IN WHICH THE READER IS MADE ACCOMPLICE TO A MISPRISION OF FELONY.


Those who only know the river Taw as he goes sweeping, clear and full,
past orchards and farmhouses, by woods and parks, and through long
green meadows, after he has left Dartmoor, have little idea of the
magnificent scene which rewards the perseverance of anyone who has the
curiosity to follow him up to his granite cradle between the two
loftiest eminences in the West of England.

On the left, Great Cawsand heaves up, down beyond down, a vast sheet of
purple heath and golden whin, while on the right the lofty serrated
ridge of Yestor starts boldly up, black against the western sky,
throwing a long shadow over the wild waste of barren stone at his feet.

Some Scotchmen, perhaps, may smile at my applying the word
"magnificent" to heights of only 2,100 feet. Yet I have been among
mountains which double Ben Nevis in height, and, with the exception of
the Murray Gates in Australia, and a glen in Madeira, whose name I have
forgotten, I have never seen among them the equal of some of the
northern passes of Dartmoor for gloomy magnificence. For I consider
that scenery depends not so much on height as on abruptness.

It is an evil, depressing place. Far as the eye can reach up the glen
and to the right it is one horrid waste of grey granite; here and there
a streak of yellow grass or a patch of black bog; not a tree nor a
shrub within the sky-line. On a hot summer's day it is wearisome enough
for the lonely angler to listen to the river crawling lazily through
the rocks that choke his bed, mingled with the clocking of some
water-moved boulder, and the chick-chick of the stonechat, or the scream