25 chapters
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25 chapters
IN THE WEST COUNTRYby Francis A. Knight.
IN THE WEST COUNTRYby Francis A. Knight.
"By Leafy Ways," "Rambles of a Dominie," "By Moorland and Sea," &c., &c. These sketches are, with alterations and additions, reprinted from the "Daily News" and the "Speaker," by kind permission of the editors. These sketches are, with alterations and additions, reprinted from the "Daily News" and the "Speaker," by kind permission of the editors. " . . . five and twenty years ago; Alas, but time escapes! 'Tis even so. " Printed at the Publisher's Works, St. Stephen Street,
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AT CLOVELLY.
AT CLOVELLY.
There are few parts of English coast-line whose traditions are more picturesque than those of the beautiful sea-board of Devon. Its shores are haunted by memories of the great Armada, of the deeds of Drake and Hawkins, of Howard and Raleigh, and of many another old sea-dog, who played his part in the making of our island story. It was the coast of Devonshire that was first harried by the Danes, when, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, "three ships of Northmen, out of Denmark," put in to
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THE SOUND OF THE SEA.
THE SOUND OF THE SEA.
The long curve of the shore on either side this little fishing port, guarded here by a mighty wall of cliff, here by steep faces of red rock, and bordered here with fields that come down nearly to the water's edge, is fringed with a wide belt of shingle—no smooth stretch of yellow sand, but miles and miles of great grey pebbles, the ruins of old cliffs, the wreck of rocky battlements shattered by the surges, and rolled and shaped and rounded by the rude play of winds and waves. Down the long sho
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THE VIKINGS SEAT.
THE VIKINGS SEAT.
Half way down the one street of this "little wood-embosomed fishing town—a steep stair of houses clinging to the cliff," as Kingsley calls it, is one of the few level spaces that break the otherwise abrupt descent. No better place could have been chosen for a seat, for no point in all the village commands so wide a view of the sea. There is no place so good as this for watching the trawlers putting out, hauled slowly to the head of the quay, and then spreading their great brown mainsails,—double
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AN OLD CARRONADE.
AN OLD CARRONADE.
Half-buried in the soft turf that clothes the rocky brows of a low headland in the West there lies an ancient carronade. It is a quiet spot. There is no sound save the lap of the tide along the shore, the stir of the wind in the long grass, the cry of a sea-gull wheeling over, or now and then the sharp clamour of a troop of daws that flutter round their harbour in the cliff. About it grow great tufts of sea-pink, whose flowers, save here and there a belated bloom or two, have long since gone to
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DARTMOOR DAYS.
DARTMOOR DAYS.
The dwellers in the picturesque homesteads scattered at wide intervals over this countryside would hardly be content to hear these hills of theirs called a wilderness. But up yonder against the sky line, with grey clouds trailing low along its topmost ridges, is a brow of the wildest wilderness in England, and these hillside pastures are the fringe of Dartmoor. One might well imagine, too, looking out over this beautiful landscape, that the lines of these West Country yeomen were fallen to them
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WYCHANGER: A FAR RETREAT.
WYCHANGER: A FAR RETREAT.
On the northern edge of Exmoor, parted from the outer world by a long ridge of wooded hills that die away into a bold headland by the grey sea, there lies a spacious valley—fair even for the West Country, a valley that for its beauty of broad fields and noble trees and old-world villages, may rank among the fairest in all England. The traveller by the well-kept coach road that passes along the foot of the hills, almost from end to end of it, looking across its green meadows and its red corn-land
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LUCCOMBE: TWILIGHT IN THE HOLLOW.
LUCCOMBE: TWILIGHT IN THE HOLLOW.
Round the old mill that stands like a drowsy sentinel at the gate of the valley, quiet reigns. Silenced is the plash of the wheel; hushed the low rumble of the rude machinery. Through the rich grass of the meadow by the stream the red cattle are trooping home in answer to the milking call. The sun, already sunk below the fringe of woodland on the hill, shows like a fiery cloud through the dark lattice work of branches. Light still lingers on the steep slope across the glen, on tawny grass and go
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HORNER WATER.
HORNER WATER.
The man who knows Exmoor only in the pride of its summer beauty, who has, it may be, followed the staghounds over its far-reaching slopes through a splendour of heath and ling and blossomed furze, who has never seen the broad shoulders of Dunkery save when they were wrapped about with royal purple, would find the moorland now in very different mood, would think it even now, far on towards the summer, desolate and sad-coloured and forlorn. The gorse, indeed, is in its prime. Its fragrant gold is
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ON EXMOOR: WHERE RED DEER HIDE.
ON EXMOOR: WHERE RED DEER HIDE.
High up on the moorland, in a wilderness of dead heather—surely beyond all power of spring-time to call back to life—with dead gorse bushes scattered over it, gaunt and spectral, unlighted by any touch of golden bloom, there stands an ancient grave-mound. It is the merest flaw in the wide landscape. A roadway passes near it. But from elsewhere, unless it chanced to cut the sky line, you might search for it in vain. Looking across the grassy rim of the hollow space within it, a space like the cra
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TORR STEPS: A MOORLAND RIVER.
TORR STEPS: A MOORLAND RIVER.
Down a deep valley in the West Country winds a swift moorland stream. Mile after mile of sombre, heath-clad solitudes stretch away on either side of it, broken with gorse and bracken, and with here and there a few stunted and storm-beaten trees. Well-ordered farm lands slope down to it. At far intervals it roars under the ancient bridges of solitary hamlets. Here, in the heart of the great hills, it runs between wooded slopes, covered with thick growth of sturdy oak trees—leafless still, but wit
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WINSFORD: VOICES THREE.
WINSFORD: VOICES THREE.
On the slopes of a great hollow in the heart of Exmoor, a hot sun beats fiercely down. True that it is an April sky whose clouds and sunshine weave their changing web of lights and shadows over the landscape. True that the landscape, even yet, wears but little of the guise of springtime. But to-day no touch of east is in the air, and the smoke columns, rising slowly from the chimneys of the village, and showing so blue against the oak plantation on a distant shoulder of the moorland, are driftin
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BREAN DOWN: FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
BREAN DOWN: FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
It is a cold, grey world that lies waiting for the dawn—a misty sky, in which one pale planet glimmers; a hazy sea, whose fretted levels shine faintly in the moonlight; shadowy hills, along whose winding line, here darkened with clustering woodlands, and there whitened by still slumbering hamlets, a grey mist hangs. It hangs, too, like a vast canopy, over the wide plain, whose sunburnt meadows seem to melt away into an infinite distance; and along the wandering river whose brown flood loiters id
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THE COUNTRY LIFE.
THE COUNTRY LIFE.
The man who can look back over thirty years of rural life, of life spent among woods and meadows, has doubtless learnt something at least of the ways of the wild creatures of his district, of its beasts and birds, of its reptiles, and fish, and insects, even of forms of life still lower in the scale. In the works of Nature, her lovers find a never-failing charm. There is no book like hers, as we read it in green field and country lane, in copse, and stream, and hedge-row. There is no voice like
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HALE WELL: A QUIET CORNER.
HALE WELL: A QUIET CORNER.
On the south slope of an old West Country orchard there is a sheltered corner lying open to the sun. Above it rises a broad, unkempt, straggling hedge-row—holly and hawthorn, bramble and sweetbriar—and behind this again the green slopes of the hill. On the left, rising at intervals through the tangled thickets that form the eastern limit of the orchard, is a line of old Scotch firs, and beyond them, dimly seen through the haze that broods over the landscape, are the grey ramparts of a range of l
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THE GREENWOOD TREE.
THE GREENWOOD TREE.
It is a very blaze of sunshine that fills the open spaces of the wood. The tall ash saplings that join hands across the path, now almost lost among the briar sprays, the trailing woodbine, and the long arms of wandering bryony, sway slowly in the hot and heavy air. But the stir of the leaves that flutter lightly overhead, their green lacework all dark against the summer sky, is a restful, soothing sound. It is a pleasant relief to turn aside a little from the pathway, to wade breast high through
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CHILL OCTOBER.
CHILL OCTOBER.
It is the heavy rain no less than the chilly air, the wet days as well as the frosty nights, which have earned for October its added name, and which mark this month so clearly as the real end of a season. We often get a long spell of warm weather in September; it may linger even over the opening of October; but it is October that sets for good and all its fiery seal upon the ruins of the summer. Yet October has been a delightful month; a month of golden dawns, bright days, and fiery sunsets. And
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TURF MOOR: A HAPPY HUNTING GROUND.
TURF MOOR: A HAPPY HUNTING GROUND.
The traveller who at this season of the year is whirled along the iron highway of the northern part of Somersetshire will perhaps be led to form but a poor opinion of West Country scenery, for he sees little from the rail of the heath-covered heights of Exmoor, of the wooded glens of Quantock, or of the green heart of Mendip. The line is laid for many miles across a wide stretch of low-lying moorland—so low that it would be flooded each high tide were it not for the old sea wall by the shore. Th
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TURF MOOR: THE FROZEN MARSHES.
TURF MOOR: THE FROZEN MARSHES.
It is now some years since, through the giving way of the bank of one of the moorland rivers, a large part of the low-lying land in the heart of Somersetshire was under water all through the autumn. Many tenants of cottages on the moor were, as they would put it, "drownded out," and there were outlying villages that for a long while could only be reached by means of boats. During a recent autumn another wide area in the same county was flooded. Frost set in while a vast tract of land was still i
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WINSCOMBE: A CAMP OF REFUGE
WINSCOMBE: A CAMP OF REFUGE
On the edge of a broad valley in the Mendips, on the gentle slope of a line of low green hills, there stands a quiet hamlet, almost hidden now among its clustering trees. At the foot of the slope, standing some way back from the village street, is a white-walled cottage, whose lawns and garden grounds only a slender fence divides from the fields that fringe the village. On one side of the garden runs a narrow lane, losing itself presently in the meadows, a quieter backwater of the quiet village
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WINSCOMBE: A MIDSUMMER MEADOW.
WINSCOMBE: A MIDSUMMER MEADOW.
The whirr of the iron mower has ceased at length. Hour after hour the clashing blades swept in still narrowing circles round and round the spacious meadow. Now the last swath has fallen. Now in the centre of the field the machine stands silent; the tired horses taking toll of the sweet grass that is strewn about their feet. The men lie motionless, their sunburned faces buried in the fragrant coolness. A few short hours ago this broad field was a sea of nodding grasses, whose tasselled points len
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WINSCOMBE: HARVEST HOME.
WINSCOMBE: HARVEST HOME.
It is strange to sit, this bright September morning, under the shadow of a noble row of limes, and listen to the whirr of the iron mower as it rattles round and round the wide meadow yonder. It is late for haymaking. Among the branches overhead are the red and gold of autumn, and the grass at the feet of the old trees is strewn with withered leaves. These fly-catchers that flit across the lawn and sail back to their stations along the fence will soon be leaving us. It cannot be long before the c
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WINTERHEAD: AFTERMATH.
WINTERHEAD: AFTERMATH.
There are many symbols on the dial of Nature to mark the changing of the year. Such signs are the brightening colours of the meadows, and the growing hosts of insect life. Such a sign is the strange, noonday silence of the woodland; and such, too, is the change in the cuckoo's cry—faltering, even before the longest day. Such signs are the gathering of the swallows, the purple mist on the plumed reeds by the river, the blackberry clusters ripening fast along the hedge-row, the butterflies that fl
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WOODSPRING: A GREY OLD HOUSE BY THE SEA.
WOODSPRING: A GREY OLD HOUSE BY THE SEA.
The heat-glimmer is still quivering on the sand, and over the vast mud-flats, bared by the retreating tide, a soft haze hangs. Yet the sun, sinking slowly through a cloudless sky, reddens as it nears the low horizon, and the grey grass of the old sea wall is brightening in the glow of sunset. Over the long curve of the sand-hills shows a wide sweep of plain, whose level meadows, freshened by the welcome rain, are still a very blaze of gold. Against the sky, where, at the far limit of the bay, th
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KEWSTOKE: THE MONK'S STEPS.
KEWSTOKE: THE MONK'S STEPS.
A grey November day, with sad-coloured clouds hanging low over a grey and sullen sea. At intervals there rolls across the water the dull boom of distant fog-guns, echoing like thunder under the heavy veil of mist. From the shore below comes the ceaseless fret of waves sweeping swiftly in across the sand. Along the edge of the tide and over the wide mud-flats are scattered the white figures of gulls; and at times there comes faintly up the low musical call of a whimbrel, or the plaintive wail of
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