From our elevated road, some distance on, the curious little village of West Dean was revealed to us, a huddle of roofs and a tiny fane hidden in a hollow of the hills--"a cup full of beauty." We looked right down upon it and over its grey church tower and over the lichen-laden uneven roofs of its few dwellings--roofs all covered with golden lichen, gloriously golden in the bright sunshine; I have never seen roofs so completely thus covered before, and then I realised what a beautifier, even on a large scale, the lowly lichen can be. The village had the rare look of remoteness, so detached was it from the outer world by the wide and folding downs, so far from rail and frequented road. We determined to visit it when we reached the valley by the long descent which followed and idle there a time. At the foot of the descent we found a large and lone old-fashioned farmstead surrounded by a colony of flint-built barns and out-houses; the little slothful river Cuckmere seeking its way to the sea, with many windings, ran close by. The grey old farmstead with its weather-stained walls, the tranquil, reedy river below, the bare and silent downs beyond, struck a note of intense quietness. A peacefulness profound brooded over this out-of-the-world spot: it might have been a hundred miles from anywhere. A picture, too, it made, effective in its breadth and simplicity. There we rested for an hour or more, just because it pleased us so to do. We travelled in search of peace and found it in a land Where little lost Down churches praise The God who made the hills. Near to the old farm we noticed a yoke of black, long-horned, but meek-eyed oxen slowly drawing a waggon up the steep slope of the hillside. The slow, black oxen toiling through the day Tireless, impassive still, From dawning dusk and chill To twilight grey. You seldom see such a sight nowadays, and only rarely on the South Downs or the lonely Cotswolds. Presently the oxen stopped for the waggon to be loaded, and we took the opportunity of having a chat with their driver, a sunburnt man clad in a faded grey suit, and having the soft speech and courteous manner that so often marks the Sussex folk. "Oxen," said he, "beat horses at work any day on these hills. I would not care to drive horses if I could drive oxen; they are a bit slow perhaps, but not lazy; they don't want so much urging as horses; I never has any trouble with them, I have just to give them a reminder with my stick now and then and that is all; you don't need a whip with oxen." I noticed that the stick he held was a long one of hazel, just a thin stick and nothing more, and I noticed that the yokes were fashioned of wood with a heavy cross-bar at the top, and these joined each pair of oxen together, being kept in position by a slight rounded wooden collar below.[1]