Adventure and adventurers > Black's guide to the counties of Dorset, Devon, & Cornwall

FROM LYME REGIS TO PLYMOUTH
Inn: King’s Head) ; on the west, the pleasant watering-place
of SEATON (population, 1966. Inn : Pole Arms). The Axe
has its source in Somersetshire, and enters Devonshire at Wee-
croft Bridge, 3 miles south of Mimbury. After contributing
very materially to the trade of Axminster it receives the river
Merle and a smaller tributary, and so augmented, runs on to meet
the Coly, emptying itself into the Channel below Seaton (6 miles
from Axminster).
Axmouth is a small fishing-town, with an old Church, which
among much later work retains a good Norman doorway and
moulded arch. The hill beyond Hawksdown is crowned with a
Boman camp, which commanded the mouth of the river, and the
ocean-waters beyond.
Seaton has of late years assumed the characteristics of a
nascent watering-place ; and, indeed, it is quiet without being
dull, and animated without being noisy. As the inland scenery
is agreeable, and the sea-view extensive, it deserves a larger popu¬
larity than it has yet acquired. The houses cluster in a curve of
the shore, between Culverhole Point, east, and Bere Head, west,
and among them rises a modern church. It is said that its vil¬
lagers, in the days of good Queen Bess, attempted to divert the
course of the Axe, but were unsuccessful. Honey Ditches
(Honey, corrupted from Kcenig's, the chief’s,) is an old entrench¬
ment defended by a double fosse and vallum. It was probably
occupied as a sister fortress to Hawksdown.
A small stream trickles through a narrow defile into the sea
at Beer, 1 mile,—a mere scattering of fishermen’s cottages upon
a romantic beach. The lofty cliffs now stretch away westward
like the huge rampart of some Titanic stronghold ; flushing into
a myriad different hues when the sunlight falls upon them. We
soon come in sight of BRANSCOMBE (population, 936). The
village and church stand upon gently-rising ground at some
slight distance from the shore. It was near this point that Tel¬
ford, the great engineer, proposed to commence the ship-canal,
which, terminating in Bridgewater Bay, should unite the Bristol
and British Channels. Among the fossils found in the neighbour¬
hood are caput medusae, basalti-formis, pecten, terebratulse, and
pentacrinites.
After escaping the hidden dangers of the Hook Ebb Rocks,