To return to the origins. The site of Winchester, I say, before ever our legends arose, had all the characters which kept it vigorous to within seven hundred years of our own time. It was central, it held the key to the only good middle passage the Channel afforded, it was destined to be a capital. From Winchester therefore a road must necessarily have set out to join what had been, even before the rise of Winchester, the old eastern and western road; this old road it would join by a slow approach, and merge with it at last and seek Canterbury as a goal. The way by which men leaving Winchester would have made for the Straits may have been, at first, a direct path leading northwards towards the point where the old east-and-west road came nearest to that city. For in the transformation of communication it is always so: we see it in our modern railway lines, and in the lanes that lead from new houses to the highways: the first effort is to find the established road, the 'guide,' as soon as possible. Later attempts were made at a short cut. Perhaps the second attempt was to go somewhat eastward, towards what the Romans called Calleva, and the Roman road from Winchester to Calleva (or Silchester) may have taken for its basis some such British track. But at any rate, the gradual experience of travel ended in the shortest cut that could be found. The tributary road from Winchester went at last well to the east, and did not join the original track till it reached Farnham. [Illustration] This short cut, feeder, or tributary which ultimately formed the western end of our Road was driven into a channel which attracted it to Farnham almost as clearly as the chalk hills of which I have spoken pointed out the remainder of the way: for two river valleys, that of the Itchen and that of the Wey led straight to that town and to the beginning of the hill-platform. [Illustration: GLIMPSES OF THE ITCHEN AWAY BEHIND US _See page 133_] It is the universal method of communication between neighbouring centres on either side of a watershed to follow, if they exist, two streams; one leading up to and the other down from the watershed. This method provides food and drink upon the way, it reduces all climbing to the one clamber over the saddle of the ridge, and, if the beginning of the path is struck out by doubtful pioneers, then, as every pioneer in a new country knows, ascending a stream is the best guide to a pass and descending one on the further side is the best guide to open spaces, and to the habitations of men. [Illustration] This tributary gradually superseded the western end of the trail, and the Old Road from the west to the east, from the metal mines to the Straits of Dover, had at last Winchester for an origin and Canterbury for a goal. The neglected western end from Farnham to Stonehenge became called 'The Harrow Way,' that is the 'Hoar,' the 'Ancient' way.[2] It fell into disuse, and is now hardly to be recognised at all.