On the very top of Winsford Hill, the southern limit of Exmoor, more than twelve hundred feet above the sea, two roads meet at right angles, at a point called Spire Cross. One connects the ancient (some say prehistoric) bridge known as Tarr Steps, on one side of the hill, with the picturesque village of Winsford, lying deep down in the valley of the Exe, on the other. The second road runs north-west from Dulverton to Exford, and so to Porlock and Lynmouth, passing on the left Hawkcombe Head, the favourite meeting-place of the Somerset and Devon Staghounds, and the Lorna Doone country.

The ancient Lucania, the area of which corresponds, more or less, to that of the Neapolitan district of Basilicata, the modern province of Potenza, is little known even to the more leisured traveller in Italy; and we must turn to the pages of Keppel Craven and Lenormant for any but the most summary account of it. In the period of the Roman supremacy in Italy no events of singular interest are connected with Lucania, save only in the operations of the Hannibalic war around Grumentum. No military colony of outstanding importance, if we except Venusia to which Apulia lays an equal claim, was founded within its borders; no ancient remains to equal those of the country of the Samnites and the northern Sabellian peoples have attracted the attention of travellers and scholars; the Via Popilia, which ran through the heart of Lucania on its course from Campania to Rhegium, and the Via Herculia, the cross-road which cut through the northern half of Lucania between the Via Appia and the Via Popilia, are amongst the least known and the worst preserved of ancient Italian highways. Even the remains of the ancient Grumentum which lies in the upper valley of the Aciris in the heart of the Lucanian hills, are little known and less visited. Nor has Lucania been altogether fortunate in its local historians, whose weakness has lain especially on the topographical side.