Philp was a dyer who in 1857 determined to leave his dyeing and go in for quarrying, and to this end purchased a plot of land here of the Commissioners for the enclosure of Waste Lands. He soon got to work, and in the following January the cave “discovered” itself by engulfing a quarrying tool that Philp in person was using. He explored the place and found it to be a tunnel running fifty feet into the hill, with a further gallery at the end, in another direction. Stalagmite made a continuous covering on the floor, and from it projected bones which scientific men who soon flocked to the spot proclaimed to be those of reindeer and cave-bears. Among them were the flint implements of prehistoric man, who seems never to have returned for them, for his bones are not among the remains. Perhaps one of the hyænas of Kent’s Cavern cut him off, untimely. I think the ten miles (for it is not an inch less) round from Mudstone Bay to Kingswear is the loneliest, and the most scrambly and tiring, coast climb in South Devon. Rocks succeed sands, and sands follow rocks; headlands alternating with bays, and ups with downs. Now you face west, now south, then something betwixt and between; and if you don’t quite box the compass, you do so very nearly. Every coombe, every headland, has a name, but they are all of a likeness: Sharkham Point, Southdown Head, Man Sands, Crab Rock Point, Long Sands, Scabbacombe Sands, Down Head, Ivy Cove, Pudcombe Cove, Kelly’s Cove, and Froward Point. Not a soul will you see, not a house, save the coastguards and their station and cottages at Man Sands. And this is overcrowded England! Off Froward Point, black and splintered and well-named, is yet another Mewstone, with a companion, the Cat Stone; and the Black Rock some distance out. From here we turn gradually round and come by Mill Bay, under the tall white day-mark on the hill-top, to Kingswear Castle. [Illustration: DARTMOUTH CASTLE AND THE CHURCH OF ST. PETROX, FROM KINGSWEAR.] CHAPTER XIX DARTMOUTH The cheapest ferry in England is that which takes you across from Kingswear to Dartmouth. In point of fact, there are two: the pontoon-like affair that plies from the ferry-slip, and the Great Western Railway’s steamer, conveying passengers between Kingswear station and Dartmouth Quay. The fare for one person is merely a humble halfpenny. It is a romantic way of entering Dartmouth, which lies across there, down by the water’s edge, with great hills rising in the background, and the smoke from Dartmouth’s thousand chimneys ascending visibly, like some great incense-offering. From this point of view you perceive the essential justness of that ancient foreigner’s report when, sent to spy upon the chances of surprising Dartmouth, he declared that the hills were its walls.