Few are those who explore to the right hand on this upland, where Trentishoe Barrow seems to witness that, however _un_-desirable the site may really be for residences, Prehistoric Man found it eminently suitable as a burying-place. The “Great Hangman,” the crowning height of these cliffs (1187 ft.), obtains its ill-flavoured name from an ignorant perversion of _Pen an maen_: the old Cornu-British for “the Hill of the Stone,” namely, a rude, post-like monolith, standing something over five feet high. The “Pen” was lost in course of time and “an-maen” became by degrees “Hangman,” when the legend that now attaches to the stone was duly invented to account for the name. According to this thoroughly unveracious story, which old Fuller, who does not appear to have disbelieved it, no doubt heard from the peasantry, a sheep-stealer was crossing the hill with a sheep slung over his back, and sat down here to rest awhile, and, doing so, the sheep in its struggles slipped, and the rope tightening round the man’s neck, he was strangled. Two difficulties, however, meet us here (supposing, for the moment, we take this tale seriously)--(1) How the sheep-stealer could have sat down to rest on a post over five feet high, and (2) How this strangling accident could possibly in any way have happened. Probably we may be met with the reply that the standing-stone is merely a monument of the affair, but the final quietus should be given the legend by the fact that there are numerous tales identical in every respect, all over England: and it is unthinkable that sheep-stealers were always being accidentally hanged in such numbers--and in a manner demonstrably impossible. This region between Heddon’s Mouth and Great Hangman Point is without doubt the most inaccessible nook along the coast. Roads avoid the neighbourhood of the gigantic cliffs that for the most part go sheer down into the sea, without sands or beaches at their base, six or seven hundred feet. And the combes, mouths, and valleys, that here and there let down some streams to the sea, are, if on a smaller scale than the gorge of Heddon’s Mouth, even more rugged and difficult of exploration. Sherracombe--or “Sherry-come-out,” as the fishermen name it--is particularly notable for its stream that, rushing down this cleave in the hills, pours out in a fall of seventy feet over the rock-face. Somewhat east of it, over the hillside and down a perilous climb, is “Wild Pear Beach,” a lonely spot overhung with brambles and hawthorn bushes: the haws upon the thorns in autumn being the “wild pears” in question.