This Is Founded On The Gradual Encroachment Of The Sea, Which Is A Fact,
But It Will Be Some Time Yet Before Masts Are Seen At Williton.
At Dunster there is a curious mill which has two wheels, overshot, one in
front of the other, and both driven by the same sluice.
It as very hot as
we stood by the wheels; the mill dust came forth and sprinkled the
foliage so that the leaves seemed scarce able to breathe; it drifted
almost to the stream hard by, where trout were watching under a cloud of
midges dancing over the ripples. They look as if entangled in an
inextricable maze, but if you let your eye travel, say to the right, as
you would follow the flight of a bird, you find that one side of the
current of insects flies up that way, and the other side returns. They go
to and fro in regular order, exactly like the fashionable folk in Rotten
Row, but the two ranks pass so quickly that looked at both together the
vision cannot separate them, they are faster than the impression on the
retina.
At Selworthy a footpath leads up through a wood on Selworthy Hill, and as
it ascends, always at the side of the slope, gradually opens out what is
perhaps the finest view of Dunkery Beacon, the Dunkery range, and that
edge of Exmoor on to the shore of the sea. Across the deep vale the
Exmoor mountains rise and reach on either hand, immense breadths of dark
heather, deep coombes filled with black shadow, and rounded masses that
look dry and heated.
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