To Merrie Old England We Go!

To read of England is to always discover part of America's history.  "Down Devon Lanes," by Herbert Corey, is the first article in the May, 1929, issue of National Geographic Magazine, Vol. LV, No.5.

Mr. Corey initiates his report by describing how cheaply he and his traveling companion, who was never named, lived during their driving tour of the county Devon in England: $15 a day that covered three meals, hotel room, "gas, oil, garage and tips" (p. 529).  He was utterly enchanted with the towns and villages of Devon and believed they all could have been the most beautiful.

What irked Mr. Corey to no end were the very narrow roads, not built for two motorcars or even two horse-drawn wagons, to pass.  He knew that the steeper the hill, the narrower the road would be!

Devon is the largest county in England, slightly larger than the U.S. State of Delaware in square miles.  It lies toward the south of the island and has both a west coast and an east coast.  It was from the east coast in the village of Plymouth that the Pilgrims of the Mayflower sailed to establish their colony in America in the year 1620.

In Princetown, there were prisons and wardens.  The Royal Naval College was in Dartmouth.  There was a Navy yard in Devonport.  And there were bogs!  Remember the Sherlock Holmes mystery, "The Hound of the Baskervilles?"  The story took place on a bog.  I have never seen an English bog but during my last trip to Ireland, I saw a genuine bog.  I expect they would appear the same, even today.  On the Irish bog, peat was being cut and piled in neat stacks.  It would be dried and used for fuel.

Peat Bog, County Cavan, Ireland, July 2011

Here are Mr. Corey's thoughts on the moor, "I had always thought of a moor as a wide, gently undulating land clothed in heather and gorse.  Nothing like it.  Dartmoor is a great granite bulge, torn into wrinkles of valleys by the storms of centuries.  The roads run along the hilltops when they can.  A man wandering in the hollows is lost before he knows it. The turns are so infinite.  The prospects are all  alike.  Sooner or later, he finds the mire. . .There are places on this moor that dogs will not go near, so reputable men have said" (p. 565). 

The history of England is so long, measured in milenia, not in centuries, and it is all very colorful.  On Devon's moors "are traces of a people who lived during the Ice Age somewhat less comfortably than did Eskimos 200 years ago.  Iberians came and were trampled under by the Celts, and Saxon thanes took over and later knuckled under to the Normans.  The French burned Devon's towns, Spaniards raided its coasts, and Danes ravaged its villages.  Devon's men played their parts in England's civil wars.  The sturdiest seafarers sailed from Devon's coasts.  Her golden age was the golden age of England" (p. 533).

Obviously, Mr. Corey couldn't describe the land of Devon nor its history in great detail for very long.  He simply concludes, "The task is hopeless.  There can be no end to Devon.  There must be an end to this story" (p. 568).  Most enjoyable!