28 Camps ok Forts. 
rible explosives are to be brought into use, capable at one fell 
swoop of destroying a town, a camp, or an army, is a question 
beyond the scope of this little essay, but it may safely be said that 
every great development and improvement in death-dealing 
weapons tend, by their efficiency and terrifying influence, to act 
directly in the cause of peace. 
Ill.—Wores of a Visit to some Camps or Forts in the Parishes of 
Dryfe and Lochmaben. By the Kev. Joun H. THomson, of 
Hightae. 
On Thursday, 19th September, Iset out in search of three camps 
or forts given in the Ordnance inch-to-a-mile map as about a mile 
and a half to the east of Hightae, in the parish of Dryfe, in the 
property of the Dake of Buccleuch. The Annan separates Loch. 
maben parish from Dryfe, and as there is no bridge across it at 
Hightae, I had to make a long detour by Shillahill of nearly four 
miles in length, before I got to Roberthill, a farm opposite to 
Hightae, on the road between Lockerbie and Dalton. Here I 
inquired at the gamekeeper’s house for the camps, and was at once 
told by an intelligent man that one of them was near at hand, on 
the hill to the south, less than half a mile away, and that the 
others were not far distant. Indeed, he pointed out their sites. 
The hill is.a rising ground that rises to fifty or sixty feet from the 
level plain through which the Annan meanders. It runs due 
south for about two miles, and begins not far from the road 
between Lochmaben and Lockerbie. At its foot, on the west side, 
it is skirted by the Bengall burn. There was little water in the 
burn, for it had been a dry September, so it was easily crossed. 
As I crossed I could see the rampart of the fort in the clump of 
trees on the brow of the hill about a hundred yards away. The 
trees seemed as if they had been planted shortly after the visit of 
the Ordnance Survey, for they are not marked upon the map first 
published in 1864. They now entirely enclose and cover over the 
camp, and make its centre dark and gloomy even in the bright 
sunshine. A carefully-kept hedge fences the clump. I walked 
round and round the camp, sometimes on its inner, and sometimes 
on its outer rampart. The ditch varies from four to six, and even 
eight, feet in depth, and its ramparts look as if taken out of ib. 
Its circle seeined in size to be twice as large as that of the camp at 
