We are treading on heroes.

It is sacred ground for Englishmen--more sacred than all but one or two fields where their bones lie whitening.

For this is the actual place where our Alfred won his great battle, the battle of Ashdown ("Aescendum" in the chroniclers), which broke the Danish power, and made England a Christian land.

The Danes held the camp and the slope where we are standing--the whole crown of the hill, in fact.

"The heathen had beforehand seized the higher ground," as old Asser says, having wasted everything behind them from London, and being just ready to burst down on the fair Vale, Alfred's own birthplace and heritage.