Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/365

 4 The Ancient Stone Crosses artificiality may be enjoyed. The artist may there find ample employment for his pencil, the disciple of Walton may revel to the full in the pursuit of his art. The geologist, the botanist, or the antiquary have there a rich field in which to indulge their various tastes, and the lover of nature can never tire of the delights afforded by a ramble through the secluded valleys, and over the breezy hills of wild aod rugged Dartmoor. But while the interior of the moor bears the palm for grandeur and sublimity, it is on its borders that one mtist look for the fairer and more l)eautiful scenes, where nature's softer features are exhibited in striking contrast to the sterner aspect of the moor. Here are deep combes, having their sides partially cult!* vated, or clothed with thick coppices of oak, running far up into the wilds, in many of them more than one substantially built farmhouse of ancient date nestling in some sheltered nook, often in close proximity to a rugged tor ; narrow gorges, through which the rivers leave their mountain birth-place, affording a glimpse of the barrenness beyond ; steep hillsides rising from enclosures formed by roughly constructed granite walls, man's handiwork being of a ruder and more primitive style as the confines of the moor are approached ; roads wind- ing by the base of these frontier heights, often carried over the streams that rush impetuously down the valleys, by grey stone bridges, forming picturesque objects, which the artist delights to pourtray ; quiet villages and hamlets on the very verge of the waste, the loiv towers of the little churches formed of granite from the rocky piles that rise so near to them ; and somewhat further removed, the small market towns we have named, now brought more into communication with the larger centres of population, but which for centuries slept quietly in the shadow of the ancient hills. No district in our country can boast of so great a number of rude stone remains as Dartmoor, every part of it furnishing examples of most of the pre-historic monuments known to the antiquary. And it is also rich in relics of mediaeval times, and among these the stone cross is certainly not the least interest- ing. But of all the objects of antiquity few have, perhaps, come down to us in so mutilated a condition as this — the one We should expect would have had bestowed upon it the