For the distance of close upon a mile this Roman road, the chief means of communication between their seaport station of Clavinium, near Weymouth, and their inland town of Durnovaria, runs on the level, bordered by the fine full-grown elms of one of Dorchester’s many avenues. Then it sets out with a grim straightness to climb to the summit of that geological spine, the Ridgeway, which places so stubborn an obstacle on these nine miles of road that many a faint-hearted pilgrim from Dorchester fails to reach Weymouth, and many another from Weymouth gives up the task at less than half-way.
Climbing here, the vast mass of Maiden Castle rises on the right, conferring a solemnity upon the scene, due not so much to the bulk given it by nature as to the amazing ditches, mounds, scarps, and counterscarps terraced along its mighty bosom by—ay, by whom? Many peoples had a hand in the making of this great fortification. The British Durotriges are said to have styled it “Mai-Dun,” the “Castle of the great Hill,” and to have established their capital here; and at a later date the Romans camped upon it and must have cursed the Imperialism which brought them here to wilt and wither in face of the bitter blasts of an inclement land.
It was the Dunium of Ptolemy, and has been the wonder of many ages, not easily able to understand by what enormous expenditure of effort all these great mounds were heaped up and what enemies they feared who delved the ditches so deeply and ramped the ridges so steeply and so high.
Maiden Castle is still occupied, although the last defender left it perhaps a thousand years ago; for as the curious traveller to these prehistoric earthworks climbs exhaustedly up the steep rises, over the short grass, he may see the rabbits mounting guard by thousands against the skyline, or fleeing panic-stricken, in admirable open order, showing myriads of white flags formed by their tails as they go loping away over the field.
As one progresses, more and more slowly with the acuter gradient, up the roadway, the church-tower of Winterborne Monkton, among its encircling barns, ricks, and cow-byres, comes into view, the observer’s eye on a higher level than the rooftop. Village there is none, and the clergyman who on Sundays conducts services here must do so—between the peals of the organ, and in midst of the quieter-spoken passages of morning and evening prayers—to the commentatory lowing of cattle or the grunts of pigs, sounding like the observations of grudging critics. There was once a saint who, like a broody hen that will nurse strange things, preached to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field, and the spiritual shepherd of Winterborne Monkton not infrequently has among his congregation a barn owl, and a cheerful concourse of sparrows in the roof, much given to brawling in church.
Roman directness was all very well, but later races found it much too trying for their horses, and thus we find, nearing the summit, that the straight ancient road across the ridgeway has long been abandoned, except by the telegraph-poles, for a cutting through the crest and an S curve down the southern and much steeper side. This expedient certainly eases both ascent and descent, but it does not suffice to render the way less than extremely fatiguing to climb and nerve-shaking to descend.
As a view-point it has remarkable features, for the whole expanse of Portland Roads, the Isle of Portland, and the site on which Weymouth and Melcombe Regis are built are exposed to gaze, very much as though the spectator looking down upon them were bending in an examination of some modelled map of physical geography. White spires at Weymouth and equally white groups of houses at Portland gain striking effects from backgrounds of grey rock or the dark green of trees, massed by distance to the likeness of dense forests; and the mile-lengths of harbour walls and breakwaters, punctuated with forts, out in the roadstead are shrunken by distance to the likeness of a cast seine-net supported by cork floats. On a ridge inland a row of circular ricks with peaked roofs showing against the sea looks absurdly like beehives, and down there in the middle distance is the curving line of embankment where the railway from Dorchester goes, after piercing the hill on which we stand by the Bincombe Tunnel.
Descending the hill, we come to the valley of the Wey. The older part of the village of Upwey marks the source of that little stream to the right, and the newer part, with the village of Broadwey, are scarcely to be distinguished from one another, ahead. The original Upwey, the Upwey of the “Wishing Well,” lies under the flanks of a great down, where, if you climb and climb and continue climbing, you will presently discover the poppy-like scarlet buildings of the Weymouth waterworks. But there is no need to seek them while the Wishing Well, nearer to hand, calls.