that this brown soil is nothing 
else than the unfertile yellow subsoil after it has been exposed 
to the influence of li?ht and air. 
The other half is covered with shallow peat, which holds 
water like a sponge after the showers, which are frequent in 
every month in the year. 
The unreclaimed peat-land produces a profusion of " forest- 
grass," a coarse benty herbage, containing the stool-bent, flying- 
bent, drew-moss, deer-hair, cotton-grass, bluepry, spratt, rush, 
and other grasses of the kinds that form the winter and spring 
