44 EEV. G. R. HALL ON 



labour solely in most instances, or, as I think, in a few cases, 

 specially adapted to his purposes and uses ? 



Many ingenious theories have been proposed, some, no doubt, 

 very improbable. Hutchinson conjectures that these terraces 

 have been formed by art, for the purpose of marshalling the mi- 

 litia of the county, and showing them to advantage. Pennant 

 inclines to a similar notion.* One of the most ingenious, but at 

 the same time, most fanciful ideas respecting their object I met 

 with in the upper part of the vale of the river Gelt, near Castle 

 Carrock, in Cumberland. There, along the southern face of a 

 high escarpment, is a series of terrace-lines of extraordinary 

 length, and great variety of dimensions and appearance. My 

 guide informed me that a local antiquary considered that these 

 ledges, which curve into the hill slope towards its base, were 

 formed by the Romans during their occupation of the country 

 (it is about four miles south of the Roman Wall), and they 

 made them serve as a kind of natural amphitheatre ; so that, 

 seated on these terrace-ledges, all the cohorts of the neighbour- 

 ing stations and the native spectators could more easily observe 

 the movements of the Roman galleys in the naval reviews and 

 regattas, which, he conceived, must have often taken place on 

 the bosom of the broad lake beneath, which is now a depression 

 of the dry land by the river margin ! 



The most feasible of these problematic opinions, however, is, 

 that such terraces were originally intended as lines of entrench- 

 ment — field earthworks — thrown up for defence where the enemy 

 might be supposed to be at hand, and in great force. We know 

 that it was the custom of the Romans thus to entrench them- 

 selves in their legionary camps (one of which may be seen a little 



*Mr. Tate (see aniea.) observes: — "This, however, is a mere fancy, destitute even of 

 probability." And Pennant, himself, elsewhere conjectures rather inconsistently that the 

 teiTaces are similar to those made for husbandry in Palestine described by Josephus. Mr. 

 MacLauchlan considers that certain parallel terraces in connection with the Kippie Hill 

 tumulus and the ancient remains of the Camp-field, near Cornliill, on the Tweed, which 

 have between them in some cases natui'al or artificial depressions for water, are not of an 

 early date, and liave been made as "a garden of pleasure," probably in peaceful times. — 

 i}fotes on Camps in Nortlvumberland, p. 31-^. See also, for a discussion concerning- the 

 " Lynchets," or Shelves of Wiltshire, Notes and Queries, Tliird Series, Vol. VII., pp. 241, 

 301, 330, 362, 422, 463, and Vol. VIII., p. 59. 



