326 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



have quite revolutionised the physical geography 

 of Avide areas, ofteu changing the natural history 

 of the districts atfected, so has cheap, constant 

 and quick travelling and conveyance of materials 

 helped to reduce j^haces and people to one dead 

 level. Romance tlies ahashed from the level, 

 monotonous road, where, years hefore, in some 

 darkling holloAv hetween the hills, ringed in hy 

 dense woodlands, it lurked in company with the 

 highwayman. AVe do not desire the return of 

 those gentry, hut what would literature have done 

 without them ? Highway and turnpike improve- 

 ments long ago sliced oft' the most aspiring hill- 

 tojis, and, carrying the roads through cuttings, 

 used the material thus cut away for the purpose 

 of filling up the gullies and deep depressions. 

 Where the early coaches toiled, often axle-deep, 

 through the Avatersplashes formed by the little 

 rills and streams that ran athwart the way, later 

 generations have built bridges, or have done things 

 infinitely worse ; so that a watersplash has become 

 a rare and curious object, noteworthy in a day's 

 journey. Only recently, on the Dover Road, near 

 Eaversham, has such a waters])lash- — one of the 

 most picturesque in the country — been abolished. 

 Ospringe was a little Kentish Venice, with a 

 clear-running shallow stream occuj)ying the Avhole 

 of* the roadway, with raised footpaths for pedes- 

 trians at either sid(% and ancient gabled cottages 

 looking do\v]i upon the i)retty scene. Alas ! the 

 sj)arkling stream now goes under the road, in a ])ipe. 

 In the old days, no traveller going north along 



