Windsor, on its crowned steep, was to
them but a new hunting palace of the old miracle-monger Edward, who had
just ruined England. Runnymede, a mile below them down the broad stream,
was but a horse-fen fringed with water-lilies, where the men of Wessex had
met of old to counsel, and to bring the country to this pass. And as they
crossed, by ford or ferry-boat, the shallows of old Windsor, whither they
had been tending all along, and struck into the moorlands of Wessex
itself, they were as men going into an unknown wilderness: behind them
ruin, and before them unknown danger.
On through Windsor Forest, Edward the Saint's old hunting-ground; its
bottoms choked with beech and oak, and birch and alder scrub; its upper
lands vast flats of level heath; along the great trackway which runs along
the lower side of Chobham Camp, some quarter of a mile broad, every rut
and trackway as fresh at this day as when the ancient Briton, finding that
his neighbor's essedum--chariot, or rather cart--had worn the ruts too
deep, struck out a fresh wandering line for himself across the dreary
heath.
Over the Blackwater by Sandhurst, and along the flats of Hartford Bridge,
where the old furze-grown ruts show the track-way to this day. Down into
the clayland forests of the Andredsweald, and up out of them again at
Basing, on to the clean crisp chalk turf; to strike at Popham Lane the
Roman road from Silchester, and hold it over the high downs, till they saw
far below them the royal city of Winchester.
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