ANCIENT BRITAIN 



Neither at the mouth nor even much higher up in its valley- 

 course, was a river a steady stream in a defined bed. Such 

 beds as it had were probably four or five times their present 

 width; they would be quite irregular, meandering about, 

 changing at every flood, full of islands, loops, backwaters, and 

 continually interrupted by snags of trees. 



The rolling hills of the lowlands would be an almost 

 unbroken forest of oak, except where perhaps level land and 

 the absence of drainage produced a marsh or horrible peat- 

 moss. But when we say forest, we do not mean a glorified 

 Richmond Park. 



In good soil there might indeed be tall and magnificent 

 trees. But it would be quite impossible to see them ! The 

 giants of the forest would be concealed in an inextricable 

 tangle of young trees, brushwood, fallen logs, creepers, and 

 undergrowth. Where the soil was sandy or stony, it might 

 be a scrub rather than a forest, of gnarled, twisted, and 

 stunted oaks, or possibly thickets of sloe, birch, rowan, 

 hawthorn, brambles, and briers. 



Every stream would be " wild water " leaping down water- 

 falls and cutting out irregular, little woody ravines. Here 

 and there boulders and escarpments of rock would break 

 through the forest soil, which would be mossy, thick with 

 undergrowth, and entangled with rotting fallen trunks and 

 branches, crossing at every conceivable angle. The higher 

 hills were covered by a dreary, sombre pine forest. It was 

 of a monotonous, desolate character. Greenish-grey tufts of 

 Old Man's Beard lichen hung from the branches. The 

 ground, treacherous, and broken by boulders, peaty hollows, 

 and dead logs, would be shrouded in a soft, thick cushion of 

 feathery Mosses, with Blaeberry, Ferns, Trientalis, Linnea, 

 Dwarf Cornel, and other rare plants. Through it descended 



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