barely a mile east of Lynton on the coast
there is told a different story: there is a valley of rocks, where
between two ridges of hills the vale is covered with stones and almost
completely laid bare, a terrific mass of boulders, the very skeleton of
the earth. Overhanging the sea is the gigantic "Castle Rock," while
facing it from the inland side, at an elbow of the valley, is a queer
pile of crags known as the "Devil's Cheese-Ring." From the castle is a
view over the sea and of the romantic towns, with the little river
flowing alongside and the tower on Lynmouth beach, while far westward
the moorland spreads away towards those other romantic spots, Ilfracombe
and Clovelly.

COMBE MARTIN AND ILFRACOMBE.

[Illustration: ILFRACOMBE.]

Let us skirt along the precipitous Devonshire coast westward from the
Lyn, where the cliffs rise high and abruptly from the water, with
foliage on the hills above them and sheep browsing like little white
specks beyond. Thus Exmoor is prolonged westward in a broad and lofty
ridge of undulating hills, through which a stream occasionally carves
its devious course in a deep and sheltered valley that comes out to the
sea between bold, rocky headlands. Far out over the sea loom up the
coasts of Wales in purple clouds. Soon in a breach in the wall of crags
we find Combe Martin, its houses dotted among the gardens and orchards
clustering thickly around the red stone church. Here were silver-mines
long ago, and here lived Martin of Tours, to whom William the Conqueror
granted the manor which to this day bears his name. The neighboring
hills grow the best hemp in Devon, and the crags guarding the harbor are
known as the Great and Little Hangman, the former, which is the higher,
standing behind the other. The local tradition says that once a fellow
who had stolen a sheep was carrying the carcase home on his back, having
tied the hind legs together around his neck. He paused for breath at the
top of the hill, and, resting against a projecting slab, poised the
carcase on the top, when it suddenly slipped over and garroted him. He
was afterwards found dead, and thus named the hills. Near here was born,
in 1522, Bishop Jewel of Salisbury, of whom it is recorded by that
faithful biographer Fuller that he "wrote learnedly, preached painfully,
lived piously, died peacefully." To the westward are Watersmouth, with
its natural arch in the slaty rocks bordering the sea, and Hillsborough
rising boldly to