was shut up a prisoner by
Cromwell. Prynne had been pilloried, shorn of his ears, and imprisoned
by King Charles I. for his denunciations of the court, and then
indulging in the same criticism of the Protector, he was confined at
Dunster. It is now the head-quarters for those who love the exciting
pleasures of stag-hunting on Exmoor.

[Illustration: ON PORLOCK MOOR--THE ROAD TO OARE.]

[Illustration: THE DOONE VALLEY.]

Journeying westward over the hills from Minehead, which is just now
endeavoring, though with only partial success, to convert itself into a
fashionable watering-place, Dunkery Beacon is seen raising its head
inland--a brown, heathy moorland elevated seventeen hundred feet above
the sea. There is a grand panorama disclosed from its summit, though it
is a toilsome ascent to get up there and overlook the fifteen counties
it can display. Far below is the level shore of Porlock Bay, with the
little village set in at the base of the cliffs. Here Southey was
sheltered at its inn, and wrote a sonnet while he was "by the unwelcome
summer rain detained;" and here the village has slept ever since the
Danes harried and Harold burned it. Then the road climbs laboriously up
the hill again to Porlock Moor, and as the top is reached, far away is
seen a little grassy basin running like a streak off towards the
north-west, and enclosed by steep hills, in which it is ultimately lost.
This is the valley of the Lyn, and joining it is another little glen,
with a hamlet of white cottages at the junction: this is the Oare
valley, the centre of some of the most stirring traditions of Exmoor,
embodied in Blackmore's novel of _Lorna Doone_. Two centuries ago a
lawless clan established themselves in this lonely glen, from which
issues the Bagworthy Water not far away from the little village of Oare.
Here was Jan Ridd's farm, and near it the cataract of the Bagworthy
Water-slide, while above this cataract, in the recesses of Doone Glen,
was the robbers' home, whence they issued to plunder the neighboring
country. The novel tells how Jan Ridd, who was of herculean strength,
was standing with his bride Lorna at the altar of the little church in
Oare when a bullet wounded her. Out rushed Jan from the presence of his
wife, dead as he thought, to pursue the murderer. He was unarmed, and
rode after him over the moorland, tearing from an oak a mighty bough as
he passed under it. To this day the rent in "Jan Ridd's tree" is shown.
Then