raight from Abinger Hatch to Leith Hill. You should
turn aside to the left and let the road take you eastwards into the
woods. Then you may come upon the tiny gathering of cottages called
Friday Street with a suddenness which is a delight. You turn a corner of
the road and you are in Switzerland. A little tarn, unruffled by any
wind, mirroring a hill of pine-trees, lies below you; beyond the water
is the blue reek of wood-fires; open grass runs to the edge of the lake,
a light green rim to the dark of the pines. So do the little emerald
tarns lie like saucers full of sky and trees in pockets of the Alps. The
illusion wants but the tinkle of cowbells: it would be pleasant to
present bells to straying goats.

From Friday Street to the tower on Leith Hill is a walk through the very
depths of the wood. Heather glows in the openings of the pines, bracken
brushes rain on your sleeve, bilberries ripen in the scented heat, and
almost any path--though not the road--runs higher and higher to the open
ground at the very top. At the top, nine hundred and sixty-five feet up,
you are on the highest hill in the south-east of England.

Leith Hill is not for the multitude which climbs Box Hill. It is further
from London, and further from a railway station. But it calls its own
companies of travellers, and they are often large; the roads from
Holmwood, which is the nearest station, are lined with notices
indicating the right direction. When brakes carry excursionists from
Holmwood, the brakes halt at the foot, and the visitors climb. The
climb ends in a tower with a story. It was built by Richard Hull, eldest
bencher of the Inner Temple and member of several Irish Parliaments. He
built it, his Latin inscription informs you, for the enjoyment of
himself and his neighbours, and six years later, in 1772, he was buried
under it. Gratefully enough, the neighbourhood rifled the dead man's
tower of its doors and windows; then, by way of compensation, to prevent
more robbery, filled it half full of cement. It was left to the late
owner of Wotton, Mr. W.J. Evelyn, in 1863 to restore the building and to
add a staircase, and I believe the platform of the roof stands now
exactly a thousand feet above sea level.

[Illustration: _Friday Street._]

The full view from Leith Hill has been described by a number of very
fortunate persons. Aubrey was one of the first, and he estimated that
the whole circumference of the horizon could not be less than two