170 Topography of Dumfries. 



Cumberland Street at the places still unbuilt upon, and then 

 flowed on through the Gasworks to behind Clerkhill ; there it 

 turned into the Millhole, for centuries the site of the Burgh 

 Mill, 16a and crossing St. Michael Street it entered the Nith 

 south of the Suspension Bridge. Those who saw the exten- 

 sive flood in 1910 will recollect how the river, flowing back 

 through the culvert, filled all the Millhole, thus reproducing 

 for us conditions that must have been common, if not con- 

 stant, in past centuries. In 12 15 it was called the rivulet of 

 Dumfries. 1"^ At that date it fell into the pond of the Mill of 

 Dumfries, and formed the eastern boundary of the Church 

 lands held by Kelso Abbey. It still flows, but it is mainly 

 underground. 1^ 



Entrenched by bogs, with narrow exits only at the north 

 and south, this low hill comprising six distinct mounds, ^^ and 

 with a considerable depression in the centre, the foot of which 

 is immediately east of Queensberry Square, offered to the 

 primitive inhabitant a natural site for a fort, and it is more 

 than probable that he took full advantage of the situation. 

 The name Dumfries has been variously interpreted : Dum 

 Phreas, fort among the brushwood, or, perhaps more satis- 

 factorily, Dum Fries, fort of the Frisians. This tribe is 

 mentioned by Procopius, who wrote in the 6th century, as 

 one of the three tribes inhabiting Britain, and Nennius, 

 among the twenty-eight cities in Britain, mentions one Caer 

 Pheris, which is thought, by some, to be Dumfries. Both 

 of these derivations agree as to the fort.^^^ Other evidence 

 of his presence our primitive ancestor left in the Stone Circle, 

 which stood on the site of Greystone House, 20 in the round 

 fort called Kirkland Moat, 21 and in the various stone imple- 

 ments that have been picked up in the district. ^^ Most 

 curious discovery of all was the gold coin of Bodvoc, King of 

 the Boduni, whose capital was Cirencester, which was found 

 at Birkhill in i86i.23 



The Ford. 



The mere fact of the site being a suitable one for a fort 



