Beaulieu Heath. 75 



village, and passing a few straggling half-timbered cottages, 

 we reach Stickland's Hill, where, down in the valley, we can 

 see the Exe winding round the old Abbot's House set amongst 

 its green elms. Farther on we come to Hatchet Gate, and the 

 Forest then spreads before us, with Hatchet Pond on our left, 

 and Little "Wood and the Moon Hill Woods on our ridit : 

 whilst, here and there on the common, rise scattered barrows. 



And now, instead of keeping to the road, let the reader make 

 right across the plain, by one of the Forest tracks, to the woods 

 at Iron's Hill. The stories, with which most books on the 

 Forest abound, of persons being swamped in morasses, are much 

 exaggerated. Mind only this simple rule — wherever you see the 

 white cotton-grass growing, and the bog-moss particularly fine 

 and green, to avoid that place. 



And now, when you are fairly out on the moor, you will feel 

 the fresh salt breeze blowing up from the Solent, and see the 

 long treeless line of the Island hills in strange contrast with 

 the masses of wood in front ; whilst the moor itself, if it be 

 August, waves with purple and crimson, except where, here and 

 there, rise great beds of fern — green islands, in the red sea 

 of heath. 



Most of the finest timber at Iron's Hill and Palmer's 

 Water has been lately cut. Keeping on, however, we shall 

 again come out upon the road which leads down to the stream, 

 close to a mill. Passing over the footbridge, we skirt Brocken- 

 hurst Manor, where, at W^atcombe, once lived Howard the phi- 

 lanthropist, and so at last reach the village. 



So greatly has the Forest been reduced in size, that Brocken- 

 hurst, once nearly its centre, is now only a border village. Its 

 Old-English name (the badger's wood), like that of Everton, 

 the wild-boar place, on the southern side of the Forest, tells 



L 2 



