352 GUN, RIFLE, AND HOUND. 



known, of the memorials of those old conquerors. It 

 is very unlike in plan to the camp of which we have 

 boyish memories in " Notes to Caesar's Commentaries." 

 Let me try to describe it. From the little tableland 

 I have been crossing, a spur shoots out boldly into the 

 plain. On each side is a valley or rather gorge 

 cutting it off from the tableland adjoining. Where 

 the valleys meet the top of the spur is some hundred 

 feet above them, and there they meet a rolling plain. 

 The precipitous sides of the valley formed the fortifi- 

 cations. Only the side I am approaching lay open, 

 and there the legionaries built a double rampart, still 

 some dozen feet high. Here is the decuman gate. 

 I enter and am still among the beeches. On my left is 

 the valley, the steep sides of which still show traces of 

 escarpment. 



As I proceed the valleys approach nearer, the 

 other one is fringed with a mass of precipitous 

 water-worn rocks. Little fortification was needed 

 there. Now I stand on the point. Before me are 

 miles of forest interspersed with farms. No house 

 is visible, but I hear a church bell somewhere. To 

 the north of the woods and hills the fields are white, 

 elsewhere the bright sun has effaced the marks of last 

 night's frost. On my right is another line of rocky 

 cliffs lined with dark firs. But it is beneath me the 

 rocks assume the quaintest forms. I descend a score 

 of feet ; here the rock is riven by half-a-dozen clefts 

 to a great depth. Walking behind the rock, and 

 looking out through these, gives exactly the effect of 

 being in a ruined castle. 



