The Somerset to which Alfred retired was widely unlike the Somerset of to-day. In this respect three points may be taken: (1) Differences in the distribution of land and water; (2) differences in the trees and woods and game; (3) differences in the political aspect of the population. 1. West Somerset was separated from East Somerset by wide inland waters: the beds of the Brue and Parret were lakes in the winter, and only passable in summer to those who knew the ground. Pedrida was regarded as a natural limit, like the sea itself, dividing nations; it was spoken of in like phraseology. Thus we read in 658 how Cenwalh warred against the Welsh and drave them even unto Pedrida[34]; and, in 682, how Centwine drave the Bret-Welsh even unto the sea[35]. The cause of that expanse of water and large area of fenland happened far back beyond historical chronology, and we can only date it by using the geological method of reckoning time. Far back in the sub-glacial era a subsidence of the land took place which affected the coast of Somerset and North Devon. Proof of this is found in a submarine forest extending along the south coast of the Severn Sea, which has long been known. ‘That portion of it visible at Porlock was described in 1839 by Sir Henry de la Beche, and more recently by Mr. Godwin Austen in an essay read before the Geological Society in 1865[36].’ Subsequently the Rev. H. H. Winwood and Professor Boyd Dawkins verified the discovery by a thorough examination of the forest-bed. Near Minehead the forest consists of oak, ash, alder, and hazel, which grew on a blue clay. An ancient growth of oak, ash, and yew is found everywhere underneath the peat or alluvium in the Somersetshire levels. Throughout this wide area the trees were destroyed by the growth of peat, or by the deposits of the floods, except at a few isolated spots, which stand at a higher level than usual, in the great flat extending between the Polden Hills and the Quantocks. One of these oases, a little distance to the west of Middlezoy, is termed the Oaks, because those trees form a marked contrast to the prevailing elms and willows of the district. In the neighbouring ditches, that gradually cut into peat, and then into silt, prostrate oaks are very abundant[37]. Subsidence of the land at a remote geological period was the cause of the impassable state of these levels in the time of king Alfred, and the modern system of drainage which was carried out at a later date has been the cause of the improved condition which we see now, and which has made the Vale of Taunton Dean proverbial as the Garden of England.