THE HILLSIDE HEDGE: ITS BIRDS AND FLOWERS--A GREEN TRACK--THE
SPRING-HEAD.
A low thick hawthorn hedge runs along some distance below the earthwork
just at the foot of the steepest part of the hill. It divides the
greensward of the down from the ploughed land of the plain, which
stretches two or three miles wide, across to another range opposite. A
few stunted ash trees grow at intervals among the bushes, which are the
favourite resort of finches and birds that feed upon the seeds and
insects they find in the cultivated fields. Most of these cornfields
being separated only by a shallow trench and a bank bare of underwood,
the birds naturally flock to the few hedges they can find. So that,
although but low and small in comparison with the copse-like hedges of
the vale, the hawthorn here is often alive with birds: chaffinches and
sparrows perhaps in the greatest numbers, also yellowhammers.
The colour of the yellowhammer appears brighter in spring and early
summer: the bird is aglow with a beautiful and brilliant yet soft
yellow, pleasantly shaded with brown. He perches on the upper boughs of
the hawthorn or on a rail, coming up from the corn as if to look around
him--for he feeds chiefly on the ground--and uttering two or three short
notes. His plumage gives a life and tint to the hedge, contrasting so
brightly with the vegetation and with other birds. His song is but a
few bars repeated, yet it has a pleasing and soothing effect in the
drowsy warmth of summer. Yellowhammers haunt the cornfields
principally, though they are not absent from the meadows.
To this hedge the hill-magpie comes: some magpies seem to keep almost
entirely to the downs, while others range the vale, though there is no
apparent difference between them. His peculiar uneven and, so to say,
flickering flight, marks him at a distance as he jauntily journeys along
beside the slope. He visits every fir copse and beech clump on his way,
spending some time, too, in and about the hawthorn hedge, which is a
favourite spot. Sometimes in the spring, while the corn is yet short
and green, if you glance carefully through an opening in the bushes or
round the side of the gateway, you may see him busy on the ground. His
restless excitable nature betrays itself in every motion: he walks now
to the right a couple of yards, now to the left in a quick zigzag, so
working across the field towards you; then with a long rush he makes a
lengthy traverse at the top of his speed, turns and darts away again at
right angles, and presently up goes his tail and he throws his head down
with a jerk of the whole body as if he would thrust his beak deep into
the earth. This habit of searching the field apparently for some
favourite grub is evidence in his favour that he is not so entirely
guilty as he has been represented of innocent blood: no bird could be
approached in that way. All is done in a jerky, nervous manner. As he
turns sideways the white feathers show with a flash above the green
corn; another movement, and he looks all black.
It is more difficult to get near the larger birds upon the downs than in
the meadows, because of the absence of cover; the hedge here is so low,
and the gateway open and bare, without the overhanging oak of the
meadows, whose sweeping boughs snatch and retain wisps of the hay from
the top of a waggon-load as it passes under. The gate itself is
dilapidated--perhaps only a rail, or a couple of `flakes' fastened
together with tar-cord: there are no cattle here to require strong
fences.
In the young beans yonder the wood-pigeons are busy--too busy for the
farmer; they have a habit as they rise and hover about their
feeding-places, of suddenly shooting up into the air, and as suddenly
sinking again to the level of their course, describing a line roughly
resembling the outline of a tent if drawn on paper, a cone whose sides
droop inward somewhat. They do this too, over the ash woods where they
breed, or the fir trees; it is not done when they are travelling
straight ahead on a journey.
The odour of the bean-flower lingering on the air in the early summer is
delicious; in autumn when cut the stalk and pods are nearly black, so
that the shocks on the side of the hills show at a great distance. The
sward, where the slope of the down becomes almost level beside the
hedge, is short and sweet and thickly strewn with tiny flowers, to which
and to the clover the bees come, settling, as it were, on the ground, so
that as you walk you nearly step on them, and they rise from under the
foot with a shrill, angry buzz.
On the other side the plough has left a narrow strip of green running
along the hedge: the horses, requiring some space in which to turn at
the end of each furrow, could not draw the share any nearer, and on
this narrow strip the weeds and wild flowers flourish. The
light-sulphur-coloured charlock is scattered everywhere--out among the
corn, too, for no cleaning seems capable of eradicating this plant; the
seeds will linger in the earth and retain their germinating power for a
length of time, till the plough brings them near enough to the surface,
when they are sure to shoot up unless the pigeons find them. Here also
may be found the wild garlic, which sometimes gets among the wheat and
lends an onion-like flavour to the bread. It grows, too, on the edge of
the low chalky banks overhanging the narrow waggon-track, whose ruts are
deep in the rubble--worn so in winter.
Such places, close to cultivated land yet undisturbed, are the best in
which to look for wild flowers; and on the narrow strip beside the hedge
and on the crumbling rubble bank of the rough track may be found a
greater variety than by searching the broad acres beyond. In the season
the large white bell-like flowers of the convolvulus will climb over the
hawthorn, and the lesser striped kind will creep along the ground. The
pink pimpernel hides on the very verge of the corn, which presently will
be strewn with the beautiful `blue-bottle' flower, than whose exquisite
hue there is nothing more lovely in our fields. The great scarlet poppy
with the black centre, and `eggs and butter'--curious name for a
flower--will, of course, be there: the latter often flourishes on a high
elevation, on the very ridges, provided only the plough has been near.
At irregular intervals along the slope there are deep hollows--shallow
near the summit, deepening and widening as they sink, till by the hedge
at the foot they broaden out into a little valley in themselves. These
great green grooves furrow the sides of the downs everywhere, and for
that reason it is best to walk either on the ridge or in the plain at
the bottom: if you follow the slope half-way up you are continually
descending and ascending the steep sides of these gullys, which adds
much to the fatigue. At the mouths of the hollows, close to the hedge,
the great flint stones and lumps of chalky rubble rolling down from
above one by one in the passage of the years have accumulated: so that
the turf there is almost hidden as by a stony cascade.
On the ridge here is a thicket of furze, grown shrub-like and strong,
being untouched by woodman's tool; here the rabbits have their `buries,'
and be careful how you thread your way between the bushes, for the
ground is undermined with innumerable flint-pits long abandoned. This
is the favourite resort of the chats, who perch on the furze or on the
heaps of flints, perpetually iterating their one note, from which their
name seems taken. Within the enclosure of the old earthwork itself the
flint-diggers have been at work: they occasionally find a few fragments
of rusty metal, doubtless relics of ancient weapons; but little worth
preserving is ever found there. Such treasures are much more frequently
discovered in the cornfields of the plain immediately beneath than here
in the camp where one would naturally look for them.
The labourers who pick up these things often put an immensely
exaggerated value on them: a worn Roman coin of the commonest kind, of
which hundreds are in existence, they imagine to be worth a week's wages
till after refusing its real value from a collector they finally visit a
watchmaker whose aquafortis test proves the supposed gold to be brass.
So, too, with fossils: a man brought me a common echinus, and expected a
couple of `crownds' at least for it; nothing could convince him that,
although not often found just in that district, in others they were
numerous. The `crownd' is still the unit, the favourite coin of the
labourers, especially the elder folk. They use the word something in
the same sense as the dollar, and look with regret upon the gradual
disappearance of the broad silver disc with the figure of `Saint Gaarge'
conquering the dragon.
Everywhere across the hills traces of the old rabbit-warrens may be
found in the names of places. Warren Farms, Warren Houses, etc, are
common; and the term is often added to the names of the villages to
distinguish an outlying part of the parish. From the earthwork the
sites of four such warrens, now cultivated, can be seen within the
radius of as many miles. Rabbits must have swarmed on the downs in the
olden times. In the season when the couch and weeds are collected in
heaps and burned, the downs--were it not for the silence--might seem the
scene of a mighty conflict the smoke of the battle rolling along the
slopes and hanging over the plains, rising up from the hollows in dusky
clouds. But the cannon of the shadowy army give forth no thunderous
roar. These smouldering fires are not, of course, peculiar to the
hills, but the smoke shows so much more at that elevation.
At evening, if you watch the sunset from the top of the rampart, as the
red disc sinks to the horizon and the shadows lengthen--the trees below
and the old barn throwing their shadows up the slope--the eye is
deceived by the position of the light and the hill seems much higher and
steeper, looking down from the summit, than it does at noonday. It is
an optical delusion. Here on the western side the grass is still dry--
in the deep narrow valleys behind the sun set long since over the
earthwork and ridge, and the dew is already gathering thickly on the
sward.
A broad green track runs for many a long, long mile across the downs,
now following the ridges, now winding past at the foot of a grassy
slope, then stretching away through cornfield and fallow. It is
distinct from the waggon-tracks which cross it here and there, for these
are local only, and if traced up land the wayfarer presently in a maze
of fields, or end abruptly in the rickyard of a lone farmhouse. It is
distinct from the hard roads of modern construction which also at wide
intervals cross its course, dusty and glaringly white in the sunshine.
It is not a farm track--you may walk for twenty miles along it over the
hills; neither is it the king's highway.
For seven long miles in one direction there is not so much as a wayside
tavern; then the traveller finds a little cottage, with a bench under a
shady sycamore and a trough for a thirsty horse, situate where three
such modern roads (also lonely enough) cross the old green track. Far
apart, and far away from its course hidden among their ricks and trees a
few farmsteads stand, and near them perhaps a shepherd's cottage:
otherwise it is an utter solitude, a vast desert of hill and plain;
silent too, save for the tinkle of a sheep bell, or, in the autumn, the
moaning hum of a distant threshing machine rising and falling on the
wind.
The origin of the track goes back into the dimmest antiquity; there is
evidence that it was a military road when the fierce Dane carried fire
and slaughter inland, leaving his `nailed bark' in the creeks of the
rivers, and before that when the Saxons pushed up from the sea. The
eagles of old Rome, perhaps, were borne along it, and yet earlier the
chariots of the Britons may have used it--traces of all have been found;
so that for fifteen centuries this track of the primitive peoples has
maintained its existence through the strange changes of the times, till
now in the season the cumbrous steam-ploughing engines jolt and strain
and pant over the uneven turf.
To-day, entering the ancient way, eight miles or so from the great
earthwork, hitherto the central post of observation, I turn my face once
more towards its distant rampart, just visible, showing over the hills a
line drawn against the sky. Here, whence I start, is another such a
camp, with mound and fosse; beyond the one I have more closely described
some four miles is still a third, all connected by the same green track
running along the ridges of the downs and entirely independent of the
roads of modern days. They form a chain of forts on the edge of the
down-land overlooking the vale. At starting the track is but just
distinguishable from the general sward of the hill: the ruts are
overgrown with grass--but the tough `tussocky' kind, in which the hares
hide, avoids the path, and by its edge marks the way. Soon the ground
sinks, and then the cornfields approach, extending on either hand--
barley, already bending under the weight of the awn, swaying with every
gentle breath of air, stronger oats and wheat, broad squares of swede
and turnip and dark-green mangold.
Plough and harrow press hard on the ancient track, and yet dare not
encroach upon it. With varying width, from twenty to fifty yards, it
runs like a green riband through the sea of corn--a width that allows a
flock of sheep to travel easily side by side, spread abroad, and snatch
a bite as they pass. Dry, shallow trenches full of weeds, and low
narrow mounds, green also, divide it from the arable land; and on these
now and then grow storm-stunted hawthorn bushes, gnarled and aged. On
the banks the wild thyme grows in great bunches, emitting an exquisite
fragrance--luxurious cushions these to rest upon beneath the shade of
the hawthorn, listening to the gentle rustle of the wheat as the wind
rushes over it. Away yonder the shadows of the clouds come over the
ridge, and glide with seeming sudden increase of speed down-hill, then
along the surface of the corn, darkening it as they pass, with a bright
band of light following swiftly behind. It is gone, and the beech copse
away there is blackened for a moment as the shadow leaps it. On the
smooth bark of those beeches the shepherd lads have cut their names with
their great clasp-knives.
Sometimes in the evening, later on, when the wheat is nearly ripe, such
a shepherd lad will sit under the trees there; and as you pass along the
track comes the mellow note of his wooden whistle, from which poor
instrument he draws a sweet sound. There is no tune--no recognisable
melody: he plays from his heart and to himself. In a room doubtless it
would seem harsh and discordant; but there, the player unseen, his
simple notes harmonise with the open plain, the looming hills, the ruddy
sunset as if striving to express the feelings these call forth.
Resting thus on the wild thyme under the hawthorn, partly hidden and
quite silent, we may see stealing out from the corn into the fallow hard
by first one, then two, then half a dozen or more young partridge
chicks. With them is the anxious mother, watching the sky chiefly, lest
a hawk be hovering about; nor will she lead them far from the cover of
the wheat. She stretches her neck up to listen and look: then,
reassured, walks on, her head nodding as she moves. The little ones
crowd after, one darting this way, another that, learning their lesson
of life--how and where to find the most suitable food, how to hide from
the enemy: imitation of the parent developing hereditary inclinations.
At the slightest unwonted sound or movement, she first stretches her
neck up for a hurried glance, then, as the labouring folk say, `quats'--
i.e. crouches down--and in a second or two runs swiftly to cover, using
every little hollow of the ground skilfully for concealment on the way,
like a practised skirmisher. The ants' nests, which are so attractive
to partridges, are found in great numbers along the edge of the
cornfields, being usually made on ground that is seldom disturbed. The
low mounds that border the green track are populous with ants, whose
nests are scattered thickly on these banks, as also beside the paths and
waggon-tracks that traverse the fields and are not torn up by the
plough. Any beaten track such as this old path, however green, is
generally free from them on its surface: ants avoid placing their nests
where they may be trampled upon. This may often be noticed in gardens:
there are nests at and under the edge of the paths, but none where
people walk. It is these nests in the banks and mounds which draw the
partridges so frequently from the middle of the fields to the edges
where they can be seen; they will come even to the banks of frequented
roads for the eggs of which they are so fond.
Now that their courting-time is over, the larks do not sing so
continuously. Later on, when the ears of wheat are ripe and the reapers
are sharpening their sickles, if you walk here, with the corn on either
hand, every ten or twenty yards a cloud of sparrows and small birds will
rise from it, literally hiding the hawthorn bush on which they settle,
so that the green tree looks brown. Wait a little while, and with
defiant chirps back they go, disappearing in the wheat.
The sparrows will sometimes flutter at the top of the stalk, hovering
for a few moments in one spot as if trying to perch on the ears; then,
grasping one with their claws, they sink with it and bear it to the
ground, where they can revel at their leisure. A place where a
hailstorm or heavy rain has beat down and levelled the tall corn flat is
the favourite spot for these birds; they rise from it in hundreds at a
time. But some of the finches are probably searching for the ripe seeds
of the weeds that spring up among the corn; they find also a feast of
insects.
Leaving now the gnarled hawthorn and the cushion of thyme, I pass a
deserted sheep-pen, where in the early year the tender lambs were
sheltered from the snow and wind. Mile after mile, and still no sign of
human life--everywhere silence, solitude. Hill after hill and plain
after plain. Presently the turf is succeeded by a hard road--flints
ground down into dust by broad waggon-wheels bearing huge towering loads
of wool or heavy wheat. Just here the old track happens to answer the
purposes of modern civilisation. Fast this, and again it reverts to
turf, leaving now the hills for a mile or two to cross a plain lying
between a semicircle of downs; and here at last are hedges of hawthorn
and hazel and stunted crab tree.
Round black marks upon the turf, with grey ashes scattered about and
half-consumed sticks, show where the gipsies have recently bivouacked,
sheltered somewhat at night by the hedges. Near by is an ancient
tumulus, on which grows a small yet obviously aged sycamore tree,
stunted by wind and storm, and under it the holes of rabbits--drilling
their habitations into the tomb of the unknown warrior. In his day,
perhaps, the green track wound through a pathless wood long since
cleared. Soon the hedges all but disappear, the ground rises once more,
nearing the hills; and here the way widens out--first fifty, then a
hundred yards across--green sward dotted with furze and some brake fern,
and bunches of tough dry grass. Above on the summit is another ancient
camp, and below two more turf-grown tumuli, low and shaped like an
inverted bowl. Many more have been ploughed down, doubtless, in the
course of the years: sometimes still, as the share travels through the
soil there is a sudden jerk, and a scraping sound of iron against stone.
The ploughman eagerly tears away the earth, and moves the stone to find
a thin jar, as he thinks--in fact, a funeral urn. Like all uneducated
people, in the far East as well as in the West, he is imbued with the
idea of finding hidden treasure, and breaks the urn in pieces to
discover--nothing; it is empty. He will carry the fragments home to the
farm, when, after a moment's curiosity, they will be thrown aside with
potsherds, and finally used to mend the floor of the cowpen. The track
winds away yet further, over hill after hill; but a summer's day is not
long enough to trace it to the end.
In the narrow valley, far below the frowning ramparts of the ancient
fort that has been more specially described, a beautiful spring breaks
forth. Three irregularly circular green spots, brighter in colour than
the dry herbage around, mark the outlets of the crevices in the earth
through which the clear water finds its way to the surface. Three tiny
threads of water, each accompanied by its riband of verdant grasses,
meander downwards some few yards, and then unite and form a little
stream. Then the water in its channel first becomes visible, glistening
in the sun; for at the sources the aquatic grasses bend over, growing
thickly, and hide it from view. But pressing these down, and parting
them with the hand, you may trace the exact place where it rises, gently
oozing forth without a sound.
Lower down, where the streamlet is stronger and has worn a groove--now
rushing over a floor of tiny flints, now partly buoyed up and chafing
against a smooth round lump of rubble--there is a pleasant murmur
audible at a short distance. Still farther from the source, where,
grown wider, the shallow water shoots swiftly over a steeper gradient,
the undulations of its surface cross each other, plaiting a pattern like
four strands interwoven. The resemblance to the pattern of four rushes
which the country children delight to plait together as they wander by
the brooks is so close as almost to suggest the derivation of the art of
weaving rushes, flags, and willows by the hand. The sheep grazing at
will in the coombe eat off the herbage too closely to permit of many
flowers. Where the springs join and irrigate a broader strip there
grows a little watercress, and some brooklime, said to be poisonous and
occasionally mistaken for the cress; a stray cuckoo-flower shows its
pale lilac petals in spring, and a few bunches of rushes are scattered
round. They do not reach any height or size; they seem dry and sapless,
totally unlike the tall green succulent rush of the meadows far below.
A water-wagtail comes now and then; sometimes the yellow variety, whose
colour in the spring is so bright as to cause the bird to resemble the
yellowhammer at the first glance. But besides these the spring-head is
not much-frequented by birds; perhaps the clear water attracts less
visible insect life, and, the shore of the stream being hard and dry,
there is no moisture where grubs and worms may work their way. Behind
the fountain the steep green wall of the coombe rises almost
perpendicularly--so steep as not to be climbed without exertion. At the
summit are the cornfields of the level plain which here so suddenly
sinks without warning. The plough has been drawn along all but on the
very edge, and the tall wheat nods at the verge. From thence a strong
arm might send a flat round stone skimming across to the other side of
the narrow hollow, and its winding course is apparent.
Like a deep groove it cuts a channel up towards the hills, becoming
narrower as it approaches; and the sides diminish in height, till at the
neck a few rails and a gate can close it, being scarcely broader than a
waggon-track. There, at the foot of the down, it ends, overlooked by a
barn, the home of innumerable sparrows, whose nests are made under the
eaves, everywhere their keen eyes can find an aperture large enough to
squeeze into.
Looking down the steep side of the coombe, near the bottom there runs
along a projecting ledge, or terrace, like a natural footway. On the
opposite side is another corresponding ledge, or green turf-covered
terrace; these follow the windings of the valley, decreasing in width as
it diminishes, and gradually disappearing. In its broadest part one of
them is used as a waggon-track, for which it is admirably adapted, being
firm and hard, even smoother than the bottom of the coombe itself. If
it were possible to imagine the waters of a tidal river rising and
ebbing up and down this hollow these ledges would form its banks. Their
regular shape is certainly remarkable, and they are not confined to this
one place. Such steep-sided narrow hollows are found all along the edge
of this range of downs, where they slope to the larger valley which
stretches out to the horizon. There are at least ten of them in a space
of twelve miles, many having similar springs of water and similar
terrace-like ledges, more or less perfect. Towards the other extremity
of this particular coombe--where it widens before opening on the
valley--the spring spreads and occupies a wider channel, beside which
there is a strip of osier-bed.
When at the fountain-head, and looking down the current the end of the
coombe westwards away from the hills seems to open to the sky; for the
ground falls rapidly, and the trees hide any trace of human habitation.
The silent hills close in the rear, capped by the old fort; the silent
cornfields come to the very edge above; the silent steep green walls
rise on either hand, so near together that the swallows in the blue
atmosphere high overhead only come into sight for a second as they shoot
swiftly across. In the evening the red sun, enlarged and bulging as if
partly flattened, hangs suspended, as it seems, at the very mouth of the
trough-like hollow. It is natural in the silence and the solitude for
thoughts of the lapse of time to arise--of the endless centuries since,
by some slow geological process, this hollow was formed. Fifteen
hundred years ago the men of the camp above came hither to draw water;
still the spring oozes and flows, and the sun sinks at the western
mouth. So too, doubtless, the sun shone into the hollow in the evening
cycle upon cycle ere then.
Up the blade of grass here a tiny white-shelled snail has crawled,
feeling in its dull, dim way that evening is approaching. The coils of
the little shell are exquisitely turned--the workmanship is perfect; the
creature within, there can be no question, is equally perfect in its way
and finds a joy in the plants on which it feeds. On the ground below,
hidden among the fibres near the roots of the grass, lies another tiny
shell; but it is empty, the life that once animated it has fled--
whither? Presently the falling dew will condense upon it, and at the
opening one round drop will stand; after awhile to add its mite to the
ceaseless flow of the fountain. Could any system of notation ever
express the number of these creatures that have existed in the past? If
time is measured by the duration of life, reckoned by their short spans
eternity upon eternity has gone by. To me the greatest marvel is the
countless, the infinite number of the organisms that have existed, each
with its senses and feelings, whose bodies now help to build up the
solid crust of the earth. These tiny shells have had millions of
ancestors: Nature seems never weary of repeating the same model.
In the osier-bed the brook-sparrow chatters; there, too, the first
pollard willow stands, or rather leans, hollow and aged, across the
water. This tree is the outpost of a thousand others that line the
banks of the stream for mile after mile yonder down in the valley. How
quickly this little fountain grows into a streamlet and then to a
considerable brook!--without apparently receiving the waters of any
feeders. In the first half-mile it swells sufficiently, if bayed up
properly, to drive a mill--as, indeed, many of the springs issuing from
these coombes do just below the mouth. In little more than a mile,
measuring by its windings, it becomes broad enough to require some
effort to leap it, and then deepens into a fair-sized brook.
The rapidity of the increase is accounted for by the fact that every
field it passes whose surface inclines towards it is a watershed from
which an unseen but considerable drainage takes place. When no brook
passes through the fields the water stands and soaks downwards, or
evaporates slowly: directly a ditch is opened it fills, and the effect
of a stream is not only to collect water till then unseen, but to
preserve it from evaporation or disappearance into the subsoil.
Probably, if it were possible to start an artificial stream in many
places, after a while it would almost keep itself going at times,
provided, of course, that the bottom was not porous. Below the mouth of
the coombe the water has worn itself a channel quite six feet deep in
the chalk--washing out the flints that now lie at the bottom. Hawthorn
bushes bend over it, and great briars uncut since their first shoot was
put forth; the elder, too, grows luxuriously, whose white flowers,
emitting a rich but sickly odour, the village girls still gather to make
elder-water to remove freckles. These bushes hide the deep gully in
which the current winds its way--so deep that no cattle can get down to
drink.
A cottage stands on the very edge a little further along; the residents
do not dip their water from the running stream, but have made a small
pool beside it, with which no doubt it communicates, for the pool, or
`dipping-place,' is ever full of cool, clear, limpid water. The plan is
not without its advantages, because the stream itself, though usually
clear, is liable to become foul from various causes--such as a flood,
when it is white from suspended chalk, or from cattle higher up above
the gully coming to slake their thirst and stirring the sandy grit of
the bottom. But the little pool long remains clear, because the water
from the stream to enter it has to strain itself through the narrow
partition of chalky rubble.
So limpid is the current in general, that the idea of seeing trout
presently when it shall widen out naturally arises. But before then the
soil changes, and clay and loam spoil the clean, sandy, or gravelly
bottom trout delight in. In one such stream hard by, however, the
experiment of keeping trout has been tried, and with some success: it
could be done without a doubt if it were not that after a short course
all the streams upon this side of the downs enter the meadows, and
immediately run over a mud bottom. With care, a few young fish were
maintained in the upper waters, but it was only as an experiment; left
to themselves they would speedily disappear, and of course no angling
could be thought of.
On the opposite side of the range of hills, where they decline in height
somewhat, but still roll on for a great distance, the contrary is the
case. The springs that run in that direction pass over a soil that
gives a good clear bottom, and gradually assume the character of rivers;
narrow, indeed, and shallow, but clear, sweet, and beautiful. There, as
you wander over the down, and push your way through one of those
extensive nutwoods which grow on the hills, acres and acres of hazel
bushes, suddenly you come to the edge of a steep cliff, falling all but
perpendicularly, and lo! at the foot is a winding river, bordered by
broad green meads dotted with roan-and-white cattle.
Here in the season the angler may be seen skilfully tempting the
speckled trout. Across the meads a grove of elm and oak, and the dull
red of old houses dimly seen between, and the low dark crenellated tower
of a village church. Behind the downs rise again, their slopes in
spring a mass of colour--green corn, squares of bright yellow mustard,
bright crimson trifolium, and brown fallows.