ship full of Spanish gold, waiting to hear from the illustrious lady, who was actually his business partner in the venture, whether she intended to disown him and cut his head off as a pirate or amicably divide the spoils. We know at any rate which she did. Nowhere in Devonshire would the stranger be able to command so much that is beautiful and interesting in this county, and make a wider acquaintance with Devonshire streams than at Tavistock, since this town is not merely on the South Western main line from Exeter to Plymouth, but is also served by its rival the Great Western. Not only the moor itself, whose swelling tors, each capped with their mysterious cluster of upstanding crags, but the district, is richer than any part of Devon in prehistoric remains, in "round huts," Cytiau Gwaeddeold, as the Welsh call them, in crosses and inscribed stones. The churches, though ancient and interesting, are not often ornate, owing, it is supposed, to the difficulty of carving the hard granite of which they are composed. But high above all, on the sharp summit of Brent Tor, between the Tavy and the Lydd, is the most wonderfully situated church in Devonshire, nay in England. A couple of ruined castles in Wales, that of Dinas Bran above the Dee at Llangollen, and Cerrig Cennen near the Towy at Llandilo, alone within my knowledge have such pride of pose. But no church in which service is still held in the whole kingdom approaches this "cloud compelling" shrine of North Brent. The main line to Exeter passes beneath it, and space limits me here to a mere passing mention of the gorgeous view which may be had even from the train window of the Okement, as fresh from the wild foot of Yes Tor, the highest peak of Dartmoor, it glitters down the rich luxuriant vale to Okehampton, with the towers of a ruined castle, in real Welsh fashion, perched high above its streams. The Okement, and its greater neighbour and cradle companion the Taw, are the only Dartmoor rivers that flow north into the "Severn Sea," that euphonious term which Kingsley substituted whenever possible for the infelicitous and unpoetic designation of "Bristol Channel." This is natural, for North Devon offers the shorter course; much more natural, indeed, than the forsaking of Exmoor itself upon the north coast for southern seas, as do the Exe and Barle. Many a time, in days now unhappily remote, both in winter and summer have I looked down from the high bogs, where the Barle rises over the whole sweep of the Channel and the shadowy mountains of South Wales beyond it, and fancied these united rivers as rejecting the brief inglorious career which seemed their destiny, and facing southwards into strange lands to win a foremost place in volume and importance among the rivers of the West. Fancy too might credit the Tamar, born within sound of the Severn Sea, with the same vaulting ambition.