For I was following not the Exe only, but a dream as well, and a memory.

Before I knew it the Exe was a beloved stream.

Many rivers had I seen in my wanderings, but never one to compare with this visionary river, which yet existed, and would be found and followed at last.

My forefathers had dwelt for generations beside it, listening all their lives long to its music, and when they left it they still loved it in exile, and died at last with its music in their ears.

Nor did the connection end there; their children and children's children doubtless had some inherited memory of it; or how came I to have this feeling, which made it sacred, and drew me to it?
We inherit not from our ancestors only, but, through them, something, too, from the earth and place that knew them.
I sought for and found it where it takes its rise on open Exmoor; a simple moorland stream, not wild and foaming and leaping over rocks, but flowing gently between low peaty banks, where the little lambs leap over it from side to side in play.