The Open Air 



much to obscure the path; at all times the path is 

 merely a track, and the ruts worn down to the white 

 chalk and the white snow confuse the eyes. Flecks 

 of snow catch against the bunches of grass, against 

 the furze-bushes, and boulders; if there is a ploughed 

 field, against every clod, and the result is bewildering. 

 There is nothing to guide the steps, nothing to give 

 the general direction, and once off the track, unless 

 well accustomed to the district, the traveller may 

 wander in vain. After a few inches have fallen the 

 roads are usually blocked, for all the flakes on miles 

 of hills are swept along and deposited into hollows 

 where the highways run. To be dug out now and 

 then in the winter is a contingency the mail-driver 

 reckons as part of his daily life, and the waggons 

 going to and fro frequently pass between high walls 

 of frozen snow. In these wild places, which can 

 scarcely be said to be populated at all, a snow-storm, 

 however, does not block the King's highways and 

 paralyse traffic as London permits itself to be paralysed 

 under similiar circumstances. Men are set to work 

 and cut a way through in a very short time, and no 

 one makes the least difficulty about it. But with 

 the tracks that lead to isolated farmsteads it is 

 different; there is not enough traffic to require the 

 removal of the obstruction, and the drifts occasionally 

 accumulate to twenty feet deep. The ladies are 

 imprisoned, and must be thankful if they have got 

 down a box of new novels. 



The dread snow-tempest of 1880-81 swept over 

 these places with tremendous fury, and the most 

 experienced shepherds, whose whole lives had been 

 spent going to and fro on the downs, frequently lost 

 their way. There is a story of a waggoner and his 

 lad going slowly along the road after the thaw, and 



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