CHAPTER XI.
DARTMOOR: ITS TENANTS
Forest rights exercised by the Duchy—Rights of the parishes of Devon to Dartmoor—Encroachments—Venville—Newtakes—Importance of the moor as common land—The four quarters—Drifts—A moorman's house—Vipers in the walls—Crockern Tor and Mr. Fowler—The "Wish Hounds"—The pixies—How an Ordnance surveyor was pixy-led—The moor in fog—Story of a pixy birth—Joe Leaman and the pixies—Notice on church gate—The boys and the plaster figures—The witch of Endor—Those born on the moor do not like to leave it—Freshets on Dartmoor rivers—The Dart—Ancient tenements—The Prisons—Story of an attempted escape—A successful escape—Cost to the country of the criminal class—Some effort should be made to prevent crime—Believer Day—Trout-fishing—Dartmoor in winter—The song of the moor.
DARTMOOR consists of moorland running up to heights of over 2000 feet, a great deal of the area being enclosed, forming rough grazing farms, but much of it remains to-day what it was thousands of years ago, boulder-strewn ravines, through which rush impetuous streams, rocky heights crowned with huge blocks of granite, so weather-worn and piled up as to suggest to the stranger that some Titans had so placed them to serve as castles or to add a romantic touch to already wild scenery. Great sweeps of heather and furze-clad downs run up to these elevations, and on many of these the rude stone monuments lie scattered about in all directions.
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