From London to Land's End: and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"Defoe, Daniel
History
From London to Land's End: and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"
Defoe, Daniel
England -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
9. Peter Blundel, a clothier, who built the free school at Tiverton, and
endowed it very handsomely; of which in its place.
10. Sir John Glanvill, a noted lawyer, and one of the Judges of the
Common Pleas.
11. Sergeant Glanvill, his son; as great a lawyer as his father.
12. Sir John Maynard, an eminent lawyer of later years; one of the
Commissioners of the Great Seal under King William III. All these three
were born at Tavistock.
13. Sir Peter King, the present Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
And many others.
I shall take the north part of this county in my return from Cornwall; so
I must now lean to the south--that is to say, to the South Coast--for in
going on indeed we go south-west.
About twenty-two miles from Exeter we go to Totnes, on the River Dart.
This is a very good town, of some trade; but has more gentlemen in it
than tradesmen of note. They have a very fine stone bridge here over the
river, which, being within seven or eight miles of the sea, is very
large; and the tide flows ten or twelve feet at the bridge. Here we had
the diversion of seeing them catch fish with the assistance of a dog. The
case is this:--On the south side of the river, and on a slip, or narrow
cut or channel made on purpose for a mill, there stands a corn-mill; the
mill-tail, or floor for the water below the wheels, is wharfed up on
either side with stone above high-water mark, and for above twenty or
thirty feet in length below it on that part of the river towards the sea;
at the end of this wharfing is a grating of wood, the cross-bars of which
stand bearing inward, sharp at the end, and pointing inward towards one
another, as the wires of a mouse-trap.
When the tide flows up, the fish can with ease go in between the points
of these cross-bars, but the mill being shut down they can go no farther
upwards; and when the water ebbs again, they are left behind, not being
able to pass the points of the grating, as above, outwards; which, like a
mouse-trap, keeps them in, so that they are left at the bottom with about
a foot or a foot and a half of water. We were carried hither at low
water, where we saw about fifty or sixty small salmon, about seventeen to
twenty inches long, which the country people call salmon-peal; and to
catch these the person who went with us, who was our landlord at a great
inn next the bridge, put in a net on a hoop at the end of a pole, the
pole going cross the hoop (which we call in this country a shove-net).
The net being fixed at one end of the place, they put in a dog (who was
taught his trade beforehand) at the other end of the place, and he drives
all the fish into the net; so that, only holding the net still in its
place, the man took up two or three and thirty salmon-peal at the first
time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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