False Evidence by E. Phillips Oppenheim — Read

About a mile seaward from Porlock, separated from it by a narrow strip of the most luxuriant meadowland in Devonshire, lies the village of Bossington. Perhaps it were better called a hamlet, for at the time when I knew anything about it (which, let the tourist remember, is many years ago) it consisted but of six or seven cottages, a farmhouse, and a half-ruined old manor-house, for the privilege of living in which my father paid ten pounds a year, or some such trifling sum, to the neighbouring clergyman whose property it was.

But what the place lacked in size was certainly atoned for -- and more than atoned for -- by the beauty of its situation. High above it, like a mighty protecting giant, rose Bossington Headland, covered always with a soft, springy turf, and glowing in midsummer with the brilliant colouring of rich purple heather and yellow gorse. Often have I stood on its highest point, and with my head bared to the strong fresh breeze, watched the sun rise over the Exmoor Hills and Dunkerry Beacon, and waited until it shed its first warm gleams on the white cottages and queer old church-tower of Porlock, which lay clustered together in picturesque irregularity at the head of the little bay. And almost as often have I gazed upon the same scene from the same spot by the less distinct but more harmonious light of the full harvest moon, and have wondered in which guise it seemed the fairest.