it isn't the
same tree, it ought to have been, for it's just in the place where the
battle must have been won or lost--"around which, as I was saying, the
two lines of foemen came together in battle with a huge shout. And in
this place, one of the two kings of the heathen, and five of his earls
fell down and died, and many thousands of the heathen side in the same
place."[C] After which crowning mercy, the pious king, that there might
never be wanting a sign and a memorial to the country side, carved out
on the northern side of the chalk hill, under the camp, where it is
almost precipitous, the great Saxon white horse, which he who will may
see from the railway, and which gives its name to the vale, over which
it has looked these thousand years and more.

Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gulley
called "the Manger," into one side of which the hills fall with a series
of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as "the Giant's Stairs;" they
are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere
else, with their short green turf, and tender blue-bells, and gossamer
and thistle-down gleaming in the sun, and the sheep-paths running along
their sides like ruled lines.

The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a curious
little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range, and
utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of
mankind, St. George, the country folks used to tell me, killed a dragon.
Whether it were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed
there, for you may see the marks yet where his blood ran down, and more
by token the place where it ran down is the easiest way up the hillside.

Passing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we come to a
little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of thorn and privet
underwood. Here you may find nests of the strong down partridge and
peewit, but take care that the keeper isn't down upon you; and in the
middle of it is an old cromlech, a huge flat stone raised on seven or
eight others, and led up to by a path, with large single stones set up
on each side. This is Wayland Smith's cave, a place of classic fame now;
but as Sir Walter has touched it, I may as well let it alone, and refer
you to "Kenilworth" for the legend.

The thick deep wood which you see in the hollow about a mile off,
surrounds Ashdown Park, built by Inigo Jones. Four broad alleys