RIVERS OF DEVON.
General Characteristics—Sources of the Devon Streams: Exmoor and Dartmoor. The OTTER: Ottery Saint Mary and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Exmoor Streams:—The EXE: Its Source in The Chains—The Barle—The Batherm—Tiverton and Peter Blundell—Bickleigh Bridge and the “King of the Gipsies”—The Culm—Exeter—Countess Weir—Exmouth. The LYN: Oareford—The Doone Country—Malmsmead—Watersmeet—Lyndale—Lynton and Lynmouth. Dartmoor Streams:—The TEIGN: Wallabrook—Chagford—Fingle Bridge—Chudleigh—The Bovey—Newton Abbot—Teignmouth. The DART: Holne Chase—Buckfast Abbey—Dartington Hall—Totnes—The Lower Reaches—Dartmouth. The Tavy. The TAW: Oxenham and its Legend—Barnstaple—Lundy. The TORRIDGE: The Okement—Great Torrington—Bideford—Hubbastone. The AVON, Erme, and Yealm. The PLYM: Dewerstone—The Meavy and Plymouth Leat—Plympton St. Mary and Plympton Earl—The Three Towns.
AMONG the charms which make Devonshire, in Mr. Blackmore’s words, “the fairest of English counties,” one need not hesitate to give the first place to its streams. They who know only its coasts, though they know them well, may walk delicately, for of much that is most characteristic of its loveliness they are altogether ignorant. But anyone who has tracked a typical Devon river from its fount high up on the wild and lonely moorland to the estuary where it mingles its waters with the inflowing tide, following it as it brawls down the peaty hillsides, and winds its way through glen and gorge until it gains the rich lowlands where it rolls placidly towards its latter end, may boast that his is the knowledge of intimacy. Commercially, the Devonshire streams are of little account, for Nature has chosen to touch them to finer issues. Yet, for all their manifold fascinations, they have had but scant attention from the poets, who, instead of singing their graces in dignified verse, have left them, as Mr. J. A. Blaikie has said, to be “noisily advertised in guide-books.” At first sight the omission seems curious enough, for the long roll of Devonshire “worthies” is only less illustrious for its poets than for its heroes. Perchance the explanation of what almost looks like a conspiracy of silence is that the streams, full of allurement as they may be, are not rich in associations of the poetic sort. Of legend they have their share, but for the most part it is legend uncouth and grotesque, such as may not easily be shaped into verse. Their appeal, in truth, is more to the painter than to the poet. For him they have provided innumerable “bits” of the most seductive description; and neither against him nor against the angler—the artist among sportsmen—for whom also bountiful provision has been made, can neglect of opportunity be charged.
THE RIVERS OF DEVON.
It is in the royal “forests” of Exmoor and Dartmoor that nearly all the chief rivers of Devon take their rise. Of these moorland tracts, the one extending into the extreme north of the county from Somersetshire, the other forming, so to speak, its backbone, Dartmoor is considerably the larger; and in High Willhayse and in the better known Yes Tor, its highest points, it touches an altitude of just over 2,000 feet, overtopping Dunkery Beacon, the monarch of Exmoor, by some 370 feet. Between the two moors there is a general resemblance, less, however, of contour than of tone, for while Exmoor swells into great billowy tops, the Dartmoor plateau breaks up into rugged “tors”—crags of granite that have shaken off their scanty raiment and now rise bare and gaunt above the general level. Both, as many a huntsman knows to his cost, are beset with treacherous bogs, out of which trickle streams innumerable, some, like the Wear Water, the chief headstream of the East Lyn, soon to lose their identity, others to bear to the end of their course names which the English emigrant has delighted to reproduce in the distant lands that he has colonised. Not strange is it that with loneliness such as theirs, Exmoor and Dartmoor alike should be the haunt of the mischief-loving pixies, who carry off children and lead benighted wayfarers into quagmires; of the spectral wish-hounds, whose cry is fearsome as the wailing voice which John Ridd heard “at grey of night”; and of the rest of the uncanny brood who once had all the West Country for their domain. Exmoor, too, is almost the last sanctuary, south of the Tweed, of the wild red-deer; and hither in due season come true sportsmen from far and near to have their pulses stirred by such glorious runs as Kingsley has described.
