St. Marychurch would probably not produce so much disfavour in the beholder were it not for its natural surroundings. This is a parable, but one easily resolved into a plain statement. The place is, in short, a bad nightmare of plaster. _Quâ_ plaster, not so very shocking, but taken in conjunction with the exceptionally lovely nature of the scenery, nothing less than a crime. A wanton, indefensible crime, too, for the neighbourhood abounds with excellent limestone, most suitable for building. I conceive there must be something radically wrong—beyond a mere error of taste—with the generations that will go out of their way to use a short-lived pretence like plaster, when limestone, calculated to last until the universe shall again be thrown into the melting-pot, offers. But there, it is done, and not unless all Torquay itself were razed to the ground, and the place begun anew, could it be remedied. Oddly enough, the first signs of enlightenment in this direction are shown by the various banks, which are being substantially and tastefully built of honest materials. The long, long streets lead past Furrow Cross, where, turning to the left, along the Babbacombe Down Road, that lovely opening, looking out upon the sea, is disclosed. Here, from the carefully railed-in cliff-edge, one looks sheer down on to the white pebble beaches of Oddicombe and Babbacombe, with winding walks through luxuriant greenery, leading hundreds of feet down to them. Red cliffs, white beaches, dark blue sea, light blue sky, and the cool green of the vegetation; what a feast of colour is the South Devon Coast! And the abounding growth of flowers and shrubs in the gardens on these heights! Geraniums, putting to shame the best efforts of ivy a-clinging and climbing: fuchsias, making growth like trees, with substantial trunks; veronica shrubs in hedges, the lovely blue masses of the heliotrope-like ceanothus, and others of the acclimatised beauties of the Southern Hemisphere: all these glories are rendered possible by the soft climate, which laps you as in cotton wool, and takes all the energy out of you, and has rendered the folk of Devon the kindly lotus-eaters they are. CHAPTER XIV BABBACOMBE—THE PEASANT SPEECH OF DEVON—ANSTEY’S COVE—KENT’S CAVERN