We now leave the river, and turn inland; and in a short time
we have entered the Forest of Dean proper; that is, the lands
that belong to the Crown. Their area may be roughly set down
as fifteen miles by ten; but in the time of the Conqueror,
and for many years after, it was much larger; extending from
Ross on the north, to Gloucester on the east, and thence thirty
miles to Chepstow on the south-west. That is, it filled the
triangle formed by the Severn and the Wye between these towns.
It is doubtless due to this circumstance of its being so completely
cut off from the rest of the country by these rivers that
it has preserved more remarkably than any other Forest, the
characteristics and customs of ancient British life, to which
we shall presently refer; for their isolation has kept the
Dean Foresters to this hour a race apart.
Sir James Campbell, who was for between thirty and forty years
the chief "Verderer," or principal government officer of the
Forest, lives near Lydney. He received us with great kindness,
and gave us statistics of the rate of grown of the oak, both
with and without transplantation.
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