Dripping out of this black eerie pool, which in my youth had stimulated the then lively imaginations of the turf-cutters from Challacombe, who almost alone ever set eyes on it, to some racy superstitions, the Barle in a few miles becomes a stream of consequence, and during its passage through the moor has all the wild charm of a moorland river still struggling in its cradling hills. Within the writer's memory, which goes back to the time before Exmoor was discovered by the tourist and the up-country stag hunter, great changes have come over this country of the Upper Barle and Exe. The heather, which once held the black game in considerable numbers, has sensibly diminished before draining and increased sheep-grazing. Bank enclosures have eaten deep into the once wild fringes of the moor; but the solitude and the silence still remain. The curlew still calls in the breeding season upon the long ridges above the Barle; the ponies and the little horned sheep of the moor, and the black-faced Highlander still have the waste to themselves. Simonsbath, the little metropolis of Exmoor forest, with its church, vicarage, manor-house, and shepherd's cottages, at one time occupied mainly by Scotsmen, sits upon the Barle. All this country and that about the Upper Exe is now familiar, in fact, to the great numbers of persons who in one way or another follow the chase of the stag, and, in name, to far more who read the voluminous literature on the subject. It is curious to recall Exmoor before it became the fashion, when its very name conveyed no meaning in ordinary company, when a strange face on the banks of the Upper Barle was a cause of astonishment, when the villages on the moor edge were rich in original characters, content with a tri-weekly post, and quite independent of newspapers. Most of the moor, including the Exe and Barle, is just within the county of Somerset. Just below Dulverton, on the Barnstaple and Taunton line, noted now as a stag-hunting quarter, the Barle and Exe join, passing at the same moment into the county of Devon. Thence through a pleasant pastoral and agricultural country with less hurry and commotion than the majority of Devonshire rivers under the name of the Exe, the river flows by Tiverton to Exeter. Beneath that ancient cathedral city it winds with broad and slow current, and, meeting the tide, becomes a navigable river; while its wide estuary, as it flows into the sea between Exmouth and Dawlish, is familiar to every traveller on the Great Western main line which skirts its shores.