116 
Legion, but the evidences here were not more satisfactory than in 
the previous suggestions and could not be accepted. There is no- 
evidence of any change of plan or that Bath was ever either a 
camp or a military station. A small guard it may be assumed! 
would be there, and soldiers as well as strangers came there as- 
invalids and died there, leaving in the form of altar or grave 
stone or otherwise, some token or record for us to discover. 
When thus considering the origin of the outline of the city, 
the mind’s eye must be cleared entirely of all present surroundings, 
of every building and street now familiar, and the spot pictured 
as a void neglected marsh, over or through which flowed the 
water from many cold springs as well as the water from the hot 
ones, forming a bog filled with reeds or rushes extending down to 
the river side. The Romans as new comers having first protected 
and enclosed the hot springs would proceed to lay out and wall 
in their new possession. Like an earlier people, they “ walled in 
the town for their habitation and had the suburbs for their cattle 
and for their goods and for all their beasts.” Taking the lower 
part of the site, many places along it must have been found too 
marshy and too wet to bear a heavy wall, thus the outline was 
determined here by the suitableness or firmness of the ground. 
Guidott* mentions that when digging some foundations in the 
south west and north west of the city, the workmen came toa 
soft yielding mud through which on being probed no bottom 
could be discovered. This was under some yards of gravel 
supposed to have been laid down by the Romans to make a firm 
surface. The northern line of wall, where the ground was dry 
and firm, is straight enough after the expected and usual manner. 
Mr. Scarth in his book “ Aquz Solis,” p. 108, treating of the 
Roman roads near Bath makes a statement which is certainly 
startling. He says, “after uniting at Batheaston with the road 
from Silchester, the Fosse road passed along Walcot and is then 
* “Discourse dc., 1676,” p. 100, 
