CHAPTER XIII.

THE MOULT.

I HAVE said but little of this pretty seat because I feel that the season of the year in which we first saw it was not the most calculated to show it to advantage; but a description of Salcombe would be incomplete without it.

After many alterations and improvements, it has of late become the property of Lord Courtenay (the present Earl of Devon), and it would be simply impertinent in a stranger like myself to make any remarks upon the house; but the gardens contain treasures long accumulated which florists and botanists would go far to see. The conservatory wall contains the finest oranges and limes, I should think, in England-at the same time, those of Woodville and Cliff House are splendid, and have not so much protection; but the glory of this place lies in its flowering shrubs and rare trees, the exceeding mildness of the climate favouring the growth of the more tender coniferæ, which have of late years been so much. cultivated; and we saw a Norfolk Island pine, which had lived four years, but had at last fallen a victim to the severity of the winter of 1854. This tree will not endure a lower temperature than thirty degrees; and it is a proof of the average mildness of Salcombe winters that it should have stood so long. The Australian gum tree, with its blueish foliage and white stems, flourishes here; and the remarks of travellers on the disagreeable tint of the Australian landscape seem fully borne out by the specimen we saw. All such evergreens as rhododendrons, kal

mias, and the larger heaths are rampant, as are fuschias and passion flowers, to say nothing of myrtles, large and small leaved, which ripen a prodigious quantity of berries. I have a drawing of two sorts of passion flowers, white and a dark crimson, with large golden fruit as big as a Mogul plum, which bears date December 21st! Climate again! There are large quantities of New Zealand flax (Phormium Tenax) looking like handsome iris leaves, and Arums, or Nile lilies, growing in pools made for them. Hydrangeas of enormous size, and verbena, with stems the thickness of a man's arm, grew here, as well as in the garden of the bee-hive roofed cottage in which we lodged. A water lily new to me, called the Snake's Head, grew in a basin round a fountain; and it certainly presented a curious resemblance to the head of a viper, the petals being armed with rows of teeth. Altogether it was one of Flora's pet establishments, and Tennyson might have been inspired to write "The Gardener's Daughter" within its shades. One peep of the Castle from a rising bit of ground would have made a fine picture for any Pre-Raphaelite who would have had the patience to paint the foreground of flowers, which added so much to the beauty of the subject. I have always regretted that we did not study the contents of this garden more than we did the want of a good guide, and our natural preference for wilder scenery, is the only reason I can give.

The Moult stands on a rocky ridge between the North and South Sands, in which places alone is there any approach to a beach; but here the billows break in their full majesty, occasionally even surmounting the barrier at the bottom of the garden, though this is of rare occurrence. It is possible, but very difficult, at extremely low tides, to walk from one sand to the other in front of the Moult: our young friends accomplished this feat once, but at the expense of great anxiety to myself, who waited on the South Sands full of fears for their safety in their unknown path.

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A few years since the gardener at the Moult, when rising early to attend to his hothouse fires, was astonished at the apparition of a man walking about amongst his shrubs, apparently in great distress. A sad tale had the poor fellow to tell. His vessel had been wrecked in the night, and himself thrown on the rocks in the dark by some extraordinarily high wave. He had no idea where he was, and could hear nothing of his poor shipmates; but the morning dawn showed him the wreck of his vessel and the loss of every man on board. After being kindly cared for by the gardener's wife, he found his way to the town with his piteous tale, where he received the relief usually given to shipwrecked mariners. It would be interesting to know the after history of this man-whether his wonderful escape had any serious effect on him, or whether he regarded it merely as an incident not unexampled in his way of life. It was probably less wonderful to him than to us stay-at-home people; but still the sudden loss of so many of his companions must have affected him deeply.

The North Sands are remarkable for containing the remains of a submerged forest, which seems to have been overthrown by some unrecorded disruption of the land which forms the hills on either side; or, perhaps, a body of water descending from the country above Hanger Mill, and sweeping everything in its way towards the sea, would have the same effect. Geologists tell us that very wonderful things have been accomplished by the agency of waterspouts—the whole surface of a tract of country changed by them; but one can hardly think this to have been the cause, though it might have been. A stream flows from Hanger Mill to the sea, which may be the remains of a greater body of water, for the fields on each side are evidently flattened by its agency. The roots of fir trees and oaks could be recognised at low tides, and at such times the sea would be full of small fragments of decayed wood, and wash up like the rinsings of a teapot: large quantities of sea-weed also might be found, and carts from the