iant tapestry
of ferns and ivies and blossoming vines. Even the roofs are covered with
flowers; every cranny bears a blossom or a tuft of green. Then above,
long stretches of barren heath (with a few twisted and wind-tortured
trees), where the sheep pasture and the sky-lark sings, and in and out
of the red-fronted cliffs the querulous sea-gulls flash in the sunshine,
and make their plaintive moan. Near Lynton there is the famous Valley of
Rocks, where the wise woman, _Mother Melldrum_, had her winter quarters
under the Devil's Cheese-wring.

[Illustration: xiv.jpg Cheese-wring]

The irregular pile of rocks that goes by this name is wrongly called
Cheese-_ring_ (or _scoop_) in some editions of "Lorna Doone," instead
of Cheese-_wring_ or (_press_), which it somewhat resembles in shape.
Southey began the fortune of Lynton as a watering-place, and wrote
a glowing description of the village and the Valley of Rocks. Of the
latter he says: "A palace of the pre-Adamite 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 subsided." Great bowlders,
half hidden by the bracken, lie about in wildest confusion; the remains
of what seem to be Druidic circles can be traced here and there, and it
is hard to persuade one's self that the ragged towers and picturesque
piles of rock are not the work of Cyclopean architects.

"Our home-folk always call it the 'Danes,' or the 'Denes,' which is no
more, they tell me, than a hollow place, even as the word 'den' is,"
says _John Ridd_. "It is a pretty place," he adds, "though nothing to
frighten any body, unless he hath lived in a gallipot." The valley is
well protected from the wind, and "there is shelter and dry fern-bedding
and folk to be seen in the distance from a bank whereon the sun shines."
Here _John Ridd_ came to consult the wise woman toward the end of March,
while the weather was still cold and piercing. In the warm days of
summer she lived "in a pleasant cave facing the cool side of the hill,
far inland, near Hawkridge, and close over Tarr-steps--a wonderful
crossing of Barle River, made (as every body knows) by Satan for a
wager." But the antiquarians of to-day assert that the curious steps
were made by the early British.

Not far beyond the Valley of Rocks are the grounds of Ley Abbey, a
modern mansion, but occupying the site of Lev Manor, to whose owner,
_Baron de Whichehalse, John Ridd_ ac