Then we inquired hither and thither, at various livery-stables, for a
conveyance to Stonehenge, and at last took a fly from the Lamb Hotel.
The drive was over a turnpike for the first seven miles, over a bare,
ridgy country, showing little to interest us. We passed a party of seven
or eight men, in a coarse uniform dress, resembling that worn by convicts
and apparently under the guardianship of a stout, authoritative, yet
rather kindly-looking man with a cane. Our driver said that they were
lunatics from a neighboring asylum, out for a walk.
Seven miles from Salisbury, we turned aside from the turnpike, and drove
two miles across Salisbury Plain, which is an apparently boundless extent
of unenclosed land, treeless and houseless. It is not exactly a plain,
but a green sea of long and gentle swells and subsidences, affording
views of miles upon miles to a very far horizon. We passed large flocks
of sheep, with the shepherds watching them; but the dogs seemed to take
most of the care of the flocks upon their own shoulders, and would
scamper to turn the sheep when they inclined to stray whither they should
not; and then arose a thousand-fold bleating, not unpleasant to the ear;
for it did not apparently indicate any fear or discomfort on the part of
the flock.
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