ain stretches of the Downs that does not
bear witness to the immemorial presence of man. To say nothing of the
discoveries about Beachy Head, the earthworks there, and the neolithic
implements and bronze weapons discovered about East Dean and Alfriston,
we have in the Long Man of Wilmington, that gigantic figure cut out in
the chalk of the hill-side, something comparable only with the Giant of
Cerne Abbas in Dorset and the White Horses of Wiltshire. That figure is
some two hundred and forty feet in height and holds in each hand a
stave or club two hundred and thirty feet long. It would seem
impossible to be certain either of its age or its purpose, but we may
perhaps be sure that it lay there upon the Downs above Polegate before
the landing of Caesar, and it may have been the foundation of one of
those figures described by him as formed of osiers and filled with
living men to be destroyed by fire as a sacrifice for our barbarian
gods.

Nor is this all. The whole range of the Downs as I say is scattered
thick with the work of our pre-historic forefathers. In Burlough Castle
and Mount Caburn we have fortresses so old that it is impossible to
name the age in which they were contrived and built, nor can we assert
with any confidence who they were that first occupied the camp upon
Ditchling Beacon, the highest point of the South Downs, or who first
defended Wolstanbury. And it is the same with those most famous places
Cissbury Ring and Chanctonbury. But the flint mines upon Cissbury give
us some idea of the neolithic men, our forefathers, which should and
does astonish us. The Camp itself is less wonderful than the mines upon
the western side of it. Here we have not only numerous pits from ten to
seventy feet in diameter and from five to seven feet deep, but really
vast excavations leading to galleries which tap a belt or band of
flints. That these mines were worked by neolithic man it is impossible
to doubt, but he may not have discovered or first used them. They may
be older than he, though all record even upon that marvellous hill-
side, has been lost of those who first exploited them. Nor is
Chanctonbury, though it cannot boast of mines such as these, less
astonishing or less ancient. The camp set there following the contour
of the hill can only have been one of the most important in south-
east England. It commands the camps at Cissbury, the Devil's Dyke,
High Down and White Hawk, the whole breadth of the Weald lay bene