THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 261 



and other rapacious beasts. On the hills where the 

 thin soil produced only a dwarfish tree vegetation, it 

 was easier to make a clearing and pasture for his cattle. 

 No doubt it was also easier for him to defend himself 

 and his possessions against wild beasts and savage human 

 enemies in such situations. The hills were without 

 water, but the discovery and invention of the dew- 

 pond, probably by some genius of the later Stone Age, 

 made the hill-people independent of natural springs 

 and rivers. In later times, when the country was 

 everywhere colonised and more settled, the hill-people 

 probably emigrated to the lower lands, where the 

 ground was better suited for cattle-grazing and for 

 growing crops. The hills were abandoned to the 

 shepherd and the hunter ; and doubtless as the ages 

 went on they became more and more a sheep-walk ; 

 for it must have been observed from early times that 

 the effect of the sheep on the land was to change its 

 character and to make it more and more suited to 

 the animal's requirements. Thus, the very aspect of 

 the downs, as we know them, was first imparted and is 

 maintained in them by the sheep — the thousands on 

 thousands of busy close-nibbling mouths keeping the 

 grass and herbage close down to the ground, and killing 

 year by year every forest seedling. And how wonder- 

 ful they are — that great sea of vast pale green billowy 

 hills, extending bare against the wide sky to the horizon, 

 clothed with that elastic fragrant turf which it is a joy 

 to walk on, and has nothing like it in the world ! 



It must have been in quite recent times, probably 



