into existence and the beauties of Eden struck his
all-wondering eyes," Mr. Hughson describes the prospect. "It commands
a view of the county of Surrey, part of Hampshire, Berkshire, Nettlebed
in Oxfordshire, some parts of Bucks, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Kent and
Essex; and, by the help of a glass, Wiltshire." Not a word of Sussex.

[Sidenote: A SEA OF MIST]

The wisest course for the non-gregarious traveller is to leave the Dyke
on the right, and, crossing the Ladies' Golf Links, gain Fulking Hill,
from which the view is equally fine (save for lacking a little in the
east) and where there is peace and isolation. I remember sitting one
Sunday morning on Fulking Hill when a white mist like a sea filled the
Weald, washing the turf slopes twenty feet or so below me. In the depths
of this ocean, as it were, could be heard faintly the noises of the
farms and the chime of submerged bells. Suddenly a hawk shot up and
disappeared again, like a leaping fish.

The same spot was on another occasion the scene of a superb effort of
courageous tenacity. I met a large hare steadily breasting the hill.
Turning neither to the right nor left it was soon out of sight over the
crest. Five or more minutes later there appeared in view, on the hare's
trail, a very tired little fox terrier not much more than half the size
of the hare. He also turned aside neither to the right nor the left, but
panted wearily yet bravely past me, and so on, over the crest, after his
prey. I waited for some time but the terrier never came back. Such was
the purpose depicted on his countenance that I can believe he is
following still.

On these Downs, near the Dyke, less than a century ago the Great Bustard
used to be hunted with greyhounds. Mr. Borrer tells us in the _Birds of
Sussex_ that his grandfather (who died in 1844) sometimes would take
five or six in a morning. They fought savagely and more than once
injured the hounds.

Enterprise has of late been at work at the Dyke. A cable railway crosses
the gully at a dizzy height, a lift brings travellers from the Weald, a
wooden cannon of exceptional calibre threatens the landscape, and
pictorial advertisements of the Devil and his domain may be seen at most
of the Sussex stations. Ladies also play golf where, when first I knew
it, one could walk unharmed. A change that is to be regretted is the
exile to the unromantic neighbourhood of the Dyke Station of the Queen
of the Gipsies, a swarthy ringletted lad