'not broken into the usual layers of soft beds alternating with hard
layers'--forms the great masses of rock on Hey Tor, and these have not
weathered into strange, jagged outlines. William Howitt wrote a charming
description of Hey Tor in his 'Rural Life of England,' from which I
quote a few lines: 'Below, the deep dark river went sounding on its way
with a melancholy music, and as I wound up the steep road all beneath
the gnarled oaks, I ever and anon caught glimpses of the winding valley
to the left, all beautiful with wild thickets and half-shrouded faces of
rock, and still on high these glowing ruddy tors standing in the blue
air in their sublime silence. My road wound up and up, the heather and
bilberry on either hand.'

A 'wonder' which has been associated with the Druids is the grove of
oaks called Wistman's Wood. It lies close to Two Bridges, on the slope
above the West Dart, and at a little distance looks more like a
furze-brake than a wood. All the oaks are dwarfs, stunted by the lack of
soil and force of the winds. Mr Rowe quotes from a 'botanical writer,'
who examined some of them: 'The bole of this tree was about three feet
high, and its total height to the topmost branches fifteen feet. The
circumference of the trunk was six feet, and its prime must have been
about the date of the Norman Conquest.' Some of the boughs, like the
trunks, are immensely thick for the height of the trees, and they are
covered with very deep cushions of bright green moss and hangings of
polypody, and whortleberries grow upon them. Every step between the
trees is perilous, among the uneven crowded masses of rocks and
half-concealed clefts. Many of the boulders are moss-covered, a kind of
sedge and long, flag-like grass spring among the crevices and add to the
pitfalls, and the whole wood really has the air of having been
bewitched. Mrs Bray's impressions of it are interesting. She found the
slope 'strewn' all over with immense masses of granite.... In the midst
of these gigantic blocks, growing among them, or starting, as it were,
from their interstices, arises wildly, and here and there widely
scattered, _a grove of dwarf oak-trees_.... They spread far and wide at
their tops, and their branches twist and bend in the most tortuous
manner; sometimes reminding one of those strange things called
mandrakes, of which there is a superstition noticed by Shakespeare--

'"Like shrieking mandrakes torn from out the earth."'

Though so