Many Coldharbours are in exceedingly exposed places, as indeed here, on Barham Downs,[8] and many more are in quite sheltered situations, in places where dense woodlands once spread, giving work and shelter to charcoal-burners. This fact has led to the formulation of another theory, one which holds that these strangely named places were, prosaically enough, "coal-harbours," or storage-places for charcoal. It is much to be desired that some leisured antiquary would devote himself to the elucidation of the name and the rescuing of the purpose of these Coldharbours from the mists of a remote and romantic antiquity. The other Kentish Coldharbours to be found near the Watling Street are at Bishopsbourne, Bridge, Newington, Northfleet, Sittingbourne, and Woolwich, and all--so close is the connection between the name and ancient dwellings--near the site of undoubted Roman stations or villas. Alike with the equally mysterious name of "Mockbeggar," which also occurs with great frequency, the meaning of "Coldharbour" will probably never be discovered.[9] Standing here beside the road at evening when the sun is going down and these bleak unenclosed uplands grow dark and mysterious, the centuries pass away like a fevered dream. Here and there the solemn expanse of the barren land is diversified by a few trees; here and there a few yards of hedge, beginning nowhere in particular and ending with equal strangeness, skirt the way; weather-beaten sign-posts start suddenly out of the moorland, and occasional haycocks take on a dead and awful blackness as the evening light dies out of the sky in long and angry streaks of red. When the moon rises and casts her cold beams upon the road and plays strange pranks with the shadows of trees and bushes, then the days of the Romans are come once more, and the legionaries live again. They rise from their camp of nineteen hundred years ago; they march along the Watling Street that was made by their descendants; and the sheen of their armour, the glitter of the pale moonlight on their eagle standards, and the tramp of many feet are as real to the imaginative traveller, if not of a greater reality, than the moaning telegraph that runs on countless poles in a diminishing procession beside the road as far as eye can reach. [Illustration: WATLING STREET: MOONRISE.] XL By daylight the traveller can see that the barren chalk of Barham Downs, although left so long in repose, has been lately cut up into golf links. A racecourse, little frequented now, also stands on the ridge. Bourne Park skirts the road for some distance on the right, and the spire of Barham Church, rising from behind a thick clump of trees in a little valley, shows where the village of Barham lies secluded, some three hundred yards down a country lane. [Sidenote: THE BARHAM FAMILY]