I did not treat his remark seriously at the time, thinking it equivalent to the remarks in hotel books where visitors express their unfulfilled intention of coming again.  But when on May 29th, 1873, a lovely day of sunshine, my brother departed with one of the handsomest girls in the village for what the newspapers described as “London and the South,” and when we received a letter informing us that they were both very well and very happy, and amusing themselves by watching the salmon shooting up the deep weir on the River Dart, and sailing in a small boat with a sail that could easily be worked with one hand, and had sailed along the river to Dartmouth and back, I was not surprised when I found that the postmark on the envelope was TOTNES.

In his letter to me on that occasion, he said he had received from his mother his “marching orders” for his next long journey; and although her letter is now old and the ink faded, the “orders” are still firmly fixed where that good old writer intended them to be, and, as my brother said, they deserved to be written in letters of gold: 

=_My earnest desire is that you may both be happy, and that whatever you do may be to the glory of God and the good of your fellow-creatures, and that at the last you may be found with your lamps burning and your lights shining, waiting for the coming of the Lord!_=

(Distance walked thirty-one-miles.)

Tuesday, November 14th.

We had made good progress yesterday in consequence of not having to carry any luggage, but we had now to carry our belongings again as usual.

Totnes, we learned, was a walled town in the time of the Domesday Survey, and was again walled in 1265 by permission of Henry III.  Of the four gates then existing, only two now remained, the North and the East; they were represented by archways, the gates themselves having long since disappeared.  We passed under the Eastgate Archway, which supported a room in which were two carved heads said to represent King Henry VIII and his unfortunate wife Anne Boleyn; and with a parting glance at the ancient Butter Cross and piazzas, which reminded us somewhat of the ancient Rows in Chester, we passed out into the country wondering what our day’s walk would have in store for us.

We had thought of crossing over the centre of Dartmoor, but found it a much larger and wilder place than we had imagined, embracing over 100,000 acres of land and covering an area of about twenty-five square miles, while in the centre were many swamps or bogs, very dangerous, especially in wet or stormy weather.  There were also many hills, or “tors,” rising to a considerable elevation above sea-level, and ranging from Haytor Rocks at 1,491 feet to High Willheys at 2,039 feet.  Mists and clouds from the Atlantic were apt to sweep suddenly over the Moor and trap unwary travellers, so that many persons had perished in the bogs from time to time; and the clouds