ALEXANDER GORDON, THE ANTIQUARY. 21 



of eartliworks, inscriptions, and relics of various kinds, of which, but 

 for him, all knowledge would have been lost. The title of his 

 famous folio is " Itiiaerarium Septentrionale, or a journey thro' most 

 of the Counties of Scotland, and those of the North of England ;" 

 not indeed that that is the whole title, for it runs on into details 

 sufficient for a respectable preface, and guarantees " a pai'ticular 

 description of the Roman walls of Cumberland, ISTorthumberland, 

 and Scotland ; their different stations, watch-towers, turrets, exjilo- 

 ratory castles, height, breadth, and all their other dimensions ; taken 

 by an actual geometrical survey from sea to sea, witli all the altars 

 and inscriptions," &c., &c. As to Mons Grampius, he has surveyed 

 it for himself, and floors his opponents by reminding them that the 

 remarkable range of mountains called the Grampian Hills reaches 

 from Dumbarton on the Clyde, to Aberdeen on the German Ocean ; 

 and though, no doubt, the Mons Grampius they are in search of 

 must be. one of this dong range of Montes Grampii, yet he says : 

 *' Till I see some vestiges of a Roman camp in the Mearns, where 

 there are none, I cannot be convinced that Agricola went so far 

 north." 



It was worth Sir John Clerk's vsrhile to give .hospitable enter- 

 tainment at Pennycuik House to one who could speak as an eye- 

 witness of every camp, tower, and barrow of the whole Grampian 

 chain. The Baron's father-in-law was Sir John Inglis, of Cramond, 

 famous for its Roman harbour, of which Gordon says : " Here 

 several Roman inscriptions have been dug up, and an incredible 

 quantity of Roman coins of gold, silver, and brass of all sorts," 

 besides altars, &c., which he describes from the originals " now in 

 Baron Clerk's collection ;" and he adds, " among all the collections 

 of Roman antiquities in Scotland, that of Baron Clerk justly claims 

 the preference, both as to number and curiosity ;" bvit above all, a 

 Roman stilus for writing, found, with its theca graphiaria, within an 

 old Roman sepulchre, or caii-n, in the County of Edinburgh, and 

 " esteemed by all the curious as the greatest rarity of that kind ever 

 fovind in Britain." The Baron's own learned report of his explora- 

 tions is embodied in Gordon's supplement, wherein he notes the dis- 

 covery in this same sepulchre of a " perpetual lamp," such as are 

 affirmed to have been found still burning on the opening of certain 

 tombs, and, in defiance of all known laws of combustion, to have 

 only gone out when a supply of oxygen was admitted to them ! 



