On the opposite side of Tor Bay is the quiet little fishing village of Brixham, the landing-place of Prince William of Orange. We reached here early on a fine June day when everything was fresh after heavy showers during the night. The houses rise in terraces up the sharp hillside fronting the harbor, which was literally a forest of fishing-boat masts. A rather crude stone statue of William stands on the quay and a brass foot-print on the shore marks the exact spot where the Dutch prince first set foot in England, accompanied by an army of thirteen thousand men. Our car attracted a number of urchins, who crowded around it and, though we left it unguarded for an hour or more to go out on the sea-wall and look about the town, not one of the fisher lads ventured to touch it or to molest anything—an instance of the law-abiding spirit which we found everywhere in England.
From Brixham, an hour's drive over bad roads brought us to Dartmouth, whither we had been attracted by the enthusiastic language of an English writer who asserts that "There is scarcely a more romantic spot in the whole of England than Dartmouth. Spread out on one of the steep slopes of the Dart, it overlooks the deep-set river toward the sea. Steep wooded banks rising out of the water's edge give the winding of the estuaries a solemn mystery which is wanting in meadows and plough-land. In the midst of scenery of this character—and it must have been richer still a few centuries back—the inhabitants of Dartmouth made its history."
As we approached the town, the road continually grew worse until it was little better than the average unimproved country highway in America, and the sharp loose stones everywhere were ruinous on tires. It finally plunged sharply down to a steamboat ferry, over which we crossed the Dart and landed directly in the town. There are few towns in England more charmingly located than old Dartmouth, and a hundred years ago it was an important seaport, dividing honors about equally with Plymouth.
The road to Dartmouth was unusually trying; the route which we took to Plymouth was by odds the worst of equal distance we found anywhere. We began with a precipitous climb out of the town, up a very steep hill over a mile long, with many sharp turns that made the ascent all the more difficult. We were speedily lost in a network of unmarked byways running through a distressingly poor-looking and apparently quite thinly inhabited country. After a deal of studying the map and the infrequent sign-boards we brought up in a desolate-looking little village, merely a row of gray stone, slate-roofed houses on either side of the way, and devoid of a single touch of the picturesque which so often atones for the poverty of the English cottages. No plot of shrubbery or flower-garden broke the gray monotony of the place. We had seen nothing just like it in England, though some of the Scotch villages which we saw later, matched it very well.
Here a native gave us the cheerful information that we had come over the very road we should not have taken; that just ahead of us was a hill where the infrequent motor cars generally stalled, but he thought that a good strong car could make it all right. Our car tackled the hill bravely enough, but slowed to a stop before reaching the summit; but by unloading everybody except the driver, and with more or less coaxing and adjusting, it was induced to try it again, with a rush that carried it through. The grade, though very steep, was not so much of an obstacle as the deep sand, with which the road was covered. We encountered many steep hills and passed villages nearly as unprepossessing as the first one before we came to the main Plymouth-Exeter road, as excellent a highway as one could wish. It was over this that our route had originally been outlined, but our spirit of adventure led us into the digression I have tried to describe. It was trying at the time, but we saw a phase of England that we otherwise would have missed and have no regrets for the strenuous day in the Devonshire byways.
Plymouth, with the adjoining towns of Devonport and Stonehouse, is one of the most important seaports in the Kingdom, the combined population being about two hundred thousand. The harbor is one of the best and affords safe anchorage for the largest ocean-going vessels. It is protected by a stupendous granite breakwater, costing many millions and affording a delightful promenade on a fine day. Plymouth is the principal government naval port and its ocean commerce is gaining rapidly on that of Liverpool. To Americans it appeals chiefly on account of its connection with the Pilgrim Fathers, who sailed from its harbor on the Mayflower in 1620. A granite block set in the pier near the oldest part of the city is supposed to mark the exact spot of departure of the gallant little ship on the hazardous voyage, whose momentous outcome was not then dreamed of. I could not help thinking what a fine opportunity is offered here for some patriotic American millionaire to erect a suitable memorial to commemorate the sailing of the little ship, fraught with its wonderful destiny. The half day spent about the old city was full of interest; but the places which we missed would make a most discouraging list. It made us feel that one ought to have two or three years to explore Britain instead of a single summer's vacation.
From Plymouth to Penzance through Truro runs the finest road in Cornwall, broad, well kept and with few steep grades. It passes through a beautiful section and is bordered in many places by the immense parks of country estates. In some of these the woods were seemingly left in their natural wild state, though close inspection showed how carefully this appearance was maintained by judicious landscape gardening. In many of the parks, the rhododendrons were in full bloom, and their rich masses of color wonderfully enlivened the scenery. Everything was fresh and bright. It had been raining heavily the night before and the air was free from the dust that had previously annoyed us. It would be hard to imagine anything more inspiring than the vistas which opened to us as we sped along. The road usually followed the hills in gentle curves, but at places it rose to splendid points of vantage from which to view the delightful valleys. Then again it lost itself under great over-arching trees, and as we came too rapidly down a steep hill on entering Bodmin, the road was so heavily shaded that we were near our undoing. The loose sand had been piled up by the rain and the dense shade prevented the road from drying. The car took a frightful skid and by a mere hair's breadth escaped disastrous collision with a stone wall—but we learned something.
After leaving Truro, an ancient town with a recently established cathedral, the road to Penzance, though excellent, is without special interest. It passes through the copper-mining section of Cornwall and the country is dotted with abandoned mines. A few are still operated, but it has come to the point where, as a certain Englishman has said, "Cornwall must go to Nevada for her copper," and there are more Cornish miners in the western states than there are in their native shire.
Penzance is another of the South of England resort towns and is beautifully situated on Mounts Bay. One indeed wonders at the great number of seacoast resorts in Britain, but we must remember that there are forty millions of people in the Kingdom who need breathing places as well as a number of Americans who come to these resorts. The hotels at these places are generally excellent from the English point of view, which differs somewhat from the American. Probably there is no one point on which the difference is greater than the precise temperature that constitutes personal comfort and makes a fire in the room necessary. On a chilly, muggy day when an American shivers and calls for a fire in the generally diminutive grate in his room, the native enjoys himself or even complains of the heat, and is astonished at his thin-skinned cousin, who must have his room—according to the British notion—heated to suffocation. The hotel manager always makes a very adequate charge for fires in guest-rooms and is generally chary about warming the corridors or public parts of the hotel. In one of the large London hotels which actually boasts of steam heat in the hallways, we were amazed on a chilly May day to find the pipes warm and a fine fire blazing in the great fireplace in the lobby. The chambermaid explained the astonishing phenomenon: the week before several Americans had complained frequently of the frigid atmosphere of the place without exciting much sympathy from the management, but after they had left the hotel, it was taken as an evidence of good faith and the heat was turned on. But this digression has taken me so far away from Penzance that I may as well close this chapter with it.