sses of granite of all shapes and sizes, heaped
irregularly on the ground among dark clusters of heath. An old
furze-cutter was the only human figure that appeared on the desolate
scene. Approaching him to ask our way to St. Cleer's Well--no signs of
which could be discerned on the wilderness before us--we found the old
fellow, though he was eighty years of age, working away with all the
vigour of youth. On this wild moor he had lived and laboured from
childhood; and he began to talk proudly of its great length and breadth,
and of the wonderful sights that were to be seen on different parts of
it, the moment we addressed him. He described to us, in his own homely
forcible way, the awful storms that he had beheld, the fearful rattling
and roaring of thunder over the great unsheltered plain before us--the
hail and sleet driven so fiercely before the hurricane, that a man was
half-blinded if he turned his face towards it for a moment--the forked
lightning shooting from pitch-dark clouds, leaping and running fearfully
over the level ground, blackening, splitting, tearing from their places
the stoutest rocks on the moor. Three masses of granite lay heaped
together near the spot where we had halted--the furze-cutter pointed to
them with his bill-hook, and told us that what we now looked on was once
one great rock, which he had seen riven in an instant by the lightning
into the fragmentary form that it now presented. If we mounted the
highest of these three masses, he declared that we might find out our
own way to St. Cleer's Well by merely looking around us. We followed his
directions. Towards the east, far away over the magnificent sweep of
moorland, and on the slope of the hill that bounded it, appeared the
tall chimneys and engine-houses of the Great Caraton Copper Mine--the
only objects raised by the hand of man that were to be seen on this
part of the view. Towards the west, much nearer at hand, four grey
turrets were just visible beyond some rising ground. These turrets
belonged to the tower of St. Cleer's Church, and the Well was close by
it.

Taking leave of the furze-cutter, we followed the path at once that led
to St. Cleer's. Half an hour's walking brought us to the village, a
straggling, picturesque place, hidden in so deep a hollow as to be quite
invisible from any distance. All the little cottage-girls whom we met,
carrying their jugs and pitchers of water, curtseyed and wished us good
morning with the prettiest