Every One, Too,
Complained That The Rivers Were So Low It Was Difficult To Angle.
This
circumstance, however, rendered the hues of the rocky banks more
distinct.
Sitting down to dinner by chance with two farmers, one began to
tell me how he had beguiled three trout the previous evening; and the
other described how, as he was walking in a field of his by the river, he
had seen an otter. These creatures, which are becoming sadly scarce, if
not indeed extinct in many counties, are still fairly numerous in the
waters here. I hope they will long remain so, for although they certainly
do destroy great numbers of fish, yet it must be remembered that in this
country our list of wild animals has been gradually decreasing for
centuries, and especially wild animals that show sport. The otter, I
fear, is going; I hope the sportsmen of Somerset will see that it remains
in their county, at all events, when it has become a tradition elsewhere.
Otter hounds frequently visit the rivers, and first-rate sport is
obtained. In these villages, two hundred miles from London, and often far
from the rail, some of the conditions resemble those in the United
States, where, instead of shops, 'stores' supply every article from one
counter. So here you buy everything in one shop; it is really a 'store in
the American sense. A house which seems amid fields is called 'The
Dragon;' you would suppose it an inn, but it is a shop, and has been so
ever since the olden times when every trader put out a sign. The sign has
gone, but the name remains.
Somewhere in a wood there is a stone, supposed to be a tombstone of the
prophetess Mother Shipton, and bearing an undecipherable inscription. One
of her rhymes is well remembered in the neighbourhood: -
When Watchet is all washed down
Williton shall be a seaport town.
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. To the right is the gleaming sea, and the distant
sound of the surge comes up to the wood. The headland and its three
curves boldly project into the sunlit waters; from its foot many a
gallant stag hard pressed by the hounds has swum out into the track of
passing vessels. Selworthy Woods were still in the afternoon heat; except
for the occasional rustle of a rabbit or of a pheasant, there was no
evidence of life; the sound of the sea was faint and soon lost among the
ferns. Slowly, very slowly, great Dunkery grew less hard of aspect,
shadows drew along at the base, while again the declining sun from time
to time sent his beams into valleys till now dark. The thatched house at
Holnicote by the foot of Selworthy much interested me; it is one of the
last of thatched houses inhabited by a gentleman and landed proprietor.
Sir Thomas Acland, who resides here, is a very large owner. Thatch
prevails on his estates; thatched cottages, thatched farmhouses, and his
thatched mansion. In the coolness of the evening the birds began to sing
and squirrels played across the lawn in front of Holnicote House.
Humble-bees hummed in the grass and visited the flowers of the holly
bushes. Thrushes sang, and chaffinches, and, sweetest of all, if simplest
in notes, the greenfinches talked and courted in the trees. Two cuckoos
called in different directions, wood-pigeons raised their voices in
Selworthy Wood, and rooks went over cawing in their deliberate way. In
the level meadow from among the tall grasses and white-flowering wild
parsley a landrail called 'crake, crake,' ceaselessly. There was a sense
of rest and quiet, and with it a joyousness of bird-life, such as should
be about an English homestead.
AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK.
There is an old park wall which follows the highway in all its turns with
such fidelity of curve that for some two miles it seems as if the road
had been fitted to the wall. Against it hawthorn bushes have grown up at
intervals, and in the course of years their trunks have become almost
timber. Ivy has risen round some of these, and, connecting them with the
wall, gives them at a distance the appearance of green bastions. Large
stems of ivy, too, have flattened themselves upon the wall, as if with
arched back they were striving like athletes to overthrow it.
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