I found the Exe easy to follow at first.  Further on exceedingly difficult in places; but I was determined to keep near it, to have it behind me and before me and at my side, following, leading, a beautiful silvery serpent that was my friend and companion.  For I was following not the Exe only, but a dream as well, and a memory.  Before I knew it the Exe was a beloved stream.  Many rivers had I seen in my wanderings, but never one to compare with this visionary river, which yet existed, and would be found and followed at last.  My forefathers had dwelt for generations beside it, listening all their lives long to its music, and when they left it they still loved it in exile, and died at last with its music in their ears.  Nor did the connection end there; their children and children’s children doubtless had some inherited memory of it; or how came I to have this feeling, which made it sacred, and drew me to it?  We inherit not from our ancestors only, but, through them, something, too, from the earth and place that knew them.

I sought for and found it where it takes its rise on open Exmoor; a simple moorland stream, not wild and foaming and leaping over rocks, but flowing gently between low peaty banks, where the little lambs leap over it from side to side in play.  Following the stream down, I come at length to Exford.  Here the aspect of the country begins to change; it is not all brown desolate heath; there are green flowery meadows by the river, and some wood.  A little further down and the Exe will be a woodland stream; but of all the rest of my long walk I shall only say that to see the real beauty of this stream one must go to Somerset.  From Exford to Dulverton it runs, singing aloud, foam-flecked, between high hills clothed to their summits in oak woods:  after its union with the Barle it enters Devonshire as a majestic stream, and flows calmly through a rich green country; its wild romantic charm has been left behind.

The uninformed traveller, whose principle it is never to look at a guide-book, is surprised to find that the small village of Exford contains no fewer than half a dozen inns.  He asks how they are kept going; and the natives, astonished at his ignorance, proceed to enlighten him.  Exford is the headquarters of the stag-hunt:  thither the hunters flock in August, and spend so much money during thir brief season that the innkeepers grow rich and fat, and for the rest of the year can afford to doze peacefully behind their bars.  Here are the kennels, and when I visited them they contained forty or fifty couples of stag-hounds.  These are gigantic foxhounds, selected for their great size from packs all over the country.  When out exercising these big vari-coloured dogs make a fine show.  It is curious to find that, although these individual variations are continually appearing—­very large dogs born of dogs of medium size—­others cannot be bred from them; the variety cannot be fixed.