The navvies made things unpleasant here, while the line was building. My grandfather writes to my father on 17 November 1864:--“More than a hundred discharged on Monday, and a pretty row there was: drunk altogether, and fighting altogether, except one couple fought in the meadows for an hour and got badly served, I hear. The same night the villains stole all poor old *****’s fowls. He had them under lock and key, but they broke in and took the whole, young and old.... There is not a fowl or egg to be got hereabout.” Writing on 29 March 1865, he describes a visit from a drunken navvy the day before--“about as fine a built tall likely a fellow as you ever saw, and nicknamed the Bulldog.” He asked for meat and drink, and was sent empty away. “I learnt that he worked Saturday and Monday, and received 5_s._ 6_d._ for the two days, slept in a barn and spent all his earnings at the public-house.... Not long after I saw the policeman who belongs to the line--not the Lustleigh man--and he said, ‘If anything of the kind occurs again, send for me, and I will soon put all right.’ But he spends all his time on the line keeping the navvies in order; and before he can be got mischief may be done.” One of the dogs here had been poisoned by meat thrown her by a navvy, 22 September 1864. After that, he kept a revolver. Now that the cuttings and embankments are all overgrown and covered with verdure, one can hardly realize how hideous it all looked, when they were raw and glaring. In that respect this was the worst piece of the line, as there are four cuttings here in less than a mile, and embankments almost all the way between them. But some of the viaducts and bridges are worthy of all praise. Just below here the line crosses and re-crosses the Wrey at a height of rather more than forty feet above the stream, first on a viaduct of two arches and then on a viaduct of three. And these are built of granite, and so well proportioned, that there would be many pictures of them, could they be transferred to Italy and attributed to Roman or Etruscan builders. A little further up there is a splendid archway, where the road goes underneath the line before ascending Caseleigh hill. The line was intended to curve round the outer slope of Caseleigh hill instead of cutting through it; but the curve was condemned as dangerous on so steep a gradient. And the plans were altered, to the disadvantage of the scenery, and also of the shareholders, as the cuttings were very costly. The old people here would often speak of London as though it stood upon a hill. And they could give a reason:--“Folk always tell of going _up_ to London.” When the railway came, it was perplexing. This portion of the line ascends about 400 feet in about six miles, with gradients of as much as 1 in 40. Yet up trains went down, and down trains up.