lorious view of the Somersetshire downs, rolling away to the distant
sea, with town and hamlet, castle turret and church tower, wooded coombe
and stretch of grain-land--as fair a scene as the eye could wish to rest
upon. As I wheeled my horse and sped upon my way I felt, my dears, that
this was a land worth fighting for, and that a man's life was a small
thing if he could but aid, in however trifling a degree, in working out
its freedom and its happiness. At a little village over the hill I fell
in with an outpost of horse, the commander of which rode some distance
with me, and set me on my road to Nether Stowey. It seemed strange to
my Hampshire eyes to note that the earth is all red in these parts--very
different to the chalk and gravel of Havant. The cows, too, are mostly
red. The cottages are built neither of brick nor of wood, but of some
form of plaster, which they call cob, which is strong and smooth so
long as no water comes near it. They shelter the walls from the rain,
therefore, by great overhanging thatches. There is scarcely a steeple in
the whole country-side, which also seems strange to a man from any other
part of England. Every church hath a square tower, with pinnacles upon
the top, and they are mostly very large, with fine peals of bells.

My course ran along by the foot of the beautiful Quantock Hills, where
heavy-wooded coombes are scattered over the broad heathery downs, deep
with bracken and whortle-bushes. On either side of the track steep
winding glens sloped downwards, lined with yellow gorse, which blazed
out from the deep-red soil like a flame from embers. Peat-coloured
streams splashed down these valleys and over the road, through which
Covenant ploughed fetlock deep, and shied to see the broad-backed trout
darting from between his fore feet.

All day I rode through this beautiful country, meeting few folk, for
I kept away from the main roads. A few shepherds and farmers, a
long-legged clergyman, a packman with his mule, and a horseman with a
great bag, whom I took to be a buyer of hair, are all that I can recall.
A black jack of ale and the heel of a loaf at a wayside inn were all my
refreshments. Near Combwich, Covenant cast a shoe, and two hours were
wasted before I found a smithy in the town and had the matter set right.
It was not until evening that I at last came out upon the banks of the
Bristol Channel, at a place called Shurton Bars, where the muddy Parret
makes its way into the sea