From Barnstaple to Dunster, and from Tiverton to Lynton, this beautiful piece of country is peculiarly rich in literary associations. Nor is this to be wondered at when we consider the variety and the loveliness of the scenery, the great open, heathery wastes of Exmoor, the wind-swept cliffs and highlands, the fair and luxuriant valleys where the pure bright waters of these hill-fed streams flow through a green tunnel of overarching trees, making a fertile paradise of flower and fern in their course. And the magnificent bold rocks and forelands of the coast, the streams broken into feathery spray falling down the precipitous face of the cliffs, creek and gully and cave, the wave-washed golden sands of the bays, or the line of foam fretting ever at the foot of these granite crags. And beyond is the sea; from every hilltop the eye turns to it, in the sheltered orchards the air is salt with it, the thunder of its great breakers on the coast can be heard far inland, an undercurrent beneath the singing of birds and the hum of bees; it is never far from the eyes or from the mind, blue as faery under a June sun, when the wheeling gulls are dazzling white flashes above it, broken into greys and greens and purples by the sudden hail of quick spring squalls, a heaving grey waste of waters under steady rain, or a wild and elemental force, terrible and splendid, under the fury of a gale. It is a land for poets and dreamers, a land to touch the fancy and stir the imagination of men, a land of beauty and of adventure. It will not, therefore, be without interest to pick up thread after thread by which the ports and hamlets, woods and waterfalls, are woven into the history of our literature. [Illustration: Dunkerry Beacon]