E-text prepared by Dave Morgan, Janet Blenkinship, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the lovely original illustrations. See 22485-h.htm or 22485-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/4/8/22485/22485-h/22485-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/4/8/22485/22485-h.zip) Transcriber's note: In this text superscript is represented with '^' and a macron with [=o] DEVON ITS MOORLANDS, STREAMS, & COASTS by LADY ROSALIND NORTHCOTE With Illustrations in Colour after Frederick J. Widgery London Exeter Chatto & Windus James G. Commin M CM VIII Deep-wooded combes, clear-mounded hills of morn, Red sunset tides against a red sea-wall, High lonely barrows where the curlews call, Far moors that echo to the ringing horn,-- Devon! thou spirit of all these beauties born, All these are thine, but thou art more than all: Speech can but tell thy name, praise can but fall Beneath the cold white sea-mist of thy scorn. Yet, yet, O noble land, forbid us not Even now to join our faint memorial chime To the fierce chant wherewith their hearts were hot Who took the tide in thy Imperial prime; Whose glory's thine till Glory sleeps forgot With her ancestral phantoms, Pride and Time. HENRY NEWBOLT Preface The first and one of the greatest difficulties to confront a writer who attempts any sort of description of a place or people is almost sure to be the answer to the question, How much must be left out? In the present case the problem has reappeared in every chapter, for Devon is 'a fair province,' as Prince says in his 'Worthies of Devon,' and 'the happy parent of ... a noble offspring.' My position is that of a person who has been bidden to take from a great heap of precious stones as many as are needed to make one chain; for however grasping that person may be, and however long the chain may be made, when all the stones have been chosen, the heap will look almost as great and delightful as before: only a few of the largest and brightest jewels will be gone. The fact that I have been able to take only a small handful from the vast hoard that constitutes the history of Devon will explain, I hope, the many omissions that must strike every reader who has any knowledge of the county--omissions of which no one can be more conscious than myself. A separate volume might very well be written about the bit of country touched on in each chapter.