a place in the Weald it had
long been my desire to see. And so having made up my mind, before
nine o'clock I set out on my way.

CHAPTER XIII

THE WEALD

There can be no one who has stood upon one of the great heights of the
Downs north and south, upon Ditchling Beacon, Chanctonbury or Leith
Hill, who, looking across the Weald, has not wondered what this
country, lying between the two great chalk ranges, might be, what is
its nature and its history and what part it has played in the great
story of England. For even to the superficial onlooker it seems to
differ essentially not only from the great chalk Downs upon which he
stands, but from any other part of England known to him. It lies,
thickly sprinkled with scattered and isolated woodlands, a mighty
trench between the heights, not a vast plain but an uneven lowland
diversified by higher land but without true hills, and roughly divided
west and east into two parts by a great ridge known by various names,
but in its greater part called the Forest, St Leonard's Forest,
Ashdown Forest, Dallington Forest, and so forth. This country which we
know as the Weald is obviously bounded north and south by the Downs
which enclose it, as they do, too, upon the west, where between
Winchester and Petersfield and Selborne the two ranges narrow and
meet. Thence, indeed, the Weald spreads eastward in an ever widening
delta till it is lost in the marshes and the sea.

Such is the aspect of this great country as we see it to-day from any
of the heights north and south of it; but what is its true character
and what is its history?

We hear of it first under a Saxon name, Andredeswald, whence we get our
name of the Weald, and we find it always spoken of not only by the
Saxons, but by the Romans before them as an obstacle, though not, it
would seem, an insurmountable one. It was, in fact, a wild forest
country of clay containing much woodland, everywhere covered with
scrub, and traversed by various sleepy and shallow streams. That it was
difficult to cross we have Roman evidence; that it was a secure hiding-
place we know from the Saxons; but as we look upon it to-day neither of
these historic facts is self-evident, and therefore a curious myth has
grown up with regard to the Weald; and the historian, seeking to
explain what is not to be understood without time and trouble and
experience, tells us that the Weald was once an impenetrable forest, a
whole great woodland and underg