and at that point turns eastwards.

The moorland country about it is very beautiful, but especially when the
heather and furze are in flower together, and far and wide stretches a
most royal display of rose-purple and gold. Ferns hang over the
transparent brown water, with its glancing lights, and tiny ferns and
polypodys peer out from the crannies and hollows of big grey boulders.
Here and there bushy willows grow along the edge, or a mountain-ash
shows its feathery, deep green foliage and clusters of scarlet berries.
A clapper bridge--that is, a bridge formed out of a single slab of
granite--over twelve feet long lies across the Wallabrook near the
meeting of the streams. Beside it grows a mountain-ash, and the
quivering and wavering leaves, and their shadows that quiver and waver
in the ripples beneath, make a profound contrast to that massive,
immovable stone, that from its look may certainly be included among
those Dartmoor antiquities which Sir Frederick Pollock says 'may very
well have been as great a mystery to the contemporaries of Julius Caesar
as they are to ourselves.' Modern opinion, however, denies that these
bridges on the moor are of a very great age. Close by on the north
stands Scorhill Circle, one of those stone circles over the history of
which antiquaries still differ.

A little farther down, on the north bank, is a tolmen, and there is a
tradition that to creep through the hole brings luck. The rock has, of
course, been associated with the Druids and their rites, but the hole is
really a natural one.

About three miles farther down the river one arrives at Chagford, and
perhaps the two things that a stranger will first notice about this
little town are, that the air is very exhilarating and the people
particularly courteous. For the rest, though not echoing Lord
Clarendon's remark, that, but for the calamity of Sidney Godolphin's
death, it is 'a place which could never otherwise have had a mention in
this world,' one must admit that it is not very remarkable. The moment
when Chagford came most violently into contact with public affairs was
that mentioned by Lord Clarendon, and most heartily must the inhabitants
have wished themselves back in their usual peaceful solitude. Sir John
Berkeley, at that time, 'with a good party, volant, of horse and
dragoons,' was descending in 'all places in the surrounding country
where Parliamentarians were known to be assembled, "dissolving" them,
and taking man