Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/466

 Of Dartmoor and its Borderland. 93 others, I was able to learn, did serve the purpose of steps at the farmhouse, though I have never been fortunate enough to discover them ; the remaining eight, however, I did find, and tbey are happily uninjured. Between the farmhouse (which is now a ruin, having been abandoned for many years) and the tor, a small stream runs down to fall into the Swincombe river just below. Not far from the house a rude bridge spans this stream, composed of stones laid side by side, and there being no central pier, reach- ing from one bank to the other. These stones are eight in number, and, without doubt, are those which helped to form the pedestal of the tomb of the "Nimrod of the moor." On making enquiries about the tomb some twenty years ago, Richard Eden, a moorman of the south quarter, whom I had known for a considerable time, and who was born at Fox Tor farmhouse, about 1823, informed me that these stones were always pointed out to him as having belonged to the tomb, and he said he had heard that there were letters on the under side of them. This, of course, greatly interested me, and I was in hopes that I should find traces of the couplet which Risdon says was once to be seen on the monument. A careful examination of these stones, which were raised by means of crowbars, satisfied me, certainly, that they once belonged to the tomb, but at the same time convinced me that they had never borne any inscription whatever. The longest of these stones measured seven feet and a half ; two were seven feet, one was six feet ten inches, and another six feet four inches in length, while the other three were about five feet three inches each. The larger ones were about twenty inches in width, but not quite so much in thickness, and the smaller were about fourteen or fifteen inches wide. These stones had all been worked in a manner somewhat similar to the one I have described as lying near the kistvaen. The result of my investigations was not a little gratifying. That I had recovered nine stones out of the twelve which formed the pedestal on which the sculptered base had rested, there could not be a doubt. From the measurements left us by Carrington, and the vignette, I saw it would be an easy task to reconstruct the tomb, and by bringing the matter to