Up Wembdon Hill, we come out of the town by its only residential suburb. Motor-cars have absolutely ruined this road out of Bridgwater, and on through Cannington and Nether Stowey, to Minehead and Porlock. It is a long succession of holes, interspersed with bumpy patches, and on typical summer days the air is heavy with the dust raised by passing cars; dust that has only begun to settle when another comes along, generally at an illegal speed, and raises some more. The hedges and wayside trees between Bridgwater and Nether Stowey are nowadays, from this cause, a curious and woeful sight, and the village of Nether Stowey itself is, for the same reason, made to wear a shameful draggletailed appearance. The dust off the limestone road is of the whiteness of flour, but looks, as it lies heavily on the foliage, singularly like snow. The effect of a landscape heavily enshrouded in white, under an intensely blue August sky, is unimaginably weird: as though the unthinkable—a summer snowstorm—had occurred. Cannington, whose name seems temptingly like that of Kennington—Köningtun, the King’s town—in South London, especially as it was once the property of Alfred the Great, is really the “Cantuctone,” _i.e._ Quantock town, mentioned in Alfred’s will, in which, _inter alia_, he gives the manor to his son Eadweard. [Illustration: CANNINGTON.] The village stands well above the Parret valley, and is described by Leland as a “praty uplandische” place. A stream that wanders to this side and that, and in its incertitude loses its way and distributes itself in shallow pools and between gravelly banks, over a wide area, is the traveller’s introduction to Cannington. Here a comparatively modern bridge carries the dusty highway over the stream, leaving to contemplative folk the original packhorse bridge by which in olden times the water was crossed when floods rendered impracticable the usual practice of fording it. The group formed by the tall red sandstone tower of the church seen from here, amid the trees, with the long rambling buildings of the “Anchor” inn below, and the packhorse bridge to the left, is charming. The present writer said as much to the chauffeur of a motorcar, halted here by the roadside. It seemed a favourable opportunity for testing the attitude of such an one towards scenery and these interesting vestiges of eld. “Bridge, ain’t it?” he asked, jerking a dirty finger in that direction. “Yes: that is the old packhorse bridge, in use before wheeled traffic came much this way.” “’Ow did they carry their ’eavy machinery, then?” “Our ancestors had none.” “Then what about the farm-waggons?” “They went through the stream.” “Kerridges too?” “Yes, such as the carriages of those times were.”