WORLE CAMP. 85 
Romans. Now the cartilage between two of the lumbar 
vertebr& of one of the skeletons discovered, (evidently not 
of anaged person,) is ossified, which I am informed could 
hardly have been caused in a person of no great age, 
except by toil so severe and constant, as to render it 
probable that it is the skeleton of one who worked under 
the lash of a task-master. In the south rampart, there is 
an evident appearance of a breach, and at no great distance 
from it these skeletons were discovered. It seems therefore 
to me not improbable, that some of the unhappy Romano- 
Britons, in the year 577, took refuge in this stronghold, 
and that the corn and pigs may have been part of their 
slender stock of provisions ; that the place was taken by 
storm, and that in the desperate contest which ensued, some 
of the slain fell into the open holes which marked the sites 
of the primitive huts, and their bones being in some degree 
sheltered from the weather, have been preserved to the 
present time, while those left upon the surface have yielded 
to decomposition and entirely disappeared, that in the 
lapse of twelve hundred years, the holes have, partly by 
accident, and partly by design, (when in later days the hill 
became a sheep walk,) been filled up with earth and stones, 
till the only vestiges remaining of them, are the low cir- 
cular mounds and slight depressions which are found in 
such numbers within the area of the fortified town, a few 
of which have now for the first time been explored. 
