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Another investigator said that he traced the prints across a field up to a hayrick. The surface of the rick was wholly free from the marks but on the opposite side, in a direction corresponding exactly with the track already traced, they began again. A similar occurrence was noted when a wall intervened in the path of the track. As high walls, hayricks, and houses were no obstacle to the onward march of these tracks, so neither was a great stretch of water. The hoof marks were traced to the bank of the estuary of the river Exe, and then picked up again on the opposite bank — across two miles of salt water. The meanderings of the track ranged from Bicton in the east to Totnes in the west, a distance of about twenty miles as the crow flies. But the actual mileage covered by the track, as measured by the distance between hamlets, villages, towns and so forth, where the marks were seen was very much more. As one Devonian who was greatly interested in the occurrence wrote: "When we consider the distance that must have been gone over to have left these marks — | may say in almost every garden, on doorsteps, through extensive woods of Luscombe, upon commons, in enclosures and farms — the actual progress must have exceeded one hundred miles." eS = Seaieef Feet : py 7 This the best illustration | know of the “Devil's Hoofmarks.” i It did not take long for these markings in the snow to become the talk of all Devon. It was not so difficult to step in those days for a village rustic, pondering the inexplicable nature of the markings and their apparent ability to go wherever they would, and remembering their shape, to wonder fearfully if perhaps the Devil himself had been abroad in the land. This fear was mentioned in a letter from the Reverend G.M. Musgrave, a local clergyman who was keenly interested in the whole matter, and who wrote of "the state of the public mind of the villagers, the laborers, their wives and children, and old crones, and the trembling old men, dreading to stir out after sunset, or to go half a mile into lanes or byways on a call or message, under the conviction that this was the Devil's walk, and no other, and that it was wicked to trifle with such a manifest proof of the Great Enemy's presence..." What of the explanation of these prints in the snow? First, review what has to be explained; an exceptionally clearly defined single line of equally spaced marks, which was found on the tops of houses, walls and in enclosed gardens, on both sides of an estuary two miles wide and at places twenty miles 111