Perhaps Moreton is an even better centre for visiting the moor than Chagford, and it is quite as attractive in itself, with its interesting but despoiled church, and its fine arcaded almshouses, dating from 1637. The inhabitants, however, deplore the loss of their old "dancing-tree", an elm growing from the mutilated base of a granite cross. This tree was supposed to be over 300 years old, and it succumbed a few years since to age and many infirmities. Balls and concerts were given on a platform built on the massive branches. The tree has received literary honour in Blackmore's _Christowell_. It is from Moreton that we can best reach Grimspound, with its twenty-four hut-circles. The pound encloses about four acres, surrounded by a double wall of granite blocks. Scattered in the neighbourhood are other hut-circles, barrows, and stone alignments. Bowerman's Nose (Celtic _veor-maen_, or great stone) is nearer to Manaton; it is a natural freak of weathered granite, 40 feet in height, standing at an elevation of about 1300 feet above sea level. Many foolish conjectures have been magnified into supposed fact by those who have taken this and other Dartmoor features to be the work of man. Manaton itself, with its own tor rising behind the church, is a beautiful little village, rendered more lovely by the River Bovey. It is the fall of the Becka brook into the Bovey that provides the popular Becky Falls; but in summer, as Mr. Baring-Gould says, this is rather a water trickle than a waterfall; in autumn and winter, when fewer visitors see it, the stream is a turbulent torrent. Not far distant is the beautiful Lustleigh Cleave, which though not on the moor is thoroughly moorland in its character and its antiquities. So hugely piled are the boulders at its foot that the river is generally quite out of sight, to be heard but not seen. But to get to a typical moorland parish we must not linger at Lustleigh; we must go out to Widecombe, and by whatever road we reach it we shall understand the sad fate of Tom Pearce's old mare. Widecombe is in a hollow surrounded by heights and tors (it must be understood that the word tor is only used where the granite actually protrudes from the soil). Bel, Rippon, and Hey Tors are on one side, Hamildon Down on the other. The valley, which is only low in comparison with the surrounding hills, was much worked in days out of date by the tin-streamers, and there is a plentiful growth of pines and sycamores above the traces they left.