DOWNS

A good road is recognised as the groundwork of civilisation. So long as

there is a firm and artificial track under his feet the traveller may

be said to be in contact with city and town, no matter how far they may

be distant. A yard or two outside the railway in America the primeval

forest or prairie often remains untouched, and much in the same way,

though in a less striking degree at first sight, some of our own

highways winding through Down districts are bounded by undisturbed

soil. Such a road wears for itself a hollow, and the bank at the top is

fringed with long rough grass hanging over the crumbling chalk. Broad

discs of greater knapweed with stalks like wire, and yellow toad-flax

with spotted lip grow among it. Grasping this tough grass as a handle

to climb up by, the explorer finds a rising slope of sward, and having

walked over the first ridge, shutting off the road behind him, is at

once out of civilisation. There is no noise. Wherever there are men

there is a hum, even in the harvest-field; and in the road below,

though lonely, there is sometimes the sharp clatter of hoofs or the

grating of wheels on flints. But here the long, long slopes, the

endless ridges, the gaps between, hazy and indistinct, are absolutely

without noise. In the sunny autumn day the peace of the sky overhead is

reflected in the silent earth. Looking out over the steep hills, the

first impression is of an immense void like the sea; but there are

sounds in detail, the twitter of passing swallows, the restless buzz of

bees at the thyme, the rush of the air beaten by a ringdove's wings.

These only increase the sense of silent peace, for in themselves they

soothe; and how minute the bee beside this hill, and the dove to the

breadth of the sky! A white speck of thistledown comes upon a current

too light to swing a harebell or be felt by the cheek. The furze-bushes

are lined with thistledown, blown there by a breeze now still; it is

glossy in the sunbeams, and the yellow hawkweeds cluster beneath. The

sweet, clear air, though motionless at this height, cools the rays; but

the sun seems to pause and neither to rise higher nor decline. It is

the space open to the eye which apparently arrests his movement. There

is no noise, and there are no men.

Glance along the slope, up the ridge, across to the next, endeavour to

penetrate the hazy gap, but no one is visible. In reality it is not

quite so vacant; there may, perhaps, be four or five men between this

spot and the gap, which would be a pass if the Downs were high enough.

One is not far distant; he is digging flints over the ridge, and,

perhaps, at this moment rubbing the earth from a corroded Roman coin

which he has found in the pit. Another is thatching, for there are

three detached wheat-ricks round a spur of the Down a mile away, where

the plain is arable, and there, too, a plough is at work. A shepherd is

asleep on his back behind the furze a mile in the other direction. The

fifth is a lad trudging with a message; he is in the nut-copse, over

the next hill, very happy. By walking a mile the explorer may, perhaps,

sight one of these, if they have not moved by then and disappeared in

another hollow. And when you have walked the mile--knowing the distance

by the time occupied in traversing it--if you look back you will sigh

at the hopelessness of getting over the hills. The mile is such a

little way, only just along one slope and down into the narrow valley

strewn with flints and small boulders. If that is a mile, it must be

another up to the white chalk quarry yonder, another to the copse on

the ridge; and how far is the hazy horizon where the ridges crowd on

and hide each other? Like rowing at sea, you row and row and row, and

seem where you started--waves in front and waves behind; so you may

walk and walk and walk, and still there is the intrenchment on the

summit, at the foot of which, well in sight, you were resting some

hours ago.

Rest again by the furze, and some goldfinches come calling shrilly and

feasting undisturbed upon the seeds of thistles and other plants. The

bird-catcher does not venture so far; he would if there was a rail

near; but he is a lazy fellow, fortunately, and likes not the weight of

his own nets. When the stubbles are ploughed there will be troops of

finches and linnets up here, leaving the hedgerows of the valley almost

deserted. Shortly the fieldfares will come, but not generally till the

redwings have appeared below in the valleys; while the fieldfares go

upon the hills, the green plovers, as autumn comes on, gather in flocks

and go down to the plains. Hawks regularly beat along the furze,

darting on a finch now and then, and owls pass by at night. Nightjars,

too, are down-land birds, staying in woods or fern by day, and swooping

on the moths which flutter about the furze in the evening. Crows are

too common, and work on late into the shadows. Sometimes, in getting

over the low hedges which divide the uncultivated sward from the

ploughed lands, you almost step on a crow, and it is difficult to guess

what he can have been about so earnestly, for search reveals

nothing--no dead lamb, hare, or carrion, or anything else is visible.

Rooks, of course, are seen, and larks, and once or twice in a morning a

magpie, seldom seen in the cultivated and preserved valley. There are

more partridges than rigid game preservers would deem possible where

the overlooking, if done at all, is done so carelessly. Partridges will

never cease out of the land while there are untouched downs. Of all

southern inland game, they afford the finest sport; for spoil in its

genuine sense cannot be had without labour, and those who would get

partridges on the hills must work for them. Shot down, coursed,

poached, killed before maturity in the corn, still hares are fairly

plentiful, and couch in the furze and coarse grasses. Rabbits have much

decreased; still there are some. But the larger fir copses, when they

are enclosed, are the resort of all kinds of birds of prey yet left in

the south, and, perhaps, more rare visitors are found there than

anywhere else. Isolated on the open hills, such a copse to birds is

like an island in the sea. Only a very few pheasants frequent it, and

little effort is made to exterminate the wilder creatures, while they

are continually replenished by fresh arrivals. Even ocean birds driven

inland by stress of weather seem to prefer the downs to rest on, and

feel safer there.

The sward is the original sward, untouched, unploughed, centuries old.

It is that which was formed when the woods that covered the hills were

cleared, whether by British tribes whose markings are still to be

found, by Roman smiths working the ironstone (slag is sometimes

discovered), by Saxon settlers, or however it came about in the process

of the years. Probably the trees would grow again were it not for sheep

and horses, but these preserve the sward. The plough has nibbled at it

and gnawed away great slices, but it extends mile after mile; these are

mere touches on its breadth. It is as wild as wild can be without deer

or savage beasts. The bees like it, and the finches come. It is silent

and peaceful like the sky above. By night the stars shine, not only

overhead and in a narrow circle round the zenith, but down to the

horizon; the walls of the sky are built up of them as well as the roof.

The sliding meteors go silently over the gleaming surface; silently the

planets rise; silently the earth moves to the unfolding east. Sometimes

a lunar rainbow appears; a strange scene at midnight, arching over

almost from the zenith down into the dark hollow of the valley. At the

first glance it seems white, but presently faint prismatic colours are

discerned.

Already as the summer changes into autumn there are orange specks on

the beeches in the copses, and the firs will presently be leafless.

Then those who live in the farmsteads placed at long intervals begin to

prepare for the possibilities of the winter. There must be a good store

of fuel and provisions, for it will be difficult to go down to the

villages. The ladies had best add as many new volumes as they can to

the bookshelf, for they may be practically imprisoned for weeks

together. Wind and rain are very different here from what they are

where the bulwark of the houses shelters one side of the street, or the

thick hedge protects half the road. The fury of the storm is unchecked,

and nothing can keep out the raindrops which come with the velocity of

shot. If snow falls, as it does frequently, it does not need much to

obscure the path; at all times the path is merely a track, and the ruts

worn down to the white chalk and the white snow confuse the eyes.

Flecks of snow catch against the bunches of grass, against the

furze-bushes, and boulders; if there is a ploughed field, against every

clod, and the result is bewildering. There is nothing to guide the

steps, nothing to give the general direction, and once off the track,

unless well accustomed to the district, the traveller may wander in

vain. After a few inches have fallen the roads are usually blocked, for

all the flakes on miles of hills are swept along and deposited into

hollows where the highways run. To be dug out now and then in the

winter is a contingency the mail-driver reckons as part of his daily

life, and the waggons going to and fro frequently pass between high

walls of frozen snow. In these wild places, which can scarcely be said

to be populated at all, a snow-storm, however, does not block the

King's highways and paralyse traffic as London permits itself to be

paralysed under similar circumstances. Men are set to work and cut a

way through in a very short time, and no one makes the least difficulty

about it. But with the tracks that lead to isolated farmsteads it is

different; there is not enough traffic to require the removal of the

obstruction, and the drifts occasionally accumulate to twenty feet

deep. The ladies are imprisoned, and must be thankful if they have got

down a box of new novels.

The dread snow-tempest of 1880-81 swept over these places with

tremendous fury, and the most experienced shepherds, whose whole lives

had been spent going to and fro on the downs, frequently lost their

way. There is a story of a waggoner and his lad going slowly along the

road after the thaw, and noticing an odd-looking scarecrow in a field.

They went to it, and found it was a man, dead, and still standing as he

had stiffened in the snow, the clothes hanging on his withered body,

and the eyes gone from the sockets, picked out by the crows. It is only

one of many similar accounts, and it is thought between twenty and

thirty unfortunate persons perished. Such miserable events are of rare

occurrence, but show how open, wild, and succourless the country still

remains. In ordinary winters it is only strangers who need be cautious,

and strangers seldom appear. Even in summer time, however, a stranger,

if he stays till dusk, may easily wander for hours. Once off the

highway, all the ridges and slopes seem alike, and there is no end to

them.