On the Excavations at Rotherley, Woodcuts, and Bokerly Dyke. 295 
very probably have originally been forest, most of the low-lying 
valleys having, in all probability, been forest in those days. The 
White Sheet Hill is a high tract of down land running east and 
west, and must always have been open and accessible to an invading 
army coming from the east. If these detached works that I have 
last mentioned ever formed part of a general system for the defence 
of the country, in association with Bokerly, the line must have 
extended for nine miles, from Martin Wood on the right to the 
termination of the dyke at White Sheet Hill on the left, the gaps 
between the several lines having been occupied by forest. I base 
this conjecture chiefly on the fact that the ditches of all of them are 
on the east side, and that they were, consequently, thrown up with 
a view to an attack from that quarter. If they were isolated and 
independent entrenchments why should they all face the same 
direction ? 
I have read with attention all the writings that were accessible 
to me upon the obscure periods of history to which these entrench- 
ments may have belonged. Some are by scholars of great ability, 
who would not have failed to bring to light evidence relating to 
them if it was to be found in the ancient chronicles and the works 
of the ancient authors. But these writings serve chiefly to convince 
the reader that nothing definite is to be expected from such sources. 
It is not known where the Belge landed, or where Vespasian 
landed and fought, or where Cerdices Ora was, or where Mons 
Badonicus was. I observe that two recent writers have proposed to 
shuffle the whole of the ancient names of places and shift them from 
their traditional localities. I have read with interest, but without 
conviction, the imaginary campaign of Vespasian by one writer in 
the West of England, and its final achievement in the hands of 
another writer, in the great British Metropolis at the Pen Pits, 
which turn out, on investigation, to be an ancient stone quarry ; 
and whilst I am fully alive to the importance of studying all the 
passages in ancient writings which have any bearing on the subject, 
by competent scholars, I must confess that the evidence that can be 
derived from them appears to be of the weakest possible description. 
I am impressed rather with the value of an observation, made by 
