Epping Forest

“ Sawyer remarked in conclusion, between place-names and surnames, and in Sussex the Saxon element will be found very strongly marked amongst the surnames.
Essex Field Club.—June 21, the members and friends paid a visit to Epping Forest. On arriving at the ancient earthwork called Ambresbury Bank, Mr. J. E. Harting, F.L.S., delivered a discourse on “The Deer of Epping Forest,” in which he treated firstly of the antiquity of the forest as a hunting-ground of the Kings and Queens of England ”

“ Epping Forest in Essex, the Forest of Blean and the King's Wood in Kent, have probably never been cultivated land. In the days when ships were made of oak these woods and hedges were very valuable, but now they are of little use as sources of timber. Instead they are valued for quite another reason: they afford shelter for foxes and for game birds. ”

“ The present forest lies between the valleys of the Roding and the Lea, and extends southward from Epping to the vicinity of Woodford and Walthamstow, a distance of about 7 m. It is readily accessible from the villages on its outskirts, such as Woodford, Chingford and Loughton, which are served by branches of the Great Eastern railway. These are centres of residential districts, and, especially on public holidays in the summer, receive large numbers of visitors. ”

“ In the extreme distance is the ancient town of Epping, from which the Forest takes its name, and “ye wodes of Waltham,” referred to in p. 8“Doomsday Book,” are on the opposite heights. To the North-west is the cave of the renowned Turpin ”

“ The road makes long curves and zigzags to avoid the heights, but the old track through the trees still remains, and shortens the distance at the expense of a little exertion in climbing.
The wildness increases beyond Eybenstock. The forest descends upon the road, and you walk for an hour at a stretch under the shade of firs, with beech and birch sparsely intermingled, and here and there a stately 49 pine springing from a mighty base to a height far above the rest, the topmost branches edged with gold by the declining sunbeams. ”

“ The sun was low in the western sky, and, seen through the haze of many grass fires, had already turned from blazing yellow to a dull red, when the spoor of the wounded elephant led us suddenly out of the forest into the open grassy valley, some three or four hundred yards broad, through which the little stream of the Dett made its sluggish way, forming many fine pools of water along its course. ”

“ Two gigantic mountains, clad in pine forests to the summits, enclose the valley, the view of which, however, extends to full two miles, showing little peeps of farmhouses and mills along the river's bank, and high upon a great bold crag, the ducal castle of Eberstein. The day is hot but not sultry, for a light summer breeze is playing over the water, and, high up, the clouds move slowly on, now casting broad masses of mellow shadow over the deep-tinted forest. ”

“ Here and there, too, as at Fritham, small farmsteads show their scanty crops of corn, or, as at Alum Green and Queen’s North, green lawns pierce and separate the woods, pastured by herds of cattle, with forest pools white with buckbean, and the little milkwort waving its blue heath on the banks.
These are the main characteristics of the New Forest, and, in some points at least, were the same in the days of the Red King. Nature, when left to herself, even in the course of centuries, changes little. The wild boars, and the wolves, and the red deer, are gone. ”

“ Down there in the depths must be the valley and the mill. It seemed to me as if I heard the murmur of the brook; but it was only the soughing of the wind in the forest on the farther side.
I went to right and to left, searching for a footpath that might take me down, and I found a place where I thought I should be able to lower myself by the help of the loose rocks which lay about, and of the juniper bushes. ”

“ Lastly, from its very nature, the New Forest is ever beautiful, at every season of the year, even in the depth of winter. The colouring of summer is not more rich. Then the great masses of holly glisten with their brightest green; the purple light gathers round the bare oaks, and the yews stand out in their shrouds of black. Then the first budding branch of furze sparkles with gold, and the distant hill-side glows with the red layers of beech-leaves. And if a snow-storm passes up from the sea, then every bough is suddenly covered with a silver filigree of whitest moss. ”

“ There, in the long aisles, settles that depth of shade which no pencil can give, and that colouring which no canvas can retain, as the sunlight pierces through the green web of leaves, flinging, as it sets, a crown of gold round each tree-trunk.
Let no one, however, think they know anything of the Forest by simply keeping to the high road and the beaten tracks. ”

“ The evergreens showed up everywhere, in delicate vigorous beauty, and we counted unguessed masses of pine among the hills. I think we always expect a little sadness with the fall of the leaves, but instead there is a sense of elation, with the greater spread of light and the wider views opening everywhere. The wood roads showed more plainly than in summer, and paths stood out green across the fields. The tender unveiling of autumn had revealed the hidden topography of the forest, and countless small ravines and slopes were suddenly made plain. ”

“ Golden sunshine bathed the slopes, planted with Scotch fir, all irregular in chance groups or singly, mingled with silver birch, and it made a harmony in gold and silver and bronze, for the bracken was turning already.
It seems a pity that most of those who come from afar should see the New Forest under its least gracious aspect. Unluckily the holiday time is late summer, just when the full, heavy leafage takes on its most monotonous green, dim and jaded after a dry season, gloomy in a wet one; when flowers are few and birds are silent. ”

“ I place it so that the horizontal beam rests upon my neck like a yoke, Rüpel carrying the upright beam behind.
And so we go on amid the boulders and the ancient trees. As we come to the precipice, the shadows of evening are closing in.
The whole night we walk through the forest. In the ravines and narrow defiles the darkness is appalling, and our cross crashes against many an old tree-trunk. When our path leads over rising ground, the moonlight shimmers through the branches, revealing the white mosaics and hearts which lie upon the earth. ”

“ The Avon still flows on with its floating gardens of flowers—lilies and arrowhead, and the loosestrife waving its crimson plumes among the green reeds. The Forest streams, too, still flow on the same, losing themselves in the woods, eddying round and round in the deep, dark, prison-pools of their own making, and then escaping over shallows and ledges of rolled pebbles, left dry in the summer, and on which the sunlight rests, and 15 the shadows of the beeches play, but in the winter chafed by the torrent. ”

“ All these woods there are for rambles, flushed in the spring with wood-anemones and wood-sorrel, set in the green moss and the greener heather of the bilberry. Nowhere, too, in the Forest, than in these woods, have I seen more lovely sunsets. Through some deep-cut oriel of the trees have I watched the sun begin to sink, each moment burning brighter, and then suddenly its great brand of fire would fall, reddening each tree trunk, and crimson billows of clouds come rolling eastward. ”

“ The air was chill, the sun was hidden 264 by old Solidor, and the stream had diminished to a silent rill winding among sear grass and yellowed willows. The valley behind them was vague with mist. The southern boundary of the forest was in sight.
At last the topmost looming crags of the Continental Divide cut the sky-line, and then in the smooth hollow between two rounded grassy summits Berrie halted, and they all silently contemplated the two worlds. To the west and north lay an endless spread of mountains, wave on wave, snow-lined, savage, sullen in the dying light ”

“ May 28th.—The most extraordinary blight is now upon the trees that I believe ever was known: it is confined entirely to the oak, and chiefly to the large trees, although in some parts it is extending to the young plantations. The whole of the High Meadow woods and great part of the Forest, particularly Russell’s Enclosure, and where the timber is thick, are entirely stripped of their leaves, and look as if fire had passed through them. Where a beech stands amongst them, it is perfectly green, and the oaks all around quite brown. ”

“ Who would follow the fortunes of Elebi must paddle in his wake as far as Okau, where the Barina meets the Lapoi, must take the left river path, past the silent pool of the White Devil, must follow the winding stream till the elephants' playing ground be reached. Here the forest has been destroyed for the sport of the Great Ones; the shore is strewn with tree trunks, carelessly uprooted and as carelessly tossed aside by the gambolling mammoth. The ground is innocent of herbage or bush; it is a flat wallow of mud, with the marks of pads where the elephant has passed. ”

“ On the other hand, aspens, willows, gray birch, cottonwood, old-field pine, and lodge-pole pine produce seedlings that glory in the sunlight and seek to gain more territory,—to push forward the forest-frontier.
Again and again the forest has been swept away by fire; but again and again a few aggressive species have retaken speedily the lost territory. In this pioneer reclamation the aspen and the lodge-pole are leaders. The aspen follows the water-courses, running along the muddy places, while the lodge-pole occupies the dry and rocky slope of the burned area. ”

“ Great tracts through the grass where the stately elephant has passed to drink at the river, spoor of buffalo and antelope at every water course and yet not a sign of life now for the sun is high up and a hundred bearers are yelling and singing close behind. After walking for about two hours we reach forest and enter its welcome shade. A small stream prattles cheerfully along under the trees and as the path several times passes through it we keep our feet comfortably cool. About 2 p.m. we reach a village beautifully situated on a slope in the midst of dense forest. ”

“ As we leave Brockenhurst we find ourselves more and more in the Forest. The road to Lyndhurst is one long avenue of trees—beeches with their smooth trunks, oaks growing in groups, with here and there long lawns stretching far away into distant woods. ”

“ He would be a strange traveller who would not forsake the dusty highway and plunge into the cool tangled glades till all sense of direction is lost. For the special and peculiar beauty of this, unlike most Forest enclosures, is that there are no straight rides cutting it transversely, but the winding alleys seem of Nature’s own planting, and these make it easy to stray, one fair group of noble trees after another beckoning along the wide green ways into the heart of the wood. One may fancy one is following the direction of the road, but it is far out of sight in a few minutes. ”

“ There lay Sepp stretched at full length, and his hands folded across his breast. And I went away down through the forest. How bright and fresh with dew, how full of the song of birds, full of the scent of flowers—how full of life the forest was! And in the hut, stretched on the bier, lay a dead man. ”

“ They are coming each year to have greater and greater value to the people of the plains. They are playgrounds, like the Alps. Campers are coming into my valley every day, and, while they increase the danger of fires, I welcome them. They are all advocates of the forest. As one man said: ‘The mountains supplement the plains. They give color and charm to the otherwise monotonous West.’ I confess I couldn’t live on the prairies—not even on the plains—if out of sight of the mountains. If I should ever settle down to a home it would be in a canon like this, with a great peak at my front door. ”

“ But of the seasons autumn is the most pleasant for a woodland ramble. The depth of gloom, the silence, the wild cries that are heard flitting to and fro; the falling leaves already rustling to the tread, and strewing the forest walk, render it particularly pleasant. ”

“ The beautiful white pine forests of Idaho and Montana, the steep pine- and spruce-clad granite slopes of the Colorado Rockies, and the sun-parched mesas of the Southwest, with their open park-like forests of yellow pine, all have their individual charm. And after crossing the well-watered Cascades and Sierra Nevadas we find forest scenery entirely different. The dense, luxuriant, giant-forests of the coast region of Oregon and Washington, bathed in an almost continual fog and rain, are without doubt the most wonderful forests in the world. ”

“ Nobody can have climbed a mountain so high as even the loftiest in the highlands of Scotland, without observing the effect upon vegetation of the increasing severity of the climate as you approach the top. The last forest, worthy of the name, through which we passed this day, overhung Kleine Oupa; and even the remoter portions of it were stunted and unhealthy. Next came the ascent of what is called Swartzen-Koppee; that is, of a long black table-land, overtopping, by a considerable altitude, the rest of the mountains near, but still far beneath the level of Schnee-Koppee. ”

“ From every hill-top gleam the blue waters of the English Channel, broken in the foreground by the long line of the Isle of Wight downs and the white chalk walls of the Needles. Nowhere, in extent at least, spread such stretches of heath and moor, golden in the spring with the blaze of furze, and in the autumn purple with 5 heather, and bronzed with the fading fern. Nowhere in England rise such oak-woods, their boughs rimed with the frostwork of lichens, and dark beech-groves with their floor of red brown leaves, on which the branches weave their own warp and woof of light and shade. ”