Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/128

Rh keener than anywhere else. Here, on all sides, stretch woods and moors. Here, in the latter end of August, the three heathers, one after another, cover every plain and holt with their crimson glory, mixed with the flashes of the dwarf furze. And a little later the maples are dyed, yellow and russet, by the autumn rains, and the beeches are scorched to a fiery red with the first frost, and the oaks renew, but deeper and more gloriously, the golden lights of spring, till the great woods of Prior's Acre and Daneshill burn with colour; every gleam of sunshine, and every passing shadow, touching them with fresher and stranger beauty.

To the east, about two miles along the Southampton Road, lies the village of Cadenham, famous for its oak, which, like the Glastonbury thorn, buds on Christmas Eve. The popular tradition in the neighbourhood runs, that, as the weather is harder, it shows more leaves, and, refusing the present chronology, only buds on Old Christmas night. As in most things, there is some little truth in the story. Doubtless, in some of the mild winters which visit Hampshire, the tree shows a few buds, as at that time I have seen others do in various parts of the Forest. Of course, they are all nipped by the first approach of severe weather, which, however, seldom happens on the warm south-west coast till the new year.

Down in the valley to the left of Rufus's Stone rise the woods of the Long Beeches, and Prior's Acre, and Daneshill or Dean's Hell, where the word Hell (from helan, to cover) means nothing more than the dark place, like the Hellbecks in Yorkshire. Beaten paths and walks stretch into 110