Famous as the Dart is for the wildness and beauty of its scenery, and for the excellence of its trout and salmon fishing, it has an evil name for the dangerous nature of its swiftly-flowing waters, which, after heavy rain on the moor, rise with extraordinary rapidity, changing it in a few hours from a peaceful and easily-forded stream into a raging and resistless torrent. At Hexworthy, in November, 1894, the river rose ten and a half feet above the level of the previous day. Characteristic of this as the other of the moorland streams, is the strange sound it sometimes makes, especially towards nightfall, known as its "cry," and believed by the superstitious to be ominous of flood and danger. To "hear the Broadstones crying"—masses of granite lying in the bed of the stream—is considered by the moor-folk a sure sign of coming rain.
The Dartmoor rivers, in the upper part of their courses, are naturally all swift, and are all more or less tinged by the peat of their moorland birth-place—lightly, when the stream is low, and deepening in flood-time into the colour of a rich cairngorm.
The Teign, another of the streams that rise in the Cranmere bog, is famous both for the beauty of the scenery along its winding shores and for the many prehistoric antiquities—stone circles and alignments, menhirs and tumuli—which stand near them. Its two main branches, the North and the South Teign, meet about a mile to the west of Chagford. To the east of that moorland village the river flows through beautifully wooded valleys, and is joined on its right bank, below Chudleigh, by another Dartmoor tributary, the Bovey, on which stand Bovey Tracy, famous for its beds of lignite and clay and for its potteries, and North Bovey, near which are the remains of the very remarkable Bronze Age village of Grimspound. Below Newton Abbot the Teign becomes a broad estuary, on or near whose shores are five of the townships that are named after the river, the most important of which is the little port and well-known watering-place of Teignmouth. The river mouth is almost blocked by a low promontory, which, although now built over, was once a mere sand-bank or dune, from which latter word, no doubt, it takes its name of the Den.
The Axe at Axminster Bridge
Other south-coast rivers are the Axe—one of whose two main branches rises in Somerset and the other in Dorset—which gives its name to Axminster and Axmouth; the Otter, which rises in the Blackdown Hills, and flowing past Honiton, Ottery St Mary, and Otterton, reaches the sea at Budleigh Salterton; the Aune or Avon, especially famous for its salmon, the Erme, and the slopes Yealm, small but beautiful streams rising on the southern slopes of Dartmoor, widening into estuaries as they near the English Channel, and giving names to Aveton, Ermington, and Yealmpton, respectively. The Plym, after which are named Plympton, Plymouth, and Plymstock, is another Dartmoor river, flowing through some very beautiful country, especially in the neighbourhood of Bickleigh, and at length forming a broad and important estuary known first as the Laira, and lower down as the Catwater or Cattewater, which joins Plymouth Sound.
The chief rivers on the north coast are the Torridge and the Taw, the former of which, rising in the extreme north-west, on the Cornish border, near the source of the Tamar, flows south-west for nearly half its course, and then sweeps round to run in the opposite direction, giving its name to three several Torringtons, and having as its chief tributaries the Walden, the Lew, and the Okement, all on its right bank. The last-named stream is formed of the East and the West Okements, which meet at Okehampton, their namesake. The lower waters of the Torridge form a long and narrow estuary—its shore only ten miles distant from the original source of the river—half-way down which is the once important port of Bideford, built on both sides of the stream, which is here spanned by a very ancient bridge. Near the entrance of the estuary, but neither of them on the open sea, are Appledore, the port of Barnstaple, and Instow, a small but growing watering-place.
The Taw is a Dartmoor-drawn river, rising, like so many streams, in the Cranmere bog, giving its name to Tawstock and to three several Tawtons, and receiving on its right bank the Yeo, the Little Dart, and the Mole. The most considerable town on it is Barnstaple, beyond which it becomes a broad tidal estuary, joining that of the Torridge, and flowing out into what is known both as Barnstaple and Bideford Bay.