Between the stations were castella, or mile-castles, about a mile apart. These were sixty feet square, built also on the south side, of solid masonry, about the same height and thickness as the wall itself. In each of these were stationed a company of some twenty men, who were yet further distributed singly in stone turrets, or watch-towers, used as sentry-boxes, of which there were four between each mile-castle, about three hundred and fifty yards apart. The sentries, being within call of each other, could thus keep up a complete system of communication along the line, and, as soon as danger threatened, troops could be concentrated at once on any spot from the stations or camps. Unluckily, none of these turrets remain, though Hodgson says that he saw one opened so lately as 1833, about three hundred yards west of Birdoswald.
Along the northern face of the wall the Romans still further strengthened it by making a ditch below, thirty-six feet wide and fifteen feet deep. It was evidently a dry ditch, as it follows the line of the wall up hill and down dale. In some places the solid rock has been excavated to make it, and occasionally the earth dug from it has been thrown up into a bank on its farther side, thus making a third line of defence. To the south of the stone wall, at a distance perpetually varying from a few yards to half a mile, runs the vallum, or earthwork, consisting, where most perfect, of three ramparts and a fosse. The origin and use of the vallum has also been a moot point among antiquaries. But now there seems little doubt that the vallum was the ancient Roman road running inside the wall. Pavements have been found upon it in various places. At Gilsland, exactly on the spot where the vallum would have to cross the Poltross Burn, the abutment of a Roman bridge has been lately discovered; and the highest authorities are now agreed, from these and many other indications, that this dispute may at last be laid to rest.
Climbing once more into our “heaven chariot,” we bade farewell to Birdoswald and its many memories and drove due west along the line of the wall. For five hundred yards it ran close beside us on the left, about seven feet high and seven feet broad,—the stones in some places untouched since the day the Roman legions laid them one on another, clear cut as when they came out of the quarry. The short turf had clothed the top of the ancient barrier with a fragrant carpet, and in crevices where the cement had weathered away, the honeysuckle found root-hold; a tall purple foxglove reared its proud head as if it were acting sentry to the Border, and the fresh green lady-fern brushed the rugged stones lightly with waving plumes.
After a time the wall grew lower, and finally disappeared. Our road, which had been running straight as a bee-line, rose and swerved a few feet to the left, and we found that we were actually driving along the top of the wall. For nearly five miles we followed it. There it ran as straight as an arrow over every obstacle, with the great green ditch to our right and the great earth-bank beyond it, a type of the resistless determination of the great people who made it. High moorland pastures, reclaimed from the Waste, lay on either side. In some, the sweet hay was being cut, and the buzz of an American mowing-machine brought our wits with a sudden shock out of the by-gone ages where they had been wandering. In others, herds of polled Galloways, the sleek black cattle of the Border, were grazing peacefully, without fear of moss-troopers or cattle-thieves. Here stood a mile-castle,—four rude grass-grown banks marking its outline,—its stones being used to build a little cottage crouching in one corner. There an old lime-kiln, like some troll’s dwelling, broke the endless swell of green and brown. The few cottages at the hamlet of Banks Head looked forlorn and dreary, as if they had been dropped by mistake on the desolate wild. They are all built of stone from the wall, which has proved an invaluable quarry to the whole neighborhood, and, in consequence, has been ruthlessly destroyed. A hideous fashion prevails about here. Most of the houses are whitewashed, the stones round the doors and windows are painted black, and, with their cold gray slate roofs or dilapidated thatch, they but add to the dreary look of this district. It is a dismal land up there on the Waste,—a sad, hard country, with its stone walls and boggy uplands, that must have bred a sad, hard race, one would think. But if one looks beyond the dreariness close at hand, what a wondrous view stretches away all round! East, are the greenish swells and conical crests of the Northumberland Fells; south, lie Tindale, Talkin, and Castle Carrock Fells across the valley of the Irthing, which is marked by a line of wood, and beyond them rise the noble group of Lake mountains. Helvellyn and the two giants Saddleback and Skiddaw, looming up veiled in mystery and golden haze; northward, the line of the Cheviot Hills shows that we are looking right into Scotland; westward, across the fertile plain, where park and pasture, river and forest, are bathed in sunshine, Criffel rears his head above Melrose Abbey; and there, right under the western sun, gleams a line of silver in the flat, extremest distance,—the Solway Firth.
It was with the feeling of parting from a friend that we bade adieu to the Roman Wall and turned downward from the bleak moorland into the rich vegetation of the valley. The glamour of the Roman period had laid hold upon us. We longed to follow up the course of this great barrier, to know more of its builders, of their lives, their works, their history, than we had ever done before. This monument of their almost superhuman power must awaken some kind of enthusiasm in the dullest mind, and one can echo Sir Walter Scott’s words in “Guy Mannering:” “And this, then, is the Roman Wall. What a people, whose labors even at this extremity of their empire comprehended such space, and were executed upon a scale of such grandeur! In future ages, when the science of war shall have changed, how few traces will exist of the labors of Vauban and Coehorn, while this wonderful people’s remains will even then continue to interest and astonish posterity! Their fortifications, their aqueducts, their theatres, their fountains, all their public works, bear the grave, solid, and majestic character of their language; while our modern labors, like our modern tongues, seem but constructed out of their fragments.”
ENGLISH RURAL SCENERY.
SARAH B. WISTER.
[For a country rich in its verdant beauty and perfect in its grooming, England is unsurpassed. While containing little of the grand, it has much of the charming, and is abundantly calculated to rest the eyes of the sight-weary traveller. We append an enthusiastic description of this garden-land from an American visitor.]
When we got into the country we grudged the time we had spent in London. The true English landscape has a great and peculiar charm until the stranger learns its secret and wearies of its sameness. Never shall I forget the journey from Southampton to London on the day we landed. Something must be allowed for the delight of eyes that had been looking over endless ridges of sea-waves to the blank horizon for so long; but what a blushing, smiling land it was that greeted them! The verdure was the first thing that struck us,—very different from ours. There is more blue and less yellow in it, resting and refreshing the eyes with a cooler, deeper tone; the trees are denser in foliage too, and fuller in form; the whole scene had a boskiness and boweriness due to innumerable hedges, orchards, shrubberies, and plantations. Woodland, strictly speaking, there was none,—only here and there little triangular bits, not an acre in extent, for game-covers, or lines of tall feathery elms with bushy heads along the hedgerows, clipped close that they might not shut out the scanty sunshine from the farmer’s field. The hawthorn was covered with its pink-and-white blossoms, May as they call it; acres of the gently-rolling country were crimson with Dutch clover; the laburnum, a small, graceful tree, was full of drooping strings of delicate yellow flowers; the banks were ablaze with scarlet poppies and golden broom.