NOT so much smuggling incident as might be expected is found along the coasts of Dorset and Devon, but that is less on account of any lack of smuggling encounters in those parts than because less careful record has been kept of them. An early epitaph on a smuggler, to be seen in the churchyard of Kinson, just within the Dorset boundary, in an out-of-the-way situation at the back of Bournemouth, in a district formerly of almost trackless heaths, will sufficiently show that smuggling was active here: To the memory of Robert Trotman, late of Rowd, in the county of Wilts, who was barbarously murdered on the shore near Poole, the 24th March, 1765. A little tea, one leaf I did not steal, For guiltless bloodshed I to God appeal; Put tea in one scale, human blood in t’other And think what ’tis to slay a harmless brother. This man was shot in an encounter with the revenue officers. He was one of a gang that used the church here as a hiding-place. The upper stage of the tower and an old altar-tomb were the favourite receptacles for their “free-trade” merchandise. Trotman, it will be observed, was of Rowd, or Rowde, in Wiltshire, two miles from Devizes, and was thus one of the “Wiltshire Moonrakers,” whose descriptive title is due to smuggling history. Among the nicknames conferred upon the natives of our various shires and counties none is complimentary. They figure forth undesirable physical attributes, as when the Lincolnshire folk, dwellers among the fens, are styled “Yellow-bellies,” _i.e._ frogs; or stupidity, _e.g._ “Silly Suffolk”; or humbug—for example, “Devonshire Crawlers.” “Wiltshire Moonrakers” is generally considered to be a term of contempt for Wilts rustic stupidity; but, rightly considered, it is nothing of the kind. It all depends how you take the story which gave rise to it. The usual version tells us how a party of travellers, crossing a bridge in Wiltshire by night when the harvest moon was shining, observed a group of rustics raking in the stream, in which the great yellow disc of the moon was reflected. The travellers had the curiosity to ask them what it was they raked for in such a place and at so untimeous an hour; and were told they were trying to get “that cheese”—the moon—out of the water. The travellers went on their way amused with the simplicity of these “naturals,” and spread the story far and wide.