Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/824



N the forties and fifties no man was better known as a character in Tavistock and on the Moor than Captain Palk, or, as he was usually designated, Quaker Palk. He was a sturdy, thick-set man with a shrewd face, sharp keen eyes, and hair short cut and turning grey.

He began life as a miner on his own account at Birch Tor and Vitifer, between the Warren Inn and Moreton Hampstead. To any man travelling over Dartmoor along the main road to the latter town, crossing that portion of the Moor where rise the headwaters of the West Webburn, the aspect of the valley and hillsides must appear strange, welted as they are with old Streamworks and mine-heaps. Just beyond the inn are the remains of the King's Oven; this was the ancient Furnum Regis, the tin-smelting place, which tin was the royal due. Here there is a large pound, in one portion of the arc of which are the remains of a circle of upright stones, enclosing a cairn and the relics of a kistvaen; a beautiful flint scraper has been found wedged between the stones of the kistvaen. The oven itself has been destroyed, and the stones carried off for the construction of the buildings of Bush Down Mine, which are hard by, but are now in ruins. On the highest bit of the down is a rude ancient cross called Bennett's Cross, with W.B. on the face, carved in modern letters, to indicate that it forms one of the boundaries of Headland Warren. It is also