Nor is this all. The whole range of the Downs as I say is scattered thick with the work of our pre-historic forefathers. In Burlough Castle and Mount Caburn we have fortresses so old that it is impossible to name the age in which they were contrived and built, nor can we assert with any confidence who they were that first occupied the camp upon Ditchling Beacon, the highest point of the South Downs, or who first defended Wolstanbury. And it is the same with those most famous places Cissbury Ring and Chanctonbury. But the flint mines upon Cissbury give us some idea of the neolithic men, our forefathers, which should and does astonish us. The Camp itself is less wonderful than the mines upon the western side of it. Here we have not only numerous pits from ten to seventy feet in diameter and from five to seven feet deep, but really vast excavations leading to galleries which tap a belt or band of flints. That these mines were worked by neolithic man it is impossible to doubt, but he may not have discovered or first used them. They may be older than he, though all record even upon that marvellous hill- side, has been lost of those who first exploited them. Nor is Chanctonbury, though it cannot boast of mines such as these, less astonishing or less ancient. The camp set there following the contour of the hill can only have been one of the most important in south- east England. It commands the camps at Cissbury, the Devil's Dyke, High Down and White Hawk, the whole breadth of the Weald lay beneath it and a signal displayed upon Leith Hill upon the North Downs could easily be answered from this noble mountain; Mount Caburn itself was not more essentially important. It has been thought that the Romans may have used Chanctonbury, but if so they have left but little mark of their occupation, and indeed, though the Downs as a whole far off are stamped with so Roman a character, there is but one spot in their whole length where we may say; here certainly the Legions have been. That spot lies upon the last division of the Downs towards the west, the line of hills which stands between Chichester and the Weald. It is certain that the Romans were, in Sussex, most at home on that great sea plain towards which the Downs slope so gradually southward. Here indeed they built their town of Regnum, and perhaps towards the end of their occupation of Britain they laid out the only purely military highway which they built here from Regnum to London Bridge. This great Roman road, known as the Stane Street, coming out of the eastern gate of Chichester, takes the Downs as an arrow flies, crossing them between Boxgrove and Bignor, nor is the work of Rome even to-day wholly destroyed, for there under Bignor Hill we may still see the pavement of their Way, while at Bignor itself we have perhaps the best remains of a Roman villa left to us in Sussex. [Illustration: THE DOWNS]