“Then I saw in my Dream, that on the morrow he got up to go forwards, but they desired him to stay till the next day also, and then said they, we will (if the day be clear) show you the delectable Mountains, which they said, would yet further add to his comfort, because they were nearer the desired Haven than the place where at present he was. So he consented and staid. When the Morning was up they had him to the top of the House, and bid him look South, so he did; and behold at a great distance he saw a most pleasant Mountainous Country, beautified with Woods, Vineyards, Fruits of all sorts; Flowers also, with Springs and Fountains, very delectable to behold.”

Every one who has followed the fortunes of Christian in the stately diction of the Pilgrim’s Progress must wish to know from whence came those wonderful word pictures with which the dreamer of Bedford Jail gems his masterpiece. That phrase “delectable mountains” conjures up in each individual reader’s mind those particular hills wherever they may be, which are his own peculiar delight, and for which, exiled, his spirit so ardently longs.

It is not presuming too much to suppose that the scene in Bunyan’s mind was that long range of undulating downs sometimes rising into bold and arresting shape, and always with their finest aspect toward the Bedford plains and him who cast longing eyes toward them. From almost any slight eminence on the south of Bedford town on a clear day the Dunstable and Ivinghoe hills are to be seen in distant beauty, and there is the strongest similarity between them and those glorious summits which every man of Sussex knows and loves so well.

The Chiltern Hills and the South Downs are built up of the same material, have had their peculiarities of shape and form carved by the same artificers rain and frost, sun and wind; their flowers are the same, and to outward seeming their sons and daughters are the same in the way that all hill folk are alike and yet all differ in some subtle way from the dweller in the plains.

Be this so or not our Downs are to us delectable mountains, and let the reader who scoffs at the noun remember that size is no criterion of either beauty or sublimity. That Sussex lover and greatest of literary naturalists, Gilbert White, in perhaps his most frequently quoted passage so characterizes the “majestic chain”; to his contemporaries such a description was not out of place; our great grandfathers were appalled when brought from the calm tranquillity of the southern slopes to the stern dark melancholy of the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland. The diary descriptions of those timid travellers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are full of such adjectives as “terrible,” “frightful,” “awful.” One unlucky individual’s nerves caused him to stigmatize as “ghastly and disgusting” one of the finest scenes in the Lake District, probably unsurpassed in Europe for its perfectly balanced beauty of form and splendour of colouring. To the general reader of those times the descriptive poems of Wordsworth were probably unmeaning rhapsodies. Our ancestors, however, were very fond of “prospects.” An old atlas of the counties of England, published about 1800, came into the writer’s hands recently. The whole of the gentler hills, including every possible vantage point in the Downs, had been most carefully and neatly marked with the panorama visible from the summit; but even Kinder Scout and the Malverns came in for the same fate as the Welsh and Cumberland mountains, all of which had been left severely alone, though the intrepid traveller had braved the terrors of the Wrekin, while such heights as Barton Hill in Leicestershire and Leith Hill in Surrey were heavily scored with names of places seen, the latter including that oft-told tale a legend, so far as the present writer is aware of St. Paul’s dome and the sea being visible with a turn of the head. Though our idea of proportion in relation to scenery has suffered a change, Gilbert White’s phrase must not be sneered at; and most comparisons are stupidly unfair. The outline of Mount Caburn is a rounded edition of the most perfect of all forms. The rolling undulations of the tamest portions of the range are broken by combes whose sides are steep enough to give a spice of adventure to their descent. The “prospects,” as such, are immeasurably superior to those obtainable from most of the mountains of the north and west, where a distant view is rare by reason of the surrounding chain of heights, and where the chance of any view at all to reward the climber is remote unless he chooses that fortnight in early June or late September when the peaks are usually unshrouded. Really bad weather, long continued, is uncommon in the Down country. A dull or wet spell is soon over. The writer has set out from Worthing in a thin drizzle of the soaking variety, descending from a sky of lead stretching from horizon to horizon, which in the north would be accepted as an institution of forty-eight hours at least, and on arriving at the summit of Chanctonbury has been rewarded by a glorious green and gold expanse glittering under a dome of intense blue.

From the wooded heights of the Hampshire border to that grand headland where the hills find their march arrested by the sea, the escarpment of the Downs is sixty miles long and every mile is beautiful. It would be an ideal holiday, a series of holy days, to follow the edge all the way, meeting with only three valley breaks of any importance; but the charm of the hill villages nestling in their tree embowered and secluded combes would be too much for any ordinary human, especially if he were thirsty, so in this book the traveller is taken up and down without any regard for his consequent fatigue, when it is assured that his rest will be sweet, even though it may be only under a hawthorn bush!

“No breeze so fresh and invigorating as that of the Sussex Downs; no turf so springy to the feet as their soft greensward. A flight of larks flies past us, and a cloud of mingled rooks and starlings wheel overhead.... The fairies still haunt this spot, and hold their midnight revels upon it, as yon dark rings testify. The common folk hereabouts term the good people ‘Pharisees’ and style these emerald circles ‘Hagtracks.’ Why, we care not to enquire. Enough for us, the fairies are not altogether gone. A smooth soft carpet is here spread out for Oberon and Titania and their attendant elves, to dance upon by moonlight....” (Ainsworth: Ovingdean Grange.)

“He described the Downs fronting the paleness of the earliest dawn and then their arch and curve and dip against the pearly grey of the half-glow; and then among their hollows, lo, the illumination of the east all around, and up and away, and a gallop for miles along the turfy, thymy, rolling billows, land to left, sea to light below you.... Compare you the Alps with them? If you could jump on the back of an eagle, you might. The Alps have height. But the Downs have swiftness. Those long stretching lines of the Downs are greyhounds in full career. To look at them is to set the blood racing! Speed is on the Downs, glorious motion, odorous air of sea and herb, exquisite as the Isles of Greece.” (Geo. Meredith: Beauchamp’s Career.)

The most delightful close springy turf covers the Downs with a velvet mantle, forming the most exhilarating of all earthly surfaces upon which to walk and the most restful on which to stretch the wearied body. Most delightful also are the miniature flowers which gem and embroider the velvet; gold of potentilla, blue of gentian, pink and white of milkwort, purple of the scabious and clustered bell-flower; the whole robe scented with the fragrance of sweet thyme. Several unfamiliar species of orchis may be found and also the rare and beautiful rampion, “The Pride of Sussex.” The hills are a paradise for birds; the practice of snaring the wheatear for market has lately fallen into desuetude and the “Sussex ortolan” is becoming more numerous than it was a dozen years ago. Every epicure should be interested in the numerous “fairy rings,” sufficient evidence of the abundance of mushrooms which will spring up in the night after a moist day. One of the most comfortable traits of our chalk hills however is the marvellous quickness with which the turf dries after rain. Those who have experienced the discomfort of walking the fells of Cumberland and Westmoreland, which at most seasons of the year resemble an enormous wet sponge, often combined with the real danger of bog and morass, will appreciate the better conditions met with in Sussex hill rambling. Where the chalk is uncovered it becomes exceedingly slippery after a shower, but there is rarely a necessity to walk thereon.

The pedestrian on the Downs should use caution after dusk; chalk pits are not seen, under certain conditions, until the wayfarer is on the verge. Holes in the turf are of frequent occurrence and may be the cause of a twisted ankle, or worse, when far from help.

The “dene holes” are of human origin. Once thought to be primitive dwelling places, they are now supposed to have been merely excavations for the sake of the chalk or the flints contained therein, and possibly adapted for the storage of grain. Of equal interest are the so-called “dew ponds,” of which a number are scattered here and there close to the edge of the northern escarpment. Undoubtedly of prehistoric origin, the art of making the pond has become traditional and some have been built by shepherds still living. These pools of clear cool water high up on the crest of a hill gain a mysterious air by their position, but their existence is capable of a scientific explanation. Built in the first place to be as nearly as possible non-conducting, with an impervious “puddled” bottom, the pond is renewed every night to a certain extent by the dew which trickles down each grass and reed stem into the reservoir beneath, and to a much greater extent by the mists which drift over the edge to descend in rain on the Weald. The pools might well be called “cloud ponds.”

The most lovely scenes, the best view points, are described in their proper place. The question as to which is the finest section of the Downs must be left to the individual explorer. To some natures the free bare wind-swept expanse at the back of Brighton will appeal the most. By others the secret woods which climb from hidden combe and dry gully, mostly terminating in a bare top, and which are all west of the Arun, will be considered incomparably the best. To every man of Lewes the isolated mass of hills which rise on the east of the town are the Downs. But all must be seen to be truly appreciated and loved as they will be loved.

Hotels will not be found in the Downs; the tourist who cannot live without them will find his wants supplied within but a few miles at any of the numerous Londons by the Sea; but that will not be Sussex pure and undefiled, and if simplicity and cleanliness, enough to eat and drink, and a genuine welcome are all that is required, he will find these in our Downland inns.

It is in the more remote of these hostelries that the inquisitive stranger will hear the South Saxon dialect in its purity and the slow wit of the Sussex peasant at its best. The old Downland shepherd with embroidered smock and Pyecombe crook is vanishing fast, and with him will disappear a good deal of the character which made the Sussex native essentially different from his cousins of Essex and Wessex.

One of the most delightful records of rustic life ever printed is that study in the “Wealden Formation of Human Nature” by the former rector of Burwash, John Cocker Egerton, entitled Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways. True, the book is mainly about Wealden men and we are more concerned with the hill tribes, but the shrewd wit and quaint conceits of the South Saxon portrayed therein will be readily recognized by the leisurely traveller who has the gift of making himself at home with strangers. It is to be hoped that in the great and epoch-making changes that are upon us in this twentieth century some at least of the individual characteristics of the English peasantry will remain. It is the divergent and opposite traits of the tribes which make up the English folk that have helped to make us great. May we long be preserved from a Wellsian uniformity!

A brief description of the geological history of the range may not be amiss here. It will be noted by the traveller from the north that the opposing line of heights in Surrey have their steepest face (or “escarpment”) on the south side, while the Sussex Downs have theirs on the north. A further peculiarity lies in the fact that the river valleys which cut across each range from north to south are opposite each other, thus pointing to the probability that the fracture which caused the clefts was formerly continuous for fifty miles through the great dome of chalk which extended over what is now the Weald. The elevation of this “dome,” caused by the shrinking and crumpling of the earth’s crust and consequent rise of the lower strata, was never an actual smooth rise and fall from the sea to the Thames valley; through the ages during which this thrust from below was in progress the crown of the dome would be in a state of comparatively rapid disintegration, and it is because of this that we have no isolated masses of chalk remaining between the two lines of hills. The highlands called by geologists the “Forest Ridge” are in the centre and are the lowest strata of the upheaval; they are the so-called Hastings sands which enter the sea at that town half-way between Beachy Head and Dover cliffs. North and south of this ridge is the lower greensand, forming in Sussex the low hills near Heathfield, Cuckfield and Petworth, and which reaches the sea south and north of Hastings. It was at one time supposed that the face of the Downs originally formed a white sea cliff and that an arm of the sea stretched across what we know as the Weald, but the simpler explanation is undoubtedly the correct one.

The Downs themselves are composed of various qualities of chalk; some of such a hard, smooth and workable material that, as will be seen presently, the columns in some of the Downland churches are made from this native “rock.” While the upper strata is soft and contains great quantities of flints, the middle layers are brittle and yield plenty of fossils, lower still is the marl, a greyish chalk of great value in the fertilization of the gault. This latter forms an enormous moist ditch or gutter at the foot of the escarpment, and from the farmer’s point of view is essentially bad land, requiring many tons of marl to be mixed with it before this most difficult of all clays becomes fertile. Between the chalk and the gault clay is a very narrow band of upper greensand, only occasionally noticeable in the southern range, but strongly marked in the North Downs.

“The chalk is our landscape and our proper habitation. The chalk gave us our first refuge in war by permitting those vast encampments on the summits. The chalk filtered our drink for us and built up our strong bones; it was the height from the slopes of which our villages, standing in a clear air, could watch the sea or the plain; we carved it when it was hard enough; it holds our first ornaments; our clear streams run over it; the shapes and curves it takes and the kind of close rough grass it bears (an especial grass for sheep) are the cloak of our counties; its lonely breadths delight us when the white clouds and the necks move over them together; where the waves break it into cliffs, they are characteristic of our shores, and through its thin coat of whitish mould go the thirsty roots of our three trees the beech, the holly, and the yew. For the clay and the sand might be deserted or flooded and the South Country would still remain, but if the Chalk Hills were taken away we might as well be in the Midlands.” (Hilaire Belloc: The Old Road.)

A description of these hills, however short, would be incomplete without some reference to the sheep, great companies of which roam the sunlit expanse with their attendant guardians man and dog (who deserve a chapter to themselves). Southdown mutton has a fame that is extra-territorial; it has been said that the flavour is due to the small land snail of which the sheep must devour millions in the course of their short lives. But the explanation is more probably to be found in the careful breeding of the local farmers of a century or so ago. Gilbert White refers to two distinct breeds “To the west of the Adur ... all had horns, smooth white faces and white legs, but east of that river all flocks were poll sheep (hornless) ... black faces with a white tuft of wool.” Since that day, however, east has been west and west east and the twain have met.

The traveller may be fortunate enough to come across a team of oxen ploughing. The phenomenon is yearly becoming more rare; but within sight and sound of the Eastbourne expresses between Plumpton and Cooksbridge this archaic survival from a remote past is more likely to be seen than elsewhere.

The oxen are usually black and are the remnants of a particular breed, the outcome of a long and slow experiment in getting the right sort of draught animal. The ploughs themselves, as Jefferies says, “must have been put together bit by bit in the slow years slower than the ox.... How many thousand, thousand clods must have been turned in the furrows before ... the curve to be given to this or that part grew upon the mind, as the branch grows upon the tree!”

But the Downs are not scarred to any great extent by cultivation. The sheep and the birds are mostly in sole possession and are almost the only living moving things on the hills. The fox, though at one time common, is now very rarely seen, for game, with the disappearance of gorse and bramble, has almost vanished, and other beasts of prey, weasel and stoat, shun the open uplands where the only enemy of field mouse and vole is the eagle of the south country, the peregrine falcon.