Through Ivy Bridge and Honiton to Exeter, where we stopped to see the
beautiful old Cathedral, so warm and rich in colouring and passing by
one long series of beautiful pictures, in perhaps the most charming
pastoral landscape in the world, we came to the white-scarred edge of
the famous Salisbury Plain.
CHAPTER II.
ON SALISBURY PLAINS.
It was on the 15th of October that we landed in Plymouth. A few days
later the whole of the 33,000 (with the exception of a few errant
knights who had gone off on independent pilgrimages) were more or less
settled on Salisbury Plain. The force was divided into four distinct
camps miles apart. One infantry brigade and the headquarters staff was
stationed at Bustard Camp; one section was camped a couple of miles
away, at West Down South; a third at West Down North still farther
away, and the fourth at Pond Farm about five miles from Bustard.
Convenience of water supplies and arrangements for the administration
of the forces made these divisions necessary.
The plains of Salisbury, ideal for summer military camps, are rolling,
prairie-like lands stretching for miles, broken by a very occasional
farm house or by plantations of trees called "spinneys." A thin layer
of earth and turf covered the chalk which was hundreds of feet in
depth; at any spot a blow with a pick would bring up the white chalk
filled with black flints.
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