Camps in Dkyfe. 29 



Lochbank. near Locluiiabeu sUtiuii, and it is iu the same state of 

 jiieservatio'i. Its ramparts cair be but little altered from the time 

 ill Avhich it ceased to be occupied. 



I left the camp and clump of trees at the soutli edge. Here 

 the groiiml ceases to rise, and becomes a flat tableland, and the 

 view it gives commands the i^lain beneath. I now walked due 

 south over the field for another clump of fir-trees about two hundred 

 yards away. In its centre I found traces, but not very marked, of 

 tlie fort given in the Ordnance map. It is very much smaller in 

 size than the camp I had left, but some of the trees on its site had 

 fallen, and may conceal much of what yet remains of it. The 

 trees, too, are dense, and gloom reigned beneath them. As 1 came 

 out of them, at the .south edge of the clump. I found I was close 

 upon the farm-house of Castlehil!. The good people of the housi; 

 were going about the stack-yard, and they readily shewed me the 

 wood in which the camp I had still to visit was to be found. It 

 was about five hundred yards due east from Castlehill. On the 

 way I crossed an old unmacadamised road, that I afterwards dis- 

 covered connected itself with a road tliat in two miles' walk led 

 straight into Lockei'bie. It is the road I should have taken had I 

 come from Lockerbie. 



The camp 1 was seeking I found, like the one I first visited, 

 to be upon a hill side, and to be in a similar condition of excellent 

 preservation. The ramjiarts (inner and outer) and the ditch were 

 tliere, and the size, too, was much the same, only instead of a circle 

 its form was that of a somewhat elongated ellipse. It was also 

 enclosed from the surrounding field by a thorn hedge, and the trees 

 were close together, and shut out the rays of the sun, and gave the 

 whole a wild and Aveird-like look, as I walked round upon its 

 ramparts and through its centre. The long ends of the elli2)se are 

 north and south. On its east side the hill slopes down into the valley, 

 and the rampart looks high and more formidable to scale than on 

 the other sides of the fort, and the stones, of which it seems mainly 

 formed, are easily seen. The ground outside of the enclosing hedge 

 has been all under the plough, which may have obliterated other 

 outworks, did they ever exist ; but I came away with a deep im- 

 pression that time had made little change upon the camp or fort 

 as a whole. 



On Monday, 23rd September, I again set out upon my travels. 

 I mention the time because, at the close of my journey. I found I 



