Over a wide extent of desolated land, beautiful in its general outline, where the eye could not penetrate to details, looked the prospect. The round gently-swelling Sussex downs rose on the southern horizon, guarding the sea, while around them were once cultivated fields which the foe had reaped, while quick streams wound in between the gentle elevations, crowned with wood, and here and there the mere spread its lake-like form. The sun was now sinking behind the huge rounded forms of some chalk hills in the west, when the camp became gradually illuminated by the light of numberless fires, whereat oxen were roasted whole, and partridges and hares by the dozen, for the Danes were voracious in their appetites.