ting what must have been an
unsatisfactory letter to Colonel Seymour, in answer to a request for
more men, speaks of the troops sent to help the defenders: 'Your desire
and expectance of supply is most just and reasonable. Having been
exhausted of men by the Prince, and having sent to the relief of
Appledore, by His Majesty's command, 500 under Colonel Apsley ... I am
not able to give you the least assistance at present.' And Sir Hugh
Pollard, writing at the same time, mentions that Colonel Apsley's force
will meet 'a many of Doddington's horse at Chimleigh, to the relief of
the fort at Appledore, which is straitly besieged by those of
Barnstaple.'

The garrison consisted of forty Cornishmen, and before the siege was
raised they were 'much straitened both for dread and fresh water.' They
were particularly badly off because 'a certain colonel, who is
stigmatized covertly as "no Cornishman," had been entrusted with the
victualling of the fort, but had neglected his duty.'

Close to the sea, on the west, lies Westward Ho!--a tiny (and modern)
watering-place, named after Kingsley's famous book. Along the western
shore as far as the Taw stretch Northam Burrows, covered for some
distance by a fine elastic turf that is far-famed, and by patches of
rushes. Beyond the golf-links the ground breaks into sand-hills, all
hillocks and hollows of pure sand, soft and yielding, dented by every
footstep, set with rushes and spangled with crane's-bill, yellow
bedstraw, tiny purple scented thyme-flowers, and a kind of spurge.

Both sand-hills and common are protected from the sea by the well-known
Pebble Ridge, which stretches for two miles in a straight line. It is a
mass--fifty feet wide and twenty feet high--of large, smooth, rolled
slate-stones, some being two feet across, though most of them are
smaller.

Turning westwards along the coast, Lundy is often to be seen like a
faint blue cloud on the horizon, especially when a softening haze hovers
over the land--but on a clear day it is very distinct. And on a fine
evening, when the dim blue twilight is creeping up on every side, it has
the very air of an enchanted island against the radiant crimson that for
a few moments spreads and glows in the west after sundown.

A little distance farther on is Portledge, 'the most antient seat of the
name and family of Coffin,' says Prince; and he mentions a boundary deed
between Richard Coffin and the Abbot of Tavistock, written 'in the Saxon