Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/136

many years Crediton was the residence of the Rev. Samuel Rowe, the Columbus of Dartmoor. He laboriously explored that region, till then almost unvisited, and chronicled its prehistoric relics. Although he was hopelessly involved in the pseudo-antiquarianism of his period, and put everything prehistoric down to the Druids and Phœnicians, yet his researches were most valuable, and he has recorded the existence of many relics that have since disappeared. His Perambulation of Dartmoor was published in 1848. He had indeed been preceded in 1832 by the Rev. Edward A. Bray, vicar of Tavistock, but the visits of the latter to Dartmoor had been confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the town of which he was parson.