Letters from England/Dartmoor
Dartmoor
WELL, I have seen everything; I have seen the mountains and lakes, the sea, the pastures and regions like gardens; the only thing I have not seen is a proper English forest, for here, if I may put it so, they have no forest because of the very trees. So off I went to the spot marked on the map as “Dartmoor Forest”; more over, unless I am wrong in my literary history. Dartmoor is the scene of the hound of the Baskervilles. On the way I had a look at the place whence Hispaniola sailed for Stevenson’s Treasure Island; it is at Bristol, most likely by that landing-stage where stood the brig which smelt of oranges. Beyond this there is nothing at Bristol except a fine church, where some sort of praying was just going on, a cathedral where devotions 
were also just being held with song and preaching, and finally an old hospital, where I drew a bearded caryatid, a chimera with a beard, which was quite an interesting thing for Bristol.
At Exeter I was beset by an English Sunday coupled with rain. An Exeter Sunday is so thorough and holy that the very churches are closed, and as regards creature comforts, the wayfarer who despises cold potatoes must go to bed with an empty stomach; I do not know what particular joy this causes to the Exeter God. In other respects it is a nice town with pleasant and quiet rain, and old English houses, to which I shall return on another occasion; for now I am hurrying to Dartmoor Forest.
The journey there is along prettily winding roads across curved hills through that shaggiest of green regions, which contains the densest of quickset hedges, the biggest of sheep, the greatest quantities of ivy, coppices and hawthorn, as well as the bushiest trees and cottages covered with the thickest thatches that I have ever seen. An old tree in Devon shire is as compact as a rock and as perfect as a statue. 
Then come straggling, bare, forlorn hills without a single tree; this is Dartmoor. Here and there projects on the solitude of furze a granite boulder upraised like the altar of giants or primeval lizards; these are tors, I may tell you. Sometimes among the furze there flows a black streamlet, a sunken pool darkens, an overgrown swamp glistens; they say that a rider on horseback will vanish there without a trace, but this I could not try, because I had no horse. The low ridges become overcast; I do not know whether it is the droop of the straggling clouds, or the fumes from the ceaselessly oozing earth. A misty veil of rain obscures the region of granite and marsh, the clouds ponderously roll together and for a while a baleful twilight reveals the forlorn stretches of furze, juniper and bracken, which just now were an impenetrable wood.
What is there in man that causes him to hold his breath when he sees so uncanny and mournful a region? Is there something beautiful about it?
Up hill and down dale, up hill and down dale through green Devon between two walls of quickset hedge which divides the broad acres into squares, as in our country the fragrant field-borders, and all the time among old trees, among the sagacious eyes of the flocks, up hill and down dale to the red shore of Devon.