Chapter 8.

First Report of Dr. Watson From this point onward, I will follow

the course of events by transcribing my own letters to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, which lie

before me on the table.

One page is missing, but otherwise they are exactly as written, and show my feelings

and suspicions of the moment more accurately than my memory, clear as it is upon these

tragic events can possibly do.

Baskerville Hall, October 13.

My Dear Holmes.

My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that

has occurred in this most god-for-sake and corner of the world.

The longer one stays here, the more does the spirit of the more sink into one's soul,

its vastness, and also its grim charm.

When you are once out upon its bosom, you have left all traces of modern England behind

you, but on the other hand you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of

the prehistoric people.

On all sides of you, as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves

and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples.

As you look at their grazed-tone huts against the scarred hillsides, you leave your own

age behind you.

If you were to see a skin-clad hairy man crawl out from the low door, fitting a flint-tipped

arrow onto the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural

...