ROSE G. KINGSLEY.
[On the borders of Cumberland, at the northern boundary of Roman occupation of England, a wall of defence against the barbarians of Scotland was built, and manned by sturdy legions. This wall still exists, and its present condition is described below.]
Half an hour’s drive brought us to the farm-house at Birdoswald, and here the real interest of our expedition began. We were now on the Roman Wall; and, except Borcovicus or Housteads, near the Northumberland lakes, Birdoswald is the most perfect station along its line. It is supposed to be the Roman Ambloganna, which was garrisoned by a strong force of Dacians from Wallachia and Moldavia. The camp is five and a half acres in extent. The eastern gate-way is in very perfect preservation, the large blocks on each side of the double portal being in their original position and still containing the pivot-holes. The arch above the gate-way is gone; but some of the stones which formed it lie strewn about. Close to the gate are the ruins of a guard-house, and a portion of the boundary-wall, six feet in breadth. The western and southern gate-ways and walls are all well preserved, the walls having five or six courses of facing-stones, and being seven to eight feet thick.
In the farm-house the buxom farmer’s wife showed us an ancient arch in the wall of the passage, under which lay a collection of curiosities found from time to time about the camp,—a beautiful stone figure with flowing drapery, small stone altars, such as the soldiers used in their private devotions, and so forth. Outside, pinks, lilies, and roses were filling the air with their perfume, as we made our way through the little garden to the green field where stood the camp. We wandered about round the low stone walls, through the gate-way, where we saw the actual marks of the chariot-wheels on the pavement,—two ruts in the stone. We looked into the remains of the guard-house, where the sweet thyme and delicate clover now creep over stones against which Dacian warriors rested their heavy heads. We tried to trace out the course of streets, temples, and barracks among the grass-grown heaps in front of the farm-garden; and then I went out to the brow of the hill to see what was there.
What a surprise! The green field fell away abruptly in a great cliff, and down below the Irthing foamed over its stony bed, twisting and winding in sinuous curves of silver along the narrow valley, among wooded slopes and rocky crags. Green ridge and brown fell in endless succession led the eye away into the far distance, where Skiddaw loomed up in the south.
The late Lord Carlisle, in his “Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters,” compares this view to the first sight of Troy after crossing the tame low plain of the Troad. It was certainly a grand point of vantage which, with their usual wisdom, the Romans pitched upon. The one thing one does not see at first is, where they got their water; and this was always one of the first points they considered in choosing a site. The river is too far off, and no spring now appears inside the camp. Last year my friends showed Birdoswald to the learned head-master of one of our most famous public schools. The absence of water puzzled the wise man not a little, and he asked one of the farm maidens who was showing the party round if she knew where the spring had been. She professed entire ignorance; but another lassie standing by reminded her in broad Cumbrian, “It’s where t’ goose laid her eggs last soummer.” We soon found it out to our cost, as, thanks to the rainy season, the ancient Roman well had formed a little quagmire hidden in long grass, into which we plunged unwittingly and came out with wet boots.
The Roman Wall adapts itself to the northern rampart of the camp, or fort, and runs close to the road for some five hundred yards westward from the farm-house. This wall—seventy-five miles long—has been the subject of many antiquarian discussions, with which we need not meddle. Those, however, who have gone most thoroughly into the subject now agree that it was erected by the renowned emperor Hadrian, when he came to Britain, in the year 119. The inscribed slabs and altars found at the stations and castles on the line of the wall are undoubtedly of his reign; so are most of the coins that are found with them; and from this fact it appears that the Roman legions received their pay at the wall in his reign.
The conception of this stupendous barrier is singularly simple and effective. The wall, though varying a little in width, according to the nature of the ground it traversed, was about eight feet broad and fourteen feet high. The north side was further crowned by a parapet of four feet, making the total height eighteen feet. The outside stones were regularly-shaped and well-dressed freestone, fifteen to twenty inches long, ten inches broad, and eight inches thick. So well were they cut that one can detect them in an instant in any cottage-wall, from their smooth, finely-chiselled face as compared with the coarser dressing of modern stones. Most of them have a wedge shape, tapering towards the end which is set into the wall. Dr. Bruce thinks that stones of this shape would have been conveniently carried on the backs of “the poor enslaved Britons.” The present dwellers along the wall say that they were all brought in an old woman’s apron and the wall built in one night. Mr. Jenkinson, on the contrary, in his charming and learned guide-book to Carlisle and the Roman Wall, thinks “both these modes of conveyance are too romantic for the practical Romans, who were not unacquainted with horses and carts.”
The inside part of the wall consists of rubble-stone, like that found in the massive walls of Cæsar’s Tower at Kenilworth and many other old castles. The stones, evidently picked up on the spot, while the dressed stone for the wall was brought in many instances from a great distance, were cemented together as hard as a rock by pouring fresh lime mixed with sand and gravel upon them.
Every four miles along the wall there was a fortified camp or station, like that at Birdoswald, each capable of containing from six hundred to one thousand foot- or horse-soldiers, as the case might be. “They were generally,” says Mr. Jenkinson, “close to the wall, on the southern side, and appear from the remains existing to have formed almost a square, containing three to six acres, surrounded by high thick walls, provided with four gate-ways, and laid out in streets, barracks, temples, baths, etc., some of the buildings having massive and occasionally beautifully-sculptured stones. Outside these stations are heaps of grass-grown rubbish, from which it is inferred that there also existed suburbs, where dwelt natives and camp-followers.”