Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
Worth is ten miles from Reigate on the Brighton-road, which goes through
Horley. Reigate has the Surrey chalk hills close to it on the North, and
sand-hills along on its South, and nearly close to it also. As soon as
you are over the sand-hills, you come into a country of _deep_ clay; and
this is called the _Weald_ of Surrey. This Weald winds away round,
towards the West, into Sussex, and towards the East, into Kent. In this
part of Surrey it is about eight miles wide, from North to South, and
ends just as you enter the parish of Worth, which is the first parish
(in this part) in the county of Sussex. All across the Weald (the strong
and stiff clays) the corn looks very well. I found it looking well from
the Wen to Reigate, on the villanous spewy soil between the Wen and
Croydon; on the chalk from Croydon to near Reigate; on the loam, sand
and chalk (for there are all three) in the valley of Reigate; but not
quite so well on the sand. On the clay all the corn looks well. The
wheat, where it has begun to die, is dying of a good colour, not black,
nor in any way that indicates blight. It is, however, all backward. Some
few fields of white wheat are changing colour; but for the greater part
it is quite green; and though a sudden change of weather might make a
great alteration in a short time, it does appear that the harvest must
be later than usual. When I say this, however, I by no means wish to be
understood as saying that it must be so late as to be injurious to the
crop. In 1816, I saw a barley-rick making in November. In 1821, I saw
wheat uncut, in Suffolk, in October. If we were now to have good,
bright, hot weather, for as long a time as we have had wet, the whole of
the corn in these Southern counties would be housed, and great part of
it threshed out, by the 10th of September. So that all depends on the
weather, which appears to be clearing up in spite of Saint Swithin. This
Saint's birth-day is the 15th of July; and it is said that if rain fall
on his birth-day it will fall on _forty days_ successively. But I
believe that you reckon retrospectively as well as prospectively; and if
this be the case, we may, this time, escape the extreme unction; for it
began to rain on the 26th of June; so that it rained 19 days before the
15th of July; and as it has rained 16 days since, it has rained, in the
whole, 35 days, and, of course, five days more will satisfy this wet
soul of a saint. Let him take his five days; and there will be plenty of
time for us to have wheat at four shillings a bushel. But if the Saint
will give us no credit for the 19 days, and will insist upon his forty
daily drenchings _after_ the fifteenth of July; if he will have such a
soaking as this at the celebration of the anniversary of his birth, let
us hope that he is prepared with a miracle for feeding us, and with a
still more potent miracle for keeping the farmers from riding over us,
filled, as Lord Liverpool thinks their pockets will be, by the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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