DOWNS. 183 



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 similar 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 im- 

 prisoned, 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 

 noticing an odd-looking scarecrow in a field. They 

 went to it, and found it was a man, dead, and still 

 standing as he had stiffened in the snow, the clothes 

 hanging on his withered body, and the eyes gone 

 from the sockets, picked out by the crows. It is 

 only one of many similar accounts, and it is thought 

 between twenty and thirty unfortunate persons 

 perished. Such miserable events are of rare 

 occurrence, but show how open, wild, and succour- 

 less the country still remains. In ordinary winters 



