it another tiny piazza, bordered by granite pillars. Inside
'linen-pattern' panelling lines the walls; there are carved seats all
round the upper end, and in the council-chamber beyond are some
fragments of fine moulding.

Before leaving the town, a curious custom practised in the eighteenth
century must be mentioned--that of taking dogs to help in catching
salmon. Defoe came here in his travels in the West, and saw the fish
being caught. The fish, he says, in the flowing tide swim into a 'cut,
or channel,' which has a 'grating of wood, the cross-bars of which ...
stand pointing inward towards one another.... We were carried thither at
low water, where we saw about fifty or sixty small salmon, about
seventeen to twenty inches long, which the country people call
salmon-peel,' caught by putting in a net at the end of a pole. 'The net
being fixed at one end of the place, they put in a dog (who was taught
his trade beforehand) at the other end of the place, and he drives all
the fish into the net, so that, only holding the net still in its place,
the man took up two or three and thirty salmon-peel at the first time.'
He finishes the story by saying that they bought some for dinner at
twopence apiece. 'And for such fish, not at all bigger, and not so
fresh, I have seen six and sixpence each given at a London fish-market.'

The river leaves Totnes in broad, sweeping curves between the hills, and
rolls on past the lovely woods of Sharpham, and on its course to
Dartmouth passes the early homes of two men who each played a part in
English history. At Sandridge, close to the river, lived Captain John
Davies, or Davis, whose name is familiar as the discoverer of Davis's
Straits. Prince, who himself lived not far away, takes the fascination
of Dartmouth, and the longing for the sea that Dartmouth seemed to
inspire, as quite natural, and says casually that, living so near this
town, 'Mr Davis had ... a kind of invitation, to put himself early to
sea.'

These were in the days when the Merchant Adventurers were at the height
of their importance and prosperity, and it was in the hope of opening up
a trade for the woollen goods of the West-country with India and China
that Captain Davis set out to look for the North-West Passage.

To face all the hazards of this journey, so very far away from
civilization, and the perils and shocks that might await him in the
frozen North, he fitted out a little fleet which consisted of the 'Barke
_