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CHAPTER X.

DARTMOOR AND ITS ANTIQUITIES

Geological structure of Dartmoor—Granite—"Clitters"—Building with granite—The bogs—The rivers—Rock basins—Logan stones—Kaoline deposits—Hut circles—Cooking-stones—Pottery—Pounds—Grimspound—Position of women in early times—Approximate period to which the relics belong—The cromlech—The kistvaen—The stone circle—The stone row—The menhir—Cairns—Modes of interment among the pagan Irish—Stone crosses—Tinners' burrows and stream works—Blowing-houses.

THE great irregular tableland of Dartmoor, an upheaval of granite over a thousand feet above the sea, and in places attaining to above two thousand, occupies two hundred and twenty-five square miles of country. Of that, however, less than one half is the "Forest" and belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall. Around the forest are the commons belonging to the parishes contiguous to the moor. The moor is almost throughout of granite. At the outskirts, indeed, gabbro and trap exist, that have been forced up at the points where the granite has burst through the slate, and these later uprushes of molten matter have greatly altered the granite in contact with them, and have produced an elvan.

The most extraordinary difference in kinds and composition exists throughout the granitic area.

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