It was already dusk when I came out of Edburton church, the late dusk of a day in early May; and so, liking the place passing well, I determined to sleep there and soon found a hospitable cottage.  In the morning I liked the place better still, and remembering the “tarmac” and the sophistication (alas!) of Steyning, I decided to stay where I was two or three days and to visit thence 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 undergrowth so thick that no man might cross it without danger.  Such an assertion is merely an attempt on the part of men, who do not know the Weald, to explain the facts of which I have spoken, namely, that the Weald appears as an obstacle in our early history, though not insurmountable, and that it continually offered a secure hiding-place and refuge to the fugitive.