H ]\ . } I- J I > - • ■ " I j *1 I ;v> - ; i > j?' THE NEW EOREST SEELEY By C. J. CORNISH Illustrated by LANCELOT SPEED, ALEXANDER ANSTED, AND JOHN FULLWOOD LONDON AND CO. LIMITED, ESSEX STREET, STRAND NEW YORK, MACMILLAN AND CO. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/newforest00corn_0 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES PAGE \^iew over the Forest from near Malwood. Etched by Alexander Ansted ■ Fro7itispiece A Forest Heath, near Lyndhurst. Etched by John Fullwood to face 22 The Rufus Glade. By Lancelot Speed „ „ 5 + Herding Swine in the New Eorest. By Lancelot Speed 76 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT In the Forest near Lyndhurst 9 The Queen’s House, Lyndhurst 11 Cottage at Lyndhurst 13 A Dead Giant, Mark Ash 13 Charcoal Burner’s Hut, Bolderwood ig Matley Passage and Matley Bog 25 Knightwood Oak, Mark Ash 29 The Heronry at Vinney Ridge 31 The Adder-Catcher 33 Brockenhurst Church 33 Bridge near Brockenhurst 36 The Forest Ponies _l_3 4 Lisr OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Beaulieu Abbey 59 Gate House, Beaulieu 62 Beaulieu 63 Interior of Beaulieu Church 65 The Edge of the Forest, near Lymington 67 The Harbour, Lymington 69 A Creek on the Beaulieu River 70 Beaulieu River at Buckler’s Hard 72 Highclifte 77 THE NEW EOREST CHAPTER I THE CENTRAL FOREST AND ITS CAPITAL Tke wholly foreig?i character of its creation — Its vast extent — "The alleged cruelty in its a foresting — Modern views — The nature of forest laws — The forest preserved by their survival — Lyndhurst the centre and capital of the Forest — The Terderers' Hall and Court — The pilgrimage to Mark Ash — Sevan Green — The wild and open forest — The Lymington stream — The hush of the forest — The progressive splendour of the trees — The wealth of ornametit in the old woods — The charcoal-burner' s hut — Voices of the forest — Alo7ie in the sanctuary. The historical link, which the New Forest has with the associations in every English mind is fixed to the era of the Normans. It was the foreign Norman and Angevin Kings of England who made and used the forest. It lay in the same county, and within a ride of their palace and capital at Winchester; and they took their sport from Malwood on their way to Rouen, riding down after a few days’ deer-shooting to Beaulieu or Lymington, where the galleys waited to take them across the Channel, much as the royal yachts wait to take Her Majesty Queen Victoria across the Solent to Osborne. But the subsequent part played by the forest as a hunting ground for kings, and a district exempt from the general law of the land, and at the absolute disposal of the sovereign, is entirely eclipsed by the picturesque and dramatic incidents which tradition has assigned to its violent creation by the first Norman monarch, and its requital, not only by the violent death of the second, but by those of two other children 6 rHE NEW FORESr of the Conqueror in this fatal precinct. His son, Richard, who was supposed to be in his disposition the special image of his father, when not yet of an age to be girded with the belt of knighthood, was the first victim. He is said to have been fatally injured by the branch of a tree when riding after a stag ; and there is a record in Domesday Book of lands restored by his father to their rightful owner as an offering for Richard’s soul.^ The second son of the Conqueror who died in the forest was another Richard, an illegitimate child, whose death seems to have been forgotten in the greater catastrophes of the death of the elder Richard and of Rufus, which preceded and followed it. Whatever belief is to be given to the tale of cruelty in its afforesting, the size and character of the district, which the Conqueror devoted to his use as a “ single and mighty Nimrod,” by the simple act of putting it under forest law, is a measure of the scope of that imperial mind. The area was as large as that of the Isle of Wight. It was bounded on the north by the line from the river Avon to the river Ouse, separating Hampshire from Wiltshire ; by the river Avon on the west, down to Christchurch. By the sea from Christchurch to Calshot Castle ; by the Southampton Water, and by the river Ouse. Within these boundaries are about 224 square miles, containing 143,360 acres of land, of which even now 90,000 acres are still within the boundary of the forest. Its natural features were such as to make it a hunter’s paradise. From the swirling salmon river at Christchurch, to the wide lagoon of Southampton Water, it exhibited and still contains, almost every natural feature which made the forests, “ regum penetralia et eorum maxim^e delicictE “the chief delight of kings, and their secret and secure retreat.” Fronted by the sheltered waters of an inland sea, and pierced by the four wide, beautiful, and commodious estuaries of Christchurch, Lymington, Beaulieu, and Southampton Water, Its heaths, pools, wastes, thickets and bogs, studded and interlaced with good ground, producing deep and ancients woods, made it a natural and unrivalled sanctuary for game. The charge against the Conqueror of “ wasting ” this district appears in its most violent form in the pages of Lingard. “ Though the king possessed sixty-eight forests, besides parks and chases, in different parts of Itngland, he was not satisfied, but for the occasional accommodation of ^ Freeman, Norma/i Conquest^ Vol. iv. p. 609. THE NEW FOREST' 7 his court, afforested an extensive tract of country lying between Winchester and the sea-coast. The inhabitants were expelled ; the cottages and churches were burnt ; and more than thirty square miles of a rich and populous district were withdrawn from cultivation and converted into a wilderness, to afford sufficient range for the deer, and ample space for the royal diversion.” “ Many populous towns and villages and thirty-six parish churches,” is the more circumstantial estimate of others. Voltaire first questioned this tradition on grounds of general historical criticism. Cobbett easily detected its improbability, from a mere examination of the soil of the forest. It could never have been a “ rich and populous district ” simply because, for the greater part, the soil is among the poorest in the south of England. Thirty thousand acres were in 1849 reported unfit either for agriculture, the growth of trees, or pasturage. The test of figures also throws a doubt on the destruction of the villages. In the original area of the forest there still remain eleven parish churches on sites where churches were in existence before the time of the Conqueror. “ If he destroyed thirty-six parish churches, what a popu- lous country this must have been ! ” writes Cobbett. “ There must have been forty-seven parish churches ; so that there was over this whole district, one parish church to every four-and-three-quarter square miles.” The modern inference from these criticisms goes to the extreme of considering, that in making the forest, William confined himself to enforcing the forest law within its boundaries, thereby reserving the exclusive right of sporting for himself, while “ men retained possession of their lands, their woods, mills, or other property, just as before, save for the stringent regulations of the forest law.” ’ Even so the interference with liberty and property, due to this extraordinary Norman provision for the amusement of the monarch is almost incredible to modern ideas. “ Forest law ” made of the area to which it might at any moment be applied, a kind of “ proclaimed district,” where the law of the land at once ceased to run, and the rights of property only existed under con- ditions which were mainly\ but not entirely, directed to the preservation of game. Its excuse was that it was a convenient method of placing wild 1 Arboriculture of the New Forest, by the Hon. G. Lascelles, Deputy Surveyor, New Forest. 8 rHE NEW EORESE districts, infested by outlaws, under the strong government of the king, in place of the timid “ presentments ” of frightened villagers, and that it formed a reserve of men and munitions of war for the sovereign. The assize of the forest of 1184 by Henry II. gives a good notion of the working of these laws in the New Forest, and a clue to the survivals which are still there found. No one might sell or give anything from his own wood, if within the forest, which would destroy it : only fire- wood {estoveria) was to be taken. The result was that no large timber could be felled, and this therefore ceased to be private property within the Crown forests. The king’s foresters were to be answerable if this wood was destroyed. No one was to agist (turn out) his cattle before the king “ agisted ” his. The king could agist his fifteen days before Michaelmas, and closed the woods fifteen days after Michaelmas. No spring grazing was allowed, so saplings and seedlings had a chance to grow. Open spaces were to be cut where deer could be shot at, like the “rides” in our pheasant covers. No tanner or bleacher of skins was to live in a forest, and “ no receivers or thieves.” But the rigour of forest law was mitigated in the days of Henry III., the whole of whose charter of the forests is framed against the an- noyance which the inhabitants had felt from the severity of the former laws. It provided that every free man should be allowed to “ agist ” his own wood in a forest when he pleased, and to have his own eyries of hawks, sparrow-hawks, falcons, eagles and herons. It granted permission to drive pigs and cattle through the forest, and let them spend a night on the king’s land, with other privileges, which were probably the origin of many “ forest rights ” now claimed in the district. Are we then to conclude that the hardships suffered by the inhabitants of the “ Ytene,” the Saxon name of the New Forest, were limited to such as were incidental to the enforcement of forest laws } Such a consoling answer can scarcely be given. In spite of the inaccuracies of the form in which it has come down to us, the tradition of the wasting of this particular forest and the confiscation of land^ are too unanimous to be disregarded. 1 P'rccman quotes an instance ot confiscation from Domesddy. “The sons ot Godric Ralf hold under the King at Minstrad. Tlicir father had three hides and a half of land. Now his sons have only half a hide. The rest of the ground is in the forest.” hi the Forest near Lyndhurst. lO THE NEW FOREST The “ stiffness ” and cruelty of such a course are too much in keeping with the character of the king, who turned into a desert the whole district between the Humber and the Tees. The forest was perfectly suited by site and soil for William’s purpose, and it is difficult to doubt that in its afforestation hardships were inflicted, which were remembered long after the general hatred of the Normans had died away. But it must not be forgotten that though the rigours of the forest laws as a means of preserving game relaxed, the protection given by them to the woods was never withdrawn, and it is to them that we owe the preservation of the ancient timber until the present day. When laxly administered, as in the days of Charles I. and the Common- wealth, the woods have been invariably destroyed ; when enforced, as by James I. and later in the days of William III. the trees have increased, and descended to us as one of the finest national inheritances. The present management of the forest, under an act passed in 1877, is based on the principle that all, except some 20,000 acres, inclosed since the year 1700, shall remain open and wild. But in this wild area forest law still runs, and protects the timber from waste and robbery. In the Verderers’ Hall at Lyndhurst the survivals of forest law and forest customs appear by the dumb witness of fixed engines of justice as primitive as the oaks of Brockenhurst. One end of the bare old chamber is fitted up as a court, in which offenders against the custom of the forest, wood and fern stealers, or those who have transgressed the limits within which cattle may be kept, or other liberties of the forest, are presented by the “ agisters,” who play the part of the knights from the hundreds, and townsmen from the township, who “presented” criminals in the shire moots. “Pre- sented,” the offender certainly is ; for he is exposed to the public view in the most primitive dock existing in England. The prisoner sits on a kind of perch, to which he climbs by a step. Behind this is a square back with cross-pieces of black oak, with the rough axe marks still showing, and immediately in front, beyond the narrow interval of the clerk’s table is the full bench of verderers. Assuming, as is probable, that this is a copy of the most ancient arrangement of such courts, we can imagine how some trembling wretch, with the The Queen's House, Lynd/?urst. 12 THE NEW FORESE prospect of maiming or blinding before him, must have felt before the scowl of the forest rangers of Norman or Angevin kings, on this seat of justice over against him. Besides the rude accommodation for judges and prisoners, the court contains a recess filled with books on forest law which, by that grace of congruity which seems inseparable from everything in this strangely perfect region, are screened by the most appropriate curtain that could be devised, the skin of a red deer. The walls are decorated by horns of deer, red and fallow. Whatever the history of the great stirrup, which hangs upon the wall, and is said to have belonged to William Rufus, it is a notable relic, and thoroughly in place in this hall of woodland justice. It is clearly the stirrup in which the thickly-mailed feet of the days of plate armour, with their broad iron toes were thrust, thick enough and broad enough to give “support” for the most ponderous horseman in his coat of steel; and so wide, that the legend that all dogs which could not be passed through it were considered possible enemies to game, and therefore maimed does not seem improbable, except in regard to dates. Lyndhurst is by size and position the true capital of the forest. There stands the ancient Queen’s House, to which the Verderers’ Hall is attached, and in which the Deputy-Surveyor of the Forest has his residence, and on the high mound of natural verdure in the centre of the town, the soaring spire of its church shoots up, and dominates the immense tract of woodland, of which it forms the natural centre. The town has no mean outskirts, or squalid surroundings. The woodlands run up to its old houses like a sea ; and the parks surrounding the fine mansions, which fringe the forest capital, are mere incidents in its scenery, lost and absorbed in the wild woods around them. Cuffiialls Park, a grassy hill clothed with oaks and beeches, lies just outside the town, and leads the eye by an easy transition, from the tormal gardens of the Lyndhurst houses, to the uncovenanted graces of the natural forest. Beyond the park the road divides to Burley and Christchurch on the left, to Ringwood on the right, and at the parting of the ways, the forest at once and without reserve flings itself across the field of sight. Thence to Mark Ash, the most renowned of all the ancient woods, the way lies through scenes in an ascending scale of beauty which mark this as the first path to be trodden by the pilgrim and stranger. rHE NEW FORESE 13 The understanding needs time to eddy round the crowding forms that claim its homage. It is the Eleusinian Way, along which the genius of the forest seems to lead the neophyte gently by the hand, saying, “ Look on this, and that, and that, first grasp the lesser, then the greater mysteries, until with eyes and understanding opened you may enter and enjoy the earthly paradise of perfect beauty which lies beyond.” Thus the mind keeps its sense of proportion, and the excitement and Cottage at Lyndhurst. stimulus of this appeal to the sense of admiration is maintained, as the appetite grows with the beauty which feeds it. Slow and lingering should be the tread, silent and solitary the traveller, in a first journey to the high places of the forest, assured that, though the first steps are through the scenes of laughing rustic prettiness, by lawns and groves, the playgrounds of the forest children, and pastures of the forest cattle, ground that in other times would have been sacred to Faunus and Pan, and all their merry crew, he will at last pass beyond the ways of men, and find himself face to face with masterpieces of Nature’s hand, before which he must stand silent and amazed. 14 THE NEW FOREST From Cuffnalls Park two winding roads lead up the steep ascent on either hand. In the space between, sloping gently upwards towards the light is neither field nor fence, but against the sky-line is ranged a crescent of oaks and beeches, fronted by most ancient thorns. Three shapes, three colours distinguish tree from tree, through their centre a green glade winds up into the wood, and from their feet a smooth lawn of turf flows gently down into the point at which the roads divide, watched on either hand by a sentinel oak. “ Swan Green ” is the name of this beautiful lawn. Beyond its slope lies the village of Emery Down, after which the signs and sounds of human habitation disappear with a suddenness almost startling. The road lies through rolling tracts of the most wild and ancient forest land. Right and left the slopes are clothed with trees in the prime and vigour of their age. Some few are oaks ; but the beech is the indigen- ous, or perhaps the growing tree of this stately tract of forest, and from this point onwards the mind is incessantly invited to consider the manifold beauties of form which even one species of forest tree presents. There seems no limit to the hall of columns which fades away into dim distance in the wood, though the space between the stem is clear and open. The gray trunks shoot straight upwards to the sky each with its smooth surrounding lawn. The tallest beeches which spring on the slope of the hill-sides seem to draw back with a certain reticence from the broad pathways of the glades, drooping their branches downward and wrapping them round their feet with a dainty and almost feminine dignity and reserve. Others grow like oaks, flinging their branches abroad in wild disordered tangles. There are those among them which have already passed their prime, and yet scarcely show the symptoms of decay. In many beeches the first years of decline add dignity to their forms. The tree dies from the top ; but at first this appears only by a cessation of upward growth. The branches at the summit thicken, cluster, and multiply, like the antlers on an old stag’s horns, giving to the whole massive and weighty proportions in strange contrast to the usual graceful and feathery outlines of its race. In others, further advanced in the stages of decay, the vigour of the lower branches so arrests the eye, that it scarcely travels beyond the mass of leafage, though above and from the centre ot the THE NEW FORESr 15 healthy boughs an upright growth of bare gray limbs rises grimly naked and alone. Some two miles from Lyndhurst the hush of the forest begins. If the wind is still, and the trees motionless, there is a silence which can be felt. In winter or early spring, before the summer migrants have arrived, or the hum of insects has begun to stir the air, the sense of hearing is not excited by any form of sound. There are neither men nor children yl Dead Giants Mark Ash. in this part of the wood, the cattle are away on distant lawns, the deer are hidden in the thick inclosures, and the great birds which haunt the forest are away, in the still grander and more solemn precincts ot the most ancient woods. Beyond Emery Down the high wood gives place to a rolling natural park, clothed with heather, cotton grass, and gray wTortle bushes, and studded with single trees, or small groups, in pairs and triplets, of perfect form. Here is seen that phase of beauty so often desired and seldom found, distance in the forest, bounded only by rHE NEW FOREST 1 6 a far-off misty screen of luxuriant wood. Beyond this open park, the imagination is kept in constant excitement and expectation by the increasing size and beauty of the trees. Each group seems to surpass the last, and to mark the ultimate limits of grace and size, until some- thing even grander and more stately takes the pride of place. Their splendour dominates the mind to the exclusion of all other subjects of thought. You become a connoisseur not only in their general beauty but in its particular forms. You analyse them into types, grades, and permanent varieties, and no longer compare them promiscuously, but form standards for the different classes. Some of the finest ancient beeches have apparently been pollarded, and so far from this proving a disfigurement in their ripe maturity, it gives them a variety of form and a spread of limb, which makes a fine contrast with the towering domes which top the single stems of the natural tree. Many of the pollards seem to come late into leaf, and the effect is particularly fine when in spring their ruddy buds surround some other forest giant in the full glory of early growth. On the left side of the road, some two and a half miles beyond Emery Down, there is such a group of immense spreading pollards, above which towers the rounded head of an unshrouded tree, capped with a cloud of vivid green fioating leaf-buds. Opposite the beech circle, a low line of alders gives promise of a swamp, and the ground descends into a “bottom”; not the squashy river ot grass usually known by that name in the Surrey coombes, but a flat swampy valley of gray and lichen-covered heather and cotton- grass, scored and Intersected by the manifold windings of a slow, dark stream, curling round masses of cattle-gnawed and ivy-strangled alders and sallows, heaped and encumbered with soft mounds of black and gray mud, studded with little bulbous oak stems, stunted and decayed, and shattered by the lightning of the thunder clouds which follow the water. The struggle for life against water and lightning must also be made heavier by the force of the wind in this valley of desolation, for even the tough alders had been uprooted by the gales, and lay prostrate in the marsh, with cavernous hollows beneath their roots haunted by water-rats and tiny trout. In the most stagnant parts white limbs of drowned oaks raise their skeleton arms above the marsh. THE NEW FORESE 17 and the ragged ponies which graze round the margin, test carefully at each step the ground in which so many of their companions have sunk and perished when weak with winter and famine. The colouring of this swampy hollow is in complete contrast to the brilliant tints of the sound lawns and high woods. It has only two tones, gray and black. Yet even there the finishing touch of nature completes the picture. The black stream and alder clumps are fringed and studded with golden marsh marigolds, and over the gray mud creeps an exquisite little plant with five-lobed leaves and gray starry flowers like silver stone- crop. A low ridge of better soil divides this slow rivulet of the swamp from the bright waters of a typical New Forest stream, the Lymington river. On its banks the solemn beeches once more cluster, and the hurrying stream goes dancing through the wood golden clear with topaz lights, past the lines of columned trees, slipping from pool to pool with little impatient rushes, resting a moment in the deeper pools, then climb- ing the pebble beds which bar them in, and hurrying down to the sea, at Lymington Haven. This river, like that at Beaulieu, belongs wholly to the forest. Here it is a mere brook, with exquisitely rounded banks of turf and moss, as if the wood fairies who put the acorn and beech nuts to bed for the winter had tucked in the coverlet on either side and then embroidered it with flowers. The pools are full of enormous “boatmen” which lurk under the banks and dart out at every leaf, insect or stick which comes floating down the stream. Each morsel is seized, pulled about and examined by the creatures, like a company of custom-house officers at a port, and as a steady rain of debris from the trees descends upon the stream throughout the day they are kept busy from dawn till dusk. Even so near its source this stream sometimes overflows its banks. In one spot the whole of the surface roots of a beech have been pared clear of soil as if by a trowel. It is not a large tree, but the spread of root is fifteen paces across. Y est of the river the ancient trees once more close in towards the road, and beyond them on either side are younger woods planted by the Crown. Very few young trees appear in this part of the old forest, but on the right hand of the path is a beautiful example of tree protecting tree from the destroying cattle. A most ancient crab-tree, hoary with I! rHE NEW FOREST lichen and green with ivy, has thrown its protecting arms round the stem of a fine young oak. The smooth clean stem now shoots up clear of the old Crabtree, whose delicate pink blossom mixed with the black ivy berries, shows that it is vigorous still in spite of its double burden of carrying the ivy and caring for the oak. An example of the astonishing detail and completeness of the natural beauties of the forest, beauty presented on a scale so large, that the absence of detail and ornament might well pass unobserved, may be seen round the stem of every great tree that fronts the road. Take for instance the base of the beech column which stands opposite to the grass track that leads to the left to the charcoal burner’s hut below Mark Ash. It is the base of a compound column, thicker than the piers of Durham Cathedral, with seven projecting pilasters. The bark is like gray frosted silver, crusted in parts with a scale ornament of lichen, and in the interstices between the pillars with short golden-brown moss. The rounded niches which encircle its base are laid out as natural gardens : which in April of the present year were planted and arranged as follows. In one a violet bed, covered with blossoms which touched the bark of the trunk. In the next a briar-rose, a foot high in young leaf. In the third three curling fronds of bracken fern. In the fourth a moss-grown billet of sere wood, and a pile of last year’s beech mast. In the fifth a young woodbine, which had slipped into the inmost crevice between the sheltering pilasters, and was already adorned with little whorls of green leaves. In the sixth a wood sorrel, with trefoils of exquisite green- like chrysoprase, and in the seventh niche four seedling hollies, a tiny rowan tree, and a seedling beech as high as a pencil. The whole was encircled by a close carpet of moss turf, and the debris of leaves. The eye sees these minor beauties in series and succession ; but no mere catalogue can convey an adequate idea of the delight and satisfaction afforded to the mind by this prodigal abundance of natural ornament. The cries of the woodland birds, which hitherto had hardly broken the silence of the forest, showed that the attractions of cover, food, and water must be combined in a measure not yet encountered in the adjacent glades. The bright sun poured between the green leaves and reached the dark hollows among the pines below, and the wood rang with the cries of the larger and rarer birds which have here their haunt. The hooting and niE NEW FORESr 19 yelping of the owls, though it was noon-day, was almost like the inter- mittent cry of hounds that have strayed from the pack, and are hunting some solitary deer. The laughing of the woodpecker, the harsh and angry screams of the jays, the crow of the cock .pheasant, and the cuckoo’s call, showed that animal life, hitherto so scarce in this wealth of arboreal growth was here abundant and in evidence. The only trace of man’s presence was the rudest and most primitive dwelling known to civilized Charcoal Burner's Hut, Bolderzvood. life. In the centre of a clearing, surrounded on three sides by a towering ring of monster beeches, was a deserted charcoal burner’s hut, with the “ burning circle ” in front of the door. Except for the setting of good English trees it might pass for part of the kraal of some race of wood- land dwarfs, with its “ zeriba ” in front. The last is a large circle of brushwood, supported by posts and rails of rough oak-poles. Within was a flooring of black ashes, neatly raked into a raised ring at a few feet from the circumference. B 2 20 rHE NEW FOREST The hut looks like a white ants’ hill covered with scales of turf turned grass inwards, with a kind of mushroom cup on the apex. The only sign that the dwelling was not constructed by savages is the square door and porch, hewn of roughly squared oak. A glimpse of the interior shows that the framework is a cope of strong oak poles, and the only furniture a couple of sacks of dry beech leaves, a low wooden bench, and one or two iron pots. A similar hut in Gritnam wood is inhabited throughout the year by an adder-hunter. He does not even indulge in the luxury of a beech leaf mattress or a wooden door ; but lives in health and comfort with a low oak bench for his bed, and a faggot of heather for curtain and door. A narrow glen and stream, with an ascent bare of trees forms a kind of precinct, before the last and inmost circle of the wood, where the neophyte may pause, and see revealed before him, the final and crowning secret of the forest. The voices of Dodona’s doves echo softly throbbing from the grove, and invite him “ to touch, to see, to enter ” and be from henceforth one of the initiated. On either side the enormous beeches rise, some tossing their branches like the arms of Blake’s angels, sweeping sky- ward with uplifted hands, others with huge limbs flung supine on the turf, others like slender pillars from which spring fretted vaults and arches, trees male and female, trees of architecture, and trees of life, rising in measured order and gradual succession on the sides of a theatre of woodland turf. Where the solemn aisles diverge they are walled with holly, roofed with the green of the beech, and floored with flesh colour and gold, as the broken lights glitter on the carpet of moss and wind- sown leaves. Half of a clustered beech had fallen in one shock to the ground, smashing into ruin the tall hollies below it, and scattering their broken limbs in a yet wider circle of destruction. The scent of beech and holly from the crushed and broken fragments overpowered all the odours of the forest. Deer had been browsing on the fallen boughs, and three fallow bucks sprang up from behind the ruin and rushed through the hollies beyond. Nine fallen limbs, each a tree itself in size and proportions, lay spread upon the ground like the fingers of a fan. The coating of moss with which it was completely covered made it easy to walk up over the limbs to the point of fracture and thence look down into the forest. In front lay beds of young holly glittering in the sun, the rHE NEW FORESr 21 ground between them covered with the vivid green of wood-sorrel. Beyond, and around, on every side the towering forms of, the gigantic trees stand clear, each behind each in ordered ranks without movement or sound in the still air, except for the cooing' of the ring-doves and the screams of the wood-owls moving in the forest. It is a temple without walls, with a thousand pillars and a thousand gates, aisles innumerable and arches multiplex, so lofty, so light, so ancient and so fair that it seems the work not of natural growth but of some enchantment, which has raised it in the forest far from the home of man, unpeopled, untrodden and alone. Such is the ancient wood of Mark Ash, in itself, its setting and surroundings. It may be doubted whether elsewhere in England is to be found another to excel it or equal it in the completeness of its beauty, and in the strange perfection of the growth, not only of its trees, but of its turf, its flowers and its lawns, to which the will of man has not contributed the laving of a sod or the setting of a daisy. CHAPTER II THE CENTRAL FOREST {continued) The Jorest heaths — Beaulieu and Ober Heath contrasted — Fleming's thorns — Matle'^ Heath and Bog —Flight of the zvoodcocks at dusk up Matle'j Passage — Denny Bog by tzvilight — Blum Green and the Roman Arch — The Knightzvood oak — Heronry in Finney Ridge — Toung herons ; buzzards ; the adder-hu?iter — Brockenhurst — Night in the forest. T HE sense of freedom and limitless distance which always accompanies a forest walk is never more complete than when the traveller emerges from roaming in the great woods or thick plantations and finds himself on one of the wide heaths which stretch for miles beside the woodlands, and are themselves surrounded by distant lines of forest beyond which lie heaths, and yet more forest far away down to the shores of the Solent. Beaulieu Heath is perhaps the finest of the open stretches of forest scenery. There is something so new, fresh and exhilarating in the sudden presentation of this apparently unlimited stretch of high open level ground, swept by the volume of the over-sea wind that comes rolling up from the Channel, which reacts on the mind with a kind of intoxication of space and air. Miles of whispering pines are the background to the heath; beyond all is open, level and free, the ground falling imperceptibly till the near horizon is nothing but a level line of heather, below which the inter- secting waters of the Solent are lost to sight, though the blue hills of the Isle of Wight rise like the background of a panorama, far beyond the invisible strait which lies between. There are those who prefer the forest heaths even to the forest woods. Doubtless each gains by contrast, the more so that the change from the high woods to the sweeping moorland, is often as sudden as the shifting of a scene upon the stage. Take for instance the wide stretch of Ober Heath, which fringes the y~(eath in the yieca^orest near Ji^jndhurs t . - i rHE NEW FORESE 23 great plantations of Rhinefield Walk, and runs almost down to Brockenhurst from the modern castle which has been built upon the site of the keeper’s lodge at Rhinefield. The upper portion of the heath is like a scene in the Surrey pine districts, studded with self-sown Scotch fir, and clothed with gorse bushes, rough heather, and a tiny dwarf willow, which creeps upon the ground like ivy, but otherwise is a perfect willow bush, studded in spring with tiny satin globes, like the “ palms ” of the common osier, but no larger than shot or tare-seed. Far away across the dark pvirple heather and golden gorse, the quick stream of Ober-water runs through a flat green lawn to join the Brockenhurst river just above New Park, with the hill of Brockenhurst Manor breaking the sky-line to the right. The left side of the heath is fringed by heavy forest ; but in this case the transition from heath to wood is broken by a wide scrub of dwarf thorns, round as beehives, matted with heather, and knots and beards of lichen. Some hundred acres must be covered by “ Fleming’s thorns,” as this dense thicket is called. Those who have seen both, compare it to the mimosa scrub of the African plains. Like the mimosa it is a favourite haunt of game ; and the wild deer love to lie in its secluded and impenetrable jungle. No fence or boundary marks the transition from heath to forest. The river slips from the common, between clumps of holly and single waving birches, winds down a glade, and in a few yards is lost to sight among masses of oak, alder, ash, and pines. Looking backwards towards the sunset along this borderland, the rugged outlines of the gorse and fir, and the broken and wind-swept hollies and thorns which fringe the full fed forest, give to the scene an air of wildness and confusion in striking contrast to the serene tranquillity which reigns within the solemn precints of the woods. Ober Fleath is an example of the forest moor inclosed by wooded hills. On Matley Heath, south of Lyndhurst, the converse may be seen ; a barren heather-clad hill rising steadily from low wooded ground on either side, and then descending in a long and gentle slope to an immense expanse of flat and barren moor. This wild and desolate tract is perhaps the largest unbroken stretch of heather and infertility in the whole forest. Under the names of Matley Heath, Black Down, Yew-tree Heath, and Denny Bog, it stretches east of Lyndhurst in a straight line of five miles to the Beaulieu river. Cobbett, who rode across it after having missed 24 rHE NEW FORESE his way, and hated heaths because they would not grow his pet swede turnips, calls it “ about six miles of heath even worse than Bagshot Heath ; as barren as it is possible for land to be.” From Lyndhurst the road gradually ascends, the soil all the way growing thinner and poorer, until the bare gravel shows in white patches and plains among the starved heather. Yet on the right, and at no great distance are thick woods of the finest timber in England, and even on the crest of the hill, a fine rounded wood of beech and oak, Matley Wood, stands up like a fertile island, with a sea of heather and bog round it. To the left lies the great stretch of Matley Bog, and to the right a narrow strip of hard sand where the road creeps round the head of the morass. Here is a picture which, but for the road and bridge cannot have changed for a thousand years. A stream flows down from a wide valley in the thick woods, and spreads itself among green marshes, sedge, and alder copses, at the top of the bog, whose level and impassable plain loses itself in the black heath which stretches far beyond the railway into the southern forest. At dusk, the woodcocks, which rest in the forest, come flying up from the bog to the woods. On the last day of April of the present year, at a quarter before eight, the woodcocks were already on the wing. Night was set- tling down on the heath, but the horizon was still light above the hill, and tall clouds were passing across the west. A sound came from the bog, like the twittering of swallows on the wing, mixed with low croaking cries. Then a bird with steady flight like that of a curlew on the mud-flats came up out of the dusk, and crossed the road, uttering its curious call at regular intervals, and making straight for the head of the woodland glen. This was followed by a pair, which, after crossing the road flew tilting at one another, and turning and twisting in the air all round the semi-circle of lofty trees which crown the hollow in the woods. Bird after bird then flew up from the bog, until the forest glen was full of their dusky forms twisting and twining, like swallows or fern owls, against the evening sky. Next day a young woodcock was brought into Lyndhurst ; it had been caught in the wood close to the Lyndhurst race-course, the rest of the brood were seen hiding close by, with their heads laid upon the ground and bodies motionless like young plover, while the parent bird flew round, and endeavoured to decoy the lad who found them Mat ley Passage and Mat ley Bug. 26 rHE NEW FOREST from the spot. This young bird was a most beautiful creature, no longer covered with down, but fully fledged to all / appearance, and adorned with the beautiful brown mottling which makes the wood- cock’s plumage one of the most perfect pieces of tone-ornament in nature. As the night creeps on, blurring every minor feature of the scene, and leaving only the faint gleam of waters and the black forms of the alder clumps from distance to distance in the bog, the cry of the wild-fowl, echoed by the dark wall of forest at the back, shows that all the natives of the marsh are awake and moving. The croak of the woodcocks, the calling and screaming of the plovers, the bleating of the snipe, and the harsh barking of the herons, winging their way from Vinney Ridge to the Beaulieu river, fill the air with sound, though the creatures themselves are invisible ; while from the forest the yelping and screeching of the owls, the incessant drone of the “ churr worms,” and the whirr of the great wood-beetles, answers the calls from the open moor. At such times the stranger will do well to seek the road and return across the heath ; for once entangled in the great woods which lie southward of the marsh, he may well be lost till morning. In the angle between this mass of forest and the railway, lies Denny Bog, a more distant and even more picturesque portion of this irreclaimable waste. The words bog, marsh and swamp are often used indifferently. Properly understood they apply to widely different conditions. A bog is a portion of ground lying in soak. In the forest they are found of all sizes, from the area of a dining-room table to that of Hyde Park. The rim of the bog is hard enough to prevent the escape of the water except by gradual soakage, and thus the service is level. Yet the beauty of the bogs is known and appreciated by every “ forester,” though they are a fruitful source of disaster to riders who do not know how they often lurk under the very shadow of the timber at the edge of the sound land of the woods. There is a tiny bog on the edge of Gritnam Wood which may serve as an example. On the verge of the common which lies below the wood is a pretty little circle of golden moss, with patches of green grass, and pools of black water no larger than a man’s hand. Towards the centre the colouring is as bril- liant as that of sea-weeds and sea-anemones seen in sunlit water. The mosses grow into spongv pillows, with exquisite feathery fronds. Some THE NEW FOREST 27 of this moss is rose-pink ; other kinds brilliant green, or tawny brown, and from the whole comes a scent like that of fern roots. A man may walk across in safety, but a horse breaks through the spongy surface, and nearly always falls, throwing its rider in the process, for the sucking mosses prevent any effort at recovering its footing after the first stumble. Herons, like the monks of old, seem always to choose a picturesque site for their home. Their home in the wooded hills of Wytham, look- ing far far across the flats of the upper Thames valley, or in the tall pines of Woolmer Forest, near the Deer’s Hut common, in the steep cliffs of the Findhorn river, and last, but not least beautiful, the heronry in the thick plantation at the head of the Penn Ponds in Richmond Park, where the London herons build almost unknown to the thousands of visitors who skate upon the lakes in winter, or ride and drive past them in summer, are each the chosen spots in their own beautiful vicinity. The heronry on Vinney Ridge, about four miles from Lyndhurst, is no exception to the rule, and the path to it leads through some of the finest woodland scenery. Part lies along an ancient Roman road, which runs over the summit of Lyndhurst Hill. From this the view ranges far to south, west, and east, while at its foot lies Alum Green, perhaps the largest and most beautiful of all the forest lawns. It is a kind of natural “ savannah ” in the woods. The extent of sound turf covers many acres, dotted with park-like groups of trees, surrounded on all sides with a ring of ancient timber on sloping banks. It is the favourite resort of all the ponies and cattle in this part of the Forest. The ancient path joins the main road to Christchurch, near the Lymington stream, about a mile below the bridge which crosses it on the w'ay to Mark Ash. Here also is a bridge, of a single arch of brick. The stream comes hurrying down to this through the open forest. Three tributaries have already swelled its waters between this and the upper crossing-place, and river and banks alike are deeper and even lovelier than before. The broken banks are planted, wreathed, and fringed by every kind of forest flower, shrub, and fern, of the largest and most luxuriant growth. Anemones, cuckoo-flowers, violets, king- cups, young bracken, and hard-fern, woodbine and wild rose, heart’s- tongue, and moss like lengths of velvet cover the banks, the beech- boughs arch the stream, and on each side the open wood extends to the rHE NEW FOREST utmost limit of sight. The otters make this part of the river their summer home. Two young ones were recently dug out from the earth a short way below the “ Gate House,” which stands near the bridge, and during the day they frequently lie up, either in the dry forest near, or under the roots of a big tree by the banks. The habits of the New Forest otters on this stream seem very well known to those who are interested either in hunting or observing them. They travel a long way down the river at night, perhaps past Brockenhurst and as far as Boldre, or even below to near Lymington. They then hunt the stream upwards in the early morning until they reach the narrow waters, where they stay during the day. The pack of otter-hounds, which generally visits the forest in the early summer, usually meet at Brockenhurst or some other point down stream and pick up the fresh “ drag ” of the otters, which have returned up stream in the early hours of the morning. Hunted deer also make for the water at this point, and endeavour to throw off the pack before seeking refuge in the thick recesses of Knight- wood and Vinney Ridge. A fallow buck finds the dimensions of the stream quite adequate for the temporary destruction of scent. Slipping down some tributary brooklet it will pick its way down to a pool, and then, gently sinking, until nothing but head and horns remain above water, lies as motionless as a squatted hare listening to the shouts, talk- ing, casting, and excitement on either bank, until refreshed and invigor- ated it springs once more to the bank and leads its pursuers another circle through the woods and bogs of the forest. North of the road, a little beyond the “ Roman Arch,” as tradition calls this bridge, is the inclosure of Knightwood. This large wood, though in part replanted in i 867, contains many remnants of ancient forest embedded in the new timber, among other the celebrated Knight- wood Oak. Thus it shows in juxtaposition both the artificial and natural modes of reproducing forest. On the edges of the wood are close plantations of Scotch fir, in formal rows, which shelter and direct the upward growth of the young oaks between. In the centre, where old trees have died and been removed, or have in past time cleared a space which their present height leaves free to light and air, young oaks, bircher and beeches are growing in irregular masses and of all heights and sizes. Among this confused multitude is the great Knightwood Oak Kiyz.l::zvood OA, M..A Ash. 30 THE NEW FORESr This forest king stands in a smooth round lawn, all other trees keep- ing their distance beyond the outermost circle of its branches. The main trunk of the oak rises like a smooth round Norman pillar, and at no great height breaks into eight limbs which radiate from it like the sticks of a fan, in very straight and regular lines. The extremities of these show signs of decay, but the tree seems as firm as ever. Its rigidity is such that in a heavy gale, though the tops of the branches move, the mass of the tree seems as stiff as if cast in iron. The limbs, though untouched by decay, are coated nearly to the summit by thick green moss, and the effect of this symmetrical mass of timber springing from a trunk of such magnitude — its girth is 19^ feet — is beyond description dignified and imposing. The tallest beeches in the forest are probably those in which the herons build in the Vinney Ridge inclosure, on the opposite side of the Christ Church Road from Knightwood. The wood lies on the top of a fine saddle-back hill, covered with trees of every kind, except elm, and of all ages, from old ivy-bound oaks to immense beeches and thorn-bushes wreathed with woodbine. There is a far greater extent of open turf here than in most “ inclosures,” and when the fences are removed in 1899, which is the date fixed for its disenclosure, it will take its place as a natural part of the ancient forest. The beeches in which the herons build are so lofty as to lift their summits above the natural angle of sight, even as the head is usually carried in the forest ; if it were not for the glimpses of the great birds silently launching themselves from the tree-tops before their disturber has approached the nest, the existence of the colony would not be suspected. It was the flight of a single heron slipping noiselessly from the nest, and soaring back in a wide circle to watch over the brood, that first indicated to the present writer that he was in the heronry. Even then the height of the trees, their distance apart, and the thickness of the foliage at the top made the discovery of the nest no easy task, had not the clattering noise made by the young indicated their where- abouts. The presence of birds of prey, though usually screened from sight by the thickness of the forest, was well illustrated by an incident which took place after the momentary flight of the old herons. A sparrow-hawk dashed up through the wood, and poising itself above the The IIero?iry at Fitmey Ridge, 32 rHE NEIV FORESr trees, flew from nest to nest, looking down into them from a height of a few feet, and apparently expecting to find a brood small enough for one to be carried off before the old birds returned. The hawk’s visit only lasted for a minute, for at that moment five old herons came sweeping over the wood, and remained soaring in hurried and anxious flight far above the tops of the loftiest trees. When we retired to some distance and stood still by a timber stack, bird after bird pitched on the trees, and after one or two subdued croaks of greeting, flapped down into the nest. The eyries appear absolutely inaccessible, built, as they are, at heights of from seventy to ninety feet from the ground on trees which rise two- thirds of that height without a single branch. Yet they are climbed, otherwise the inquiry as to whether you “ could do with some young herons ” — or young “ cranes,” for both names are used in the forest — ■ would not be addressed to those who are known to have a taste for keeping odd pets so often as it is. There are a few ancient inhabitants who still know the favourite nesting places, not only of the herons, but of rarer birds, such as the common and honey-buzzard. The forest is said to be the last breeding place of the honey-buzzard left in England, and there is no reason, in the present condition of the woodlands, why either of these birds should forsake the district, except in the prices offered for their eggs by “ oologists.” The keepers protect a nest when found, and as the honey-buzzard does not lay till summer is well advanced, there is more chance of its nest escaping observation than for those of the early- building birds. The strangest survival of any industry connected with the taking of wild animals in the forest is that ot the “ Adder-hunter,” probably the very last representative in England of a race who for upwards of two centuries have contributed their strange nostrum of adder’s fat to the pharmacopccias of central and western Europe. The last of the Adder- hunters is a strikingly handsome man, probably past his sixtieth year, short, with curling beard and hair, and equipped in what is probably a unique costume for his peculiar trade. Thick boots and gaiters protect him from the chance of a bite from the snakes. He is slung all over with bags of sacking, his pockets are stuffed with tins and boxes, and from his chest hangs a pair of long steel forceps. In his hand he carries a light THE NEW FORESE 33 stick with a ferrule, into which when he rouses a snake he puts in a short forked piece of hazel wood, and, darting it forward with unerring The Adder-Catcher. aim, pins the adder to the ground. Stooping down he picks it up lightly with the forceps, and after holding the writhing creature up for a moment, in which he looks like a rustic ^sculapius, he transfers it to his c 34 rHE NEW FOREST sack. Mr. Mills, or “ Brasher,” as he is known among his friends, is a well- known and popular character in the forest, and his services in keeping down the number of adders are considerable. From March to September he ranges the forest, and his largest “bag” was i6o adders in a month. These he boils down, and prepares from their flesh the “ adder’s fat,” which he sells. Its virtues have been known for so many centuries, and the favour with which extremely penetrating unguents, such as lanoline, made from the fat of sheep’s wool, are now regarded, justifies the reputa- tion it enjoys. The belief that it is a remedy for the bite of the snake itself may rest on slender grounds. But for the odd list of accidents given by the old man — “ sprains, black eyes, poisoning with brass, bites by rats and horses, rheumatic joints, and sore feet in men and dogs,” it is admitted by the general consent of the forest to be a sovereign balm. In winter the Adder-hunter’s occupation is gone, but he has other modes of making a livelihood, and his lodging throughout the year is in the woods, in the snug interior of a charcoal-burner’s hut. Brockenhurst, unlike Lyndhurst, which, with all its picturesque features, bears itself like a little town, is a true village, imbedded in the forest. Here the ground is stiff clayey loam, suitable for the growth of oaks, and consequently for corn and arable land. The square fields, with hedgerows, which fringe the village give an uneasy sense of limit and confinement after the free and open woodlands. But the cultivated land is a mere patch, lost to sight and memory in a few minutes’ walk from the village. The church stands apart on a little hill, a perfect forest shrine, ringed by a double circle of oaks, between which lie the graves, sprinkled with primroses that have crept out from the wood, and spread their flowers shyly on the church- yard turf. Like the new church of Lyndhurst, the building stands upon a green mount. A giant yew, sound and vigorous, with a solid stem eighteen feet in girth, overshadows the red-brick tower, and reaches halfway up the spire. In front of this tree stand the dead fragments of an oak. The age of this ruin of a tree is almost beyond conjecture, but its position gives some clue to its date. Part of one branch survives. This limb, which appears to be some six feet in diameter, must have passed across the space on which the greater part of the yew now stands, at a height of thirteen feet from the ground. Thus when the ancient Brochenhurst Church, 36 THE NEW FORESE yew was a mere shrub, not so high as the great limb of the oak, the latter must have attained its full dimensions ; for the yew is a tree of perfect growth, straight, upright, and unmarred by crowding or shade, which must have been the case had it grown up when the oak-bough was large enough to overshadow it. The shell of the oak measures twenty-five feet Bridge near Brockenhurst. round ; and the centuries of the growth of the yew must be the measure of the decline and fall of this primeval oak. At dusk, when the heavy clouds descend and brood in long lines across the woods, with bars ol pale white sky below, the scene between Brockenhurst and Lyndhurst is singularly wild and pleasing. The white and waning light in the west is broken by the sharp outlines of the rugged firs, and reflected in pale sheets in the swampy pools which line the river. The woods are studded with clumps of holly, whose THE NEW FORESr 37 opaque black outline contrasts with the gnarled and twisted limbs of the ancient pollarded oaks native to this stiff and vigorous soil. As the dusk creeps on the night-sounds of the forest are more distinctly heard. The splashing of the ponies’ feet as they crop the grass of the swamps, the neighing of the forest mares as they call their foals, and the distant tinkle of the cattle-bells, sound through the trees, and shadowy forms of deer canter across the rides. Voices of children, calling or crying in the deep wood, are among the startling and unexpected sounds of night in the forest. More than once the writer has left the track and hastened into the grove, only to see the fire of a gipsy camp, with the children and parents lying at the mouth of their tent, lighted and warmed by the glow of their beech-wood fire. The smell of the woods on a still night, when dew is falling, is the essence of a thousand years distilling in the soil of this virgin forest. It baffles description ; suffice it to say, as Herodotus did of Arabia Felix, “ from this country comes an odour, wondrous sweet.” Nor are true perfumes wanting, where wafts of the scent of sweetbriar come across the path, or an unseen bed of hyacinths fringes the road. CHAPTER III THE WILD DEER AND FOREST PONIES Unique character of hunting in the High JUoods" — Survival of the zuild deer — A spring fneet at Nezu Park — Rousing deer zvith tufters — Old Moonstone — Laying on the pack — Full cry in the forest — Humber of deer killed — Fhe forest potties — Fheir importance to the Commoners — Arab blood — Fheir feral habits — Improvement and tnaintenance of the breed — Fhe Pony Shozv at Lyndhurst. The forest was created as a hunting-ground, and such it still remains. The fox is regularly hunted, and the otter-hounds visit Brockenhurst in spring. But the beasts of the chase peculiar to the district are the wild red and fallow deer, which are hunted amid settings and surroundings absolutely unique in England. Their continued existence is one instance in many of the natural survival of what is appropriate to the forest. When the deer were over-preserved by the Crown, their presence led to endless ill-will and demoralisation. From 7,000 to 8,000 head are said to have lived within and about the boundaries of the forest at the end of the last century. Such a stock was far larger than the natural resources of the ground could maintain. In the winter they were partly fed by hay grown for them at New Park. Even so they frequently starved in hard weather, and it is said that in the winter of 1787 three hundred were found dead in one walk. The reaction from this over-preservation went almost as far in the opposite direction. The “ Deer Removal Act ” was passed in 1851. The greater number were taken in the “toils” — high nets still kept in most deer parks — and most of the rest were shot down by sportsmen. But they have survived all efforts at their THE NEW FOREST 39 destruction, and their increase in the thick and quiet plantations is now steadily maintained. Towards the close of the season, late in April, a day with the New Forest deerhounds presents from meet to finish a series of pictures of sylvan sport, in the full glory of the English spring, each of which might be illustrated from the plays of Shakespeare and the old ballad poetry of England. Take for example the scene at a meet late in April of the present year, under the tall oaks at New Park. Three men, born and bred in the forest, sons of woodmen, dressed in brown velveteen, thick boots, and gaiters, were leaning against the oaks. Each wore across his shoulders long thongs of leather, with loops and swivels of steel, working examples of those mysterious ornaments of white and gold with which the Master of the Queen’s Buckhounds is girded as he leads the royal procession on the Cup day at Ascot. These are the “ couples,” for holding the pack, until the time comes to lay them on upon the scent of the deer, which the “ tufters ” have driven from cover. Three or four red-scarved, black-muzzled forest gipsies strolled up and formed a group under another oak, little dark active laughing orientals, a strange contrast to the sturdy foresters. The old adder-catcher next joined the party ; he had hunted the forest as he came, and flung down upon the ground from his wallet a pair of writhing snakes. The “ kennels ” are good customers for his adder’s fat, as it is believed not only to be useful to reduce sprains and injuries in horse and hound, but also as a remedy against the adder poison should a hound be bitten in the forest. A gipsy family followed, ragged, unkempt, “ happy a^ birds and hard as nails,” as a forester described them, taking the meet on their most leisurely way to Brockenhurst. An old w'oman, the present patriarch of the forest gipsies, led the way, in a cloak of enormous squares of scarlet and black, which covered the basket she carried like a tent, and a poke-bonnet. Another younger woman, in a true “■ witches’ hat ” with elf locks hanging from below, and a tribe of most ragged children, sockless, shoeless, some pushing a little cart in wFich lay their tents, others straying and returning like little wild animals, were amusing themselves by imitating a pack of hounds in full cry. Soon the pack appeared, with huntsman and whips in coats of Lincoln green, and couples across their breasts, and though the hounds 40 mE NEW FORESE are no longer like those which Theseus bid the forester “ uncouple in the western valley,” “ With ears that sweep away the morning dew, Crook-kneed and dewlapped like Thessalian bulls Slow in pursuit,” they are still “ matched in mouth like bells,” and their greater speed and symmetry does not detract from the pleasure of listening in the forest to “ The musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction,” which the hero proposed to Queen Hippolyta. A sharp-faced man “ lunging ” a forest pony, and one or two mounted woodmen and keepers, completed the party, until the “ field ” cast up rapidly, the master in Lincoln green, the rest in quiet blacks and browns. The hounds were then divided by the whips into groups, and the couples fastened, each thong being linked to a pair of hounds. Thus one man has to hold from three to six couple, and that picturesque poise of men stepping backwards with arms extended and dragging reluctant hounds which has been painter’s and sculptor’s subject for centuries is reproduced in perfection. One ancient and sagacious hound, byname Moonstone, was omitted from the coupling process. Satisfied that for it the honour was reserved of finding and separating the deer, it trotted alone at the heels of the hunts- man’s horse, with an air of sagacity and importance most edifying to behold. After “ secret consults ” with one or two woodmen, who had marked deers in the early morning, the huntsman led the way through thick and beautiful plantations, the coupled hounds and the field following in long procession. On every side the wood rang with the spring notes of birds, the laugh of the woodpecker, the cry of the cuckoo, while starry beds of violet and primrose, and everywhere the sight and scent of leaves and flowers, made an unusual and beautiful setting to the animated groups of riders, horses, and hounds. The pack and field halted in a rough common deep in heather and furze, shut in on three sides by plantations, and on the fourth by the ancient timber of Gritnam wood. The huntsman and a mounted keeper, with the old “ tufter ” Moonstone, then trotted into a large rUE NEW FORESr 41 enclosure on the farther side. “ Come on, old dog ! ” called the hunts- man, as the hound stopped to feather on either side of the beautiful green ride up which the two men were trotting. The keeper pulled up his cob, and pointed to a clump of beeches surrounded by low brambles and thorns, remarking, “ There were three bucks there this morning.” The hound, which had been casting from side to side of the walk and through the cover, now bounded towards the beeches, and with a crash three bucks sprang to their feet, and rushed through the wood, followed by the loud and musical baying of the hound. The deer did not break at once, and there was time to join the groups in the common and watch the dispersion of the inhabitants of the plantation, as the hound twisted and turned after the bucks. A big fox stepped out, and a doe crossed, eliciting a chorus of impatient whimpers from the pack before whose eyes it passed. Then the three bucks crossed the open, followed by the single hound, whose deep voice was heard for many minutes as he drove them through the next covert. A blast on the horn now gave the signal that the deer had separated, and half a dozen willing hands led the coupled hounds to the ancient wood in which they were to be laid upon the scent. The long line of men and hounds, followed by the well-mounted field, hurried along through the long narrow glades of a most beautiful and ancient wood of oaks, or under arcades of crab-blossoms, ragged gipsies, brown-coated foresters, hounds and riders, all gradually hurrying on till the whole cavalcade was pushing at a trot through the forest. A pretty little black-eyed boy was leading old Moonstone (literally by a string). “ I likes deer-hunting, though ’tis a cruel sport, for the deer does us no harm,” he remarked sententiously, as the procession grouped itself round the huntsman, who was sitting alert and eager on his horse in a green ride at the highest point of the wood, where the single buck had crossed. All the hounds were now eager and happy, with heads up, sterns waving. In a few moments they were uncoupled, and dashed down through the wood. If the scene was not a reproduction of Tudor or Plantagenet days, the picture of the early poets is sadly misread. Hounds, all black, white, and tan, spread fanlike across the forest, flinging to right and left, each giving tongue as it owned the scent ; master, huntsman, and whips in Lincoln green, under the lights and branching canopy of most ancient beeches ; well-mounted and well-dressed riders, in the costume, sober in 42 THE NEW FORESE colours, sound in texture, which good taste and good sense have elaborated into the perfection of simplicity, now seen, now lost, as they gallop down the glades, among the tall gray pillars of the beech-trunks, and the gossamer green of little thorns, and bushes of ivy and wild rose. Surely some such scene as this must have been in the mind of the author of the Allegro^ when he bids the reader “ At his window bid good morrow, Through the sweetbriar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine. “ Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn. From the side of some hoar hill. Through the high wood echoing shrill.” A favourite device of a hunted stag in the New Forest is to make for the wood in which other deer are lying, and disturb them, carrying the trail right over their “ forms.” The difficulty of keeping hounds together when so composed in a thick extensive plantation is very great, and it often happens that, while the main body of the pack keep to the scent of the hunted deer, small parties of hounds, or even a single hound, break off and enjoy a hunt on their own account. It is on record that on one occasion the pack separated into three, each of which division killed a deer. One doe was hunted and killed by three hounds only, who were found eating the carcass. The single efforts of a staghound which is driving a deer are often extremely interesting, as an example of the per- severance, skill, and instinct combined possessed by the modern breed. On the day the opening of which has been described, a stray hound hunted a buck for a full hour without driving it from one large plantation, giving tongue at intervals, and sticking to the scent without the encouragement either of its own companion or of a single rider. At last, a fine fallow buck, which had not yet shed its horns, broke from the enclosure, and cantered lightly across the open common, ringing twice or thrice round clumps of bushes, and lying down for a few minutes to cool itself, though apparently not at all distressed, in a boggy pool. It then leapt a fence into a plantation. The hound then made its exit from the wood, and took up the scent at a swinging gallop, giving tongue loudly at first, but THE NEW FOREST 43 soon becoming silent as it reached the scene of the buck’s circle round the bushes. At least ten minutes were required to unravel these difficulties ; but the check did not in the least abate the keenness of the hound, who brought the line up to the wood, and then with a fine burst of “ music ” dashed into the wood, and there pursued its solitary hunt. Stag-hunting in the forest begins in August, and the meets are held through September, November, December, January, March, April, and part of May, thus covering a considerable period when fox-hunting has either ceased or not begun. Probably the late spring hunting is the most novel and picturesque experience which a day with the New Forest stag- hounds affords. But to those who enjoy the sight of hounds working, and at the same time have a taste for beautiful scenery, nothing could well be more delightful. Last season, sixty days’ sport averaged about the same number of deer killed. Blank days are unknown, andj there is the certainty of a run and of a day’s enjoyment. The New Forest ponies are one of the most interesting features both ot the landscape and the life of this wild country. Now that the deer are so few as to have disappeared from common view, they are replaced on the heaths, the lawns, the bogs, and among the ancient trees by the many-coloured, wild-looking forms of these almost feral ponies. There is scarcely any portion of the forest — the inmost recesses of Mark Ash woods, the sea-girt heaths of Beaulieu, the sodden rim of Mat ley Bog, or the smooth lawns of Alum Green, of Stonycross, or Brockenhurst — from which the ponies are absent. There is no solitude in which their quiet movements, as they tread with careful steps cropping the scanty herbage, do not break the stillness by day and night, no bare hillside so barren but the ponies can find on it some humble plant to crop between the stones. The brood mares of the forest are perhaps the nearest approach to the wild horse now existing in this country, so far as their life and habits entitle them to the name. Many of these have run for twenty years in the heaths and woods, unbroken, unshod, and almost without experience of the halter except when “ pounded ” by the “ agisters ” for occasional marking. Their graceful walk and elegant shape, their sagacity and hardihood, their speed and endurance, and, not least, the independence and prosperity which their possession confers on the com- 44 THE NEW FORESr moners and borderers who live in and around the forest, give to these ponies an interest apart from that attached to the life of any other breed of domesticated animal in this country. Nearly all the work done else- where by large horses seems to be performed in and around the forest by these miniature ponies, drawing miniature carts. Singly, or driven tandem-fashion, they draw bricks, haul loads of brushwood and poles, trot almost any distance to markets and fairs in carts and gigs, and will carry a heavy forester safely and well “Over hill, over dale, Through bush, through briar,” without fatigue or stumble. There is something in the fact of owning horses — be they only ponies — which seems to raise a man in his own esteem, and the jolly foresters have an air and demeanour, whether standing in front of their mud-built cottages, or riding across the heaths to drive in their various stock, which belongs of right to the equestrian order of mankind. “ The love of pony breeding,” writes Mr. W. Moens, of Tweed, near Boldre, one of the most energetic founders of the Association for the Improvement of the Breed of New Forest Ponies, in his pamphlet on the subject, “ lies deep in the breasts of most commoners, not only on account of its somewhat speculative nature, but for the animals them- selves. The ponies running in the forest are rarely left for long without being looked after to see how they are doing, or at least being inquired after by their owners, of those living near or working in the forest. Even the very children of borderers know to whom the mares and foals belong, so that the forest ponies afford much amusement to the forest folk, and nothing more easily excites them than a rumour that something or other is about to be done that may injure their interests as regards their pony stock. Some of the large breeders own as many as one hundred or more ponies, many forty or fifty, the smaller occupiers own as many as they can keep in the winter season. These, according to the fancy of the owners, are distributed in various parts of the forest, where they are marked by the agisters, or marksmen, by cutting the hairs of the tails in various ways. Thus the ponies haunting each quarter of the forest are known, the agister comparing his own marks with those made by the owner, and with his description of his ponies. Should any ponies The Forest Ponies. 46 rHE NEW FORESE stray into the parks, other pastures, or the lanes around the forest, information given to one of the agisters causes it to be soon known to whom the straying ponies, which go by the name of ‘ lane-haunters,’ The present system of identification has taken the place of a far more picturesque and exciting method of marking the stock, the “ Drift of the Forest.” This custom was a survival of an Act of Henry VIII., which ordained that all forests and chases were to be driven yearly within fifteen days after Michaelmas, and if any mares or fillies were found which were not likely to bear good foals “ the same unprofitable beasts were to be killed and buried.” Long after this drastic command had ceased to be regarded, the “ Drift ” was maintained, as a kind of census for the marking of all forest stock. As nearly as possible on the same day, keepers, agisters, and owners rode out to drive the different walks of the forest towards the pounds. These were not necessarily railed enclosures. The forest hardly contained a fence in the old days, and where, round the few villages, the roads were bordered by fences, the space between was ingeniously used as a trap. At Brockenhurst, for instance, the foals, ponies, cattle, calves, and donkeys were forced towards the lane which, with its high hedges, runs by the side of Brockenhurst Manor towards Beaulieu. Once past the manor mill, by the Boldre River, the gate across the road was shut, and the long lane was filled from end to end with a promiscuous throng of wild and tame beasts, thrusting, neighing, bellow- ing, and crowding, like the spoils of Amalek. From ten to twenty men would join in the work of collecting the animals from the open forest. This needed both skill and knowledge to perform properly. The wilder ponies, who had unpleasant recollections of branding and other rough handling in the pounds, would often make a determined effort to break back, taking their way at speed through the most difheultand treacherous ground. There too, as in the runs of New South Wales, the animals which have been ridden in the business before seemed to take a pleasure in aiding to secure the wild ones, and the most successful means to bring in a fugitive was often for the rider to sit still, and leave the pony he rode to choose its own line, and the time for making the last push which turned the other back to the herd. The history of these New Forest ponies is by no means ascertained. rHE NEW FORESr 47 They are not an indigenous animal like the red deer, but the uniformity in size and appearance suggests a common stock and ancestry. The first is, however, probably due to the almost feral state in which these ponies live in the wild district, from which their food-supply is entirely obtained. No pony above a certain size is likely to survive in the forest, for the simple reason that it cannot find food to maintain it. In winter, by browsing all day and the greater part of the night, hardy little “ foresters ” of from twelve to thirteen hands high can just make both ends meet, though they are extremely thin and ragged. But anything much above that size would need artificial support, and its progeny would deteriorate. On the other hand, their size does not tend to fall much below the standard at which Nature sets the limit, which, in the case of the New Forest pony, seems to be from twelve to thirteen and a half hands. The natural appetite and needs of these hardy creatures prompt them to do the best for themselves from day to day with a constancy hardly to be understood by human beings whose minds are not concentrated by necessity on the absorbing effort to satisfy the hourly cravings of hunger. Nature levels up as it levels down, and this is probably the clue to the uniformity in size of all wild animals, as well as of these half-wild ponies. The condition of this stability is of course that man interferes no- where. But the practice of selecting and selling away from the forest all the best of the ponies did threaten a marked deterioration in the stock about ten years ago, not only in size but in quality. Now the “ quality ” of the ponies is obvious and unmistakable. They have none of that lumpiness and want of due proportion so often seen in ponies ; on the contrary, they are far more like miniature horses, and horses with a strain of Arab blood in them, as their fine eye, small heads, and high quarters show. Whatever the origin of the ponies in the past, this high-bred appearance has a history, and a very interesting one. They are of the blood of Eclipse, or rather of his sire, supplemented in later years by Arab strains of historical excellence. The story of the Arab strain in these ponies is mixed up with one of the earliest romances of the modern thoroughbred. The Duke of Cumberland, son of George II., who in his later years became Ranger of the New Forest, exchanged an Arabian horse for a Yorkshire thorough- 48 rHE NEW FOREST bred, which he called Mask, after the place from which it came. Mask w'as descended from the Darley Arab, brought from Aleppo in the time of Queen Anne, and from the Byerly Turk, thus possessing a pedigree going back to the days of Charles I. Mask was, however, sold for a small sum at the death of the Duke, and remained for some years in the neighbourhood of the New Forest, where he became the sire of num- bers of forest ponies, and also of the celebrated Eclipse. Recently the Queen sent to the forest two thoroughbred Arabs — Abegan and Yirassan — the former a gift of the Imaum of Muscat. Lastly, in 1891, the Association for the Improvement of the Breed of New Forest Ponies was founded at Lyndhurst, which holds an annual show of pony sires, and grants premiums to such as come up to the standard required, on con- dition that they are allowed to run in the forest. This pony show is one of the prettiest sights of the forest year. It is held annually at the end of April, just as the leaves are appearing on the beeches and thorns, not in some formal show-yard in a town, but on a lovely lawn outside Lyndhurst, called Swan Green. The beauty of this little sylvan theatre has already been described as the first scene in the forest which presents itself on the way to Mark Ash from Lyndhurst town. The scene at the spring pony show in the present year was a busy contrast to the ordinary quiet of the little green. In these country gatherings the puzzle is to know where the people come from and how they get there. It had been pouring with rain all the morning, and the grove beyond the green was dripping with sunlit showers of drops. Yet a large part of the forest population seemed to be present. Under an oak on the hillside a white pony, saddled but riderless, was cropping the leaves from a thorn-bush, in company with four or five sooty, ragged, wet, long-tailed colts, dragged in from the forest. Smart well-groomed pony stallions were showing off their paces on the road on either side. In the centre a ring of about an acre had been enclosed with hurdles, within which were the ponies, their owners, or leaders, and the judges ; and around, in the every-day dress of working life, the men and boys of the forest. “ Wild ponies and wild people” was the remark of a bystander. But the roughness of the forester only extends to costume ; his manners are nearly always pre- possessing, and his conversation, on topics in which like that of pony- THE NEW FOREST 49 breeding, he is an authority, is as brisk and epigrammatic as that of a farmer in the Yorkshire dales. Smart people in breeches and gaiters, old foresters with faces rugged as their oaks, short black-eyed “ gippos ” pry- ing and peeping between the broad shoulders of the native race, and all the school children of Lyndhurst, were grouped round the ring. Within it, the ponies were being led round in procession before the judges, who, notebook in hand, were marking the merits and defects of each. A curly- headed sweep headed the troop, carrying, instead of a whip, his soot-brush, with which he occasionally whacked his handsome rough pony, a piece of “ effect, ’ which had evidently been carefully thought out beforehand. Most of their ponies had spent the whole of the last trying season in the forest, and showed evident signs of the privations they had undergone. Many had their rough coats still almost unshed. This produces a curious effect, for though the forest ponies are of all known colours, the masses of unkempt, shaggy winter coat, which cling to them, are of colours quite unknown to the eye which only sees groomed horses, or those which have been out at grass for a few months in a meadow. All sorts of shades of soot-colour, sand-colour, dusty brown, smoky gray, lie in rags and tatters on their flanks, colours which alter again when, as in the present case, the mop-like mass is drenched with wet, or drying in the sun. Yet the quality of the race shows in the fine head, and large eye, and above all, when they begin to move. Unshod, and untrained, they step with all the careless freedom of a race-horse, giving that curious impression of moving in detail^ which the shuffling jog of a coarse bred pony never creates. The contrast between the animals towed in by halters, with the mud of the bog still clinging to their flanks, and their civilised relations “ in service,” is perhaps the most striking feature of the show. But the con- dition in which the true forest pony appears after his winter in the open, IS an excellent guide to the size, points and quality necessary for combining the maximum of speed and strength, with the power to endure the hard life in which they are born and bred ; and the judges seem to grasp the “true inwardness” of each pony’s merits through any depth of matted hair and mud, and in spite of any want of flesh between hide and bones. The privations of the last season fell heavily on all grazing stock, whether semi-wild, or kept upon the farnrs. Yet it was remarked that ponies left to run wild in the forest did better during the long drought D 5 ° rHE NEW FOREST than those which were ‘‘ taken up ” and put into pastures on inclosed land. They got into the recesses of the bogs and swamps, and there found more food and better, than was available on theTurnt-up meadows of the farms. These ponies must in fact be judged in the first place from their power to exist as wild animals ; the other qualities follow. The old saying that “ a good horse is never a bad colour,” seems true of these “ Foresters.” In the endless circle moving round the ring, there was as much difference in the colour of the animals as in the appearance of the men and boys who led, hauled, or pushed them round. On the whole blacks and roans seemed the most numerous. Of seventy animals in the ring at one time, thirty were either roans, grays or blacks. As for the two-year-olds, wild little fellows fresh from the forest, awkward, reluctant, shaggy, and “ pixie-ridden ” to the last degree, their colours were so obscured by long hair and wet, that blacks, browns, and bays seemed all shrouded in a dingy earth colour. But all walked with freedom and grace, and most would probably have fetched from to ^12 as they stood. It is said that the yearlings if removed to the good pastures of Sussex, Dorset, or Somerset, will grow a hand taller than their dams. It must not be supposed, from the rough and poor condition of these creatures when seen in April, after exposure to the long hard winter, that their life is uniformly one of privation and hardship. The health and freedom which they enjoy together make them on the whole a very happy and contented race. During the summer each sire collects his little troop of mares, and so far as possible keeps them from the approach of any rival. In the spring when the foals are born, there are few prettier sights than the little mares and their young, which they then bring into the most sheltered and beautiful lawns near that part of the forest which they haunt. Later in the year, when the sun is hot and the midge and forest fly — perhaps the greatest pest to horses which exists in England, begin to worry them in the thick cover and low ground, ponies and cattle alike leave the low ground at about 9 a.m., and until the afternoon frequent the “shades” or open ground where they stand close together half asleep, swishing off the flies with their long tails. The accurate observer, whose work has been quoted previously, thinks that these shades are chosen according to the prevailing wind, “ sometimes being chosen in the full sun, where the summer breeze is better felt than in the surrounding rHE NEW FORESr 51 bottoms ; at other times they will stand in a favourite part of some forest stream, or in a drift away over the railway. Blackdown is a favourite shade, being a ridge surrounded by bottoms, where there is plenty of good feed in the driest summers, with abundance of food and water. This district is perhaps the most favoured of any, being haunted by over 600 ponies and cattle, or more than one-tenth of the whole stock run in the forest.” This was the district which it was proposed to take as a military rifle range, a proposal which was successfully resisted largely on the ground that the ponies would thus lose their favourite summer haunt. CHAPTER IV THE NORTHERN FOREST Stony Cross — Rufus Stone and the Rufus Legend — A brief for the prosecution of Sir Walter Tyrrell — The viezv from Stony-Cross Plain — Bratnshazv M'ood— Malzvood — Minstead and its park. The great ridge of Stony-Cross Plain divides the northern from the central forest. Along it runs the ancient road from Winchester to Ringwood, and thence to the port of Poole. From its summit the whole of the forest, north, south, and east, is seen in endless waves of woods ; and in the deep glen below its eastern shoulder is the spot where Rufus was killed by the arrow of Sir Walter Tyrrell on the evening of the second of August, a.d. iioo. In the monkish stories the death of Rufus became a text, not for the vengeance which comes on the despoiler of the poor, as in the case of the death of the Conqueror’s other children on the scene of their father’s oppressions, but of the vengeance of God upon the robber of the Church. The fate of the brutal scoffer who mocked at the holy saints, who kept abbeys without their abbots, sees without their bishops, and the very throne of Canterbury itself vacant for three years while he fattened on the incomes of the servants of God, is the theme of ecclesiastical story. It was almost inevitable that this colour should be put on the sudden death of the spoiler by zealous Churchmen. Those who see in the denunciations of the Church, and in the prophecies of an impending requital which were in circulation up to the day of Rufus’s death, a motive, which alters the part of Tyrrell from the unconscious instrument to the secret emissary of vengeance, will find some curious circumstantial evidence in an exaniina- rUE NEW FOREST 53 tion of the spot in which the king’s body was found, assuming that that now marked as the place where Rufus fell is rightly identified. There is good reason for thinking that in spite of the lapse of time, tradition in this respect is right. The place is close to Malwood, where the king was lodging the night before, and had dined and drunk on the very day of his death. Malwood has for centuries, probably from the days of Rufus, been the residence of men whose business has been to know and visit every part of the forest in that particular “walk.” Those in the house at the time of the king’s death must have had knowledge of the spot where the body was found. Even if Purkiss, the charcoal-burner, who drove it in his cart to Winchester, did not mention to the other foresters the scene of so dreadful a discovery, it is almost certain that after the dispersion of the party at the lodge, the flight of Tyrrell, and the desperate ride of Henry to Winchester, in order to seize the succession to the Crown with the blessings of the Church, which had banned his brother, the domestics must have stolen down the hill to look at the body where it lay. The death of princes, even if not followed by the appearance of the caladrus, the ill-omened bird, which, according to the monkish bestiaries, only appeared on earth to bring news of the death of kings, must always be a topic of awe and curiosity to those near the scene, even if fear closes their mouths and prevents them from paying due reverence to the body. The murder of Absalom the beautiful in the wood of Ephraim was known to more than the “ captains of the host,” though they dissembled all knowledge of the deed. The descendants of the charcoal-burner, who carried the body to Winchester, enjoyed for centuries the rights given them as a reward, among others that of taking all such wood as they could gather “ by hook or by crook,” dead branches, that is, which have not yet fallen, but might be broken off, though not lopped by axe or bill. Thus the evidence as to the exact place of the king’s death does not depend on history, or upon general tradition. It is fixed by a concurrent and very coherent though independent set of circumstances. In the first place by the fact which we have glanced at, that by the fixed and unchanging order of the forest there have lived in continued succes- sion, within ten minutes’ ride of the place, persons employed for eight hundred years to traverse daily that particular part of the forest, Malwood 54