“Kind reader, judge! Here’s under laid A hopeful, young and virtuous maid, Thrown from the top of earthly pleasure Headlong; by which she’s gained a treasure. Environed with Heaven’s power, Rounded with Angels from that hour In which she fell: God took her home, Not by just law, but martyrdom. Each groan she fetched upon her bed Roar’d out aloud ‘I’m murdered!’ And shall this blood which here doth lye In vain for right and vengeance cry? Do men not think, tho’ gone from hence, Avenge God can’t her innocence? Let bad men think, so learn ye good, Live each that’s here doth cry for Blood.” This is a relic of the siege of Salcombe Castle and the military operations between Cavaliers and the Parliament troops. It seems that the Puritan soldiery, attacking a farm-house, were met with a stout resistance and fired through a window, mortally wounding the farmer’s daughter. To follow the coast from Torcross to the Start, it is necessary at this point to take to the sands, or, more strictly speaking, the shingle; extremely heavy walking, but endurable on account of the interesting rocks piled up in huge masses on the shore. The slaty cliffs have here fallen in ruins, with picturesque results. Some of the great blocks twenty feet or more in height, have sides quite smooth and lustrous. We are here in a district not indeed far removed from modern accommodation, but in the same primitive condition as it must have been a century, or even more, ago. The fine shingle gives place to a waste of laminated slate and then, where the cliffs die away for a space into a marshy bottom, to a scrubby flat piece of waste leading to the hamlet of Beesands, marked on many maps as Beeson Cellar. Beesands has a perpetual air of rejoicing, for on every fine day the waste between the sea and the one row of fishermen’s cottages flies its banners to sea and sky. It is only the domestic wash hung out to dry, but the effect is one of festival. There is a something Irish in the look and the manners and customs of Beesands. The drying-ground of washing and of fishing-nets is rich in old tins and brickbats, and is populated numerously with fowls, housed as a rule in decayed boats turned keel upward. They are the most trustful cocks and hens in the world, and follow the fishermen into the inn and the cottages like dogs.