I had been on Dartmoor, too; but of that noble moorland
range so much has been said and sung of late, that I really am afraid
it is becoming somewhat cockney and trite. Far and wide I had
wandered, rod in hand, becoming a boy again in the land of my
boyhood, till, once more at Ilfracombe, opposite me sat Claude
Mellot, just beginning to bloom again into cheerfulness.
We were on the point of starting for Morte, and so round to Saunton
Court, and the sands beyond it; where a Clovelly trawler, which we
had chartered for the occasion, had promised to send a boat on shore
and take us off, provided the wind lay off the land.
But, indeed, the sea was calm as glass, the sky cloudless azure; and
the doubt was not whether we should be able to get on board through
the surf, but whether, having got on board, we should not lie till
nightfall, as idle
'As a painted ship,
Upon a painted ocean.'
And now behold us on our way up lovely combes, with their green
copses, ridges of rock, golden furze, fruit-laden orchards, and
slopes of emerald pasture, pitched as steep as house-roofs, where the
red longhorns are feeding, with their tails a yard above their heads;
and under us, seen in bird's-eye view, the ground-plans of the little
snug farms and homesteads of the Damnonii, 'dwellers in the valley,'
as we West-countrymen were called of old.
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