see from the railway, and which gives its name to the Vale, over which
it has looked these thousand years and more.

* "Pagani editiorem Iocum praeoccupaverant. Christiani ab
inferiori loco aciem dirigebant. Erat quoque in eodem loco
unica spinosa arbor, brevis admodum (quam nos ipsi nostris
propriis oculis vidimus). Circa quam ergo hostiles inter se
acies cum ingenti clamore hostiliter conveniunt. Quo in
loco alter de duobus Paganorum regibus et quinque comites
occisi occubuerunt, et multa millia Paganae partis in eodem
loco. Cecidit illic ergo Boegsceg Rex, et Sidroc ille senex
comes, et Sidroc Junior comes, et Obsbern comes," etc.--
Annales Rerum Gestarum AElfredi Magni, Auctore Asserio.
Recensuit Franciscus Wise. Oxford, 1722, p.23.

Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gully
called "the Manger," into one side of which the hills fall with a series
of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as "the Giant's Stairs." They
are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere
else, with their short green turf, and tender bluebells, and gossamer
and thistle-down gleaming in the sun and the sheep-paths running along
their sides like ruled lines.

The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a curious
little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range,
utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of
mankind--St. George, the country folk used to tell me--killed a dragon.
Whether it were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed
there, for you may see the marks yet where his blood ran down, and more
by token the place where it ran down is the easiest way up the hillside.