Dorchester deserves to be chosen as the headquarters of the earliest of a series of excursions in Dorset, not only by reason of the premier position which it holds in the country, but also on account of the multitude of interesting surroundings which claim the attention of the literary pilgrim, the antiquary and the archæologist. The town is situated on a hill which slopes on the one side to the valley of the Frome, and extends on the other in an open country, across which run the Roman roads, still used as the highways. The principal thoroughfares divide Dorchester pretty equally, the High Street intersecting it from east to west, the South Street and North Market in the opposite direction. On the south-west is the suburb of Fordington. The principal street--on the line of the Via Iceniana--ends abruptly at the fields, and on the south and west is the rampart, planted with rows of sycamore and chestnut trees as a walk. Daniel Defoe, in his whimsical description of his pilgrimage _From London to Land's End_, published in 1724, gives an entertaining survey of the town at that period. He says: "Dorchester is indeed a pleasant, agreeable town to live in, and where I thought the people seemed less divided in factions and parties than in other places; for though here are divisions, and the people are not all of one mind, either as to religion or politics, yet they did not seem to separate with so much animosity as in other places. Here I saw the Church of England clergyman and the Dissenting minister or preacher drinking tea together, and conversing with civility and good neighbourhood, like Catholic Christians and men of a catholic and extensive charity. The town is populous, though not large; the streets broad; but the buildings old and low. However, there is good company, and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a retreat in this world might as agreeably spend his time, and as well, in Dorchester as in any town I know in England.... There are abundance of good families and of very ancient lines in the neighbourhood of this town of Dorchester, as the Napiers, the Courtneys, Strangeways, Seymours, Banks, Tregonwells, Sydenhams, and many others, some of which have very great estates in the county, and in particular Colonel Strangeways (ancestor of the present Earl of Ilchester), Napier (ancestor of the present Lord Arlington) and Courtney." As to the healthiness of Dorchester, the editors of Hutchins's second edition wrote: "The pleasant and healthy situation of this town deserves an encomium. The famous Doctor Arbuthnot, coming hither in his early days with a view to settle in it, gave as a reason for his departure that 'a physician could neither live nor die in Dorchester.'"