of an extremely pretty
pink-and-white archaeologist who stood beside me. Instead, therefore, of
boring her and my other companions with all my accumulated store of
information about Ogbury Barrows, I locked it up securely in my own
bosom, with the fell design of finally venting it all at once in one
vast flood upon the present article.

Ogbury Barrows, I would have said (had it not been for the praiseworthy
negligence of our esteemed secretary), stand upon the very verge of a
great chalk-down, overlooking a broad and fertile belt of valley, whose
slopes are terraced in the quaintest fashion with long parallel lines of
obviously human and industrial origin. The terracing must have been done
a very long time ago indeed, for it is a device for collecting enough
soil on a chalky hillside to grow corn in. Now, nobody ever tried to
grow corn on open chalk-downs in any civilised period of history until
the present century, because the downs are so much more naturally
adapted for sheep-walks that the attempt to turn them into waving
cornfields would never occur to anybody on earth except a barbarian or
an advanced agriculturist. But when Ogbury Downs were originally
terraced, I don't doubt that the primitive system of universal tribal
warfare still existed everywhere in Britain. This system is aptly summed
up in the familiar modern Black Country formula, 'Yon's a stranger.
'Eave 'arf a brick at him.' Each tribe was then perpetually at war with
every other tribe on either side of it: a simple plan which rendered
foreign tariffs quite unnecessary, and most effectually protected home
industries. The consequence was, each district had to produce for its
own tribe all the necessaries of life, however ill-adapted by nature for
their due production: because traffic and barter did not yet exist, and
the only form ever assumed by import trade was that of raiding on your
neighbours' territories, and bringing back with you whatever you could
lay hands on. So the people of the chalky Ogbury valley had perforce to
grow corn for themselves, whether nature would or nature wouldn't; and,
in order to grow it under such very unfavourable circumstances of soil
and climate, they terraced off the entire hillside, by catching the silt
as it washed slowly down, and keeping it in place by artificial
barriers.

On the top of the down, overlooking this curious vale of prehistoric
terraces, rise the twin heights of Ogbury Barrows, familiar landmarks to