Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary wilderness--"Bruaria." Then follows the length and breadth in leagues; and, though some uncertainty exists as to the exact extent of this ancient lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the area of Egdon down to the present day has but little diminished.
"Turbaria Bruaria"--the right of cutting heath-turf--occurs in charters relating to the district."Overgrown with heth and mosse," says Leland of the same dark sweep of country.
Here at least were intelligible facts regarding landscape--far-reaching proofs productive of genuine satisfaction.The untameable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was it always had been.Civilization was its enemy;and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation.
In its venerable one coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes.A person on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or less an anomalous look.We seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive.
To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New.
The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim.Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour.
The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.
Those surfaces were neither so steep as to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits.With the exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to--themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance--even the trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches of the last geological change.
The above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels of the heath, from one horizon to another.In many portions of its course it overlaid an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Western road of the Romans, the Via Iceniana, or Ikenild Street, hard by.
On the evening under consideration it would have been noticed that, though the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever.
2 - Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble Along the road walked an old man.He was white-headed as a mountain, bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect.He wore a glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an anchor upon their face.In his hand was a silver-headed walking stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the ground with its point at every few inches' interval.One would have said that he had been, in his day, a naval officer of some sort or other.
Before him stretched the long, laborious road, dry, empty, and white.It was quite open to the heath on each side, and bisected that vast dark surface like the parting-line on a head of black hair, diminishing and bending away on the furthest horizon.
The old man frequently stretched his eyes ahead to gaze over the tract that he had yet to traverse.At length he discerned, a long distance in front of him, a moving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, and it proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself was journeying.
It was the single atom of life that the scene contained, and it only served to render the general loneliness more evident.Its rate of advance was slow, and the old man gained upon it sensibly.
When he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van, ordinary in shape, but singular in colour, this being a lurid red.The driver walked beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red.One dye of that tincture covered his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots, his face, and his hands.He was not temporarily overlaid with the colour; it permeated him.
The old man knew the meaning of this.The traveller with the cart was a reddleman--a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with redding for their sheep.
He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals.He is a curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obsolete forms of life and those which generally prevail.
The decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside his fellow-wayfarer, and wished him good evening.The reddleman turned his head, and replied in sad and occupied tones.
He was young, and his face, if not exactly handsome, approached so near to handsome that nobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natural colour.His eye, which glared so strangely through his stain, was in itself attractive--keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist.
He had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the lower part of his face to be apparent.
His lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners now and then.He was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its original colour by his trade.It showed to advantage the good shape of his figure.A certain well-to-do air about the man suggested that he was not poor for his degree.
