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what is now Laneashire and Yorkshire. To him we attribute 
many of the forts to be found in our neighbourhood. He 
conquered the country lying between the Humber and the Tyne— 
the lower isthmus of Britain. Agricola, before being recalled to 
Rome, had marched as far north as the Firth of Tay. The 
southern portion of Caledonia resisted the Roman rule, so that 
when we come to the reign of the Antonines we find a state of 
affairs in the northern portion of Britain which, continuing 
through the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, readily explains the 
motive for the fortifications of Trajan’s successor. Hadrian 
came to the Imperial throne A.D,117, and reigned 21 years. 
He employed the peaceful years of his reign in developing the 
resources of the various provinces of the empire. He conceived 
and lived to see partly executed the great fortifications of the 
empire, which preserved it through many generations of evil 
days and kept back the tide of barbarism for two centuries. 
Hadrian’s life was a perpetual journey, there was not a province of 
the wide dominions of Rome which he did not visit. He possessed 
the various talents of the soldier, the statesman, and the scholar. 
To him, in all probability, belongs the renown of raising on 
the isthmus, 70 miles long, which is crossed by the Tyne and 
the Irthing, the works of the Vallum Hadriani, the subject of the 
paper. 
The legionaries of Rome were composed of men from every 
race in the Roman dominions. The remains found along the 
line of Hadrian’s Wall show that the cohorts stationed in the 
camps in the north of England comprised Tungrians and 
Batavians, Gauls and Spaniards, Dacians and Dalmatians—in 
short, soldiers of almost all the nations of the empire, conquered 
and disciplined by the genius of the Roman arms. Under 
Hadrian’s direction and in his presence, in the year 119, the 
building of the wall was begun. Across the isthmus is a chain 
of heights, sloping to the north. Hadrian made full use of this 
great natural barrier. The fortification consisted of three parts. 
The first obstacle the assailant had to encounter was the fosse. 
The average breadth of this was 12 yards and the depth 5 yards. 
To-day this fosse may be followed almost from sea to sea. 
Where a natural cliff presents an impregnable front to the north 
the fosse is omitted. In other places the materials of the fosse 
(consisting sometimes of limestone, basalt or whinstone) were 
thrown up on the northern edge, forming an additional parapet. 
Behind the fosse was the great stone murus. This was probably 
about 18 feet high and the average width was 8 feet. On the 
south, at distances from the wall varying with the character of 
the country, ran an earthen wall or vallum, ‘This consisted of 
two main ramparts about 24 feet apart with a fosse between. 
On the south side of the ditch was a smaller rampart or agger. 
