The rivers that flow from Dartmoor-The bogs are their cradles-A tailor lost on the moor-A man inAune Mire-Some of the worst bogs-Cranmere Pool-How the bogs are formed-Adventure inRedmoor Bog-Bog plants-The buckbean-Sweet gale-Furze-Yellow broom-Bee-keeping.DARTMOOR proper consists of that upland region of granite, rising to nearly 2,000 feet above thesea, and actually shooting above that height at a few points, which is the nursery of many of therivers of Devon.The Exe, indeed, has its source in Exmoor, and it disdains to receive any affluents from Dartmoor;and the Torridge takes its rise hard by the sea at Wellcombe, within a rifle-shot of the BristolChannel, nevertheless it makes a graceful sweep-tenders a salute-to Dartmoor, and in returnreceives the liberal flow of the Okement. The Otter and the Axe, being in the far east of the county, rise in the range of hills that form the natural frontier between Devon and Somerset.But all the other considerable streams look back upon Dartmoor as their mother.And what a mother! She sends them forth limpid and pure, full of laughter and leap, of flash andbrawl. She does not discharge them laden with brown mud, as the Exe, nor turned like the waters ofEgypt to blood, as the Creedy.A prudent mother, she feeds them regularly, and with considerable deliberation. Her vast bogs act assponges, absorbing the winter rains, and only leisurely and prudently does she administer thehoarded supply, so that the rivers never run dry in the hottest and most rainless summers.Of bogs there are two sorts, the great parental peat deposits that cover the highland, where not toosteep for them to lie, and the swamps in the bottoms formed by the oozings from the hills that havebeen arrested from instant discharge into the rivers by the growth of moss and water-weeds, or arechecked by belts of gravel and boulder. To see the former, a visit should be made to Cranmere Pool, or to Cut Hill, or Fox Tor Mire. To get into the latter a stroll of ten minutes up a river-bank willsuffice.The existence of the great parent bogs is due either to the fact that beneath them lies the imperviousgranite, as a floor, somewhat concave, or to the whole rolling upland being covered, as with a quilt, with equally impervious china-clay, the fine deposit of feldspar washed from the granite in thecourse of ag