108 ANCIENT EARTH-WORKS. 



ways, some of wlaich. were good enough to serve the military 

 Rom.ans on the only occasion that one of their legions is known 

 to have made a march through the county. They were also 

 skilled in arms. 



In Cornwall the Romans found a race* trained in mining and 

 in removing rocks and earth, habituated to strangers and 

 profiting by commerce. That race they never conquered, nor 

 did they probably wish to conquer it, for their traders were 

 welcomed. No known excavations in Cornwall have disclosed 

 the foundations of a Roman villa, station, or tesselated pave- 

 ment, such as have been discovered in Devon and other counties, 

 nor is there any undisputed evidence of a Roman road, or other 

 indication of the Romans having settled here. The coins dug 

 up at various points clearly suggest trading posts only. 



The earth ramparted "Rings" and "Rounds" still to be 

 seen throughout the county were the homes of the old Cornish- 

 men, and no error has probably caused more historical mischief 

 than the unfounded belief that they were ever "Camps" or 

 " Castles " in the modern acceptation of those terms. Their 

 towns were set on hills, and could not be hid. The rampart and 

 the ditch were as necessary to them as the walls of a house are 

 to us. Their main purpose was less for fighting than for 

 residence. Their number and disposal demonstrate the extent 

 and industry of the settled inhabitants. As to these earthen 

 enclosures being once "town places" in the same sense as we 

 use those words, some of them are still occupied. In Cornwall 

 Launceston is, perhaps, the best instance. There we may see 

 skeletons of two periods, but of one species, the ramjparts of the 

 Dunmonii, surmounted by Anglo-Norman stone walls, with 

 precipitous dykes outside them. At St. Dennis, in Mid-Cornwall^ 

 the parish church is within an old circular entrenchment. In 

 Devon, Exeter may be taken as a link in the chain of proof. 



Superstition and fear have probably been causes of the 

 preservation to the present day of many of our old earthworks. 

 " To dig in one would cause bad luck, or such a storm of thunder 

 and lightning as had never been heard before." As to their 



* The Romans must have found in Cornwall more than one race, Celts 

 and the races which the Celts had found here. — Edd, 



