a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as
it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the
flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for
hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the
earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at
whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream.

On either side, to right and left the tree-girdle reached out toward the
blue distance, thick close and unsundered, save where it and the plain
which it begirdled was cleft amidmost by a river about as wide as the
Thames at Sheene when the flood-tide is at its highest, but so swift and
full of eddies, that it gave token of mountains not so far distant,
though they were hidden. On each side moreover of the stream of this
river was a wide space of stones, great and little, and in most places
above this stony waste were banks of a few feet high, showing where the
yearly winter flood was most commonly stayed.

You must know that this great clearing in the woodland was not a matter
of haphazard; though the river had driven a road whereby men might fare
on each side of its hurrying stream. It was men who had made that Isle
in the woodland.

For many generations the folk that now dwelt there had learned the craft
of iron-founding, so that they had no lack of wares of iron and steel,
whether they were tools of handicraft or weapons for hunting and for war.
It was the men of the Folk, who coming adown by the river-side had made
that clearing. The tale tells not whence they came, but belike from the
dales of the distant mountains, and from dales and mountains and plains
further aloof and yet further.