30 Cami- in Lolhmaben. 



could not have chosen better. The ground was dry — a great matter 

 for a traveller on foot — and the fields were clear. The liarvest was 

 everywhere over. The object of my pilgrimage was to find what 

 the six-inches-to-a-mile Ordnance map styles a supposed Roman 

 camp, and a fort at the north end of the parish of Lochmaben, not 

 far from the village of Templand. 



I took the road from Lochmaben that crosses the railway at the 

 station, and runs north north-east for a mile and a quarter, until it 

 reaches the bridge over the Kinnel, a chief tributary of the Annan. 

 Here I turned off eastwards, and took the I'oad to Nethercleugh. In 

 half a mile's Avalk I came to a gate that opens into an old road 

 that leads north Jiorth-west to a stone c[uarry no longer wrought. 

 This old road I followed, and in ten minutes' walk I came upon 

 the camp in a piece of flat, rough-looking pasture. It was close to 

 the road, and beyond it was the old quarry. It was altogether 

 different from the forts I had visited during the past week. It 

 was square, with a rampart about three to four feet in height, and 

 a ditch in which water lay and reeds were growing. Outside of 

 the ditch was another rampart. The entrance and the road into 

 the camp over the ditch were as marked as the camp itself. The 

 whole had a remarkable likeness to the Roman camps at Birrens- 

 wark, but in miniature. I walked alougthe ridge of the four sides 

 of the outer rampart, and found each of the sides to be about sixty 

 paces in length. The sides of the inner rampart were about fifty. 

 There are no traces of any ditch or rampart beyond the outer 

 rampart. As the workings of the old quarry are close to tlie camp, 

 it is iiossible that, if they ever existed, they may have been ploughed 

 down. The ground, however, about the camp looks as if it had 

 never been turned up, and the ramparts are as if unchanged 

 since the palisades that bristled on their ridges were destroyed 

 many centuries ago. 



From the camp I went north along the old road, and in five 

 minutes' walk I was upon the road that connects Templand with the 

 Nethercleugh station, on the Caledonian railway. A large planta- 

 tion of trees lines the north side of this road for nearly half a mile. 

 At the end of this plantation, in the corner, not far from the road, 

 and on a knoll that commands the view southwards, was the fort I 

 was in search of. It is, perhaps, thirty feet higher than the road, 

 but the brackens were, in their luxuriance, breast high, as I 

 climbed up tu it. and tried to walk aljout it, and prevented nic 



