38 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



likely dwellers on the hill top. On the came under the plough, the water- 

 hill tops we find their remains, bar- supply was a simple matter. It thus 

 rows, camps, fields, homes, imple- seems probable that the custom of 

 ments. Not until historic times, when making mist-ponds fell into disuse, and 

 the later Celtic peoples and the invad- was only revived when the downs were 

 ing Teutons settled in our country, again occupied as huge sheep-walks. 

 did farmers begin to till the lowlands. The old Britons of the hill top are 

 Hitherto the fear of bears and wolves gone ; they cannot give evidence in 

 had been a hindrance. Stone hatchets, person. But we, who in no small 

 and even cutting tools of bronze, had degree are the offspring of these 

 proved very inefficient for felling ancient peoples, must feel a glow of 

 the forests. Swamps were common, pleasure in calling forth the mist-ponds 

 Therefore the early folk favoured the as dumb witnesses of prehistoric 

 heights. When the land in the vales customs. 



VIII 

 THE MAKING OF SCENERY 



" From the depths of the waters that lighten and darken 

 With change everlasting of life and of death . . . 



A. C. SWINBURNE. 



A SEABOARD with no bastions and heather, and carpeted with brack- 



of steep and rugged rocks ; but en, meet park and woodland where 



only broken lines of low, friable cliffs, flourish ancient oaks (one veteran, still 



once smugglers' haunts, and now the bringing forth fruit in old age, counts 



home of martins ; and stretches of sixteen centuries), symbols of the na- 



drifted sands whose dunes, knotted tion's heart when ships were built of it, 



with sedge and decked with sea-holly, and venerable seats of widespread 



poppy and convolvulus, are separated Aryan cult. The rich clays and heavy 



by " fulls " of rolled pebbles from loams secure their heavy crops of 



marsh, mere, and warren. Here gather cereals to the farmer ; alder and 



the seabirds in whose shrill, melancholy poplar-fringed streams widen into estu- 



note there is refrain of the wind in the aries rich in rare bird life ; estuaries 



trees and the waves breaking on the slowly silting up by the tide-brought 



shore. Commons fragrant with gorse ooze, and becoming the dwindling 



