Are usually covered with coarse herbage

Are usually covered with coarse herbage

Are usually covered with coarse herbage

The sides of the steep valleys, of which some include an acre, and others extend for miles, are usually covered with coarse herbage, heather, and bilberry plants, springing from a deep black or red soil: at certain spots a greener hue marks the site of the bogs which impede, and at times almost engulph, the incautious horseman. These bogs are formed by springs, which, having been intercepted by a pan of sediment, and prevented from percolating through the soil, stagnate, and cause, at the same time, decay and vicious vegetation. They are seldom deep, and can usually be reclaimed by subsoiling or otherwise breaking the pan, and so drying the upper layers of bog. Bog-turf is largely employed on Exmoor as fuel. On other precipitous descents, winter torrents have washed away all the earth, and left avalanches of bare loose stones, called, in the western dialect, crees. To descend these crees at a slapping pace in the course of a stag-hunt, requires no slight degree of nerve; but it is done, and is not so dangerous as it looks.