A Landscape. 55 



to imagine the waters of a tidal river rising and ebb- 

 ing up and down this hollow these ledges would 

 form its banks. Their regular shape is certainly 

 remarkable, and they are not confined to this one 

 place. Such steep-sided narrow hollows are found 

 all along the edge of this range of downs, where 

 they slope to the larger valley which stretches out 

 to the horizon. There are at least ten of them in a 

 space of twelve miles, many having similar springs 

 of water and similar terrace-like ledges, more or less 

 perfect. Towards the other extremity of this par- 

 ticular coombe where it widens before opening on 

 the valley the spring spreads and occupies a wider 

 channel, beside which there is a strip of osier-bed. 



When at the fountain-head, and looking down the 

 current, the end of the coombe westwards away from 

 the hills seems to open to the sky ; for the ground 

 falls rapidly, and the trees hide any trace of human 

 habitation. The silent hills close in the rear, capped 

 by the old fort ; the silent corn-fields come to the 

 very edge above ; the silent steep green walls rise on 

 either hand, so near together that the swallows in 

 the blue atmosphere high overhead only come into 

 sight for a second as they shoot swiftly across. In 

 the evening the red sun, enlarged and bulging as if 

 partly flattened, hangs suspended, as it seems, at the 

 very mouth of the trough-like hollow. It is natural 

 in the silence and the solitude for thoughts of the 

 lapse of time to arise of the endless centuries 

 since, by some slow geological process, this hollow 

 was formed. Fifteen hundred years ago the men of 

 the camp above came hither to draw water ; still the 

 spring oozes and flows, and the sun sinks at the 



