CHAPTER XIII
SHALDON—LABRADOR—WATCOMBE—ST. MARYCHURCH—BABBACOMBE
At the point, just where the river and the sea meet, off the toy lighthouse, is the noblest view of the Ness, the great red bluff that turns a jagged front to the sea, and lifts a shaggy head of firs to the sky. With a dark and oily smoothness that betokens depth and strength of current, the estuary of the Teign empties itself at the ebb, and fills again with feathered spray on yonder rocks. Above Shaldon, opposite, rise the great hills, up whose sides climbs the road to Torquay: hills fertile to their very summits, and remarkable for their subdivision by hedgerows all the way up those staggering gradients. From nowhere better than from Teignmouth can this beautiful and characteristic feature of a Devonshire landscape be seen.
Let us leave Teignmouth here by the ferry-boat, in preference to walking over the long bridge. Both bridge and ferry belong to one company, and the toll each way, by either of them is the same modest penny. The ferry goes from one sandy beach to another, touching the opposite shore immediately under the roadway, the little forecourt gardens, and the bow-windowed houses of Shaldon, which seems to the stranger the oddest, brightest, cleanest and most quiet of townlets, and for a while puts Teignmouth in the shade. Shaldon, however, is very much of a “dead end,” a backwater, or still pool of life, and when the visitors are gone, when the children have deserted the warm sands, and the half-dozen ferry boats that are required in summer are reduced to two; and when nature, with autumn past, frugally turns the lights down until next spring, Shaldon is apt to be dull. But there is always the harbour to look out upon, and Teignmouth across the river; although, to be sure, there is the reverse view of the harbour and of Shaldon from Teignmouth. For myself, I incline to think the outlook upon the harbour and Shaldon and the hills from Teignmouth the best, especially since the appearance on the Bitton estate of those houses you wot of. But this is certain, while human nature remains true to itself: wherever you are not, there you would be, just as, whatever you are doing, you look forward to the doing of something quite different; or else, doing nothing, yearn to be busy, and being busy, long for idleness.
It is a rocky scramble round beyond the Ness to the open sea and Labrador, and no one, fortunately, has yet engineered a neat path that way. For one thing, it would be scarce worth the trouble of doing so while great fragments of rock come hurtling down from the cliff, thrust out by the frosts and thaws of winter. The way is strewn with these immense pieces of red conglomerate, weighing anything from five to twenty tons; and those who wear india-rubber shoes and can best imitate the chamois in rock-leaping are those who like best the exploration of the Ness. For others there is that “harvest of the quiet eye” down in the rock-pools that the tide has left, where, among the trailing seaweeds, the limpet clings with the tightness of a moribund government clinging to power, and only to be removed in the same way; by the sudden, unexpected blow, like the Parliamentary snap-division; where transparent things, showing their inwards in the most indelicate way, flit about unconcerned at that publicity, and the hermit-crab justifies his sponsors by hurrying, presto, to some rocky cell when you disturb this little mare clausum.
AT SHALDON.
Tumbled rock-heaps, alternating with beaches, lead to the foot of the cliff by whose up-on-end path you breathlessly reach Labrador, a place known to every one who has visited Teignmouth. Local traditions tell how this cottage and garden, half-way up the four hundred feet of cliff, were the work of a retired sea-captain who, settling here from a long career in the Newfoundland trade, christened the place by the name it still bears. I do not suppose he ever contemplated it being converted into a picnic inn, but he may have had an eye to a snug little traffic in smuggling, for which in his time it must have been especially adapted.