Pack trails
A little later the merchants of North-western Europe in search of salt, landed at the Cinque Ports of Kent. Their pack trails converged to drop down Blackheath Hill. From thence the one trail coasted the southern edge of the saltings of Southwark by way of Old Kent Road and Bedlam, striking the first firm ground in the river bank at Lamb's Hythe (landing), where the Bishop of Canterbury afterwards built his town house. From Lambeth at low tide there was a ford to Horseferry Road on the Isle of Thorns in mid-river. From the island site of the City of Westminster, there was a broader but very shallow ford across the north arm of the Thames. One may see the north bank of the Island at Great George Street, Westminster; but the site of the pack trail is lost. It took up the ridge between the Tyburn and Bayswater brooks, avoiding the mudholes of both, along Park Lane. At Marble Arch it swung into the Bronze trail, to leave it presently at Tyburn Tree, and strike up Edgeware Road, and so via Watling Street to the salt wells in Cheshire. It was along the Bronze trail and the Salt trail that civilization found its way into England.
Were I a merchant I might see in wool the single origin of my country's wealth; were I a broker I might see in stocks and shares the origin of prosperity. Each to his trade; but as an old packtrain captain I have ridden many a hundred miles, noting the grass-grown bridle paths along dry ridges, the hesitating down-hill curves of ancient roads as they approach wet ground, the outer hedging and the inner hedging as highways narrowed down when they were paved, and public house signs, such as the Packhorse, dating from the recent centuries when still the traffic of old England was done on cargo ponies. It needs but a little scouting to show clearly the story of some fifteen hundred years of England's progress down to the time when Cæsar's strength was taxed on joining battle with the British tribes. Our people, like the Gauls, had roads and chariots, armour of bronze and gold, old trades, and industries and towns before the Romans came.
II. THE DUN HORSE OF ASIA.
The Dun horse of Asia
As the Earth reels through the Dark, and on her journey spins like a sleeping top, we only notice the changing of the seasons while she swings round her great orbit, and the swift passage of flying nights and days. It is only when one is quite alone in the far wilderness that one begins to feel the Earth in motion, and after sunset to watch her shadow climb the eastern sky. To roll one's bed down beside the waning camp fire, to turn in and smoke the evening pipe, to lie looking up at the stars, is to know that one is only a speck of loose dust on a flying sphere, flung eastward at a thousand miles an hour, yet held down by the pull of the Earth's weight safe from being whirled away into space. Loose adventurers like me, loose air, dust, water, and loose tribes of men are all being flung with the surface, pulled by the centre of the Earth, and drifted about all the time without our knowing why.
Of course the weaker tribes have been flung eastward so far as there was land, and stay where they were thrown in China, Indo-China, Burma, and Bengal. Only the stronger races have thrust against the motion of the planet. These dark-haired sallow Asiatics, Scythian, Hun, Tartar and the rest were bred in regions of strong sunlight, filling their native steppes until they were overcrowded. They were harmless shepherds and herders who did a little hunting. But for the Dun pony we might not have heard much about them. When they tamed the pony the savages became barbarians, the little scattered tribes were welded into formidable hordes. And then they swarmed like locusts eating up the world under some ruthless Caan, a Genghis, a Timour, burning all civilization, trampling out the embers of human reason. And in their wake came twilight—the Dark Ages.
Pack horse trails
History is a jade. She has a glad eye for soldiers and sportsmen whose business is destruction, but turns a sour face from lousy pilgrims to the shrines of Faith, poor craftsmen and scholars burdened with the tools of Progress, drab merchants who carry Culture in their packs, and all the messengers of civilization. Of these her annals are curt and negligent. She has plenty of gossip about Kings more or less human as advertised by scribes more or less venal; but keeps no chronicle of the pack trails on which the little Dun ponies carried all that made civilization to the camps of the barbarian and the savage. She told us nothing about the hundreds of opulent cities which now lie dead and buried in the Mongolian deserts. One does not like to speak ill of a lady, but her sense of truth is always moderate.
Adventure is not officially authorized as one of the Muses, but she is as truthful as History, and a deal more amusing as a guide.