Customs and beliefs are more primitive and the forms of
speech more archaic than in the region beyond the New Forest, and the
natives have a goodly amount of the old Jutish blood in their veins,
possibly more than their relatives of the Isle of Wight. The swelling
hills of that delectable land fill the vista as we descend between
Soberton and Wickham, where the valley divides the main portion of the
ancient Forest of Bere from the scattered woodlands of Waltham Chase
and, at the last-named village, widens into the lowlands that stretch
between Tichfield and Fareham and the busy activities of Portsmouth.
We now near the end of our brief exploration of Wessex and, returning
to Basingstoke, take the last sixteen miles of our course over the
great road, straight and lonely of houses, that runs across the hills
to Winchester. The Romans built up the solid foundations of the
greater part of this highway which passes through no villages, though
it has several within a short distance of its straight hedges and
interminable telegraph posts. Near the _Sun Inn_, high on the chalk
hills five miles from Basingstoke, a lane turns left to Dummer, worth
visiting for the sake of the old unrestored church dating mostly from
the early thirteenth century.
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