But against Aylesford there are three strong arguments. They are not only strong, they are insuperable. The first is the immense width of valley that would have to be crossed to reach it. That is, the immense tract of uncertain, wooded way, without a view either of enemies or of direction.
The second is the clay. A belt of gault of greater or lesser width stretches all along the Downs just below the chalk. Here it is particularly wide, and no straight line can be taken from Wrotham to the Aylesford gravels without crossing nearly two miles of this wretched footing, which, throughout its course, the road has most carefully avoided. That a ford of great antiquity was there; that the men of the sandy heights used it; that the Romans used so admirable a ford (it is gravel near the river on either side), that they bridged it, that they made a causeway over the clay, and that this causeway and that bridge were continuously used after their time, I am willing to believe; but not that the prehistoric road along the chalk hills could have waded through all that clay to reach it, and have gone out of its way into the bargain.
Thirdly, there is the clinching fact that a number of prehistoric remains, Kit's Coty House and the rest, lie to the north of such a crossing, and that to reach Boxley itself, a site indubitably dependent upon the prehistoric road, a man crossing at Aylesford would have to turn back upon his general direction.
It must further be remembered that by the seventh century some of the valleys had acquired firm roads, inherited from the old civilisation, and that in the rout after a battle, an army making for a tidal river, and not able to choose their own time of crossing (as can a wayfarer), would certainly make for a point as far up the stream as possible and for a bridge.
If Cuxton and Aylesford, then, are to be neglected (as I think they certainly must be), there remain only Lower Hailing and Snodland.
At first sight the weight of argument is for Lower Halling, and if the various parts of such an argument as I adduce have different proportions from those I lend them, one might conclude that at Lower Halling was the original passage of the Medway.
True, there is for the passage at Lower Halling but one evidence that I can discover, but it is an evidence of the greatest weight, and such an one as is often permitted alone to establish a conclusion in archæology. It is this, that there was good surface over the original soil from the Pilgrim's Way on the hills above, right down to the river-bank at this point. No clay intervenes between the chalk and gravel. The primitive traveller would have had fairly dry land all the way down to the river. Even beyond the river the belt of alluvial soil is less broad than it is at Snodland; and altogether, if the geological argument alone were considered, the decision undoubtedly would be given to this place.
The claims of Snodland are asserted by a number of converging arguments. I will enumerate them, and it will, I think, be seen that though each is individually slight, the whole bundle is convincing.
First.—The spur, which leaves the main range of hills for the river (such a spur as has elsewhere, at Shalford, and at Dorking, and at Otford, attracted the Old Road towards the ford it points to), touches indeed both Snodland and Lower Halling on either side, but with this great difference—that Snodland is on the south, Lower Halling upon the north of the ridge. The elevation is not pronounced, the slope is slight, but a little experience of such ground at various seasons will determine one that the southern bank would be chosen under primitive conditions. In such a conformation the southern bank alone has during the winter any chance of drying, and in a dry summer, it matters little whether a slope be partly of clay35 (as is the descent to Snodland) or of chalk (as is that to Lower Halling). During more than half the year, therefore, the descent to Snodland was preferable; during the other half indifferent.
Secondly.—Immediately before and beyond the Lower Halling crossing no antiquities of moment have been discovered: a grave, possibly Roman, is, I believe, the only one. At Snodland, and beyond its crossing, they are numerous. An ancient and ruined chapel marks the descent from the hills. The church itself has Roman tiles. Beyond the river, the Roman villa which was unearthed in 1896 by Mr. Patrick is precisely upon the road that would lead from such a crossing up to the Pilgrim's Way upon the hill. Close by the origin of this lane from the ford to the hillside were discovered the fragments of what some have believed to be a Mithraic temple; and earlier, in 1848, Roman urns and foundations were found near the road at Little Culand.
Thirdly.—The crossing at Snodland is shallower than that at Lower Halling, and (though I do not pretend that the artifice is prehistoric) the bottom has been artificially hardened.
Fourthly.—There stands at Snodland a church, past the southern porch of which goes the road, and when the river is crossed, and the same alignment followed along the bank upon the further side for a little way, the track again passes by a church, and again by its southern porch.
Fifthly.—The 'Horseshoe Reach'—the reach, that is, between Snodland and Burham—has always marked the limit between Rochester's jurisdiction over the lower, and Maidstone's over the upper, Medway. This is of great importance. All our tidal rivers have a sea-town and a land-town; the limits up to which the seaport has control is nearly always the traditional crossing-place of the river. Thus Yarmouth Stone on the Yare divides the jurisdiction of Norwich from that of Yarmouth; it is close to the Reedham Ferry, which has always been the first passage over the river. For London and the Thames we have the best example of all—Staines.
Finally, it is not extravagant to note how the megalithic monument (now fallen) near Trottescliffe, corresponds to Kit's Coty House on the opposite shoulder beyond the valley. The crossing at Snodland would be the natural road between the two.
ROCHESTER
These seven converging lines of proof, or rather of suggestion—seven points which ingenuity or research might easily develop into a greater number—seem to me to settle the discussion in favour of Snodland.36
By that ferry then we crossed. We noted the muddy river, suggestive of the sea, the Medway, which so few miles above suggests, when it brims at high tide, a great inland river. It has hidden reaches whose fields and trees have quite forgotten the sea. We passed by the old church at Burham. We were in a very field of antiquity37 as we went our way, and apart from the stones and fragments it has left, we were surrounded by that great legend which made this place the funeral of the first barbarians.
It was already nearly dark when we came to the place where that old sphinx of three poised monoliths, Kit's Coty House, stands in a field just north of the lane; the old circle of stones, now overthrown, lay below us to the south.
We would not pass Kit's Coty House without going near it to touch it, and to look at it curiously with our own eyes. Though we were very weary, and though it was now all but dark, we trudged over the plough to where it stood; the overwhelming age of the way we had come was gathered up in that hackneyed place.
Whether the name be, or be not, a relic of some Gaelic phrase that should mean 'the grave in the wood,' no one can tell. The wood has at any rate receded, and only covers in patches the height of the hill above; but that repeated suggestion of the immense antiquity of the trail we were pursuing came to us from it again as we hesitated near it, filled us with a permanent interest, and for a moment overcame our fatigue.
When we had struck the high-road some yards beyond, just at the place where the Pilgrims Way leaves it to reach the site where Boxley Abbey once stood, our weakness returned. Not that the distance we had traversed was very great, but that this kind of walking, interrupted by doubts and careful search, and much of it of necessity taken over rough land, had exhausted us more than we knew.
With difficulty, though it was by a fine, great falling road, we made