CHILLINGEAM PARE. 175 



since it conveys hay to them, in winter. We traversed, 

 however, the lower part of the park on foot, for, as it 

 was a bright, clear, hot day, the wild cattle, as is their 

 wont, were high up on the hill, and we had some 

 distance to go before we came to them. The lower 

 part of the park is wide and spacious, and of no great 

 elevation above the valley below ; and is very good 

 land. It is well wooded and very wild, abounding in 

 many places with fern and gorse, which, near the little 

 rivulets, grow to the height of a man's head ; in others 

 with large breadths of good grass. In these forest 

 glades and wide, open, intermediate spaces, hundreds of 

 deer, both red and fallow, were grazing. As we rise 

 higher above the sea-level the deciduous timber ends, and 

 there is a long, large, tolerably flat, open plateau of grass, 

 where the cattle were when we saw them. It has 

 been proposed to name this " The Prince of Wales's 

 Plain," for it was there that the Prince for some time 

 pursued and finally shot the wild bull. The ascent to 

 this high terrace is gradual. On the steep slope below 

 it is " The Fox Knolls," a fine, thick, but open wood of 

 larch, beech, and oak. Above it, on the still more pre- 

 cipitous hill- side, is a large wood of Scottish fir, called 

 Ross-hill Wood ; and above that stretches to the summit 

 of Rosscastle, the heather. Besides Chillingham Burn, 

 several small mountain streamlets rise in the park, and 

 supply it abundantly with the purest water. Towards 

 the centre of the park, as you proceed southwards, but 

 near to its western boundary, is " Robin Hood's Bog," 

 a characteristic name, pointing apparently to times long 

 past, and " to which," it is said, " the wild cattle, when 

 disturbed, habitually resort, and to which tradition points 

 as their pristine habitat." This is the place called by 



