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traversing the" modern kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemburg, and 

 crossing the duchies of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Cassel, and 

 Nassau, entered what is now Rhenish Prussia, and terminated on the 

 Rhine. It generally passed over high ground and through thinly inha- 

 bited districts, and was conducted along the water-shed. Without this 

 last arrangement it would have been subject to rapid destruction by the 

 action of water collecting on one side of it, and always tending to under- 

 mine or to overflow it, so as to produce in it continually increasing rents. 

 The wall of Antoninus, which joined the Friths of Forth and Clyde in 

 Scotland, did not pass along the water-shed ; but provision was made for 

 its preservation by means of stone conduits passing underneath it so as 

 to carry off the accumulated waters. 



As the German Wall commonly passed through forests, it was obvi- 

 ously necessary to cut down the forest for the space of from fifty to one 

 hundred feet on each side of it. The timber thus obtained, besides 

 supplying abundance of fuel, furnished materials for erecting palisades, 

 bridges, towers, and other edifices. These erections have disappeared, 

 and the forest has resumed its dominion over the cleared space. But 

 the earthen mound, or vallum, with its foss, is conspicuous through 

 long tracts, and is commonly found to pass in straight lines, not only 

 over the level ground, but up and down steep declivities. When it 

 changes its direction it usually turns, not in a curve, but in an angle. 

 Agreeably to the account given by an ancient Latin writer, it is found 

 that the wall was fortified by watch-towers, placed about a Roman mile 

 (mille passus) from one another. The foundations of these are dis- 

 covered in many places on removing the sod. They were occupied by a 

 few soldiers placed in each, whose duty it was to look out, and, if any 

 incursion was made, to give the alarm by blowing a trumpet, waving a 

 torch, or raising a column of smoke. Thus information of the appre- 

 hended attack was rapidly communicated along the line, and was also sent, 

 from certain points, along the military roads to the larger camps and the 

 cities. Thus the so-called *' Pfahl-graben," or ♦' Palisade-ditch," was to 

 a considerable degree effective as a defence. But its chief design was to 

 mark the boundary of the Roman Empire, and to show where the tem- 

 tory still left in possession of the Germans commenced. The palisade, 

 which bristled over the whole length of the mound, from the Danube to 

 the Rhine, must also have served to prevent the straying of cattle and 

 of game, and thus to dry up the sources of innumerable misunderstand- 

 ings and quarrels.* 



* Mr. J. Yates' account of this structure appeared in full in the Arehetological Journal. 



