A walk up the valley leads to the famous Beer quarries that have been worked for centuries. This splendid building-stone lies below the chalk with flints. There are eight beds, forming a thickness of twelve feet four inches, resting on a hard, white, calcareous rock five or six feet thick, which reposes in turn on sandstones. There is very little waste from these quarries, which are carried on underground; and all that is seen of them are the yawning portals in a face of white cliff. But a shout at the entrance will summon a workman, who will conduct the visitor through the labyrinth underground. The roof is sustained by large square pillars formed by portions of the workable beds left standing. The stone is nearly white, and chiefly composed of carbonate of lime, with the addition of some argillaceous and silicious matter, and a few scattered particles of green silicate of iron. When first quarried this stone is somewhat soft, and is easily worked, but it rapidly hardens on exposure. Opposite the new quarry are the mounds that mark the site of the old quarry, from which the stone was extracted for Exeter Cathedral. The subterranean passages there are now blocked, but during the time of the European war they were much used by smugglers, who abounded in Beer. The _Memoirs of Jack Rattenbury_, the most notorious of these, were published at Sidmouth in 1837, but are not of conspicuous interest. Beer Head has suffered from landslips, and is broken into spires of rock in consequence. Books on the Landslip, and on Seaton:-- CONYBEARE and DAWSON, _Memoir and Views of Landslips on the Coast of East Devon_, 1840. A very scarce work. HUTCHINSON (P. O.), _Guide to the Landslip near Axmouth_. Sidmouth, 1840. DAVIDSON (J. B.), "Seaton before the Conquest," in _Transactions of Devonshire Association_, 1885. MUMFORD (G. F.), _Seaton, Beer, and Neighbourhood_. Yeovil, _n.d._ CHAPTER V. EXETER The river Exe--Roman roads--The Saxons in Devon and Exeter--Saxon and British Exeter--The Battle of Gavulford--S. Boniface at Exeter--His persecution of Celtic missionaries--S. Sidwell--Bishop's seat transferred to Exeter--S. Olave's Church--The Cathedral--Its merits and demerits--Ottery S. Mary--Excursions from Exeter--Fingle Bridge--Fulford--Ecclesiological excursions. Exeter, the Isca Dumnoniorum of the Romans, was the Celtic Caer Wisc; that is to say, the caer or fortress on the Usk. The river-name has become Exe; it derives from the Celtic word which signifies water, and which we have in whiskey and Usquebaugh, _i.e._ fire-water. The same word has become also Ock. Thus the Ockment River at Okehampton, a few miles down, becomes the Exe, at Exbourne; and a tributary of the Exe is the Oke, that flows into it near Bampton.