l. It is also the original site of the old village of
Lynton, when it had no fame as a holiday resort, and barely a history,
being left alone on its lofty cliff, as of no special value to anyone;
for, although the present parish church is partly Perpendicular and
partly of a later date, while the chancel is modern, it stands upon the
foundations of a small earlier church, which, surrounded by a few poor
cottages, with walls of cob and roof of thatch, a rough ladder leading
to a sort of loft, which was the sleeping apartment of all the family,
and a little patch of herb garden in front of each, comprised the
village of Lynton when we find it first, in the thirteenth century,
mentioned as a parish in the "valor" of Pope Nicholas.

Below it, then as now, lay the small fishing village of Lynmouth--or
Leymouth, as it was formerly called--a similar group of rude small
cottages, clustered in isolation, with the sea before and the great
moors behind, the people subsisting chiefly on coarse bread, salted
meat, and fish--often stale fish, for fish was the one thing of value
that Lynmouth yielded, and that would go to some representative of Ford
Abbey, under whose rule Lynton and Lynmouth came. Yet it should surely
have been easy, with a little help and instruction, to have grown many
varieties of vegetable food, for flowers grow in abundance, and
evergreens grow to a great size and beauty, while the variety of trees
is remarkable--larch, chestnut, sycamore, oak, ash and birch, elm and
beech, showing the fertility of the soil and the temperateness of the
climate, in spite of the seaward position of the village.

But it is not the history of Lynton, nor its old associations, which
calls us to it, but its beauty entirely. Stand upon one of the
terraces of Lynton on a still summer evening, looking east to
Countisbury Foreland, and see the water of the bay still and gleaming
in the evening light, the great headlands ruddy and golden above it.
The steep sides of the gorge of the East Lyn are warm and sunlit, they
glow richly with purple and russet; over the rocks of the valley a
faint flicker of grey mist begins to hang above the stream. From the
trees around and below comes a great cawing of rooks, drowning the rush
of the water below; they settle into their nests in the great green
elms, then suddenly there is a caw, a scurry, a rush, and they fly up
as if shot out of the tree-tops. There is a flapping of wings, and
much angry