It is interesting, as one leaves Houghton village, to notice how the road (which is now identical with the old British track) approaches the marshy land of the river, following the spur of dry land which pushes out into the marshes, and making for the nearest similar spur on the farther side of the stream. All old British ways approach a river in this fashion, as, for instance, the track to which we owe London Bridge, the crossing of the Medway near Lower Halling, of the Mole just north of [Sidenote: RACKHAM HILL] Dorking, and of the Darent at Oxford. The last few yards of the road where the marshy land begins are carried on the modern causeway; the Arun itself is crossed by a fine bridge, on the farther side of which is an inn which makes a very good stopping-place, whether a man has ridden or has walked, for, by the time he reaches this inn, he will have gone between fifteen and twenty miles. Moreover, it is always wise, when one is exploring the Downs, to rest in the river valleys which cut them rather than to come down off their main summits on to the plain, for to do this last is to waste much effort in the climb of next morning. Half a mile after leaving Houghton Bridge inn the traveller will find a lane leading straight up to the top of the Downs, a summit here called Rackham Hill; and thenceforward he has before him a ridgeway of five miles of unbroken turf of the finest sort in England, midway along which he should note upon the steep escarpment beneath him (along the northern side of what is called Kithurst Hill) the great embankment which may perhaps be defensive earthworks, or may perhaps be some religious emblem of the prehistoric ancestors of the county. At the end of the five miles he comes down upon what is known as Washington Gap, where the Worthing road crosses the hills, and as he does so he leaves upon his right Highden, the original home of the Gorings, and the centre from which has spread the influence of that Sussex family. The gap is low, but a little over 300 feet, and when he has crossed it he must go up nearly 500 more to the height of Chanctonbury Ring, which is the knot or pivot, as it were, upon which the whole system of the range turns. Though it is not exactly central between the Hampshire borders and the sea end of the Downs, being a good deal to the west of such a centre, it is a place of observation from which the range may be discovered stretching to the left and right through the whole of its extent. Ditchling Beacon to the east and Duncton Down to the west are twenty or thirty feet higher, but neither is so conspicuous as the Ring. Here also, immediately to the east and just below the clump of trees, is the largest dew pan on the Downs. It is possible to go down from Chanctonbury straight to Steyning, but, if one desires to see all one can of the hills, it is better to keep upon them until one sees below one a spur pointing towards Bramber; there is a lane down this spur, and at