These hills were rocky and bleak enough towards their
summit; lower down they were clothed with tangled
copsewood and green depths of fern, out of which a gray
giant of an ancient forest-tree would tower here and
there, throwing up its ghastly white branches, as if in
imprecation, to the sky. These trees, they told me, were
the remnants of that forest which existed in the days of
the Heptarchy, and were even then noted as landmarks.