A poet _en deshabille_. Reduced from poetry to the matter-of-fact nomenclature of the ordnance maps, those places are Bishopsteignton, Kingsteignton, and Coombe-in-Teignhead—the “Cumeintinny” of local speech. The poet who might wish to know all the “Teign” villages and hamlets, would need to make acquaintance with Teignharvey and Stokeinteignhead, on the salt estuary; and thence find his way inland, to the back of Newton Abbot, where, beside the freshwater stream that comes prattling down from Dartmoor he shall find Teigngrace, Canonteign, and Drewsteignton. For six miles above Teignmouth the Teign runs up salt: a broad estuary at high water: above the bridge an oozy expanse of mingled sand and mud flats at low; and “Newton Marsh,” the water-logged meadows just below the market town and important railway junction of Newton Abbot. Midway is Coombe Cellars, a waterside offshoot of Coombe-in-Teignhead; a place, you perceive, even in Keats’ time, it was the recognised thing to visit and— “… have your cream All spread upon barley bread.” [Illustration: COOMBE CELLARS.] It was then a highly rustic spot; the oddest little promontory jutting out into the stream, and on it the “Ferry Boat” inn, built behind stout sea walls, and itself built of whitewashed cob, and heavily thatched. The “Cellars” were fish cellars, and the place was, and is, oddly amphibious; the inn being half farmhouse and half fisherman’s tavern, the landlord himself a farmer down to the waist, and a fisherman as to the legs and the sea-boots. At night you would find him out with the trawl-nets, to sea; at low tide in the morning cockling on the mud-flats off his inn; and in the afternoon milking the cows or urging the plough in his hillside fields. To take boat from Teignmouth Harbour, and row up on the flood to tea at Coombe Cellars, returning with the ebb, was once a delightful thing, and, with a difference, is so still; but you must not expect to be the only party there—no, not by a very long way, and you must by no means expect to get your tea, with or without Devonshire junket, strawberries and cream, or cockles, in quite so rustic a fashion or at such moderate prices as once obtained. And, although the house remains very much the same as of yore, the thatch has given place to a something less rural. CHAPTER XIII SHALDON—LABRADOR—WATCOMBE—ST. MARYCHURCH—BABBACOMBE