52 EEV. G. R. HALL ON 



is that each group of these terraced slopes, both near Bu'tley and 

 "Wall, is found where the aboriginal, or Celtic vale dwellers, have 

 been most numerous. Broomhope camp-field, and the smaller 

 forts at the Orchard and above the Steel Burn, are near the Steel 

 terraces. The High Shield G-reen, Countess Park, and Buteland 

 camps enclose two series of such culture -ledges. Ai'ound the 

 Birtley terrace-lines are the Mill Knock, the Dene, Carry House, 

 and West Farm forts closely adjoining. Between the last named 

 camp, which lies to the south, and that series of terraces the 

 farmer informs me he discovered, when draining a few years 

 since in the low-lying intervening hollow, a kind of broad road 

 or pavement of stones, about six yards wide, evidently leading 

 from one to the other through what must have been once a very 

 marshy spot. Again, the Swinburne terrace-lines are overlooked 

 by the chain of forts on the Gunnarton Crags, at no great dis- 

 tance ; and those near Wall are immediately beneath the brow 

 of the freestone headlands on which a strong British fortress has 

 stood. Within these " camps," as they are usually called, are 

 still to be seen the circular huts or dwellings of those primitive 

 tribes, who lived more by hunting and fishing, like the rest of 

 the inland people of Britain, whom C»sar describes,* than by 

 cultivating the ground. Here and there, as in the family barrow 

 opened not long since near Warkshaugh, and noticed on a for- 

 mer occasion, we find tangible relics, such as flint knives, and 

 rudely baked and scored pottery, which teach us something 



* " De Bello Gallico," Lib. V., Chap. 14. Compare Lysoii's reniarks, " Our British An- 

 cestors," p. 41, f.f. During the Roman occupation no doubt a much larger area was brought 

 under cultivation by the native tribes dwelling near the Wall and the Watling Street. Mr. 

 Wright, in "The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon," thinks It probable that the Emperor 

 Julian's corn ships came for their cargoes to the Tyne or the Humber." — Chap. 4, p. 206. 

 On heather-clad wastes, long given up to pasturage, arc traces of early cultivation, not in 

 terraces, but in broad furrows. Between the Gmmerton Money Hill foot and Camp HiU (see 

 "Nat. Hist. Transactions," Vol. I., p. 152) I have noticed such vestiges, which local tradi- 

 tion refers, as a farmer whom I met near the spot informed me, to some period "when the 

 Pope of Rome put all the ploughed land in England under his cm-se, and people then went 

 farther up the slopes of the hills, where the ground h"d never been under the plough, that 

 they might stall get a crop, and be no worse for itl " This curious legend unmistakeably 

 points to the Papal interdict in King John's reign ; and it is elsewhere met with, as I find 

 it mentioned by Mr. Wright, and Mr. Sullivan in " Cumberland and Westmorland," p. 245. 

 This ancient tillage of land, which has lain fallow for ages, is more likely to be the work of 

 Roman or sulijcct-British ploughmen. 



