The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-12-16


 Wiltshire is a study of clays and chall1s. The clays are a natural dairy district in the north, having deep soil for oaks and heavy farming and rising in picturesque outworks toward the Worcestershire COtswOlds. The chalks begin with the Marlborough downs and make a bold, clean cut across tn ecoun- ty to the White Horse; and south of them lies Salisbury Plain, a broad eX- panse of undulating country stretching toward Dorchester. The Marlborough hills may not rival the North and South downs of Kent and Sussex in the som bre beauty of ragged white edges, crowned wIth dark masses of foliage, but the plain is unique among the En- gIish chalks. While the soil is thin, it is not a barren heath fringed with furze, but a vendant sheepwalk, with endless reaches of turf for pasturage, and as fine a country for riding as can be found in England. As one walks or rides across it from Amesbury to the Dexerill villages and Stourton, the Windswept biIlowy tract leaves and rolls like a sea of verdure, with the horizon yelled in a glory of blue mist, and it has the silence of the real sea the drowsy silence of neglected, but ever beautiful, rural England. There can be no imagery of the hills when there are no stony uplands to block the view, no escarpments of chalk on the crests of the downs, no narrow val leys like the pockets in the folds of the Cotswolds, no willows on the marshy borders of sparkling brooks, with trout splashing III the sunlight. The story of the sea is in the chalk underneath the turf, and the spirit Of it is in the environment of the track less rolling plain where the wind blows and the verdure rises and falls in bil- loWy movement.
 The illusion of the sea is deepened when one enters the great plain from Amesbury and comes suddenly upon the 1nFsterious columnar stones of Stone henge. The circles and ovals of sand stone and bluestone draw together until they seem to form a natural break water on the verge of a vast expanse of surging turf, and as the last gray sentinel block is passed one has vague impression of leaving port and heading for an unknown sea Perhaps the wttchery of this illusion came more easily when the majestic monument was unprotected and unconfined on the edge of Salisbury Plain There is a wire fence around it now, and near the fugitive Friar's Heel, or the Pointer above which the sun rises at the sum irer solstice, a shilling toll is exacted; and among the great trilfthons within the rough hewn peristyle a blue coated guardian of the law is spraWling on the turf and watching with idle curios- ity visitors as they gossip pleasantly about the inscrutable mysteries of the past and reconstruct alternately shrines of Budd41a, calendars of the sun, tenn pies of the Druids, Valhallas of primi- tive heroes or hanging places for the vengeance of giants in an age of stone or bronze. Safeguards against stone chipping vandals have been considered necessary, and some ill-natured com ments have been made on the uncon- trollable energy of American tourists who are bent upon scaling the time worn capstones, cutting their initials in the syenite ,obelisks and digging up the seven barrows. Probably holiday trippers breaking beer bottles on the altar stone, or soldiers noisily carous- ing among the tumuli after the been more dangerous and mischieyous than these foreign invaders; but the pre- cautions have been justified by the courts, and the property rights of pri- vate owners have been recognized. Stonehenge. with it's mysterious circles, ovals and processional way, has been fenced in with wire, and inquisitive visitors must pay for the privilege of counting the stones or musing over the tragic fate of Tess
 Beyond the Stonshenge are the som- bre, silent reaches of Salisbury Plain. As the Avon is left behind the trees disappear in the windswept tract. All traces of tillage are lost, there are no struggling villages behind hedgeroWs and there are no hints of a tableland once rich and populous, but now con denlned to dream hopefully of it's stori- ed greatness. The grassgrown surges swell and fall in continuous undulations until the gray sky meets the dull green in a @Yapory vista of blue. One may ride or walk in grass for hours without seeing a stone cottage with glints of peoples and marigolds before the door way, or, hearing child's voice or fir rustling with the breath of the wind. It is not easy to believe that history has been enacted in this silent corner Of the storfed netherlands; and certain ly there has been less of it than in oth- CT shires. The great chalk plain was a thin1y populated waste, which was not considered worthy of deliberate conquest, when the West SaXons were battling with the Romanized Britons, or Merica and Wessex were striving for supremacy, or a common defense was made against marauding Danes. The fortified towns of Somerset and Glou- cestershire were the prizes of intrigue and warfare after the Norman con quest, and it was not until the dis tracted period of civil strife was reach ed that Wardour Castle, on the south ern edge, was taken and recaptured and ancient Sherborne fell, and royal ist generals won, an dlost their bat ties on the chalk downs northWard. The silent plain remained in 8 state of na- ture century after century, and so sluggish has been the advance of agri- culture that even now it has hardly undergone change. Grim, majestic csJso3, ot,ta,, i,, eolftayxy dacolo tio,,