The South Downs in their whole extent slope, as I have said, very
gradually seaward and south, and there of old were our cities chiefly set,
but northward their escarpment is extraordinarily steep, rising from time
to time into lofty headlands of which the noblest, the most typical and
the most famous is Chanctonbury. Standing above that steep escarpment a
man to-day looks all across the fruitful Weald till far off he sees the
long line of the North Downs running as it were parallel with these
southern hills, and ennobled and broken by similar heights as that of
Leith Hill. Between, like an uneven river bed with its drifts and
islands of soil, running from west to east, lies the Weald, opening at
last as it were into the broad estuary of Romney Marsh, half lost in
the sea. And what we see to-day our neolithic forefathers saw too--with
a difference. Doubtless the Downs then were as smooth and bare as they
are now, but the Weald, we may be sure, was different, wilder and
certainly fuller of woodland, though never perhaps the vast and
impenetrable forest of trees of which we have been told.
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