266 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



short and stiff stage up the steep hill scattered with 

 loose flints. The native went back to the great wheat 

 plains, and several men from the hamlet followed 

 him. He preached the imperialism of the soil too 

 eloquently for them to withstand it. Yet there were 

 two good things he found at home which he admits 

 are wanting to his new world. One was scenery. In 

 those huge tracts of corn there is nothing so good to 

 see, nothing that will bear looking at so long, as the 

 rounded hill and beech tree steep hanger and little 

 green water meadows of home. There are no gabled 

 and thatched barns, no Early English church spires 

 hidden deep among the elms. The second thing he 

 missed was sainfoin. People bred in a sainfoin land 

 set that crop so high. 



The caravans of cattle, once a common sight in this 

 part of England, have gone for ever. They ended 

 when the railway system spread through the country- 

 side. It often took days and nights to move the 

 cattle from one town to another, the drovers sleeping 

 with their herds in the open, where now the journey 

 lasts only a few hours. Certain broad strips of green, 

 and local names and tradition, give a good notion of 

 how familiar the long strings of slouching beasts must 

 have been for centuries, not only in grazing counties, 

 but also in many old-style farming districts of wheat 

 and mutton England. Grassy wastes, known still 

 as " the drove," " the cattle drove," " ox drove," are 



