52 INFERENCES FROM RECENT EXPLORATIONS. CHAP. in. 



twenty-five feet on the Forth would not lay the eastern 

 extremity of the Eoman wall at Carriden under water, and 

 he was therefore desirous of knowing whether the western 

 end of the same would be submerged by a similar amount of 

 subsidence. It has always been acknowledged that the wall 

 terminated upon an eminence called the Chapel Hill, near 

 the village of West Kilpatrick, on the Clyde. The foot of 

 this hill, Mr. Greikie estimates to be about twenty-five or 

 twenty-seven feet above high-water mark, so that a subsi 

 dence of twenty-five feet could not lay it under water. Anti 

 quaries have sometimes wondered that the Eomans did not 

 carry the wall farther west than this Chapel Hill ; but Mr. 

 Greikie now suggests, in explanation, that all the low land 

 at present intervening between that point and the mouth of 

 the Severn, was, sixteen or seventeen centuries ago, washed 

 by the tides at high water. 



The wall of Antonine, therefore, yields no evidence in 

 favour of the land having remained stationary since the time 

 of the Komans, but on the contrary, appears to indicate that 

 since its erection the land has actually risen. Eecent explo 

 rations by Mr. Geikie and Dr. Young, of the sites of the old 

 Roman harbours along the southern margin of the Firth of 

 Forth, lead to similar inferences. In the first place, it has 

 long been known that there is a raised beach containing 

 marine shells of living littoral species, about twenty-five feet 

 high, at Leith, as well as at other places along the coast above 

 and below Edinburgh. Inveresk, a few miles below that city, 

 is the site of an ancient Eoman port, and if we suppose the 

 sea at high water to have washed the foot of the heights on 

 which the town stood, the tide would have ascended far up 

 the valley of the Esk, and would have made the mouth of 

 that river a safe and commodious harbour ; whereas, had it 

 been a shoaling estuary, as at present, it is difficult to see 

 how the Eomans should have made choice of it as a port. 



