We therefore decided to go round the Moor instead of over it, and visit the town of Plymouth, which otherwise we should not have seen.

The whole of Dartmoor was given by Edward III to his son the Black Prince, when he gave him the title of Duke of Cornwall after his victorious return from France, and it still belonged to the Duchy of Cornwall, and was the property of the Crown; but all the Moor was open and free to visitors, who could follow their own route in crossing it, though in places it was gradually being brought into cultivation, especially in the neighbourhood of the many valleys which in the course of ages had been formed by the rivers on their passage towards the sea.  As our road for some miles passed along the fringe of the great Moor, and as the streams crossed it in a transverse direction, on our way to Plymouth we passed over six rivers, besides several considerable brooks, after leaving the River Dart at Totnes.  These rivers were named the Harbourne, Avon, Lud, Erme, Yealm, and Plym, all flowing from Dartmoor; and although there was such a heavy rainfall on the uplands, it was said that no one born and bred thereon ever died of pulmonary consumption.  The beauty of Dartmoor lay chiefly along its fringes, where ancient villages stood securely sheltered along the banks of these streams; but in their higher reaches were the remains of “hut circles” and prehistoric antiquities of the earliest settlers, and relics of Neolithic man were supposed to be more numerous than elsewhere in England.

There was no doubt in our minds that the earliest settlers were those who landed on the south coast, and in occupying the country they naturally chose positions where a good supply of water was available, both for themselves and their cattle.  The greater the number of running streams, the greater would be the number of the settlers.  Some of the wildest districts in these southern countries, where solitude now prevailed, bore evidence of having, at one time, been thickly populated.

We did not attempt to investigate any of these pretty valleys, as we were anxious to reach Plymouth early in order to explore that town, so the only divergence we made from the beaten track was when we came to Ivybridge, on the River Erme.  The ivy of course flourished everywhere, but it was particularly prolific in some parts of Devon, and here it had not only covered the bridge, over which we crossed, but seemed inclined to invade the town, to which it had given its name.  The townspeople had not then objected to its intrusion, perhaps because, being always green, it was considered to be an emblem of everlasting life—­or was it because in Roman mythology it was sacred to Bacchus, the God of Wine?  In Egyptian mythology the ivy was sacred to Osiris, the Judge of the Dead and potentate of the kingdom of ghosts; but in our minds it was associated with our old friend Charles Dickens, who had died in the previous year, and whom we had once heard reading selections from his own writings in his own inimitable way.  His description of the ivy is well worth recording—­not that he was a poet, but he once wrote a song for Charles Russell to sing, entitled “The Ivy Green “: