The traveller will, of course, go up Lyndale, the valley of the East Lyn, as far as Watersmeet, and will not omit to explore the quieter, more luxuriant, though less magnificent West Lyn. He will climb to the summit of Lyn Cliff, and will survey at ease the prospect from the summer-house; and will not omit the extraordinary Valley of the Rocks, reached by a grand walk along the face of the cliff, which overhangs the sea to the west of Lynton. At a break in this path he suddenly comes to a gigantic gateway, formed of two rocky pyramids, and enters upon a scene which, to his first view, appears strewn with the fragments of some earlier world. "Imagine," says Southey, "a narrow vale between two ridges of hills, somewhat steep: the southern hill turfed; the vale, which runs from east to west, covered with huge stones, and fragments of stone among the fern that fills it; the northern ridge completely bare, excoriated of all turf and all soil, the very bones and skeleton of the earth; rock reclining upon rock, stone piled upon stone, a huge terrific mass. A palace of the pre-historic kings, a city of the Anakim, must have appeared so shapeless, and yet so like the ruins of what had been shaped after the waters of the flood subsided.... I never felt the sublimity of solitude before." The drive from Lynton to Barnstaple, though not long, being, we believe, somewhat under twenty miles, brought to us a crowd of half-forgotten associations of early days when coach-travelling was the chief means of locomotion. The coach itself was of the old build, spick and span in its neatness; the coachman was of old-fashioned ways; the four sleek horses were no mere omnibus hacks, but as they warmed to their work up and down hill, showed a mettle akin to that of roadsters in days long ago. Or perhaps we had only imagined until now that the old breed had deteriorated! The villages on the way had no sign of "Station" or "Station Hotel" about them; children ran from the cottage doors to shout after the coach, or to bring primroses and violets to the passengers; rustics gathered for a chat where the coachman pulled up, as he did tolerably often, for time seemed but a small object in that old-world region. And all around was outspread a landscape of rich, ever-changing loveliness, ruddy in soil, rich in verdure, as at one time we descended into lanes half-embowered by the already luxuriant hedgerows, and at another emerged on open moorland swept by soft breezes from the sea, and engirdled by the hazy forms of distant hills. At length the estuary of the Taw came into view, the houses of Barnstaple appeared, the coach drove into the station yard, and we were in the world again.