I say that the Downs, now deserted save by the shepherd and his flock,
were of old populous, and of this fact the evidence is plentiful. There
is indeed not one of the five main stretches of the Downs that does not
bear witness to the immemorial presence of man. To say nothing of the
discoveries about Beachy Head, the earthworks there, and the neolithic
implements and bronze weapons discovered about East Dean and Alfriston,
we have in the Long Man of Wilmington, that gigantic figure cut out in
the chalk of the hill-side, something comparable only with the Giant of
Cerne Abbas in Dorset and the White Horses of Wiltshire. That figure is
some two hundred and forty feet in height and holds in each hand a
stave or club two hundred and thirty feet long. It would seem
impossible to be certain either of its age or its purpose, but we may
perhaps be sure that it lay there upon the Downs above Polegate before
the landing of Caesar, and it may have been the foundation of one of
those figures described by him as formed of osiers and filled with
living men to be destroyed by fire as a sacrifice for our barbarian
gods.
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