Leaving Exeter, my farthest western longitude at present, I steered my course back again along the sea-side, inwrapped in contemplation with the poet, _Undæ quæ vestris pulsatis littora lymphis, Littora quæ dulces auras diffunditis agris!_ +Virg.+ [Sidenote: +Honey-Ditches.+ _a Camp_. Nor could I think myself alone, when so much new entertainment was presented to me every minute. Much rock-samphire grows upon these cliffs. The Roman road seems to have crossed the Otter at Hertford. At Woodbury is a camp. I passed by Sidmouth, and came to Seaton, a little village upon the mouth of the river Ax. This Mr. Camden conjectures to have been the Roman _Moridunum_, and with reason: it has been a great haven and excellent port, of which they still keep up the memory: the river runs in a large valley, having high ground on each side: the shore is rocky, high and steep, consisting of the ends of hills which here run north and south: the ground at bottom under the rocks is marly; the waves wash it down perpetually, undermining the _strata_ of stone, which from time to time fall down in great parcels. At present this haven mouth, which is a good half-mile over, is filled up with beach, as they call it; that is, coggles, gravel, sand, shells, and such matter as is thrown up by the roll of the ocean: so that the river water has but a very narrow passage on the east side under the cliff. The beach was covered over with _papaver luteum corniculatum_, now in blossom: the people in the isle of Portland call it _squat maw_, i. e. bruise herb, and use it in that case, no doubt with good success, where both intentions are answered, of dissolving the coagulated blood, and easing pain. On the west side, near Seaton, upon a little eminence is a modern ruined square _Pharos_ built of brick; they remember it sixteen foot high; and two guns lie there. They say there were formerly many great foundations of houses visible nearer the sea than the present town, but now swallowed up; and in all likelihood there stood the Roman city. More inward toward the land, beyond the great bank of beach, is a marsh which the sea has made, landing itself up when its free flux was hindered: this is full of salt-pans, into which they take the sea-water at high tides. When they dig these places they find innumerable keels and pieces of vessels, with nails, pitch, anchors, &c. six or eight foot deep, because it was formerly part of the haven: anchors have been found as high as Axminster, and beyond it, though now there is no navigation at all: so great a change has Time produced in the face of Nature, upon these confines of the two great elements always opposing each other. _Sic volvenda ætas commutat tempora rerum._ +Lucr. V.+