34 PAPERS, ETC. 
and fearless barbarians. Its slight and simple, though 
regular entrenchment, displaying a marked and striking 
contrast to the complicated system of mounds and trenches 
with which the Britons fortified their more important 
strongholds. The Britons, on the contrary, appear always 
to have occupied the highest ground, frequently an isolated 
hill, which they surrounded with a series of deep trenches, 
generally following the natural form of the ground, and 
often so irregular in plan as to defy all attempts to find 
out their original design. But though thus irregular, their 
fortifications, on close inspection, will not be found deficient 
in a sort of rude science. Every inequality of the ground 
seems to have been taken advantage of ; outworks flanking 
the entrances may very frequently be traced, these en- 
trances moreover sometimes opening into one of the 
trenches through which the approach to the interior leads, 
so as to expose an enemy to an overwhelming storm of 
darts and stones from the heights above. Besides this 
complicated system of entrenchments, there is one very 
peculiar and characteristic feature of British fortification 
which I have hardly ever found wanting in the military 
works of that people. This is a series of low terraces 
scarped out of the side of the hill, rising one above another, 
not continued in an unbroken line round the place, but 
forming, in some cases, almost a net-work of platforms, 
commanding every approach to the entrances, and affording 
advantageous positions for the sling, in the use of which 
weapon the Britons peculiarly excelled. At Worle Hill, 
not only is this plan of fortification adopted on the side of 
the hill, but even the front also of the stone rampart (where 
it has been cleared) appears to have been composed of a 
series of platforms rising one above another, almost like 
the scales of a fish. In cases where no isolated position 
Be 
