Here we called for refreshments, and got some coffee and
some good things to eat, with some of the best Devonshire cream we had
yet tasted. After an argument in which I pointed out the danger of
jeopardising our twenty-five-mile average walk by staying there, as it
was yet early in the forenoon, we settled matters in this way; we would
leave our luggage in Totnes, walk round the town to the objects of
greatest interest, then walk to Dartmouth and back, and stay the night
on our return, thus following to some extent the example of Brutus, the
earliest recorded visitor:
Here I stand and here I rest,
And this place shall be called Totnes.
[Illustration: TOTNES CHURCH WALK]
There was no doubt about the antiquity of Totnes, for Geoffrey of
Monmouth, the author of the famous old English Chronicle, a compilation
from older authors, in his _Historia Britonum_, 1147, began his notes on
Totnes not in the time of the Saxons nor even with the Roman Occupation,
but with the visit of Brutus, hundreds of years before the Christian
era. Brutus of Troy had a strange career. His mother died in giving him
birth, and he accidentally shot his father with an arrow when out
hunting.
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