Not the least of the attractions of the park is Virginia Water, with its
bright and beautiful expanse, its cincture of green banks, soft and
smooth as velvet, its screen of noble woods, its Chinese fishing-temple,
its frigates, its ruins, its cascade, cave, and Druidical temple, its obelisk
and bridges, with numberless beauties besides, which it would be
superfluous to describe here. This artificial mere covers pretty nearly
the same surface of ground as that occupied by the great lake of olden
times.
Windsor forest once comprehended a circumference of a hundred and
twenty miles, and comprised part of Buckinghamshire, a considerable
portion of Surrey, and the whole south-east side of Berkshire, as far as
Hungerford. On the Surrey side it included Chobham and Chertsey, and
extended along the side of the Wey, which marked its limits as far as
Guildford. In the reign of James the First, when it was surveyed by
Norden, its circuit was estimated at seventy-seven miles and a half,
exclusive of the liberties extending into Buckinghamshire. There were
fifteen walks within it, each under the charge of a head keeper, and the
whole contained upwards of three thousand head of deer.
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