34 THE SUSSEX CORN BELT 



cottages of the dreariest red brick, have been springing 

 up of late years, each with a strip of land on which 

 the occupier hopes to make a living out of fruit or 

 poultry or even bees. Most of these rapidly shabbying 

 villas could tell a series of short stories of failure, as 

 much from the inexperience and ineffectiveness of the 

 occupiers as from the innate hopelessness of the 

 venture upon which they had embarked ; but here and 

 there a business faculty develops and another family 

 gets rooted on the land. The forbears of a good 

 many of the older farmers about the Forest were 

 nothing but squatters, authorized or overlooked ; 

 probably they knew little enough of agriculture at 

 first, but they have made both land and men out of 

 waste. 



From Redbrook we had miles of suburb to traverse, 

 but once across the Itchen ferry the highly cultivated 

 land begins and extends into the zone of the electric 

 tramcars and the street lamps. The light sands on 

 this side are less barren than the Forest heaths, and 

 have proved of great value for strawberry-growing, 

 with which, indeed, the countryside as far as Ports- 

 mouth is chiefly occupied. Poor enough some of the 

 land is, and after it has grown strawberries for a few 

 years it is often allowed to run back to villainous 

 waste ; but its warmth and dryness combine with the 

 southerly exposure to produce the earliest outdoor 

 strawberries in the country. The strip of country from 

 Southampton to Chichester comprises, indeed, some 

 of the warmest and earliest land in the country, and 

 a little farther east by Portsdown Hill, where corn- 

 growing rather than fruit becomes the staple industry, 

 the earliest wheat harvest may be expected, as Cobbett 

 used to tell his readers nearly a century ago. Here 

 were some excellent crops, and the first corn we had 



