of centuries have suffered much from like causes, and . that our valleys must have once extended much further out to sea,and that it would consequently be difficult to discover the traces of a town situated near the mouth of the Priory Valley in Roman or British times, the site of which would now be covered by the waters.
It has been urged and may again be objected , that these valleys could never have harboured powerful fleets : but when the great wood of Anderida spread through Kent and the eastern part of Sussex,where the " hursts" and " fields," the woods and adjoining cleared spaces, the Crowhursts and the Catsfields still mark out its old area : when the Weald was, what its name imports,a forest land, the foliage formed an impervious barrier to the escape of vapour to the air ; the sunshine never visited the swampy glens, the valleys now drained by some slender rivuletwere filled with water from side to side. As centuries rolled on , the woodland has waned before the woodman 's axe, and the land, cleared and drained for the plough , has sent less and less moisture to the sea.
" Before these fields were shorn and tilled,
Full to the brim our rivers flowed,
The melody of waters filled
The fresh and boundless wood.
And torrents dashed and rivulets played ,
And fountains spouted in the shade.
Those grateful sounds are heard no more ,
The springs are silent in the sun ,
The rivers by the blackened shore,
With lessening current run."
