Contentum tellus quem Rutupina tegit. Auson.
South of Sandwich, as we go along upon the sea-shore, are six large and broad Celtic tumuli, equidistant: the second from the town has been dug away, to raise a little fort upon the road: they all stand in a line east and west.[116] This flat coast is fenced against the ocean by the sand-downs, which in Lincolnshire we call meals: but within the memory of man, as they told me, the sea has commenced a new method of guarding against its own violence, by covering the shore, for a great depth and height, with the pebbles afore mentioned; which is an odd mutation in nature; and it is observable that these pebbles come from the south. I rode from Sandwich as far as Hithe, upon the brink of the shore or cliff, in sight of France all the way; and nothing could be more entertaining in this autumnal season, when the weather is generally clear, serene and calm. Much sea tithymal grows here, and a very pretty plant, papaver cornutum flore luteo, rock samphire feeding upon petroleum, a most excellent pickle, and many more.[117] The murmur of the ocean has a noble solemnity in it, as Homer says, when latinised,
Eructante salo raucam dant littora vocem.
More copiously expressed in Virgil,
Et gemitum ingentem pelagi, pulsataque saxa,
Audimus longe, fractasque ad littora voces.
Exsultantque vada atque æstu miscentur arenæ.Æn. iii.
which is an exact idea of this place. By listening attentively I observed this noise of the ocean is by fits, at short but equal intervals; which I believe gave occasion to that fancy of the ancients, that every tenth wave was the largest; of which Ovid has a distich.
Sandown castle is composed of four lunettes of very thick arched work of stone, with many port-holes for great guns: in the middle is a great round tower, with a cistern at top; underneath an arched cavern, bomb-proof: a foss incompasses the whole, to which there is a passage over a draw-bridge. Deal castle and Walmer castle are of the same nature, all built by Harry VIII. to guard this naked level coast: moreover, lines are drawn along between castle and castle, and at proper intervals round bastions with a ditch and parapet of earth, where cannon may be planted, as in the infancy of fortification. These are what Camden calls Rome’s works, and fancies to be remnants of Cæsar’s ship-camp: the neighbours with as little truth affirm they were thrown up by Oliver Cromwell, for reduction of these castles: one is close by the north side of Deal, and two between Deal castle and Walmer castle. At Walmer castle the cliff begins for about half a mile southward with a gentle rise to a hill, whereon is a tumulus: then the shore is plain again in a valley till you come to Kings-wold, which is half a mile’s space. TAB. XXXVII. 2nd Vol.Between Walmer castle and Deal I take to be the spot where Cæsar landed in his first expedition, because it is the first place where the shore can be ascended north of Dover, and exactly answers his assigned distance of eight miles: probably in his second expedition, when he came with many more ships, and had a perfect knowledge of the country, he went a little farther in the downs, whereabouts now is Deal, a town lately sprung up from the mariners. As for his sea-camps, it is vain to expect a sight of them; they are many ages since absorpt by the ocean, which has so long been exercising its power, and wasting the land away. Even since Harry the VIIIth’s time it has carried off the sea-ward esplanades of the three castles, and one half of two of the three circular forts. Indeed, of late years, the providential ejectment of those pebbles has put a stop to it in some measure; and it is amazing to see how it by degrees fills up these fosses and trenches, and sometimes flies over the banks a good way up into the land, with a power well expressed by the poet,
Aut vaga cum Tethys Rutupinaque littora fervent.Lucan. vi.