Not far off from this singular monument of “ages long ago” there is found to this day a rough and rude assemblage of moorstone slabs, some cast down and others erect, but manifestly brought together and arranged by human hands and skill. There is still traceable amid the fragments the outline of a human habitation, once divided into cells, and this was the origin and purpose of this solitary abode. It was the work and the home of a remarkable man--an eccentric and original character among the worthies of the west--and the place has borne ever since the early years of the last century the name of Daniel Gumb’s Rock. He was a native Cornishman, born in a cottage that bordered on the moor, and in the lowlier ranks of labouring life. In his father’s household he was always accounted a strange and unsocial boy. In his childhood he kept aloof from all pastime and play, and while his companions resorted to their youthful amusements and sports, Daniel was usually seen alone with a book or a slate whereon he worked, at a very early age, the axioms of algebra or the diagrams of Euclid. He had mastered with marvellous rapidity all the books of the country-side, and he had even exhausted the instructions of the schoolmaster of the neighbouring town. Then it became his chosen delight to wander on the moors with some favourite volume in his hand, and a crust from his mother’s loaf in his bag; with his inseparable tools, also, the chisel and the mallet, wherewithal to chip and gather the geological specimens of his own district. Often he would be absent whole nights, and when he was questioned as to his place of shelter, he would reply, “Where John the Baptist slept,” or “At Roche, in the hermit’s bed;” for the ruined cell of a Christian anchorite stood, and yet stands, above the scenery of the wanderings of that solitary boy.