“I’ll take the woods,” said I, having had enough of the glaring sunshine; “they’ll be shady.”
“Yes—and full of flies,” returned the lighthouse man, “the place fairly ’ums with ’em.”
How true that was: how entirely true! They are charming woods of scrub-oak, hanging on the side of the scrambly cliff; and one would fain rest there awhile in the shade, on a moss-covered rock, beside the springs that trickle down the side of the cliff. But the celebrated “hoss-stingurrs”—the large grey horse-flies—that inhabit the place in force, and bite you through the thickest stockings, forbid any idea of resting in that tormented spot, and the beautiful thoughts that might have found expression in scenery so provocative of literary celebration, are lost in the defensive operations that accompany an undignified retreat. It is in places a very clamberous path to Glenthorne, and at some points more than a little difficult and dangerous. So few, evidently, and far between are those who come this way, that the track kept open by the occasional explorer who brushes aside the brambles and the branches that bar his path, is almost overgrown by the time the next stalwart forces a passage. Here and there a steep little gorge requires careful manœuvring; in some places, where the track emerges upon the open, bracken-grown hillside, descending alarmingly, and without a break, to the sea far below, it traverses broken, rock-strewn slanting ground, where a slip would send the incautious hopelessly rolling into the water; and at other places all signs of a track are lost. It is here, as the stranger goes chamoising up and down amid the tussocky bracken, that he feels sorry for himself. The excursion steamboats passing up and down Channel, half a mile out, command a fine uninterrupted view of these cliffs, and the adventurer, questing perspiringly up and down for any sign of a track, is fully aware that some fifty field-glasses are probably turned upon his efforts. He, therefore, unostentatiously drops down amid the bracken until those steamboats pass out of sight, beyond the Foreland.
One of the cruellest dilemmas is that which Fate is capable of presenting the stranger in these perilous ways. He slips on a mossy ledge under the shadow of lichened branches, and, to save himself, grips in the half-light what he thinks to be a foxglove, but is really a thistle. “Hold fast to that which is good,” say the Scriptures; and although in other circumstances a thistle is scarcely a desirable grip, yet, between the prospect of rolling down some hundreds of feet and the certainty even of excoriated hands, there is but one possible choice.
In the middle of July, when the bracken is come to full growth, the air is filled with the exquisite odour of it; a peculiar scent, heavy and sweet, like that of a huge making of strawberry jam. And presently, after much toil, you come to a broad green ride, where you may rest awhile and luxuriously inhale that fragrance.
Point Desolation is the name given to one of the headlands on the way, and “Rodney” the name of a cottage, now deserted, in a dark cleft, overhung with trees. Finally, the green drive conducts to a very welcome granite seat overlooking a wide expanse of sea, and thence through a gateway marked “private.” This is the entrance to the Glenthorne grounds, which are not so strictly private as the stranger might suppose. Through the gateway, the path continues, bordered here with laurels and fir-trees, and so dips down toward the mansion, built in 1830, in the domestic Gothic style, on a partly natural terrace, three parts of the way down the wooded cliffs and hillsides that go soaring up to a height of five hundred feet. The house is situated exactly on the borderline of Devon and Somerset, and is in the loneliest situation imaginable; having, indeed, been in the old days a favourite spot with the smugglers of these coasts. It was built, and the grounds enclosed, by the Reverend W. S. Halliday, a person whose eccentricities may yet be heard of at Lynmouth. One of his peculiar amusements was the sardonic fancy for burying genuine Roman coins in places where it is thought no Romans ever penetrated, with the expressed idea of puzzling future antiquaries. It seems—since he cannot be there to chuckle over the jest—a strange kind of humour.
GLENTHORNE.
The long ascent from Glenthorne, through the woods, is extraordinarily tiring, beautiful though those woods be, and aromatic with piny odours. The carriage-drive, zigzagging up, is steep, and a halt by the way, every now and then, more grateful and comforting than even a famous cocoa is advertised to be. But that ascent in the shade is a mere nothing to the further treeless ascent to the coach-road, under the July sun. Bare grassy combes, and white roads that wind round the mighty shoulders of the hills exhaust the wayfarer, who at last, taking on trust the prehistoric camp of Old Barrow, perched on a steep height, gains the dull highway with a sigh of relief. I daresay a good many of the sardonic Mr. Halliday’s Roman coins are buried in Old Barrow, awaiting antiquarian discovery.
The way back to Lynmouth, crossing Countisbury Common, has some beautiful glimpses away on the left, over the wooded valley of the East Lyn.