20 The Neiv Forest: its History and its Scenery. 



CHAPTER III. 



ITS EARLY HISTORY. 



The Cattle Ford, Liney HiU Wood. 



Once the New Forest occupied nearly the entire south-west 

 angle of Hampshire, stretching, when at its largest, in the 

 beginning of the reign of Edward I., from the Southampton 

 Water on the east, whose waves, the legend says, reproved 

 the courtiers of Canute, to the Avon, and even, here and there, 



