A Book of Dartmoor: Second EditionBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A Book of Dartmoor: Second Edition
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Dartmoor (England)
This is much like what we are all doing, and doing
unconsciously--leaving little finger-touches on our creations, giving
shape to the minds and habits of our children and of those with whom
we are brought into contact, shaping, adorning, or disfiguring our
epoch, and the impressions we leave are indelible; they will in turn be
transmitted to ages to come.
Some of the ornamentation, as in a specimen from Smallacombe Rocks, is
made with a twisted cord. The pottery is all hand-made, shaped without
the wheel, and very imperfectly burnt. It is not red, because there was
little iron in the clay.
One large hut at Foale's Arrishes had a seat carried round part at
least of the interior, made of branches that were held from spreading
by sharp stones planted upright in the floor. The kitchen was on the
left side of the entrance in a subsidiary structure.
It has, of late, become a thing not unusual for young fellows, if
suffering from delicacy of the lungs, to rent or buy a farm on
Dartmoor. No research after parasitic microbes thenceforth concerns
them. The fresh air, the constant exercise, the joyous existence on
the wild moor are fatal to tubercular bacteria. Rude health, buoyant
spirits, unflagging energy result from such treatment.
It is, it must be admitted, surpassing hard to induce servants from
the "in-country" to take situations on Dartmoor. The air there is as
unsuited to them as to other microbes. But the settler lights his own
fires, cooks his own meals, makes his own bed; and, as one of them
assured me, his experience proved to him that a man can keep a hunter
at the same cost as he can a servant-maid: therefore, why be worried
with the latter?
At Post Bridge they have had a succession of curates who have lived
this life in cabins or hovels, and have learned to love it. It has one
drawback, and one only--it makes the hands rough and grimy. But what
are gloves for, but to cover dirty hands when we go to town to make
display?
As to food. Rabbits are to be had at any moment; geese, ducks live
and luxuriate on the moor; an occasional blackcock or moorhen and a
brace of snipe give zest; and trout are to be obtained for the labour
or pleasure of angling for them. The price of horses is mounting; any
number may be grown on the moor. Sheep, cattle--you turn them out, and
they thrive on the sweet grass, and know not the maladies that afflict
flocks and herds in the world twelve hundred feet below.
[Illustration: ORNAMENTED POTTERY.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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