It is a fashion to go to Cranmere, and even to leave a card as proof that the visit has been paid; but the bogs and mires that surround it always make the approach difficult--in wet seasons dangerous; and except as the source of so many Devon rivers the spot is really unattractive. It is never more than a marshy pool, and sometimes scarcely that. Dartmoor is one of the rainiest spots in England, its height being swept by the moisture-laden winds from both seas; and the rainfall is held in its high-lying hollows by peat bogs. Every hollow is like a granite cup, and where there is not the immediate granite, there is the equally impervious china-clay of its denudations; these basins are perpetually fed by rain or mists, and the rivers thus born never run dry. From the actual pool of Cranmere rises the West Ockment, while the East Ockment, the Tavy, the Dart, the Taw, and the Teign spring from morasses or quags in its neighbourhood. No other spot in the kingdom gives birth to so many rivers of importance--important for their great beauty though only slightly for their navigation. On the moor itself they are rapid streams, sometimes peat-stained, yet always limpid; and this rapidity, especially after rainfall, goes with them to their estuaries, bringing sometimes sudden and dangerous risings of tide. The general Dartmoor watershed is southward; all the streams but the Ockments and the Taw flow to the English Channel. Teignmouth, Dartmouth, Plymouth, are watered by Dartmoor rivers. Though the mother and nurse of these rivers, Cranmere is disappointing; yet it has loomed large in local folklore. Like Dosmare of the Bodmin Moors, it has been supposed to be bottomless; and the fate of doomed spirits has been to drain it with a leaky shell. One tale is of an old farmer who, after death, here had to expiate his misdoings. His ghost was so troublesome that it took seven parsons to secure it. Being changed into a colt by their pious spells, a servant lad was told to lead him to Cranmere pool, take off the halter, and leave the place instantly, without glancing back. The boy obeyed all the instructions but the last; and on looking back he received a parting kick from the colt, which then plunged into the pool in the form of a ball of fire. We are indebted to the Ockment Rivers for the name of Okehampton (in Domesday the name is Ochementone), which is perhaps the best centre from which to explore the northern moorland. But the peacefulness and to some extent the security of the district have been affected by the fact that ninety acres of land are leased for the use of the Royal Horse and Field Artillery, whose practice has sometimes jeopardized unwary tourists. Happily the character of Dartmoor saves it from becoming a huge camp and review-ground, like Salisbury Plain; but it needs some patriotism to forgive such military occupation as we find at Okehampton and elsewhere.