With regard to the Tamar, we may call it as we please a Devonshire or a
Cornish river. It divides the counties through the principal part of its
course, but it has its source in Morwenstow, on a wretched moor, in
Cornwall. Not much can be said in its favour till it reaches Bridgerule.
From that point past North Tamerton (and Vacey, which although on the
left bank was included in Cornwall, and has two formidable earthworks)
it glides down to Werrington, where it meets the waters of the Attery
and passes under Polson Bridge within sight of Launceston. Thenceforth
the Tamar is in the full bloom of beauty. Carthamartha (Caer Tamar)
stands at its junction with the Inny. Below Polson Bridge it has
accepted the Lyd from Devon. Then through the lands and woods of the
Duke of Bedford at lovely Endsleigh, under the bold crags of Morwell, up
to which the tide reaches, then past Calstock and Cothele, and in
serpentine writhes about Pentillie Castle, and so into the Hamoaze--the
most beautiful river in England, excepting possibly the Wye.
[Illustration: Wadebridge]
The Inny, one of the feeders of the Tamar and altogether Cornish, must
not be omitted, for it is a beautiful stream. It rises in the elevated
land by Davidstowe and ripples down near Altarnon, passing in a
picturesque valley the Holy Well and chapel of St Clether and the
ancestral seat of the Trevelyan family at Basil; then, still in its
beautiful valley, past Polyphant, famous for its quarries of a stone
that admits of the most delicate carving, until it reaches the Tamar at
Innyfoot. It is a river rich in trout. An old Cornish song of the
Altarnon volunteer has the verse:
O Altarnon! O Altarnon! I ne'er shall see thee more,
Nor hear the sweet bells ringing, nor stand in the church door,
Nor hear the birds a-whistling, nor in the Inny stream
See silver trout glance by me, as thoughts glance by in dream.
It is not however the Inny but a tributary that actually passes
Altarnon.
[Illustration: Royal Albert Bridge, Saltash]
The Lynher falls into the Hamoaze, running for much of its course
parallel to the Inny. It rises in the Bodmin moors and flows through the
beautiful grounds of Trebartha where it receives a feeder from Trewartha
marsh that leaps to meet it in a pretty cascade. Trewartha marsh has
been turned over and over for tin and gold, and the Squire of Trebartha
formerly furnished his daughters with gold rings made from the precious
ore found in it. A curious settlement of the Celtic period exists above
the marsh. It has however been much mutilated by farmers, who have
carried off the stones for the construction of pigstyes. The Lynher
flows through the park of the Earl of St Germans, past the beautiful
church with its Norman west front, and then is lost in the united waters
of the Tamar and the Tavy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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