Word-painting is all very well as a pastime, but the result makes poor reading. We will, therefore, not emulate the local guide-books; which, to be sure, transcend the descriptive art so greatly as to come out at the other end, as works of unconscious humour. Thus, when in those pages we read of “Dame Nature,” and “Old Father Time,” working these miracles of landslides, we get a mental picture of a stupendous old couple that fairly takes the breath away. Moreover, the scene is compared with “the island home of Robinson Crusoe,” and likened to “the wildness of Salvator Rosa or the fairy scenes of Claude,” while “the huge boulders you can convert into sphinxes,” and find “deep and thickly wooded dingles, in which lions and tigers could lurk unseen.” Still more, we read: “If you give full scope to your imagination, you may fancy that the pale moonlight would inhabit the ruins with the spirits of those who lived in the ages of mythology.” In short, if these directions are faithfully followed, and these lions and tigers and these spirits of mythological creatures—the “Mrs. Harrises” of ancient times—are duly conjured up, the too-imaginative explorer is likely to emerge fully qualified for a lunatic asylum. The exceptional beauty of the scene does not require any of these fantastical aids to appreciation, and the hoar ivied rocks, the fairy glades, the brakes and willow woods are sufficient in themselves. The mile-long beauty of the great Dowlands Landslip having been traversed, the way lies across the down over Haven Cliff, the striking headland that shuts in Seaton from the east. CHAPTER III SEATON Down there lies Seaton, looking very new, along the inner side of a shingly beach, with the strath of the river Axe running, flat and green, up inland to the distant hills, and the silvery Axe itself looping and twisting away, as far as eye can reach. But Seaton is not so new as might be supposed. Down there, on the wall that runs along the crest of the beach, is painted in huge black letters the one word MORIDUNUM, which to passengers coming in by steamboat seems the most prominent feature in the place, and at first sight is generally taken to be the impudent advertisement of some new quack electuary, tooth-paste, hair-wash, or what not? “Use Moridunum,” you unconsciously say, “and be sure you get it”; or “Moridunum for the hair,” “Moridunum: won’t wash clothes,” and so forth. Seaton claims—and, it is evident, claims it boldly—to be the _Moridunum_ of Roman Britain; but is it? In short, seeking it here, _have_ you got it? [Illustration: SEATON: MOUTH OF THE AXE]