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The contrast was very vivid indeed along the line from Dover to London
at that time. For a space they traversed just such a country-side as he
had known since his childhood, the small oblongs of field, hedge-lined,
of a size for pigmy horses to plough, the little roads three cart-widths
wide, the elms and oaks and poplars dotting these fields about, little
thickets of willow beside the streams; ricks of hay no higher than a
giant's knees, dolls' cottages with diamond panes, brickfields, and
straggling village streets, the larger houses of the petty great,
flower-grown railway banks, garden-set stations, and all the little
things of the vanished nineteenth century still holding out against
Immensity. Here and there would be a patch of wind-sown, wind-tattered
giant thistle defying the axe; here and there a ten-foot puff-ball or
the ashen stems of some burnt-out patch of monster grass; but that was
all there was to hint at the coming of the Food.
For a couple of score of miles there was nothing else to foreshadow in
any way the strange bigness of the wheat and of the weeds that were
hidden from him not a dozen miles from his route just over the hills in
the Cheasing Eyebright valley. And then presently the traces of the Food
would begin. The first striking thing was the great new viaduct at
Tonbridge, where the swamp of the choked Medway (due to a giant variety
of Chara) began in those days. Then again the little country, and
then, as the petty multitudinous immensity of London spread out under
its haze, the traces of man's fight to keep out greatness became
abundant and incessant.
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