As It Was He Had To Tell His Joy To Some One, Though It Were To A Stranger.

Chapter Fifteen:

Summer Days on the Otter

The most characteristic district of South Devon, the greenest, most luxuriant in its vegetation, and perhaps the hottest in England, is that bit of country between the Exe and the Axe which is watered by the Clyst, the Otter, and the Sid. In any one of a dozen villages found beside these pretty little rivers a man might spend a month, a year, a lifetime, very agreeably, ceasing not to congratulate himself on the good fortune which first led him into such a garden. Yet after a week or two in this luxurious land I began to be dissatisfied with my surroundings. It was June; the weather was exceptionally dry and sultry. Vague thoughts, or "visitings" of mountains and moors and coasts would intrude to make the confinement of deep lanes seem increasingly irksome. Each day I wandered miles in some new direction, never knowing whither the devious path would lead me, never inquiring of any person, nor consulting map or guide, since to do that is to deprive oneself of the pleasure of discovery; always with a secret wish to find some exit as it were - some place beyond the everlasting wall of high hedges and green trees, where there would be a wide horizon and wind blowing unobstructed over leagues of open country to bring me back the sense of lost liberty. I found only fresh woods and pastures new that were like the old; other lanes leading to other farm-houses, each in its familiar pretty setting of orchard and garden; and, finally, other ancient villages, each with its ivy-grown grey church tower looking down on a green graveyard and scattered cottages, mostly mud-built and thatched with straw. Finding no outlook on any side I went back to the streams, oftenest to the Otter, where, lying by the hour on the bank, I watched the speckled trout below me and the dark-plumaged dipper with shining white breast standing solitary and curtseying on a, stone in the middle of the current. Sometimes a kingfisher would flash by, and occasionally I came upon a lonely grey heron; but no mammal bigger than a watervole appeared, although I waited and watched for the much bigger beast that gives the river its name. Still it was good to know that he was there, and had his den somewhere in the steep rocky bank under the rough tangle of ivy and bramble and roots of overhanging trees. One was shot by a farmer during my stay, but my desire was for the living, not a dead otter. Consequently, when the otter-hunt came with blaze of scarlet coats and blowing of brass horns and noise of barking hounds and shouts of excited people, it had no sooner got half a mile above Ottery St. Mary, where I had joined the straggling procession, than, falling behind, the hunting fury died out of me and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had been found. The frightened moorhen stole back to her spotty eggs, the dipper returned to his dipping and curtseying to his own image in the stream, and I to my idle dreaming and watching.

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