90 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[Apeil 2, 1900. 



Cirencester to Marlborough, or between Oxford and 

 Henley, or. again, between Aylesbury and Amersham ; 

 it is formed by the upturned edge of the Upper Creta- 

 ceous series — a series which has been swept off from the 

 surface of central England and which here findc its 

 present boundary. The plateau, when we climb to it, falls 

 gently towards London, and streams have cut valleys 

 in it, running south or east to join the Thames. This 

 drop in the country corresponds to the dipping surface 

 of the strata, and the next scarp is produced by the 

 Eocene edge above them. 



On the Cretaceous escarpment, the white quarries in 

 the Chalk are everywhere in evidence. Here and there, 

 pagan tribes and Christian imitators have scraped out 

 great white horses on the slopes, which are visible, as 

 geological signals, fifteen or twenty miles away. Sheep 

 are pastured on the plateau, which is set with the little 

 huts of their guardians, quaint affairs on wheels, resem- 

 bling bathing-machines escaped. At times, a wood of 

 beech and ash has been spared, and the road goes 

 straightway through it, much as it did in jjrehistoric 

 times. In the barer landscapes, where the forests were 

 devastated, in all probability, by Britons and Romans 

 for their camp-fires, we may see the tumuli, the gi-aves 

 of ancient days, forming grass-covered hillocks, ten, 

 twelve, or twenty of them at a time, set uiJon the wind- 

 swept sky-line. Even where the plough has made a 

 brown patch in this open country, a gentle swelling in 

 the field, seen when the sun is low, often reveals cue of 

 these " barrows," which are doomed to disappear amid 

 the farmland. 



In this bleak country stands Stonehenge, the one 

 superb landmark on the way from Andover to Wells : 

 away in the north is Avebury, at the forking of the 

 three Bath roads, its huge monoliths rising among the 

 gardens of a little village. Both these monuments, 

 mainly fo.-med of sand.stone blocks, bear witness to the 

 Cainozoic strata that once covered all the English 

 Downs. Close to Marlborough, such masses still lie 

 tumbled in the hollows, like the talus of a mountain- 

 side ; but in most cases they have been broken up, during 

 centuries, as the only stone for walls or buildings. 

 Formerly, sands must have spread across the country, 

 as they still do in the Bagsliot area; and the residual 

 blocks, known locally as " sai'cens," represent those 

 parts of the beds that became cemented together and 

 escaped decay. The " sarcens " are thus as much geo- 

 logical outliers, cut off from the London basin, as are 

 the cappings of clay and conglomerate that we find left 

 stranded on the edges of the Surrey Downs. 



When man took possession of this rolling plateau, 

 which is typified in Salisbury Plain or Marlborough 

 Down, every village required its defence, each cluster of 

 huts became a fortified encampment. The finest en- 

 closure of the kind is seen in Old Sarum, which remained 

 the official centre of the district down to Norman days. 

 Even as late as the thirteenth century, the cathedral 

 stood here within ancient British walls. This spot be- 

 comes of special interest to us, when we compare it with 

 the cities, ringed about to this day, that we shall see 

 v.-hen we go eastward and invade the plains of Picardy. 

 The Romans, the Saxons, and the Danes, have ranged 

 over our plateau of the Chalk, just as the English, the 

 Spaniards, and the Germans, have made their pastime in 

 the unfenced fields of northern France. 



The Chiltern Hills lie on the south-east side of a 

 great Cretaceous arch, formed by the broad folding of 

 the strata that went on through Cainozoic times. We 

 are unaware liow far the Chalk spread westward; the 



clear deep sea. unburdened by detritus, in which this 

 white limestone was laid down, may have lapped round 

 the island-mass of Wales, and crossed by way of Cheshire 

 into Ireland. It is certain that it spread, across a 

 pebbly shore, over all the east of Ulster, and found its 

 north-western boundary in the stubborn hills of Donegal. 

 The chalk cliffs of the county of Antrim, gleaming from 

 beneath their protective covering of basalt, may form, 

 perhaps, the far side of the Chiltern arch, the whole 

 intervening mass having been swept away from tho 

 crown of an enormous anticlinal. 



The same gentle type of folding brings the Chalk down 

 under London, and up again to form the North Dowiu 

 of Kent and Surrey. The arch which follows this down- 

 ward curve has been breached by the rivers that flowed 

 over it. some going northward to the London Basin, some 

 southward to the English Channel ; and the claj's and 

 sands exposed by its removal give us respectively the 

 oak-woods and the fir-clad ridges of the Weald. The South 

 Downs, formed by another typical Chalk scarp, thus 

 face the North Downs across a gap of thirty miles ; but 

 the two ranges merge on the west side, and we find the 

 arch unbroken when we trace it to the heights of 

 Selborne. Thence its crown spreads westward, forming 

 a plateau country, until it dies out in the bleak upland 

 north Oi Salisbury. 



The east and west trend of the Wealden arch is no 

 doubt connected with the pre-existing buried ridge, 

 which IS known to us by borings, and which run~s be- 

 neath the London Basin. The Cretaceous rocks were 

 pressed against this obstacle when the broad Cainozoic 

 folds were formed ; and their general north-east and 

 south-west trend became here locally disturbed. When 

 we cross the Channel to the white Chalk cliffs of Nor- 

 mandy, we find our Downs again, this time sloping 

 south-eastward towards the Paris Basin. 



There is little wonder that the Norman adventurers, 

 and successive English kings, felt themselves so much 

 nt home on either side of the Channel. The woods on 

 the French side are, perhaps, a little more frequent 

 along the hollows; but the crisp short grass upon the 

 slopes above, the white quarries, and the crops that 

 struggle with a stony soil, recall at every point the 

 familiar Chalk of England. The rivers, as with us 

 have cut long valleys, out of which the roads climb 

 steeply ; and the heights along the Seine near Rouen 

 may well remind us of the best part of the Thames at 

 Henley. The open plateaux contain, as in our country, 

 primitive little hamlets, often set back from the main 

 routes, among their own trees, and clustered round a 

 village green; the towns lie below, along the Somme, 

 the Oise, the Aisne, and a hundred smaller streams. 

 The forests have been niore carefully preserved than m 

 England, and cover large areas of the uplands. One 

 may ride for miles along the straight level roads, 

 through dark woods, in which the deer move softly ; 

 and here and there we emerge on some huge chateau, 

 which, thanks to Viollet^le-Duc, takes our thoughts right 

 back to Froissart, or the dim knight-errantry beyond. 



On the north, the country is open to Flanders, and 

 repeats all the features of the Netherlands. Windmills, 

 canals, boats that appear to sail across the meadows, 

 barns that assert themselves as the prominent features 

 of the landscape, show how the Chalk has here dropped 

 to the level of the sea. The old brick houses have a 

 Flemish air, and the double names above the village- 

 shops are certainly neither French nor Norman. The 

 hamlets of Zutkerque and Volkerinckhove fail to con 

 ceal their origin; Moringhem, Ruminghem, and Salper^ 



