Before I came to East-Meon, the soil of the hills was a shallow loam with flints, on a bottom of chalk; but on this side of the valley of East-Meon; that is to say, on the north side, the soil on the hills is a deep, stiff loam, on a bed of a sort of gravel mixed with chalk; and the stones, instead of being grey on the outside and blue on the inside, are yellow on the outside and whitish on the inside. In coming on further to the North, I found, that the bottom was sometimes gravel and sometime chalk. Here, at the time when _whatever it was_ that formed these hills and valleys, the stuff of which Hindhead is composed seems to have run down and mixed itself with the stuff of which _Old Winchester Hill_ is composed. Free chalk (which is the sort found here) is excellent manure for stiff land, and it produces a complete change in the nature of _clays_. It is, therefore, dug here, on the North of East-Meon, about in the fields, where it happens to be found, and is laid out upon the surface, where it is crumbled to powder by the frost, and thus gets incorporated with the loam. At Bower I got instructions to go to Hawkley, but accompanied with most earnest advice not to go that way, for that it was impossible to get along. The roads were represented as so bad; the floods so much out; the hills and bogs so dangerous; that, really, I began to _doubt_; and, if I had not been brought up amongst the clays of the Holt Forest and the bogs of the neighbouring heaths, I should certainly have turned off to my right, to go over Hindhead, great as was my objection to going that way. "Well, then," said my friend at Bower, "if you _will_ go that way, by G--, you must go down _Hawkley Hanger_;" of which he then gave me _such_ a description! But, even this I found to fall short of the reality. I inquired simply, whether _people were in the habit_ of going down it; and, the answer being in the affirmative, on I went through green lanes and bridle-ways till I came to the turnpike-road from Petersfield to Winchester, which I crossed, going into a narrow and almost untrodden green lane, on the side of which I found a cottage. Upon my asking the way to _Hawkley_, the woman at the cottage said, "Right up the lane, Sir: you'll come to a _hanger_ presently: you must take care, Sir: you can't ride down: will your horses _go alone_?"