'Shadows of the world appear.'
Or, rather, the shadows of a past world are reflected in its wastes, witnessing to prehistoric man; to the tinners, who appear out of the mists of antiquity, and who peopled the moor through the Middle Ages; to the dawn of Christian teaching in the country; and to the Normans, with their forest rights and laws. Antiquities abound, although there are instances where it is most difficult to decide whether the remains are prehistoric, or merely traces of mediæval mining. 'It is possible that "old men's workings," as the traces of abandoned mines are called in this country, may account for more of them than is generally admitted.' But modern observations have severely excluded any fanciful theories. 'Certain stone inclosures which have passed for British fortifications are now more plausibly considered to have been made (at a sufficiently remote time, we may freely allow) for the protection of cattle.' However, after deducting any objects of doubtful antiquity, there remain an enormous number as to which, there can be no question—stone rows, kistvaens, menhirs, large circles of upright stones, forts and barrows, and pounds enclosing hut-circles. It is interesting to read the views of antiquaries at different stages of the nineteenth century, and their flat contradictions of the opinions of their predecessors. A good instance is given in the new edition of that mine of information, Rowe's 'Perambulation of Dartmoor,' where certain verdicts as to the origin of Grimspound are quoted. 'Polwhele states that it was a seat of judicature for the Cantred of Darius; Samuel Rowe, that it was a Belgic or Saxon camp; Ormerod considered it a cattle-pound pure and simple; Spence Bate was convinced that it was nothing more than a habitation of tinners, and of no great age; while now the work of the Rev S. Baring-Gould and Mr Robert Burnard goes far to show that its construction reaches back into a remote past, and that its antiquity is greater than any former investigator dared to assign to it.'
The great numbers of prehistoric people who lived on the moor are very remarkable. 'Tens of thousands of their habitations have been destroyed,' says Mr Baring-Gould, 'yet tens of thousands remain. At Post Bridge, within a radius of half a mile, are fifteen pounds. If we give an average of twenty huts to a pound, and allow for habitations scattered about, not enclosed in a pound, and give six persons to a hut, we have at once a population, within a mile, of 2,000 persons.' Perhaps they climbed so high because on the lower slopes the forest was thick, and wild beasts were more to be feared, though, according to tradition, they were certainly not free from danger on the moor; for 'wolves and winged serpents were no strangers to the hills or valleys.' All their possessions that we are aware of belong to the early Bronze Age, when flint was used in great quantities, and bronze was known, but was rare and very valuable. The amber pommel of a dagger, inlaid with gold pins, and part of a bronze dagger blade, were found in a barrow on Hameldon, and a few other bronze weapons have been discovered; flint implements in abundance. Great numbers of flint scrapers for cleaning the skins of animals, and small knives for cutting up meat, have been picked up; arrow-heads are scarce, and it would seem that they left very few celts or axes, and spear-heads.
Lustleigh Cleave
Of the exceedingly interesting remains, perhaps the most interesting—at any rate, to the uninitiated—is Grimspound. The boundary wall, which is double, encloses four acres; it is from ten to twelve feet thick, but not above five and a half feet in height. Within the circle are twenty-four hut-circles, and in some of them charcoal and fragments of pottery have been found. A brook, dipping under the walls, and passing through the enclosure, supplied the camp with water.
Drizzlecombe, near Sheep's Tor, is rich in a variety of antiquities, for it has three stone rows, a large tumulus, a kistvaen, and a later relic—a miner's blowing-house. One of the avenues is two hundred and sixty feet long, and one is double for a part of the way, and each of the three starts from a menhir, or long stone. Near Merivale Bridge are two double stone rows, but the stones are small. Close by are a sacred circle, a kistvaen, a pound and hut-circles, and one cairn, besides the ruins of others that have been destroyed. It would be absurd to pretend to enter on such a wide subject here. Some idea of its extent may be gathered by considering one single branch of it: Mr Baring-Gould has stated that no fewer than fifty stone avenues have been observed in different parts of the moor. And hut-circles and ancient track-lines are unnumbered, although very many antiquities of all kinds have been destroyed when granite was wanted for rebuilding churches, or for making doorways or gate-posts, or even for mending roads.
The early antiquaries discovered the hand of the Druids in certain unusual rock-shapes, now known to be the work of Nature—such as rock-basins, which are developed in the granite by the action of wind and rain; tolmens, or holed stones; and logans, or rocking-stones. Granite on the moor generally weathers irregularly, and if the lower part of a piled-up mass partly crumbles away, a huge layer of harder granite remains balanced on one or two points, and becomes what is called a logan-stone. In some cases, though the slab is almost impossible to remove, it will rock at a finger-touch. Perhaps the most striking example on Dartmoor is the Rugglestone, near Widdecombe, which it has been calculated weighs about one hundred and ten tons; but there are several in the neighbourhood, and a logan called the Nut-Crackers is perched among the thickly scattered boulders on Lustleigh Cleave. This lovely little valley lies on the eastern edge of the moor, and the River Bovey flows through it. Masses of granite crown the ridge; lower on the hill-side is a jungle of tall bracken, and the stream is overshadowed by a wood, crowded with matted undergrowth and with innumerable rocks tumbled together.
Granite more consistent than that found on most of the tors—that is, 'not broken into the usual layers of soft beds alternating with hard layers'—forms the great masses of rock on Hey Tor, and these have not weathered into strange, jagged outlines. William Howitt wrote a charming description of Hey Tor in his 'Rural Life of England,' from which I quote a few lines: 'Below, the deep dark river went sounding on its way with a melancholy music, and as I wound up the steep road all beneath the gnarled oaks, I ever and anon caught glimpses of the winding valley to the left, all beautiful with wild thickets and half-shrouded faces of rock, and still on high these glowing ruddy tors standing in the blue air in their sublime silence. My road wound up and up, the heather and bilberry on either hand.'
A 'wonder' which has been associated with the Druids is the grove of oaks called Wistman's Wood. It lies close to Two Bridges, on the slope above the West Dart, and at a little distance looks more like a furze-brake than a wood. All the oaks are dwarfs, stunted by the lack of soil and force of the winds. Mr Rowe quotes from a 'botanical writer,' who examined some of them: 'The bole of this tree was about three feet high, and its total height to the topmost branches fifteen feet. The circumference of the trunk was six feet, and its prime must have been about the date of the Norman Conquest.' Some of the boughs, like the trunks, are immensely thick for the height of the trees, and they are covered with very deep cushions of bright green moss and hangings of polypody, and whortleberries grow upon them. Every step between the trees is perilous, among the uneven crowded masses of rocks and half-concealed clefts. Many of the boulders are moss-covered, a kind of sedge and long, flag-like grass spring among the crevices and add to the pitfalls, and the whole wood really has the air of having been bewitched. Mrs Bray's impressions of it are interesting. She found the slope 'strewn' all over with immense masses of granite.... In the midst of these gigantic blocks, growing among them, or starting, as it were, from their interstices, arises wildly, and here and there widely scattered, a grove of dwarf oak-trees.... They spread far and wide at their tops, and their branches twist and bend in the most tortuous manner; sometimes reminding one of those strange things called mandrakes, of which there is a superstition noticed by Shakespeare—