The Teign, another of the streams that rise in the Cranmere bog, is
famous both for the beauty of the scenery along its winding shores and
for the many prehistoric antiquities--stone circles and alignments,
menhirs and tumuli--which stand near them. Its two main branches, the
North and the South Teign, meet about a mile to the west of Chagford. To
the east of that moorland village the river flows through beautifully
wooded valleys, and is joined on its right bank, below Chudleigh, by
another Dartmoor tributary, the Bovey, on which stand Bovey Tracy,
famous for its beds of lignite and clay and for its potteries, and North
Bovey, near which are the remains of the very remarkable Bronze Age
village of Grimspound. Below Newton Abbot the Teign becomes a broad
estuary, on or near whose shores are five of the townships that are
named after the river, the most important of which is the little port
and well-known watering-place of Teignmouth. The river mouth is almost
blocked by a low promontory, which, although now built over, was once a
mere sand-bank or dune, from which latter word, no doubt, it takes its
name of the Den.
[Illustration: The Axe at Axminster Bridge]
Other south-coast rivers are the Axe--one of whose two main branches
rises in Somerset and the other in Dorset--which gives its name to
Axminster and Axmouth; the Otter, which rises in the Blackdown
Hills, and flowing past Honiton, Ottery St Mary, and Otterton, reaches
the sea at Budleigh Salterton; the Aune or Avon, especially famous
for its salmon, the Erme, and the slopes Yealm, small but beautiful
streams rising on the southern slopes of Dartmoor, widening into estuaries
as they near the English Channel, and giving names to Aveton, Ermington,
and Yealmpton, respectively. The Plym, after which are named Plympton,
Plymouth, and Plymstock, is another Dartmoor river, flowing through some
very beautiful country, especially in the neighbourhood of Bickleigh,
and at length forming a broad and important estuary known first as
the Laira, and lower down as the Catwater or Cattewater, which joins
Plymouth Sound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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