Returning to the main road, we reach the high land of Blue Bell--"Upper Bell," as it is marked on the Ordnance Map. We are not quite on the highest range, but sufficiently high (about three hundred feet) to enable us to appreciate the splendid view that presents itself. In the valley below winds the Medway, broadening as it approaches Rochester.[30] The opposite heights consist of the western range of hills, the width of the valley from point to point being about ten miles. The "sky-line" of hills running from north to south cannot be less than sixty miles, extending to the famous Weald of Kent (weald, wald, or wolde, being literally "a wooded region, an open country"); all the intervening space of undulating slope and valley (river excepted) is filled up by hamlets, grass, root, and cornfields, hop-gardens, orchards and woodlands, the whole forming a picture of matchless beauty. No wonder Dickens was very fond of this delightful walk; it must be gone over to be appreciated.[31] [Illustration: Kits Coty House and "Blue Bell" From the Painting by Gegan] We tramp on through Boxley and Bridge Woods, down the hill, and pass Borstal Convict Prison and Fort Clarence, where there are guns which we were informed would carry a ball from this elevated ground right over the Thames into the county of Essex (a distance of seven miles); and so we get back again to Rochester. FOOTNOTES: [26] Lambarde says, "Malling, in Saxon Mealing, or Mealuing, that is, the Low place flourishing with Meal or Corne, for so it is everywhere accepted." [27] The italics are interpolated. [28] Burham, although now enshrouded in the smoke of lime-making, was probably sixty years ago a delightfully rural spot. [29] Mr. Roach Smith reminded us that the yew was in times past planted for its wood to be used as bows. [30] Professor Huxley, in his _Physiography_, has estimated that "at the present rate of wear and tear, denudation can have lowered the surface of the Thames Basin by hardly more than an inch since the Norman Conquest; and nearly a million years must elapse before the whole basin of the Thames will be worn down to the sea-level"; and Dr. A. Geikie, after a series of elaborate calculations, has postulated "as probably a fair average, a valley of 1000 feet deep may be excavated in 1,200,000 years." Taking these estimates as a basis, and allowing for an average height of three hundred feet, we roughly arrive at a period of about four hundred thousand years as the possible length of time which it has taken to form this beautiful valley. Professor Huxley may well say that "the geologist has thoughts of time and space to which the ordinary mind is a stranger."