The road to Dartmouth was unusually trying; the route which we took to
Plymouth was by odds the worst of equal distance we found anywhere. We
began with a precipitous climb out of the town, up a very steep hill
over a mile long, with many sharp turns that made the ascent all the
more difficult. We were speedily lost in a network of unmarked byways
running through a distressingly poor-looking and apparently quite thinly
inhabited country. After a deal of studying the map and the infrequent
sign-boards we brought up in a desolate-looking little village, merely a
row of gray stone, slate-roofed houses on either side of the way, and
devoid of a single touch of the picturesque which so often atones for
the poverty of the English cottages. No plot of shrubbery or
flower-garden broke the gray monotony of the place. We had seen nothing
just like it in England, though some of the Scotch villages which we saw
later, matched it very well.

Here a native gave us the cheerful information that we had come over the
very road we should not have taken; that just ahead of us was a hill
where the infrequent motor cars generally stalled, but he thought that a
good strong car could make it all right. Our car tackled the hill
bravely enough, but slowed to a stop before reaching the summit; but by
unloading everybody except the driver, and with more or less coaxing and
adjusting, it was induced to try it again, with a rush that carried it
through. The grade, though very steep, was not so much of an obstacle
as the deep sand, with which the road was covered. We encountered many
steep hills and passed villages nearly as unprepossessing as the first
one before we came to the main Plymouth-Exeter road, as excellent a
highway as one could wish. It was over this that our route had
originally been outlined, but our spirit of adventure led us into the
digression I have tried to describe. It was trying at the time, but we
saw a phase of England that we otherwise would have missed and have no