The old men say their fathers told them that soon after the
fields were left to themselves a change began to be visible. It
became green everywhere in the first spring, after London ended, so
that all the country looked alike.
The meadows were green, and so was the rising wheat which had
been sown, but which neither had nor would receive any further
care. Such arable fields as had not been sown, but where the last
stubble had been ploughed up, were overrun with couch-grass, and
where the short stubble had not been ploughed, the weeds hid it. So
that there was no place which was not more or less green; the
footpaths were the greenest of all, for such is the nature of grass
where it has once been trodden on, and by-and-by, as the summer
came on, the former roads were thinly covered with the grass that
had spread out from the margin.
In the autumn, as the meadows were not mown, the grass withered
as it stood, falling this way and that, as the wind had blown it;
the seeds dropped, and the bennets became a greyish-white, or,
where the docks and sorrel were thick, a brownish-red. The wheat,
after it had ripened, there being no one to reap it, also remained
standing, and was eaten by clouds of sparrows, rooks, and pigeons,
which flocked to it and were undisturbed, feasting at their
pleasure. As the winter came on, the crops were beaten down by the
storms, soaked with rain, and trodden upon by herds of animals.
Next summer the prostrate straw of the preceding year was
concealed by the young green wheat and barley that sprang up from
the grain sown by dropping from the ears, and by quantities of
docks, thistles, oxeye daisies, and similar plants. This matted
mass grew up through the bleached straw. Charlock, too, hid the
rotting roots in the fields under a blaze of yellow flower. The
young spring meadow-grass could scarcely push its way up through
the long dead grass and bennets of the year previous, but docks and
thistles, sorrel, wild carrots, and nettles, found no such
difficulty.
Footpaths were concealed by the second year, but roads could be
traced, though as green as the sward, and were still the best for
walking, because the tangled wheat and weeds, and, in the meadows,
the long grass, caught the feet of those who tried to pass through.
Year by year the original crops of wheat, barley, oats, and beans
asserted their presence by shooting up, but in gradually diminished
force, as nettles and coarser plants, such as the wild parsnips,
spread out into the fields from the ditches and choked them.
Aquatic grasses from the furrows and water-carriers extended in
the meadows, and, with the rushes, helped to destroy or take the
place of the former sweet herbage. Meanwhile, the brambles, which
grew very fast, had pushed forward their prickly runners farther
and farther from the hedges till they had now reached ten or
fifteen yards. The briars had followed, and the hedges had widened
to three or four times their first breadth, the fields being
equally contracted. Starting from all sides at once, these brambles
and briars in the course of about twenty years met in the centre of
the largest fields.
Hawthorn bushes sprang up among them, and, protected by the
briars and thorns from grazing animals, the suckers of elm-trees
rose and flourished. Sapling ashes, oaks, sycamores, and
horse-chestnuts, lifted their heads. Of old time the cattle would
have eaten off the seed leaves with the grass so soon as they were
out of the ground, but now most of the acorns that were dropped by
birds, and the keys that were wafted by the wind, twirling as they
floated, took root and grew into trees. By this time the brambles
and briars had choked up and blocked the former roads, which were
as impassable as the fields.
No fields, indeed, remained, for where the ground was dry, the
thorns, briars, brambles, and saplings already mentioned filled the
space, and these thickets and the young trees had converted most
part of the country into an immense forest. Where the ground was
naturally moist, and the drains had become choked with willow
roots, which, when confined in tubes, grow into a mass like the
brush of a fox, sedges and flags and rushes covered it. Thorn
bushes were there, too, but not so tall; they were hung with
lichen. Besides the flags and reeds, vast quantities of the tallest
cow-parsnips or "gicks" rose five or six feet high, and the willow
herb with its stout stem, almost as woody as a shrub, filled every
approach.
By the thirtieth year there was not one single open place, the
hills only excepted, where a man could walk, unless he followed the
tracks of wild creatures or cut himself a path. The ditches, of
course, had long since become full of leaves and dead branches, so
that the water which should have run off down them stagnated, and
presently spread out into the hollow places and by the corner of
what had once been fields, forming marshes where the horsetails,
flags, and sedges hid the water.
As no care was taken with the brooks, the hatches upon them
gradually rotted, and the force of the winter rains carried away
the weak timbers, flooding the lower grounds, which became swamps
of larger size. The dams, too, were drilled by water-rats, and the
streams percolating through, slowly increased the size of these
tunnels till the structure burst, and the current swept on and
added to the floods below. Mill-dams stood longer, but, as the
ponds silted up, the current flowed round and even through the
mill-houses, which, going by degrees to ruin, were in some cases
undermined till they fell.
Everywhere the lower lands adjacent to the streams had become
marshes, some of them extending for miles in a winding line, and
occasionally spreading out to a mile in breadth. This was
particularly the case where brooks and streams of some volume
joined the rivers, which were also blocked and obstructed in their
turn, and the two, overflowing, covered the country around; for the
rivers brought down trees and branches, timbers floated from the
shore, and all kinds of similar materials, which grounded in the
shallows or caught against snags, and formed huge piles where there
had been weirs.
Sometimes, after great rains, these piles swept away the timbers
of the weir, driven by the irresistible power of the water, and
then in its course the flood, carrying the balks before it like
battering rams, cracked and split the bridges of solid stone which
the ancients had built. These and the iron bridges likewise were
overthrown, and presently quite disappeared, for the very
foundations were covered with the sand and gravel silted up.
Thus, too, the sites of many villages and towns that anciently
existed along the rivers, or on the lower lands adjoining, were
concealed by the water and the mud it brought with it. The sedges
and reeds that arose completed the work and left nothing visible,
so that the mighty buildings of olden days were by these means
utterly buried. And, as has been proved by those who have dug for
treasures, in our time the very foundations are deep beneath the
earth, and not to be got at for the water that oozes into the
shafts that they have tried to sink through the sand and mud
banks.
From an elevation, therefore, there was nothing visible but
endless forest and marsh. On the level ground and plains the view
was limited to a short distance, because of the thickets and the
saplings which had now become young trees. The downs only were
still partially open, yet it was not convenient to walk upon them
except in the tracks of animals, because of the long grass which,
being no more regularly grazed upon by sheep, as was once the case,
grew thick and tangled. Furze, too, and heath covered the slopes,
and in places vast quantities of fern. There had always been copses
of fir and beech and nut-tree covers, and these increased and
spread, while bramble, briar, and hawthorn extended around
them.
By degrees the trees of the vale seemed as it were to invade and
march up the hills, and, as we see in our time, in many places the
downs are hidden altogether with a stunted kind of forest. But all
the above happened in the time of the first generation.
