me as Celia Fiennes described them in her tour through England in
1695: "Ye lanes are full of stones and dirt for ye most part, because
they are so close ye sun and wind cannot come at them"--among the
steep, tree-embowered, whitewashed houses, which with the sun blazing
on their flat white walls suggest rather a little village of the
Pyrenees or Northern Italy than Devonshire cottages, that and the
luxuriance of the trees through which the East Lyn and the West Lyn
foam down to the little beach, and the prodigal flowering of bushes and
shrubs. Follow the East Lyn up to Watersmeet, which is about two miles
from Lynmouth through one of the most beautiful wooded gorges in
England. Past the hotels you go, and a little straggle of small modern
houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a
larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun,
and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea
from your backward look, and you stand in the heart of a valley and
beyond signs of habitation. The southern slope is beautifully wooded,
showing every range and variety of green, from the light vivid green of
larches to the dull brownish tone of the oaks. The northern slope
rises brown and rocky, the edges clear-cut against the brilliant sky;
there is a great sound of birds, and always the noise of water running
over stones.

As you ascend the river the gorge becomes narrow and more thickly
wooded; the path winding along it is hot and close and still; the water
is clear brown in its depths, and green in the shallows and where it
slides over a mossy stone; it bubbles into foam in its tiny waterfalls
and cataracts and miniature whirlpools; it is deliciously sweet and
cool. The green moss grows to the very edge of its white stones, and
ferns and hart's-tongues and lilies-of-the-valley clothe the sides of
the hill; there are celandines and primroses and wild strawberry in
flower, and the lovely white cup of the ivy-leafed bell-flower.
Nowhere, perhaps, save in the west of England (I do not speak only of
Devon, for I know of little valleys in Cornwall which are as fertile as
the Garden of Eden, held in the rocky jaws of some bleak cliff), but in
what we call "the West," is there such peculiar beauty of contrast,
bold outlines of cliff and cove, great stretches of moor lying open to
the sky, and wooded combe and valley or small green sheltered hollow of
such blossoming fertility.