The Pageant of the Road.--Canterbury Pilgrims.--Henry II. barefoot.--Choosing the Road.--Wind on the Hill.--Wine in the Valley.--_Pilgrim's Progress._--Shalford Fair.--A doubtful Mile.--Trespassers will be Prosecuted.--With Chaucer from the Tabard.East and west through the county of Surrey runs the chalk ridge of theNorth Downs, the great highway of Southern England from the Straits ofDover to Salisbury Plain. Of all English roads, it has carried thelongest pageant. It saw the beginnings of English history; for fourcenturies it was one of the best known highways in Christendom: thevision from its windy heights is one of the widest and most gracious ofall visions of woods and fields and hills. By the trackway they madeupon the ridge came the worshippers to Stonehenge; Phoenician tradersbrought bronze to barter for British tin, and the tin was carried iningots from Devon and Cornwall along the highway to the port of Thanet;Greeks and Gauls came for lead and tin and furs, and the merchants rodeby the great Way to bring them. When Cæsar swept through Surrey on hissecond landing, his legions marched over the Way before he turned northto the Thames. When the Conqueror drove fire and sword through SouthernEngland, he went down to Winchester by the chalk ridge; and when thegreat lords under the Conqueror and Rufus, Richard de Tonebrige andWilliam de Warenne, built their rival castles, they built them tocommand the highway; so did Henry of Blois build his castle at Farnham;and so was Guildford Castle built. Of warfare later than Norman days,the Way saw nearly all that went through Surrey. Simon de Montfort andhis barons rode fast by the ridge the year before Lewes; they lay atReading on the twenty-ninth of June, and on the first of July atReigate. In the wars of the Parliament, Farnham west of the Way saw thesiege of an hour; Lord Holland led his little band from Dorking toReigate and fled back again. Last of the echoes of Stuart battles,Monmouth, after Sedgmoor, was driven through Farnham to lodge for onenight of misery and fear at Abbot's Hospital in Guildford.But the Way has another meaning and other memories. It is as thePilgrims' Way that it is best known, and as the Pilgrims' Way that ithas been written about and tracked and traced and surrounded with legendand story and the haunting melancholy of an old road once used and nowhalf forgotten. The Pilgrims' Way is more than the old Way, for it runsby more than one road. The old Way took its followers along the ridge orjust under it, high in the sun and wind where the traders and fighterscould see their route clear above the thick woods of the Weald. ThePilgrims' Way lies as often on the low ground as on the hill. But itfollows the line of the chalk ridge, and the parallel roads, though hereand there it would be difficult to choose between them as to which wasmost used by travellers, have become vaguely named the Pilgrims' Way,and as the Pilgrims' Way they remain.[Illustration: _Along the Chalk Ridge.--Leith Hill in the Distance._]The Way became the Pilgrims' Way in 1174, four years after Thomas àBecket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. His tomb in the Cathedralbecame the second shrine in Christendom, and pilgrims came to it along --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.