Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/101

Rh at one extremity, and the Eagle Tree at the other; whilst behind us are the young Burley plantations. Here, near the Lodge, scattered in some fields, stand the remains of the "Twelve Apostles," once enormous oaks, reduced both in number and size, with

And now, if the reader does not mind the swamps—and if he really wishes to know the Forest, and to see its best scenes, it is useless to mind them—let him make his way across to Mark Ash, the finest beechwood in the Forest, which even on a summer's day is dark at noon. Thence the wood-cutter's track will take him by Barrow's Moor and Knyghtwood, where grows the well-known oak. Here a different scene opens out with broad spaces of heath and fern, where the gladiolus shows its red blossoms among the green leaves of the brake; whilst on the hill, distinguished by its poplars, stands Rhinefield, with its nursery, and, below, the two woods of Birchen Hat, where the common buzzard yearly breeds.

Keeping along the main road, which is just before us, nearly as far as the New Forest Gate, we will turn in at Liney Hill Wood, going through the woods of Brinken, and the Queen's Mead, and the Queen's Bower, following the course of the stream.

Very beautiful is this walk, with its paths which stray down to the water's edge, where the cattle come to drink; the stream pausing round some oak roots, which pleach the banks, lingering in the darkness of the shade, and at last going away with reluctance.

Few things, of their sort, can equal these lowland Forest streams, the water tinged with the iron of the district, flashing 83