The Hound of the Baskervilles: Watson's First Report

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 13th.

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-forsaken corner
of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit
of the moor 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 grey stone huts against the scarred hillsides you
leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a
skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door fitting a
flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel
that his presence there was more natural than your own. The
strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what
must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian,
but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried
race who were forced to accept that which none other would
occupy.

All this, however, is foreign to the mission on which you sent me
and will probably be very uninteresting to your severely
practical mind. I can still remember your complete indifference
as to whether the sun moved round the earth or the earth round
the sun. Let me, therefore, return to the facts concerning Sir
Henry Baskerville.

If you have not had any report within the last few days it is
because up to today there was nothing of importance to relate.
Then a very surprising circumstance occurred, which I shall tell
you in due course. But, first of all, I must keep you in touch
with some of the other factors in the situation.

One of these, concerning which I have said little, is the escaped
convict upon the moor. There is strong reason now to believe that
he has got right away, which is a considerable relief to the
lonely householders of this district. A fortnight has passed
since his flight, during which he has not been seen and nothing
has been heard of him. It is surely inconceivable that he could
have held out upon the moor during all that time. Of course, so
far as his concealment goes there is no difficulty at all. Any
one of these stone huts would give him a hiding-place. But there
is nothing to eat unless he were to catch and slaughter one of
the moor sheep. We think, therefore, that he has gone, and the
outlying farmers sleep the better in consequence.