visible horizon. The face of the country is formed by swelling: and undulations gradually over topping each other without ever forming very distinct mountains. There is neither vegetation nor any human dwelling; we tread upon a boggy soil of very little depth, and scarcely furnishing sufficient food to support some dwarf colts, wild as the country they inhabit.
The Erme rises about nine miles north of Ivy-Bridge, and one thousand one hundred and thirty-one feet above the level of the sea; the land gradually rising as we approach its source. This however is not the most elevated point of this part of Dartmoor forest; as far as I can judge, that point is near a place three miles south-east of Two-Bridges, where some tin mines are worked, and where that metal is found disseminated in the granite, as one of its integrand parts.
Two Bridges is fourteen miles to the north of Ivy-Bridge: There is but one house, and that an inn,[1]. which stands nearly in the middle of this vast mountain plain, which contains, I believe, nearly three hundred and fifty square miles of surface.[2] Two Bridges is one thousand one hundred and forty-eight feet above the level of the sea. To the north of this place, the granitic country appears to extend as far as the neighbourhood of Oakhampton, but I cannot speak of that with certainty, as I did not trace it myself over the whole of that extent; I can only say, that according to the course of the rivers, the only mountain of any consequence
- ↑ There has been lately erected in the neighbourhood, a vast stone building, where it is intended to convey the greatest part of the French prisoners now confined in Mill prison at Plymouth. There are also at some distance from the inn at Two Bridges some houses on the high road from Tavistock to Ashburton, and Moreton Hampstead, which crosses this part of Dartmoor forest.
- ↑ It contains about 80,000 acres. Maton's Survey of the Western Counties, vol. I. p. 299.
