A Walk across the Downs. 53 
stand, and near them perhaps a shepherd’s cottage: 
otherwise it is an utter solitude, a vast desert of hill 
and plain; silent too, save for the tinkle of a sheep 
bell, or, in the autumn, the moaning hum of a distant 
threshing-machine rising and falling on the wind. 
The origin of the track goes back into the 
dimmest antiquity ; there is evidence that it was a 
military road when the fierce Dane carried fire and 
slaughter inland, leaving his ‘nailed bark’ in the 
creeks of the rivers, and before that when the Saxons 
pushed up from the sea. The eagles of old Rome, 
perhaps, were borne along it, and yet earlier the 
chariots of the Britons may have used it—traces of 
all have been found; so that for fifteen centuries this 
track of the primitive peoples has maintained its 
existence through the strange changes of the times, 
till now in the season the cumbrous steam-ploughing 
engines jolt and strain and pant over the uneven turf. 
To-day, entering the ancient way, eight miles or 
so from the great earthwork, hitherto the central post 
of observation, I turn my face once more towards its 
distant rampart, just visible, showing over the hills a 
line drawn against the sky. Here, whence I start, is 
another such a camp, with mound and fosse ; beyond 
the one I have more closely described some four 
miles is still a third, all connected by the same green 
track running along the ridges of the downs and 
entirely independent of the roads of modern. days. 
They form a chain of forts on the edge of the down- 
