Occasionally round stones, flat on one side and convex on the other, have been disinterred in the huts. They served to protect the apex of the roof, where the poles were drawn together, from the action of the rain, which would rot them, as well as to prevent the rain from entering at this point. An example of a stone of the same character employed for this very purpose may be seen in actual use on a thatched circular pounding-house on Berry Down, near Throwleigh.
Not a single quern has been found in a hut, and this indicates that the occupants neither grew nor ground corn extensively.[9] They lived mainly on milk and meat. Numerous rubber-stones have been unearthed that served for smoothing the seams of skin clothing sewn together; and plenty of flint scrapers that turn up show that the skins employed for garments were previously carefully scraped and cleaned. Esquimaux women chew the leather to get it flexible, and then rub it with similar smoothers of stone.
7. Tracklines in abundance are everywhere found, made of stones, but without close investigation it is not possible to determine to what period they belong.
8. Paved roads exist; the main road across the moor has been traced from Wray Barton in Moreton Hampstead, by Berry Pound to Merripit, by Post Bridge, and thence on to Mis Tor. From somewhere near the Powder Mills a branch struck off in the direction of Princetown, aiming probably for Tamerton, but it has been obliterated by the prison inclosures. A raised paved road leaves the camp above Okehampton Station and takes a direction due south, but cannot be traced far. That these ways were not Roman is tolerably certain. The ancient Britons drove chariots with wheels, and where wheeled conveyances were in use, there roads are postulated.
9. The cairns that are abundant, and were of considerable size, have nearly all been ransacked by treasure-seekers. Only such as were too small to attract attention have escaped. They are mounds of earth and stone over a pit sunk in the original soil, or over a kistvaen. Usually they contain a handful of ashes only; they rarely yield more. One, however, on Hamildon surrendered a bronze knife with amber handle and rivets of gold. Others have given up small knives of bronze, and urns of the characteristic shape and ornamentation of the Bronze Age. In one, on Fernworthy Common, was found a thin blade of copper, along with a flint knife, a large button of horn, and a well-ornamented urn.
A cairn surrounded by a circle of stones, and containing a kistvaen, near Princetown, is called "The Crock of Gold," a name that may be due to a vessel of the precious metal having been found in it.
One thing is obvious, the enormous labour of exploring the larger cairns would not have been undertaken unless previous ransackings had yielded valuable results. Some of the cairns must have been huge, and have taken many men several days in clearing out their interiors. About these cairns I shall say a good deal in a chapter apart.
10. Of camps there are two kinds, those constructed of stone and those of earth. I reserve what I have to say about these to a separate chapter.
11. The old stone bridges, composed of rude slabs cast across an opening to a pier, also rudely constructed, have been attributed to "the Druids," of course. There is nothing to indicate for these a great antiquity. They belong to the period of pack-horses, and were doubtless often repaired. Those at Dartmeet, and Post Bridge, and Two Bridges—this last has disappeared—were in the line of the pack-horse track, and not in that of the paved way across the moor.