Here and onwards to Upright Cliff and Hartland Quay, the furious wash of the Atlantic is supremely noticeable, and has carved out the face of the land in fantastic manner. Pillared rocks, styled by some imaginative geographer the “Cow and Calf,” astonish by their bold aspect, and still more by their want of resemblance to Calf or Cow. Follows then the hollow of Smoothlands, with Damehole Point; on the very verge, as it would seem, of becoming an island, through the violence of the sea eating away the softer parts of the rock. Beyond this, the hollow of Black Mouth, well named from its inky rock ledges, opens, with an enchanting view inland, up a wooded valley, where a noble mansion may be seen in the distance. That is “Hartland Abbey,” the country residence so-called. Here, in the beautiful valley that, with its broad, level bottom, is more than a “combe,” Gytha, wife of Earl Godwin and mother of the unfortunate King Harold, who lost life and kingdom at the Battle of Hastings, founded a college of secular canons, as a thank-offering to God and St. Nectan for the preservation of her husband from shipwreck. In the reign of Henry the Second, this establishment was re-founded by Geoffry de Dynham as a monastery under Augustine rule; and through the centuries it prospered in this remote valley progressively enriched by the pious and the wicked alike: by the pious out of their piety, and by the wicked by way of compounding for their sins. And at last it ended in the usual confiscating way which makes the story of the monasteries in the time of Henry the Eighth seem to some so unmerited a tragedy, and to others a tardy, but well-earned retribution. From the Abbot who surrendered Hartland Abbey and its lands to Henry the Eighth, the property went by royal gift to one whose own name was, curiously enough, Abbott. From him it descended in turn to the Luttrells, the Orchards, and the Bucks, who in 1858 changed their name to Stucley. It was an Orchard who in 1779 built the existing mansion, that is seated so comfortably in the sheltered green strath, away from the winds rioting on those exposed uplands from which we have just now descended. He built in that allusive architectural style for which one may coin the word “ecclesiesque”; a midway halting between church architecture and domestic. Strange to say, he retained the Early English cloisters of the old Abbey, and here they are to this day. [Illustration: HARTLAND POINT.]