SALISBURY MARKET.
To the northward of Salisbury is that region filled with prehistoric relics known as Salisbury Plain. Here are ancient fortresses, barrows, and sepulchral mounds, earthworks, dykes, and trenches, roadways of the Roman and the Briton, and the great British stronghold, guarding the southern entrance to the plain, which became the Old Sarum of later times. Until within a century this plain was a solitary and almost abandoned region, but now there are good roads crossing it and much of the land is cultivated. It is a great triangular chalk-measure, each side roughly estimated at twenty miles long. The Bourne, Wiley, and Avon flow through it to meet near Salisbury, and all the bolder heights between their valleys are marked by ancient fortifications. Wiltshire is thus said to be divided between chalk and cheese, for the northern district beyond the plain is a great dairy region. Let us journey northward from Salisbury across the plain, and as we enter its southern border there rises up almost at the edge the conical hill of Old Sarum, crowned by intrenchments. When they were made is not known, but in 552 they were a British defence against the Saxons, who captured them after a bitter fight and overran the plain. Five centuries later William the Norman reviewed his army here, and after the first Domesday survey summoned all the landholders of England to the number of sixty thousand, who here swore fealty to him. The Normans strengthened it with a castle, and soon a cathedral also rose at Old Sarum, while a town grew around them. But all have disappeared, though now there can be traced the outlines of streets and houses and the foundations of the old cathedral. When the clergy removed to Salisbury it is said they determined the new site by an arrow shot from the ramparts of Old Sarum, and moving the cathedral soon attracted the people. Old Sarum for some time remained a strong fortress with many houses, but the cathedral was taken down in 1331 and its materials used for building the famous spire at Salisbury. The castle decayed, the town was gradually deserted, and as long ago as the sixteenth century we are told there was not a single house left there. And such it is to this day. Climbing the steep face of the hill, the summit is found fenced by a vast earthen rampart and ditch enclosing twenty-seven acres with an irregular circle, the height from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the rampart being over one hundred feet. A smaller inner rampart as high as the outer one made the central citadel. Nearly all the stone has long ago been carried off to build Salisbury, and weeds and brushwood have overrun the remarkable fortress that has come down to us from such venerable antiquity. Under the English "rotten-borough" system Old Sarum enjoyed the privilege of sending two members to Parliament for three centuries after it ceased to be inhabited. The old tree under which the election was held still exists, and the elder Pitt, who lived near by, was first sent to Parliament as a representative of Old Sarum's vacant mounds.
STONEHENGE.
A few miles' farther journey to the northward over the hills and valleys, and among the sheep that also wander on Salisbury Plain, brings us to that remarkable relic of earlier ages which is probably the greatest curiosity in England—Stonehenge. When the gigantic stones were put there, and what for, no man knows. Many are the unanswered questions asked about them, for the poet says:
"Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle!
Whether by Merlin's aid from Scythia's shore
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,
To entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile:
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
Taught 'mid thy massy maze their mystic lore;
Or Danish chiefs, enriched by savage spoil,
To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine,
Reared the huge heap; or, in thy hallowed round,
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line;
Or here those kings in solemn state were crowned;
Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,
We muse on many an ancient tale renowned."
STONEHENGE, FROM THE NORTH.