who had been the favourite retainers at Ley, never prospered after. When
their master left Lynton they moved to West Leymouth, as the modern
Lynmouth was called then, and employed themselves in the herring-curing
industry, which the cottagers said failed because Babb was engaged in
it; and years after his granddaughter, Ursula Babb, was pointed out as
the last of the race with the curse on it, and, as she was reported to
possess the evil eye, became a great object of fear to all around.'

John Wichehalse and his wife went to London, and wasted their goods
until he died, when the mortgages were foreclosed, and no property in
Lynton was left to the family. The melancholy fate of their daughter
Mary may have suggested the more romantic story of Janifred. Mary
Wichehalse married, but later returned to Lynton, where, under the care
of a faithful servant, she spent her time wandering over the cliffs
looking at the lost inheritance. Some say that she fell off the rocks,
and others that she was washed away by the tide, but both accounts agree
that she was drowned.

The Valley of Rocks is wild, grand, and rather dreary, 'all crags and
pinnacles.' Southey was deeply impressed by it: 'Imagine a narrow vale
between two ridges of hills somewhat steep; the southern hill turfed;
the vale, which runs from east to west, covered with huge stones and
fragments of stone among the fern that fills it; the northern ridge
completely bare, excoriated of all turf and all soil, the very bones and
skeletons of the earth; rock reclining upon rock, stone piled upon
stone, a huge terrific mass--a palace of the preAdamite kings, a city of
the Anakim, must have appeared so shapeless, and yet so like the ruins
of what had been shaped after the waters of the flood had subsided. I
ascended with some toil the highest point; two large stones inclining on
each other formed a rude portal on the summit. Here I sat down. A little
level platform, about two yards long, lay before me, and then the eye
immediately fell upon the sea, far, very far below. I never felt the
sublimity of solitude before.' Names have been given to the great
rock-masses. The Castle Rock looks far over the sea, the Devil's
Cheesewring is on the inner side of the valley, and there are many
others. A narrow path cut in the deep descent of the cliffs leads from
the valley, 'where screes and boulders, red and grey and orange, covered
for the most part with lichen or tendrils of ground-ivy, le