Keeping as close as may be to the stream, the way leads by a lovely beechen avenue through Briken Wood to issue on the road to Bank, prettiest of suburbs, where the houses stand in an irregular row on the top of a tableland, looking northwards to more woods. But if we cross the road and continue to follow Highland Water, climbing through the woods again, we reach a curious and interesting little bridge, the rough foundations of which, showing at the sides, are said to be Roman work. Leaving the brook at this point, a seductive track will presently emerge in a grove fitly named "The Cathedral". The exceeding loftiness of the beech trees, their noble grouping, and the clear space beneath, have the solemn impressiveness of the aisle of some great sanctuary.
Even to name all the woods that stand round about Lyndhurst, reaching to Burley and Hinchelsey on the one side, to Denny and Ladycross on the other, and northward to Malwood, would exceed the measure of this little book; to describe one-half the beauty would outrun all bounds. For you cannot say that when you have seen one wood you have seen all; each has its own special character, its own individual claim on our affections. Were you dropped out of the skies into the midst of one, you could never confuse Mark Ash with Burley Old Wood, Setthorns with Queen's Bower, nor any one of them with Wood Fidley. This last had always been to me a kind of mythical land--the place where they brewed the rain--for in these parts when a cold torrent lashes our eastern windows, we remark, as we throw a fresh peat on the fire, "It is a Wood Fidley rain; it will last all to-day and all to-morrow". So one day I resolved to go and find it. Being the arid summer of 1911, I need hardly say they were not brewing any that day. Golden sunshine bathed the slopes, planted with Scotch fir, all irregular in chance groups or singly, mingled with silver birch, and it made a harmony in gold and silver and bronze, for the bracken was turning already.
It seems a pity that most of those who come from afar should see the New Forest under its least gracious aspect. Unluckily the holiday time is late summer, just when the full, heavy leafage takes on its most monotonous green, dim and jaded after a dry season, gloomy in a wet one; when flowers are few and birds are silent. In October the early frosts will light up the woods with a rich medley of hues, ending in the exquisite tracery of bare boughs. November has its special beauty when the blue mists lurk in the depth of woodland ways, when the wet bracken glows like a peat fire, and toadstools of weird and wondrous colours adorn the damp wayside. And lovely are the rare days when the moor lies sheeted with snow, and every spray is set with diamonds. Presently in February comes a moment when a purple flush, like the bloom on a ripe plum, steals over the massed woodland, though yet no green leaf shows, and we know that life begins to stir. On the sheltered banks snowdrops are piercing the dark mould, and soon the early primroses peep out under last year's dead leaves, and daffodils toss their golden heads in the pasture. So the unfolding goes on till the "brief twenty days" of Faber's poem, when every tree is clad in its own fresh raiment, no two alike, and scattered snow of bird cherry or sloe and rosy flush of crab-apple lights up the dark thickets. Now the primroses are poured out with a lavish hand, and the green glades are turned into rivers of blue where the tall wild hyacinths stand massed together in a sheet of amethyst and sapphire mingled; for their changeful hue has the blue of mountains rather than of sky. But the glory of spring flowers belongs to the coppices about Brockenhurst and Beaulieu; Lyndhurst's proud woods have none.