HATFIELD CHASE. 87 



the heights appear bold, but all are clothed with fern, 

 billberries, and heath, leagues upon leagues, variegated by 

 patches of gorse and ragwort. Apart from the expanse 

 there is a charm in the alternations of colour produced by 

 the innumerable undulations, some slopes appearing of a 

 bright metalic green, others dull and rusty, while screes 

 of gravel in plains vary the surface. The contrasted pro- 

 spect may be enjoyed to perfection while pacing to and 

 fro along the edge of the firs. 



" Within the remembrance of persons now living, the 

 Chase, with its continuous wastes, stretched along the 

 county from near Stafford to a few miles south of Litch- 

 field a bleakj wild region, where travellers had at times 

 to struggle for their lives in snow-drifts. ' Antiently,' 

 says an old topographer, ' Cank Wood was a barren 

 forest ;' now, as we see, there are no trees, and year by 

 year cultivation encroaches on its limits, and though the 

 surface be poor, the Chase is rich under ground ; nume- 

 rous coal mines have already converted its southern ex- 

 tremity into a black country, and as ' Cannock Coal ' is 

 now sent into the London market, we may look forward, 

 not without regret, to the time when the bright, breezy 

 Chase shall be hacked into deformity and smothered in 

 smoke," 



C.Hatfield Chase. 



In the West Riding of Yorkshire is Hatfield Chase, one 

 of the largest in England, containing above 180,000 acres, 

 and throughout much of its extent a swamp, but drained 

 and cultivated into arable and pasture land in the reign 

 of Charles I., by Sir Cornelius Varmuyden a Dutchman, 

 to whom it was sold, and being the property of a subject, 

 it received the appropriate designation: it was not a 

 forest ; it was a chase. 



The place, it may be mentioned, had long before been 

 celebrated as the scene of a battle fought between Edwin, 

 king of Northumberlnnd, and Penda, a pagan king of 



