Westward of the valley of the Dart is the valley of the Plym, also flowing out of Dartmoor. Two streams known as the Cad and the Mew join to form this river, and though they are of about equal importance, the source of the Cad is generally regarded as the true Plym head, while a crossing upon it is known as the Plym Steps. Both are rocky, dashing mountain-streams, and such are also the characteristics of the Plym after the junction until it enters its estuary. The Plym Head is within the royal forest of Dartmoor, about twelve hundred feet above the sea, and in the wild and lonely moorland. The stream flows by the flat summit of Sheeps Tor, one of the chief peaks on the southern border of the moor. Here in a hollow formed by overhanging rocks one of the Royalist Elfords, whose house was under the tor, sought refuge, and amused his solitude by painting the walls of the cavern, which is known as the "Pixies' House," and is regarded by the neighbors as a dangerous place for children, to whom these little fairies sometimes take a fancy. It is not safe, they say, to go near it without dropping a pin as an offering between the chinks of the rock—not a very costly way of buying immunity. In Sheeps Tor churchyard in the valley below lies Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, who died near there in 1868. As the streams course down the hillside they disclose frequent traces of the rude stone relics left there by an ancient people, the chief being the settlement at Trowlesworthy, where there is a circular hut enclosure about four hundred feet in diameter, with stone avenues leading to it and the entrances defended by portions of walls. The stones are nowhere large, however, rarely exceeding five feet high. Then we come to Shaugh, where the rivers struggle through rocky ravines and finally join their waters. The little Shaugh church crowns the granite rocks on one side, while on the other is the towering crag of the Dewerstone. This ivy-clad rock, which lifts its furrowed and wrinkled battlements far above the Plym, was the "Rock of Tiw," that powerful god of the Saxons from whom comes the name of Tuesday. Once, we are told, in the deep snow traces of a human foot and a cloven hoof were found ascending to the highest point of the rock, which His Satanic Majesty seems to have claimed for his own domain. From this lofty outpost of the moor, if he stayed there, our all-time enemy certainly had a wide lookout. On the one hand is a grand solitude, and on the other a hilly country stretches to the seaboard, with the river-valley winding through woods and fields, and Plymouth Sound and its breakwater in the distance. Here, below the junction of the two streams, are the scant remains of the old house of Grenofen, whose inmates lived in great state, and were the Slannings who so ardently supported King Charles. A mossy barn with massive gables is the prominent feature of the ruins. The river runs down through the very beautiful vale of Bickleigh, and then under Plym Bridge, where it becomes broader and more tranquil as it approaches the head of the estuary. This region belonged to the priory of Plympton, and its Augustinian owners raised at the end of the bridge a small chapel where the traveller might pause for prayer before venturing into the solitudes beyond. The remains of this structure, however, are now slight. At Plympton St. Mary was the priory, and at Plympton Earl the castle of the Earls of Devon, a brook flowing between them to the river. Both stand near the head of the estuary, and are in ruins. The priory was the wealthiest monastic house in Devon, but the castle was only important as the head-quarters of Plymouth's Royalist besiegers in the Civil War. The priory was the nurse of the noted port of Plymouth, and its earlier beginnings can be traced to the fostering care of the Augustinians, who developed the fishing-town that subsequently became the powerful seaport. Plympton, the old rhyme tells us, was "a borough-town" when Plymouth was little else than a "a furzy down." The priory was founded in the twelfth century, and was long patronized by the neighboring Earls of Devon. The Augustinians, legend says, were the first to cultivate the apple in Devonshire, and the ruins still disclose the moss-grown "apple-garth." Little remains of the monastery beyond the old refectory doorway and walls. The town of Plympton Maurice is in the valley near by, famous as the birthplace of Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1723, but the house has been swept away, though the grammar-school in which his father taught remains. Reynolds is said to have made good use of the recollections of the grand scenery around his birthplace in furnishing landscape backgrounds for his pictures. The town afterwards elected him mayor, though he rarely visited his birthplace, but in lieu sent the corporation his portrait painted by himself. Here begins the broad estuary known as the Laira, at the mouth of which stands Plymouth, the town covering the land between the Laira and the Hamoaze, the estuary of the Tamar, with its adjoining suburbs of Stonehouse and Devonport. Here are now a population of two hundred thousand, while the station is of vast importance as a government dockyard and barracks, with a chain of strong protecting fortifications for defence from attacks both by sea and land. Along the southern bank of the estuary extend the woods of Saltram, the seat of the Earl of Morley. Then we come to Catwater Haven, crowded with merchant-ships, and the older harbor of Sutton Pool. Mount Batten on one side and Citadel Point on the other guard the entrance to the haven. It was here that the English fleet awaited the Armada in 1588; that Essex gathered his expedition to conquer Cadiz in 1596; and from here sailed the Mayflower with the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620. Plymouth harbor's maritime and naval history is, however, interwoven with that of England.
PLYMOUTH.
The port of Plymouth comprises what are called the "Three Towns"—Plymouth proper, covering about a square mile, Stonehouse, and Devonport, where the great naval dockyard is located. Plymouth Sound is an estuary of the English Channel, and receives the Plym at its north-eastern border and the Tamar at its north-western, the sound being about three miles square and protected by the great breakwater a mile long, with a lighthouse, and defended by forts. The Plym broadens into the Catwater, used as a haven for merchant-vessels and transports and capable of furnishing anchorage to a thousand ships at one time. The Tamar broadens into the Hamoaze, which is the naval harbor, and is four miles long, with sufficient anchorage-ground for the entire British navy. Sutton Pool is a tidal harbor now used by merchant-vessels. The coasts of Plymouth Sound are rocky and abrupt, and strong fortresses frown at every entrance. It is the naval dockyard that gives Plymouth its chief importance: this is at Devonport, which is strongly fortified by breastworks, ditches, embankments, and heavy batteries. The great dockyard encloses an area of ninety-six acres and has thirty-five hundred feet of water-frontage. There are here five docks and also building-slips, where the great British war-ships are constructed. Another enclosure of seventy-two acres at Point Keyham is used for repairing ships, and a canal seventy feet wide runs through the yards to facilitate the movement of materials. Immense roofs cover the docks. East of Devonport, divided from it by a creek, and adjoining Plymouth, is Stonehouse. Here are the great victualling yard, marine barracks, and naval hospital. The Royal William Victualling Yard occupies fourteen acres on a tongue of land at the mouth of the Tamar, and cost $7,500,000 to build. Here the stores are kept and naval supplies furnished, its great features being the vast government bakehouse, the cooperage, and the storehouses. Its front is protected by a redoubt, and to the eastward are the tasteful grounds of the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe's winter villa. The marine barracks, which have the finest mess-room in England, will accommodate fifteen hundred men; the naval hospital, northward of Stonehouse, will furnish beds for twelve hundred. There are three thousand men employed about these great docks and stores, and they form the most extensive naval establishment in the world. Near Mount Wise are the Raglan Barracks, where there is a display of cannon taken from the Turks.
In Plymouth Sound is a bold pyramidal rock, the Isle of St. Nicholas, which is a formidable fortress. Mount Edgcumbe is on the western shore, and on the eastern side is Plymouth's pretty park, known as the Hoe, where the old Eddystone Lighthouse will be set up. Having come down the Plym, we will now ascend the Tamar, past the huge docks and stores, and about five miles above see the great Albert Bridge, which carries a railway, at a height of one hundred feet, from the hills of Devon over to those of Cornwall on the western shore. It is built on nineteen arches, two broad ones of four hundred and fifty-five feet span each bridging the river, the entire structure being two thousand two hundred and forty feet long. Out in the English Channel, fourteen miles from Plymouth, is its famous beacon—the Eddystone Lighthouse. Here Winstanley perished in the earlier lighthouse that was swept away by the terrible storm of 1703, and here Smeaton built his great lighthouse in 1759, one hundred feet high, which has recently been superseded by the new lighthouse. The Eddystone Rocks consist of twenty-two gneiss reefs extending about six hundred and fifty feet, in front of the entrance to Plymouth Sound. Smeaton's lighthouse, modelled after the trunk of a sturdy oak in Windsor Park, became the model for all subsequent lighthouses. It is as firm to-day as when originally built, but the reef on which it rests has been undermined and shattered by the joint action of the waves and the leverage of the tall stone column, against which the seas strike with prodigious force, causing it to vibrate like the trunk of a tree in a storm. The foundation-stone of the new lighthouse was laid on a reef one hundred and twenty-seven feet south of the old one in 1878. It is built of granite and rises one hundred and thirty-eight feet above the rock, its light being visible seventeen miles: it was first lighted May 18, 1882.
TAVISTOCK.
A short distance up the Tamar it receives its little tributary the Tavy, running through a deep ravine, and on its banks are the ruins of Tavistock Abbey, founded in the tenth century and dedicated to St. Mary. Orgarius, the Earl of Devonshire, was admonished in a dream to build it, but his son Ordulph finished it. He was of great strength and gigantic stature, could break down gates and stride across a stream ten feet wide. They still preserve, we are told, some of Ordulph's huge bones in Tavistock Church. The Danes plundered and burned the abbey, but it was rebuilt in greater splendor, and its abbot sat in the House of Peers. When it was disestablished, like Woburn it fell to Lord Russell, and it is now owned by the Duke of Bedford. The remains of the grand establishment, however, are but scanty, and its best memory is that of the printing-press set up by the monks, which was the second press established in England. The Duke of Bedford's attractive villa of Endsleigh is near Tavistock, and a short distance south of the town is Buckland Abbey, built on the river-bank by the Countess of Devon in the thirteenth century. This was the home of Sir Francis Drake, and is still held by his descendants. Drake was born in a modest cottage on the banks of the Tavy about the year 1539. North of Tavistock, on the little river Lyd, are the ruins of Lydford Castle, surrounded by a village of rude cottages. Here originated the "law of Lydford," a proverb expressive of hasty judgment:
"First hang and draw,
Then hear the cause by Lydford law."
One chronicler accounts for this proverb by the wretched state of the castle jail, in which imprisonment was worse than death. At Lydford is a remarkable chasm where a rude arch is thrown across an abyss, at the bottom of which, eighty feet below, the Lyd rattles along in its contracted bed. This is a favorite place for suicides, and the tale is still told of a benighted horseman, caught in a heavy storm, who spurred his horse along the road at headlong speed to seek shelter in the village. Next day it was found that the storm had swept the bridge away, and the rider shuddered to think how his horse on that headlong ride through the tempest had leaped over the abyss without his knowing it.