White Horse Jottings. 57 
having seen on an island in the mysterious lake of Peten, the figure 
of a white horse, which the people called “ Tzimin chak ”—chak in 
their language signifying white. 
So you see, with so many conflicting opinions, we are still very 
far from knowing the real history of our most perplexing Wiltshire 
antiquities ; but the world is not yet exhausted, enormous tracts of 
country, hundreds of islands, are yet absolutely unexplored. It is 
impossible to say what in these days of fresh emigration and 
ransacking of the’ globe may not come to light. Perhaps in some 
cannibal island, eight thousand miles under our feet, may yet turn 
up the key to that other great riddle on Salisbury Plain— 
Stonehenge. 
White Borse Aottings. 
By the Rev. W. C. PLENDERLEATH. 
( SHE following paper contains the substance of sundry jottings 
ay je as to the White Horses of our county which I have 
put together since I addressed the Society upon the subject at 
Trowbridge, in 1872.1 
We are all acquainted with the venerable Wiltshire tradition 
which asserts that the Westbury Horse, as it existed up to the year 
1778, was cut out by King Alfred in Easter, 878, on the morrow of the 
victory of Ethandune. I know that this tradition is now discredited : 
I should be astonished if it were not so. For finality is a thing 
which cannot I fear, be predicated of any branch of human know- 
ledge. And I have even heard of persons so depraved as to say 
that whenever an unusually positive assertion is made by scientists 
of any description the one only thing of which we may be sure is 
that the exact reverse will be asserted with equal positiveness a little 
later. I remember that a great many years ago when large exca- 
vations were going on upon the Palatine Hill, at Rome, the then 
1 Wiltshire Archeological Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 12, 
