THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 3 



trees ; at Ashbury, also, one among trees and oats, built 

 of stone, with many square windows and handsome 

 chimneys; and one where the by-road goes to Longcott and 

 Shrivenham. North of this road is the flat land, which has 

 so many elms bordering so many small fields that from a 

 distance it seems one wood. South, and close at hand, are 

 the Downs — the solitary, arable slopes, the solid beech 

 clumps, the coursing and racing turf of Ashdown and 

 Lambourn. Always high up, the Ridge way goes north- 

 eastward over the corn, with few traces of living men except 

 the Oxford Steam-Ploughing Company's engines, har- 

 boured, perchance, amidst heaps of coal and the chalk-land 

 flowers — hop-trefoil, saw-wort, scabious, purple gentian, 

 and poppy. Wayland Smith's cave lies on the left going 

 north-east, about thirty water-worn and mossy sarsens, 

 some roughly hewn, three upright, with a superincumbent 

 fourth, hidden among beeches and starved elders. Beyond, 

 the old road is to be seen going rough and white up White- 

 horse Hill, nicked by the entrenchment, and with it even 

 the weary feet must go if it is summer and the hour a 

 spacious and windless twilight. It leads to yet another 

 camp, Letcombe Castle, two or three miles south of 

 Wantage, farther than which a walker from Coate who 

 had to return the same day would not be likely to travel. 



Going south-east instead of north-east from Coate, a 

 similar limit is reached at Lambourn. From Wan- 

 borough, through Totterdown, to Baydon, the road is the 

 Ermine Street on its way from Cirencester, through 

 Cricklade, to Sheen, and crosses the Ridgeway at Totter- 

 down. For the ear at least Baydon is Badon Mount. 

 This is pure down-land : the breasted hills curving as if 

 under the influence of a great melody ; the beeches lining 

 the Roman road, and sheltering a gipsy camp among 

 harebells, sweet basil, and trefoil, which the grasshopper 

 also loves. Lambourn itself is a fair, small town, with a 

 cross, of which the shaft is as graceful and light as the 

 beeches in the churchyard. It is the hub of many little 

 roads that lead out among the curving expanses of pasture 



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