-looking, but it makes a most inglorious
exit into the sea, for a huge pebble ridge rises as an impassable
barrier, and the river has to twist away farther east and run out
obliquely through a narrow channel. Axmouth, on the farther side, is a
pretty old-fashioned little village, the thatched whitewashed cottages
forming a street that curves round almost into a loop, while a
chattering stream runs between the houses. In the church is the figure
of a tonsured priest, with chasuble, stole, and alb, supposed to be one
of the early Vicars of Axmouth. At his feet lies a dog, and the legend
goes that this was not merely the customary image of a dog seen on
tombs, but the effigy of his own favourite, whom he desired to be buried
at his feet; and as an indemnity for this order he left a piece of
ground to be devoted to charitable purposes, called Dog Acre Orchard. Mr
Rogers, in his 'Memorials of the West,' tells us that the name remains
till to-day.

A very short distance beyond is the great landslip which fell in 1839,
when about fifty acres of the cliff slid more than a hundred feet to the
shore beneath, but in such a way that part of an orchard descended with
its growing trees, and they continued to flourish at their new level.
More wonderful still, two cottages settled down on to the shore, without
falling in pieces. The ground began to slide on the night of Christmas
Eve, and by the evening of December 26 the great mass had fallen. To the
west is a great chasm, and the cliff rises high on the seaward side.
Farther east, no cliff rises beyond the chasm, but little hillocks and
sand-dunes slope unevenly to the beach. The undercliff has not in the
least the barren look of an ordinary bit of waste ground touching the
shore, but is covered with grass and thick undergrowth, oaks and
hawthorns, and masses of ivy, and beneath them the long spear-like
leaves and scarlet-berried pods of the wild-iris.

If one returns to the Axe and begins to follow up its innumerable bends,
one arrives opposite the little town of Colyton, which is not quite on
the river. Mr Rogers says that the name comes from the British _Collh y
tun_, and has the pretty meaning of 'the town where the hazels grow.'

Here is a fine church, chiefly Perpendicular, well known, among other
reasons, for a richly carved tomb, on which is the effigy of a very
small lady, a coronet on her head and a dog at her feet, with coats of
arms hanging above. The figure was always