Dartmoor

“ Down below we are oppressed with the fall of the leaf, affecting us, if inclined to asthma and bronchitis; and in the short, dull days of December and January our spirits wax dark amidst naked trees and when our ankles are deep in mud. There are no trees on Dartmoor to expose their naked limbs, and tell us that, vegetation is dead. The shoulders of down are draped in brown sealskin mantles—the ling and heather, as lovely in its sleep as in its waking state; the mosses, touched by frost, turn to rainbow hues. For colour effects give me Dartmoor in winter.
And then the peat fires! ”

“ There is still a different beauty in the fen country and the land of the Broads. But Dartmoor has its own character, which it does not surrender to a casual acquaintance; it has a reserve and depth of individuality, to be won only by slow confidence. There are strong characteristics also among the moor folk; but here a change has been in progress. It is useless to come now expecting to find a superstitious and credulous peasantry. When a district is haunted by tourist and artist, when cars and brakes unload crowds of chattering sightseers, something of the outside world comes with them ”

“ It must be confessed that the rarest beauty of the moorland belongs to its fringes, around what may be called the gateways of the moor; in the interior there is the charm of broad expanse, the glorious colour of heather, ling, and gorse, and occasionally a grand desolation of mist and tempest that may almost strike dismay. A guidebook writer has spoken of Dartmoor as "the quintessence of unlovely dreariness"; and perhaps there is some justification for his words in the immediate neighbourhood of Princetown, the solitary town of the moorland proper. ”

“ He will see what Devon was before it was cultivated; he will be in a haunt of strange traditions, lingering superstitions, wild fancies. Perhaps when cold clammy fogs blot out the undulations and tors, a chill will strike to the heart; Dartmoor is no kindly nurse to those who have lost their way or those who are overtaken by snowfall. He who comes here must lean on his own resources; he will not be pampered and guided; he must fend for himself. Nature, as Jefferies was fond of saying, does not care for man; he is an alien, exiled by the very civilization of which he is so proud ”

“ The child is father to the man. Years have rolled away. I have wandered over Europe, have rambled to Iceland, climbed the Alps, been for some years lodged among the marshes of Essex—yet nothing that I have seen has quenched in me the longing after the fresh air, and love of the wild scenery of Dartmoor. There is far finer mountain scenery elsewhere, but there can be no more bracing air, and the lone upland region possesses a something of its own —a charm hard to describe, but very real—which engages for once and for ever the affections of those who have made its acquaintance. ”

“ The beech trees were planted at the same time that two lodges were erected by a gentleman called Hullett, who was induced to believe that he could convert a portion of Dartmoor into paradise. He purposed building a mansion at Stannon, and actually began the house. But by the time the lodges were set up and a wing of his house, he had discovered that Dartmoor would spell ruin, and he threw up his attempt. And Dartmoor will spell ruin unless approached and treated in the only suitable manner. It will pasture cattle and feed ponies and sheep, but it will never grow corn and roots. ”

“ Dartmoor consists of moorland running up to heights of over 2000 feet, a great deal of the area being enclosed, forming rough grazing farms, but much of it remains to-day what it was thousands of years ago, boulder-strewn ravines, through which rush impetuous streams, rocky heights crowned with huge blocks of granite, so weather-worn and piled up as to suggest to the stranger that some Titans had so placed them to serve as castles or to add a romantic touch to already wild scenery. ”

“ Certain it is, that the common people in this neighbourhood were impressed with the notion that Dartmoor was a place less desirable to mortals, and more under the influence of evil spirits, than any other spot in England. I shall only say, that I found it, take it all in all, a less disagreeable prison than the ships; the life of a prudent, industrious, well behaved man might here be rendered pretty easy, for a prison life, as was the case with some of our own countrymen, and some Frenchmen; but the young, the idle, the giddy, fun making youth generally reaped such fruit as he sowed. ”

“ Rocks turn to rivers, rivers turn to men".
As he returned voluntarily to this exile, we must imagine the miracle to have taken place, or perhaps his own heart had been tamed by his adversity.
The southern moor is watered by beautiful but less familiar rivers than those of the west and east; the Avon, the Erme, the Yealm have all their own charm, and are as genuinely children of Dartmoor as the Teign, the Dart, or the Tavy. ”

“ It is not to us who move at various speeds from place to place—by motor-car, or bicycle, or train, or even on foot—that Dartmoor will reveal itself. Do not let us deceive ourselves. We may have driven on every road and every tortuous lane between the Teign and Tavistock, yet we need not dream that we know the Moor. That knowledge comes only with the slow years, only with the passionate love that begins in childhood and lasts for life.
LUSTLEIGH.
That is no reason why we should not see as much of the Moor as we can, and love it dearly in our own poor fashion. ”

“ We have a peculiar institution in the county of Devon—a week of hare-hunting on Dartmoor after hare-hunting has ceased everywhere else. Dartmoor is a high elevated region totally treeless, with peaks covered with granite, having brawling streams that foam down the valleys between. One main road crosses this vast desolate region, as far as Two Bridges, where is an inn, The Saracen's Head, and there it divides, and runs for many miles more over moor to Moreton Hampstead on one side, and to Ashburton on the other. ”

“ The areas within the circles on Dartmoor, so far as they have been examined, show that great fires have been lighted in them; the floors are thickly bedded in charcoal. It may be that they were the crematoria of the tribe, and certainly numerous cairns and kistvaens are to be found around them; or it may be that great fires were lighted in them when the tribe met for its parliament, or its games and war-dances. It has been noticed that usually these circles of upright stones are placed on the neck of land between two rivers. ”

“ Then I showed him the way to the little inn at Merrivale Bridge, and advised him to hire a trap there and get back to Plymouth as quickly as might be.
"I solemnly swear to you, sir," said he, "nothing will ever induce me to set foot on Dartmoor again. If I chance to see it from the Hoe, sir, I'll avert my eyes. How can people think to come here for pleasure—for pleasure, sir! But there, Chinamen eat birds'-nests. There are depraved appetites among human beings, and only unwholesome-minded individuals can love Dartmoor." ”

“ From being worth nothing it has risen to a rapidly rising value, as we are becoming aware that we shall have to present impenetrable sides to our Continental neighbours.
Dartmoor comprises the "forest" and the surrounding commons, as extensive together as the forest itself. "What have you got on you, little girl?" asked a good woman of a shivering child. "Please, mem, first there's a jacket, then a gownd, and then comes Oi." So with Dartmoor. First come the venville parishes, next their extensive commons, and "then comes Oi," the forest itself. ”

“ Here, under the roof of Devon, through the measures that press up to the Dartmoor granite and are changed by the vanished heat thereof, a little Dartmoor stream, in her age-long battle with earth, has cut a right gorge, and so rendered herself immortal. ”

“ In winter they are strong enough to make playthings of the rough lichened boulders that confront their course; and in the hottest summers they never run dry—the mother-breast of Dartmoor has always ample nourishment. Though there is a lessening in the body of the rivers, and perhaps a surface-drought of the bogs, the moors are never really parched; drovers from the Eastern counties sometimes bring their flocks hither in a summer of great heat, to feed on Dartmoor turfs when their own home-pastures would be arid. Yet the central moor is more like a desolate waste than a pasture. ”

“ Phillpotts in all his work has done no single piece of portraiture better than this presentation of Philip Ouldsbroom.... A triumph of the novelist's understanding and keen drawing.... A Dartmoor background described in terms of an artist's deeply felt appreciation.—New York World.
"No other English writer has painted such fascinating and colorful word-pictures of Dartmoor's heaths and hills, woods and vales, and billowy plains of pallid yellow and dim green. Few others have attempted such vivid character-portrayal as marks this latest work from beginning to end."—The North American. ”

“ The furze—only out of bloom when Love is out of tune—keeps away from the standing water. It is the furze which is the glory of the moor, with its dazzling gold and its honey breath, fighting for existence against the farmer who fires it every year, and envelops Dartmoor in a cloud of smoke from March to June. Why should he do this instead of employing the young shoots as fodder?
I think that as Scotland has the thistle, Ireland the shamrock, and Wales the leek as their emblems, we Western men of Devon and Cornwall should adopt the furze. ”

“ I landed them at Honolulu and saw no more of them.
Their going left the manual work of exercising the freak to Dartmoor, and I grinned shamelessly. At this juncture I had half a mind to run over to San Francisco and make another appeal to Ella, but gave it up. She might not have grown away from him yet; and at any rate I could keep Dartmoor on the island as long as I pleased. To such dark depths of knavery does jealousy bring a man.
I ran back to the island, and no sooner was the anchor down than Dartmoor and the dominie appeared on the beach, shouting and gesticulating like lunatics. ”

“ In days before education had done something to kill picturesque imaginings, it is not surprising that many a phantom cortege was supposed to wend its way along this haunted track; and the moor folk were very careful not to pass that way alone at night-time. But the ghosts have been laid now, or men's eyes are sealed by their incredulity; the only night-haunters of Dartmoor are mist, and rain, and storm.
In making a tour of the border villages it is natural to begin with Lydford, the mother-parish, which, with an extent of 56,333 acres, claims to be the largest parish in England. ”

“ But on Dartmoor man has none of this pity; he selects the very time when the poor birds are sitting in their nests on their eggs, or are cherishing their callow young, for enveloping them in flames. The buzzard, the hen-harrier, and the sparrow-hawk are now chiefly seen in the most lonely portions of the moor. ”

“ With regard to the numbers of people who lived on Dartmoor in prehistoric times, it is simply amazing to reflect upon. Tens of thousands of their habitations have been destroyed; their largest and most populous settlements, where are now the "ancient tenements," have been obliterated, 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 inclosed in a pound, and give six persons to a hut, we have at once a population, within a mile, of 2,000 persons. ”

“ The prison at Dartmoor is situated on the east side of one of the highest and most barren mountains in England, and is surrounded on all sides, as far as the eye can see, by the gloomy features of a black moor, uncultivated and uninhabited, except by one or two miserable cottages, just discernible in an eastern view, the tenants of which live by cutting turf on the moor, and selling it at the prison. The place is deprived of every thing that is pleasant or agreeable, and is productive of nothing but human woe and misery. ”

“ Gerry. During that time I fell in love with Dartmoor and begged my husband to build me a bungalow up here when the war was ended, if he could afford to do so. His pilchard trade with Italy practically came to an end after the summer of 1914. But the company of Pendean and Trecarrow owned some good little steamers and these were soon very valuable. So Michael, who had got to care for Dartmoor as much as I did, presently took steps and succeeded in obtaining a long lease of a beautiful and sheltered spot near Foggintor quarries, a few miles from here. ”

“ One has supposed hitherto that the gay widower who looked out for another spouse after having lost the first was a product of the human species only.
A visitor to Dartmoor in June or July will be surprised to find flights of rooks over it. As soon as their maternal cares are over, they desert the rookeries on the lowland and go for change of air and diet to the moor, where they feed on the whortleberry, possibly, but most certainly on the daddy longlegs and its first cousin, who is the hateful wireworm in his fully developed form. ”