For all that I have said about the barrenness of these great moors, Exmoor is the land of sweet waters. The Exe, the Barle, the Quarine, rising near Dunkery Beacon, the Haddes from the Brendon Hills, the Lyn, the Wear Water, the Badgeworthy (up which little John Ridd fished for loach), the Parley Water, the Horner, which runs into Porlock Bay, the East Water, all these beautiful clear, clean streams abound with fish, and have the freshness and the sparkle of this sparkling upland air. Wherever there is a fold in the ground there is running water--though geographically one should put it in the opposite way, that wherever the water runs there is a fold in the ground--and wherever it runs flowers and ferns and trees grow in beautiful abundance. I have already described the luxuriant green of the wooded gorges of the Lyn, the variety of trees and the luxuriance of ferns and mosses; the Horner Woods, near Porlock, have the same green loveliness, though a sharper air blows through them, as they stand nearer the Exmoor heights and less sheltered by steep rocks than those that overshadowed the Lyn, and on a summer afternoon there is a sharp smell of resin from the sun-warmed pines, and the keen air stirs even in the depths of the wood.
And besides these rivers there are numberless little unnamed streams, everywhere the tinkle and chatter of water, breaking over stones, slipping through the peaty earth, falling in a thin spray down the face of the cliffs, spreading out across the white rocks of an encircled cove, incessant movement and change of colour and light, a ceaseless ripple and gleam of reflected water across the lichened trunk of some old tree, sweet and incessant sound.
"In Somerset," says Miss Celia Fiennes with considerable severity, "they are likewise as careless when they make cider; they press all sorts of Apples together, else they might have as good sider as in any other parts, even as good as the Herriforshire."
This young lady, with her keen criticisms, her spirit of intrepidity, and her variable spelling, betook herself on a tour on horseback through England in the reign of William and Mary, and kept a diary of her travel, noting with equal solemnity the state of agriculture or the quality of pastry which she encounters in her journey. She was the daughter of Colonel Fiennes, a Parliamentary soldier, and being a delicate girl, was recommended fresh air and exercise by her doctor. "My journeys, as they were begun to regain my health by variety and change of air and exercise, so whatever promoted, that was pursued . . .," she says, rather elliptically, in her preface, and admonishes Ladies and Gentlemen to follow her example, and profit by the spectacle of their own country--advice which we of this generation have taken _au sérieux_, and of which the present book and those akin to it are sufficient witness!