It lies,
thickly sprinkled with scattered and isolated woodlands, a mighty
trench between the heights, not a vast plain but an uneven lowland
diversified by higher land but without true hills, and roughly divided
west and east into two parts by a great ridge known by various names,
but in its greater part called the Forest, St Leonard's Forest,
Ashdown Forest, Dallington Forest, and so forth. This country which we
know as the Weald is obviously bounded north and south by the Downs
which enclose it, as they do, too, upon the west, where between
Winchester and Petersfield and Selborne the two ranges narrow and
meet. Thence, indeed, the Weald spreads eastward in an ever widening
delta till it is lost in the marshes and the sea.
Such is the aspect of this great country as we see it to-day from any
of the heights north and south of it; but what is its true character
and what is its history?
We hear of it first under a Saxon name, Andredeswald, whence we get our
name of the Weald, and we find it always spoken of not only by the
Saxons, but by the Romans before them as an obstacle, though not, it
would seem, an insurmountable one.
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