2 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, 

 Dorset, and part of Somerset. East and west across it 

 go ranges of chalk hills, their sides smoothly hollowed by 

 Nature and the marl-burner, or sharply scored by old 

 roads. On their lower slopes they carry the chief woods 

 of the south country, their coombes are often fully fledged 

 with trees, and sometimes their high places are crowned 

 with beech or fir; but they are most admirably themselves 

 when they are bare of all but grass and a few bushes of 

 gorse and juniper and some yew, and their ridges make 

 flowing but infinitely variable clear lines against the sky. 

 Sometimes they support a plateau of flint and clay, which 

 slopes gradually to the level of the streams. Sometimes 

 they fall away to the vales in well-defined ledges — first a 

 long curving slope, then a plain of cornland, and below 

 that a steep but lesser slope covered with wood, and then 

 again grassland or sandy heaths and rivers. Except on the 

 plateau, the summits have few houses and very small 

 hamlets; the first terrace has larger villages and even a 

 town or two; but most of the towns are beneath on the 

 banks of the rivers, and chiefly where they are broadest 

 near the sea, or on the coast itself. The rivers flow mainly 

 north and south, and can have but a short course before 

 they enter the sea on the south or the Thames on the 

 north. Those I remember best are the Stours, the two 

 Rothers, but especially the one which joins the Arun, the 

 Medway, the Len, the Eden, the Holling, the Teise, the 

 Ouse, the Itchen, the Meon, the Wey, the Mole, the 

 Kennet, the Ray, the Winterbournes, the Wiltshire Avon, 

 the Wylye, the Ebble, and many little waters running gold 

 over New Forest gravel or crystal over the chalk of Hamp- 



