Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/275

Rh business, no pleasure even, for it had no assembly balls, no neighbourhood. Okehampton was among towns what the earth-worm is in the order of animated nature, a digestive tube, but with digestive faculty undeveloped. Now all is changed. The War Office has established a summer barrack on the heights above it, and life—in some particulars in undesirable excess—has manifested itself. Trade has sprung up: a lesson in life—never to despair of any place, any more than of any man. It has an office to fill, a function to perform, if only patience be exercised and time allowed. But if Okehampton in itself considered as a town be ugly and uninteresting, the neighbourhood abounds in objects of interest, and the situation is full of beauty.

Two brawling rivers, the East and the West Ockments, dance down from the moors and unite at the town; and if each be followed upwards scenes of rare vvildness and picturesque beauty will be found.

It is towered over by Yes Tor and Cosdon, two of the highest points on Dartmoor, and some of the moor scenery, with its tumbled ranges of rocky height, is as fine as anything in the county of Devon.

The Ockment (uisg-maenic) or stony water, gives its name to the place; the Saxon planted his tun at the junction of the streams, whereas the earlier dun of the Briton was on the height above the East