Chapter VIII: The Results of Caesar’s Invasions of Britain (7)

Professor Ridgeway insists that it is ‘obvious that when the Belgic tribes ... made permanent settlements on the south-east coast of Britain, the course of trade would pass regularly from Kent into Northern France, and that the old route by Armorica, Corbilo, and the Loire would fall into disuse’.[2382] If anything is ‘obvious’, it is that the course of trade would continue to follow the most convenient route, and that merchants would not saddle themselves with the expense of conveying tin, destined for Mediterranean markets, all the way from Cornwall to Kent. Besides, how was it to be conveyed thither? Certainly not by land; for Professor Ridgeway tells us himself that the barrier interposed by the great forest of Anderida would have rendered this impossible.[2383] Certainly not by sea; for, unless the merchants had taken leave of their senses, why should they have paid for the voyage from Cornwall to Kent, then for the voyage from Kent to Boulogne, and then for the long overland journey to Marseilles, when, by taking the route which led from St. Michael’s Mount to the mouth of the Loire, both the voyage and the land journey would have been considerably shortened? If Caesar does not expressly mention Corbilo, neither does he expressly mention any other commercial port; and he does imply that the Veneti had the lion’s share of the carrying trade with Britain.[2384] Possibly Corbilo had lost its importance by the time of Caesar; but the estuary of the Loire still formed one of the two most important harbours in the west of Gaul, and Strabo mentions it as one of the four principal Gallic ports from which ships bound for Britain set sail.[2385] The argument based upon the fact that the overland journey lasted thirty days implies that the merchants would have deliberately preferred a longer to a shorter route; and as the distance from the mouth of the Loire to Massilia was about four hundred and eighty miles _in a straight line_, it does not seem incredible that the journey should have lasted thirty days. But what puzzles me most in Professor Ridgeway’s argument is that, while it is partly based upon the testimony of Diodorus, it sets that testimony at defiance. The professor holds that the authority whom Diodorus followed was Posidonius. If so, Posidonius stated that in his time British tin was shipped for the Continent at Ictis. Now Professor Ridgeway identifies Ictis with the Isle of Wight. I have shown that Ictis was St. Michael’s Mount. But, according to Professor Ridgeway, British tin was shipped, in the time of Posidonius, neither at the Isle of Wight, nor at St. Michael’s Mount, but in Kent.[2386] The train of thought which led to this conclusion is one which my poor brain is powerless to follow.[2387]

Professor Haverfield[2388] affirms that the Roman annexation of Gallia Narbonensis ‘secured that trade route by which Diodorus Siculus tells us that British tin reached the Mediterranean, that is the route from Narbo by the “pass of Carcassonne” and Toulouse to Bordeaux’; but I cannot find any evidence that this was the route to which Diodorus referred.

Professor Rhys[2389] has constructed a theory about the course of the tin trade during the maritime supremacy of the Veneti which is even more remarkable than that of Professor Ridgeway. He tells us that ‘at one time they probably landed British tin at the mouth of [the Loire] ... and they fetched some of it at any rate from the south-east of Britain’. In other words, the tin was conveyed at heavy cost by the Britons three hundred miles from Cornwall to the south-east of Britain, in order that the Veneti might add at least two hundred miles to the voyage which they would have undertaken if they had fetched it direct from Cornwall; and this was done although, as Professor Rhys himself assures us, there was ‘communication between the Dumnonii [of Cornwall] and the nearest part of Gaul during the Venetic period’. The professor adds that ‘whatever direct trade in tin there may have been between the tin districts of Britain and the Loire, it must have been utterly unknown to Caesar’. I reply that if, as Professor Rhys holds, there was trade in tin by way of South-Eastern Britain between the tin districts of Britain and the Loire, this trade also must, on Professor Rhys’s theory, have been unknown to Caesar, for he mentions neither the one nor the other; but that the voyage which Crassus made to the tin-producing districts of Cornwall, and about which Caesar is equally silent, shows that Caesar was not ignorant, but merely reticent.

But Professor Ridgeway would assign a different reason for Caesar’s silence. Remarking that ‘when Strabo, writing as a contemporary, is describing the exports from Britain, he omits the mention of tin, whilst from the extract from Posidonius, quoted alike by him and Diodorus, it is plain that when the Stoic explorer visited North-Western Europe, the British tin trade was still of importance’, the professor suggests that in the time of Caesar Britain ceased to export tin.[2390] But did not Strabo write long after Caesar died? Professor Haverfield, on the other hand, has given reasons for the view that ‘the early Cornish tin trade, which Posidonius and Caesar knew, died out about the beginning of our era’; and he suggests that it may have done so because the Romans had just discovered ‘the real site of the Cassiterides in N.W. Spain’.[2391] ‘Very little,’ he remarks, ‘has been found west of Exeter which can be connected with the first two centuries of the Roman Empire.... Plainly the Romans of the conquest period did not care to advance beyond Exeter.... Yet if the tin trade had then been flourishing they would hardly have stopped. We must put the halt at Exeter beside the silence of the writers after Caesar, and suppose that for some reason the tin trade had ceased in Cornwall. Perhaps as iron took the place of bronze in many lands tin was no longer in such demand; perhaps the Spanish ore was cheaper than the Cornish; perhaps the accessible Cornish tin streams seemed exhausted. Whatever the reason, the Cornish tin trade vanished before A.D. 50. It reappears two centuries later.’[2392]

Now the evidence that Professor Haverfield offers of its having _reappeared_ is simply the discovery of one inscribed ingot of Cornish tin, which belonged to the fourth century; and if no inscribed ingots of an earlier date have been found, their absence hardly proves that the Romans had not worked the mines before. This Professor Haverfield admits; but, he insists, ‘it does prove that we have no right to say that mining was going on.’[2393] Possibly: but if so, _the absence of inscribed ingots of tin in Spain_[2394] _equally proves that we have no right to say that mining was going on there_. Yet, if it was suspended in Cornwall, it must have been contemporaneously active in Spain. It is true that no Roman antiquities of earlier date than the third century have been found in Cornwall, except some Samian ware and coins of Trajan and Vespasian;[2395] and it may be true that, as the professor says, these discoveries ‘prove no Roman influence or occupation’:[2396] but, on the other hand, Cornwall has very few Roman antiquities even of the third and fourth centuries,[2397] and no Roman or Romanized towns or villas.[2398] Is it not then possible that, as Professor Gowland suggests, the mines were worked throughout the whole period of the Roman occupation of Britain, but not under Roman control?[2399] He points out that ‘the stamps had been impressed [upon the solitary ingot] when the metal was cold, and hence not necessarily at the mine, but very probably by a Roman trader or officer at the coast’.[2400] Professor Haverfield indeed states that the ingot was found not more than a mile and a half from ‘an old working’, which has yielded Roman coins:[2401] but Professor Gowland supports his own view by the argument that ‘at the Roman lead mines in Britain the inscriptions were always cast on the ingots of lead when they were made, and at the copper mines were stamped on the cakes of copper while they were red hot’. ‘The real site of the Cassiterides’ was not, as Professor Haverfield thinks, ‘in N.W. Spain,’ but in the British Isles. ‘The silence of the writers after Caesar’ in regard to the British trade in tin, on which he lays stress, really resolves itself into the silence of Strabo; for although the professor is quite right in saying that ‘later authors [namely, Diodorus, Strabo, and Pliny] merely include it in quotations from earlier literature’, those who are familiar with their writings will admit that there was no reason why any of them, except Strabo, should have expressly added to those quotations the information that the British tin trade continued in their own time. We should certainly have expected that Strabo would have included tin in his list of British exports if it had been exported in his time; and I will not attempt to explain away his silence: but can it outweigh the extreme improbability that for two centuries the civilized world should have been entirely cut off from one of the two sources from which its supply of tin had previously been derived? And when Professor Haverfield suggests that ‘as iron took the place of bronze in many lands, tin was no longer in such demand’, does he not momentarily forget that not only in the lands round the Mediterranean but also in those of Northern and Western Europe iron had taken the place of bronze for many purposes several centuries before the Christian era, and that, on the other hand, those implements and ornaments which were still made wholly or in part of bronze were probably in greater demand than before?

IV. We have now to deal with the Phoenicians. Sir George Cornewall Lewis[2402] and various other writers have endeavoured to prove that the Phoenicians (including the Carthaginians) never traded directly with Britain for tin; and in 1896 Dr. Arthur Evans remarked that ‘the days are gone past when it could be seriously maintained that the Phoenician merchant landed on the coast of Cornwall’.[2403]

Now Dr. Evans’s distinguished father, who holds that the Cassiterides ‘are rightly identified with Britain’, observes that ‘the traces of Phoenician influence in this country are ... at present imperceptible. But,’ he continues, ‘it may well be that their system of commerce or barter was such as intentionally left the barbarian tribes with whom they traded in much the same stage of civilization as that in which they found them, always assuming that they dealt directly with Britain and not through the intervention of Gaulish merchants.’[2404]

Some merchants certainly landed, if not on the coast of Cornwall at all events on that of Ictis: is there any reason in the nature of things why Phoenician merchants should not have done so? To the old-fashioned view there are only two objections worth considering, namely, first, that ‘the tin trade was carried on overland through Gaul’,[2405] and, secondly, that the tin which was shipped to Gades may have come not from Britain but from the mines of North-Western Spain. But, as we have seen, there is no evidence that the overland trade had begun before 600 B.C.,--the approximate date of the foundation of Massilia; nor is there any evidence that the Phoenicians took part in it. From Gades to Cornwall the voyage, as George Smith observes, was shorter than the voyages ‘from Tyre to Malta, Carthage, or Sicily, which they were performing continuously’.[2406] If Desjardins[2407] is right in affirming that ‘the name _Corbilo_ unquestionably looks Phoenician’, and that a Phoenician inscription has been found near Guérande, it may be inferred that the carrying trade between Britain and Corbilo was at one time either wholly or partly in Phoenician or Carthaginian hands. That tin was obtained in ancient times from the mines of North-Western Spain must be admitted: not only is the fact attested by the statements of Strabo and Pliny,[2408] but it has been proved by the researches of Mr. W. C. Borlase.[2409] But there is some evidence that tin also came from Cornwall to Gades. Festus Avienus[2410] tells us, ultimately, it may be assumed, on the authority of the Carthaginian traveller, Himilco, that both the Carthaginians and the people of Gades used to sail to the British seas.[2411] Sir George Cornewall Lewis,[2412] indeed, argues that ‘if the date of the voyages of Hanno and Himilco is correctly fixed, it follows that at a period subsequent to the expedition of Xerxes, the Carthaginians ... had not carried their navigation far along the coasts of the Atlantic; and that they sent out two voyages of discovery--one to the south, the other to the north--at the public expense’. All that we know about the date of Himilco’s voyage is that it was not later than the fifth, probably in the sixth century B.C.,[2413] and, according to Pliny,[2414] its object was ‘to explore the outer parts of Europe’. Anyhow the evidence remains that after Himilco’s time, if not before, the Carthaginians traded by sea with Britain.[2415] Dr. Arthur Evans, I know, warns us that ‘a truer view of primitive trade as passing on by inter-tribal barter has superseded the idea of a direct commerce between remote localities’.[2416] But the testimony of Diodorus, that is to say of Pytheas, proves that traders purchased tin off the Cornish coast from the natives who had prepared it for market, carried it across the Channel, and unloaded it on the coast of Gaul, whence it was conveyed overland to the mouth of the Rhône. If this was not ‘direct commerce’, what was? That there was ‘inter-tribal barter’ in ancient times, no well-informed person would deny; but that there was also ‘direct commerce between remote localities’ is as well attested as any fact of ancient history can be.

Mr. C. T. Newton indeed argues that ‘if the Phoenicians frequented any portion of the British coast, it is probable that they would have given names to the more important harbours and promontories, as they did in Africa and Spain’.[2417] But is it not also probable that they found it sufficient to hold, or even to occupy temporarily, as occasion required, one or more of the Scilly Islands, or perhaps St. Michael’s Mount, and that they may have given names to these places, although the names have not survived.[2418] Their settlements in Africa and Spain were not temporary but permanent.

I freely admit that the testimony of Festus Avienus is not conclusive; but I see no reason for rejecting the statement of Strabo that the Phoenicians traded directly for tin with the Cassiterides--that is to say, the British Isles--and that they originally monopolized the trade.

M. Salomon Reinach,[2419] who supports the view that the Phoenicians traded directly with Cornwall, insists, referring to a well-known passage in Thucydides,[2420] that the overland route must have been earlier than the maritime. ‘Corinth,’ says Thucydides, ‘being seated on an isthmus, was naturally from the first a centre of commerce; for the Hellenes within and without the Peloponnese, in the old days when they communicated chiefly by land, had to pass through her territory in order to reach one another.’[2421] M. Reinach argues that ‘nothing could have suggested to the Phoenicians the idea of going with their ships in search of tin if they had not already known the existence not only of the metal but also of the distant country which produced it ... the Phoenicians of Spain no more discovered the Cassiterides and tin than the Portuguese discovered India and spices’. This may be freely admitted. But the Phoenicians may well have acquired the knowledge upon which they acted long before the direct overland trade which Diodorus describes began. Tin was probably conveyed in very early times from Cornwall to Gaul for the use of tribes who inhabited that country before the immigration of the Celtic-speaking invaders; and, since Gaul was in communication with Britain from the beginning of the Bronze Age,[2422] the knowledge that tin was to be obtained in Britain might have reached Phoenician ears even before Gades was founded.

But the most striking contribution which M. Reinach has made to the literature of this subject is the suggestion that the traders who first sailed from the Mediterranean into the English Channel were not Phoenicians but Phrygians. Speaking of the well-known passage, which I have already quoted, in which Pliny says that Midacritus was the first who imported tin from ‘the tin island’,[2423] he argues that the generally accepted identification of Midacritus with the Phoenician Melcarth is erroneous. He points out that in Pliny’s list of discoverers all except the most famous names are accompanied by a complementary designation, for example (Toxius), _Caeli filius_[2424]. Therefore, even if, as has been supposed, what Pliny wrote was not _Midacritus_ but _Melicertus_ (Melcarth), that unfamiliar name would have been followed by some explanatory addition. M. Reinach then quotes two passages from Hyginus[2425] and Cassiodorus[2426] respectively. In the former we read that ‘King Midas, the Phrygian, son of Cybele, was the first to discover lead and tin’ (_Midas rex Cybeles filius Phryx plumbum album et nigrum primus invenit_); in the latter, that ‘Midas, the ruler of Phrygia, discovered tin’ ([Aes enim Ionos Thessaliae rex], _plumbum Midas regnator Phrygiae reppererunt_). It is clear then, says M. Reinach, that, as the Jesuit scholar, Hardouin, perceived more than two centuries ago, for _Midacritus_ in the MSS. of Pliny we ought to read _Midas Phryx_. He adds that from a fragment of the Seventh Book of Diodorus, preserved in the Chronicle of Eusebius, we learn that the maritime supremacy of the Phrygians began about 903 B.C., and that of the Phoenicians in 824.[2427]

DENE-HOLES

Of the various theories which have been published as to the object of dene-holes three only are worth considering, namely, that they were granaries; that they were refuges; and that they were sunk in order to obtain chalk.

Subterranean granaries have of course been used in many countries;[2428] but it is said that no grain has ever been found in any dene-hole,[2429] whereas grain has been found in shallow pits and on numerous other prehistoric sites in Britain.[2430] On the other hand, a thorough exploration of the famous group of dene-holes in Hangman’s Wood, Essex, revealed fragments of two millstones.[2431] The Reverend E. H. Goddard remarks that ‘very similar places’ in Brittany were used by ‘the peasant armies during the war in La Vendée’ as refuges and lairs, and argues that dene-holes served a similar purpose.[2432] Perhaps, though it would have gone hard with the fugitives if their lairs had been discovered; but, seeing that strongholds were available, it is difficult to admit that they were dug with that object. The theory that they were shafts sunk for the extraction of chalk rests mainly upon the evidence of Pliny, who states that chalk was obtained in Britain for manure ‘by means of pits sunk like wells with narrow mouths to the depth commonly of one hundred feet, where they branch out like the veins of mines’ ([creta] _petitur ex alto, in centenos actis plerumque puteis, ore angustis, intus ut in metallis spatiante vena_[2433]). Messrs. T. V. Holmes and W. Cole, who superintended the exploration of the dene-holes in Hangman’s Wood, argue that ‘the above account could not have been given to Pliny by any man who had ever descended into one of our [Essex] ... dene-holes, which are entered by ... narrow shafts, but whose lofty symmetrical chambers cannot be described as “branching out like the veins of mines”.’[2434] I think, on the contrary, that, allowing for the natural inaccuracy of a writer who gave his own version of information supplied by one who had perhaps himself not descended into a dene-hole, Pliny’s description was remarkably correct: the chambers which open out at the bottom of the shafts in Hangman’s Wood are arranged in the shape of a star-fish; the only material error with which Pliny can be charged is that he compared them to the veins of mines; and that he was alluding to them I have no doubt. Messrs. Holmes and Cole are, however, on firm ground when they point out that his informant may have wrongly assumed that the shafts were sunk in order to obtain chalk because the chalk that was extracted from them was utilized. ‘And,’ they continue, ‘a foreigner accidentally discovering secret pits--and our surface trenches showed our dene-holes to have been secret excavations--would almost necessarily be deceived as to their use by natives.’ But is it not possible that Pliny’s informant may have been a Briton? And, assuming that he was deceived as to the purpose of the dene-holes, why was he allowed to learn the existence and arrangement of the chambers, and, approximately, the depth of the shaft?

Nevertheless, Messrs. Holmes and Cole are undoubtedly right in the main. It has been argued that dene-holes are situated in places which must always have been uncultivated, whereas the tracts in which chalk lay near the surface may have been already occupied; that chalk has been obtained in Wiltshire in modern times by mining although it was to be had near the surface; and that the labour of sinking the shafts may have been compensated by saving the cost of transporting chalk from distant parts, where it was the surface rock.[2435] But, as Messrs. Holmes and Cole observe, ‘there is plenty of bare chalk within a mile’ of Hangman’s Wood; and, as they pertinently ask, if the dene-holes were sunk for chalk, why was their position so carefully kept secret?[2436] Again, Mr. Spurrell, who admits that where chalk lay very deep shafts may have been sunk merely in order to obtain it, remarks that ‘it is evident that where the land is white with chalk the pits of great depth so often found there could not have been dug for manure, and the natives of Kent in such situations scout the idea as absurd’.[2437] Messrs. T. E. and R. H. Forster contend that the elaborate design of the chambers in Hangman’s Wood is ‘in reality a strong confirmation’ of the truth of ‘the chalk-quarry theory’; for ‘the star-fish-shaped pit ... enables the miner to win more chalk at one sinking; and if no examples of it were known, it would be necessary to postulate its existence in order to supply the missing link between the primitive bell-pit and the pillared and galleried mine of the kind seen at Chislehurst’.[2438] But is the ‘bell-pit’ primitive, and is there a link, missing or otherwise? Anyhow it is incredible that the people of Essex, if they had undertaken the prodigious labour of sinking 70 shafts simply in order to obtain better chalk than what they could have found hard by at the surface, would have contented themselves, after boring through 60 feet of sand and gravel, with ‘the very uppermost [and therefore worst] chalk’.[2439] As Mr. Holmes remarks,[2440] ‘it must be obvious that the course which would commend itself to all seekers after superior chalk would be to begin operations where chalk is at the surface, make a shaft 10 to 20 feet deep, and procure chalk lying at that depth’; and, while he freely admits that ‘a farmer might naturally prefer to get chalk at a depth of 60 to 80 feet on his own land rather than ... from some one else’s pit a mile or two away’, he emphasizes the absurdity of supposing that ‘any people ... concentrated their pits where they got the least return for their labour, and where there was no counterbalancing advantage ... as they must have done at Hangman’s Wood and Bexley on the Chalk-pit hypothesis’.[2441]

Charred wood, bones of animals, and large quantities of coarse pottery have been found in a dene-hole near Dunstable,[2442] which is sufficient evidence that some dene-holes were occasionally inhabited.

I conclude that dene-holes were intended to serve as granaries; that they may have been used occasionally as places of concealment; and that the chalk which was taken out of them was used, if it was wanted, for manure. It is significant that their name means ‘_Dane_-holes’, that is, hiding-places from the Danes.[2443]

The ‘bell-pits’ which have been already mentioned, and which are sometimes confounded with dene-holes, were undoubtedly made for the sake of the chalk; and, unlike dene-holes, they were made broad in order that a large amount of material might be taken out of them at each haul.[2444]

Some of the Kentish dene-holes, if Mr. Goddard is rightly informed, contained bronze implements;[2445] and those of Essex are almost certainly post-neolithic.[2446] Some bell-pits are ancient, but I doubt whether it could be proved that any were pre-Roman: Pitt-Rivers[2447] indeed believed that it was from the Romans that the Britons learned to use chalk as top-dressing.

THE COAST BETWEEN CALAIS AND THE SOMME IN THE TIME OF CAESAR

The question of the period during which the gulf of St. Omer existed has given rise to much discussion. According to Reclus,[2448] Desjardins,[2449] and many other writers,[2450] even in the time of Caesar this so-called gulf, which was really a shallow salt-water ‘mere’, covered the lowlands north-east of the hills of Artois between Sangatte and Dunkirk, and extended inland to within a short distance of St. Omer. No evidence, however, has been adduced to show that it existed at that time;[2451] and it has been proved by M. J. Gosselet that it did not exist before the latter part of the third century of our era, for Gallo-Roman remains, including 2,354 coins, some of which belong to the time of Postumus, have been found in the area. As M. Gosselet says,[2452] the _Sinus Itius_ is a mere invention of writers of the seventeenth century.

The ancient topography of Wissant, of the estuary of the Liane, and of the headlands of Blancnez, Grisnez, and Alprech, is discussed in the article on the Portus Itius.[2453]

The inland extension of the bay formed by the estuary of the Canche has steadily diminished since the time of Caesar; and whereas, during the last century at all events, the headland on its southern side has gained considerably on the sea, the ‘Pointe de Lornel’ on the north and the neighbouring sand-dunes have suffered continual erosion.[2454]

The country which lies between the hills of Artois and the sea, from the mouth of the Canche to the mouth of the Somme, is, as Reclus[2455] remarks, of recent formation; and, as late as the ninth century, the environs of the town of Rue, which is now about six miles from the sea, were covered by a vast shallow lake, 20,000 hectares, or about 78 square miles, in extent.

THE CONFIGURATION OF THE COAST OF KENT IN THE TIME OF CAESAR

This volume is not a treatise upon the physical geography of Ancient Britain; and I am only concerned with geographical questions in so far as they are essential to a right understanding of the history. It is impossible to understand the narrative of Caesar’s invasions of Britain without considering how far the physical geography of that part of the island which was the theatre of his operations differed from what it is now.

I. BETWEEN RAMSGATE AND SANDOWN CASTLE

Thanet, as everybody knows, was an island in Caesar’s time; and Bede[2456] says that it was separated from the mainland by an estuary three furlongs broad: but the late George Dowker[2457] concluded from ‘an attentive examination of the estuary’ that it was ‘much shallower and narrower than is generally supposed’.

John Lewis,[2458] a well-known antiquary of the eighteenth century, and William Boys,[2459] the historian of Sandwich, maintained that an estuary, in which was included the harbour of Richborough, known to the Romans as Portus Ritupis, had extended from the cliffs of Ramsgate southward to Walmer, covering the sites of Stonar and Sandwich and indeed the whole of the low ground between Sandwich and Deal, and washing the shore of an island on which stood Richborough Castle. A recent writer, Mr. H. Sharpe,[2460] who endorses this opinion, argues that the Roman road from Canterbury to Richborough harbour (_ad portum Ritupis_[2461]) terminated at Each End. The road ‘cannot’, he insists, ‘have run to Sandwich in Roman times. Montagu Burrows ... _Cinque Ports_, 1888, p. 30,[2462] says--“Sandwich and Stonar are wholly English. No Roman remains have been found at either” ... there is good reason to suppose that the land upon which it [Sandwich] stands and the land over which the Sandwich end of the road runs were not formed when the Romans were here.’[2463] And again, ‘There is another reason for supposing that Each End was ... the place where the boats left the mainland for the island [of Richborough]. [The road running northward from Dover] is marked on the Ordnance map[2464] as a Roman road, and if complete would run to Each End, not to Richborough Castle or to Sandwich ... the last mile from [Woodnesborough] to Each End, is missing.’[2465]

Now, in regard to Stonar, Professor Burrows, as we shall presently see, is mistaken; and, granting that the Roman road from Dover would, if complete, run to Each End, how can Mr. Sharpe prove that it did not run further? The late George Dowker stated, in a paper which was published after his death, that he had himself ‘traced the Roman road to Woodnesborough, and thence by Each End to near the Richborough Island’;[2466] and the views of Lewis and Boys, which Mr. Sharpe endorses, as to the wide extent of the estuary at the time of the Roman conquest of Britain have been stultified by discoveries to which Mr. Sharpe does not allude. Roach Smith affirms that ‘Roman remains, indicative of habitations, have been discovered in the sand-hills considerably to the north of Sandown Castle’, and that ‘coins have been found at Stonar, opposite to Richborough’; and from these facts he infers that ‘the recession of the sea from the low land between Thanet and Walmer probably commenced at a period much earlier than has been commonly supposed’.[2467]

That the hill on which Richborough Castle stood was nearly if not quite insulated is generally admitted;[2468] but Mr. George E. Fox remarks that it ‘was probably not washed by the open sea, though a broad channel may have flowed close beside it, forming one of the southern mouths of the strait, while a narrow strip of salt-marsh and sand-bank lay between it and the open sea’. It would be more correct to say that the island, on its eastern side, was separated by a channel from Stonar Beach, the southern extremity of which lay east by north of the site of Sandwich: the sand-hills were on the south-eastern side of this beach, from which they were divided by a narrow channel. Mr. Fox goes on to say that ‘a large extent of what is now marshland, lying to the west of the hill, may then have ... formed the haven,[2469] making of the camp hill an island’. He argues, however, that, on the eastern side, the channel ‘could not have hugged the hill very closely, as at no great distance to the south of the station on this same side, and in the low ground presumably near the shore, fragments of a Roman house were discovered in 1846’.[2470]

In the year 1876 Dowker affirmed that ‘the low shore and sand hills’ which now extend from the Deal beach to the latitude of Sandwich ‘extended [in the time of Caesar] much less than at present’;[2471] and in a map which accompanied his paper[2472] he contrasted the low-water line between Walmer and Sandwich, as he believed it to have existed in 55 B.C., with the low-water line as it existed at the time when he wrote. In the latitude of Sandwich the modern low-water line is traced on this map a mile and a half east of the hypothetical ancient line, which distance gradually diminishes to three-quarters of a mile in the latitude of Worth and about one furlong in the latitude of Deal. I find a difficulty in reconciling this map with Dowker’s own statement that ‘Roman pottery, coins and traces of the Roman occupation have been found in the sand-hills--and indeed below the sand-hills considerably northward of Deal, beyond Sandown Castle’;[2473] and from the fact which this statement records it follows that, in the time of the Roman occupation of Britain, the shore-line at the place where the discoveries in question were made cannot have been widely different from what it is now.

II. BETWEEN SANDOWN CASTLE AND WALMER CASTLE

When we endeavour to trace the shore-line, as it existed in Caesar’s time, opposite Deal and Walmer, we find that the writers who have dealt with the question differ widely among themselves; while Dowker again shows himself a most troublesome witness. Unfortunately this meritorious geologist, who laboured hard to elucidate the geographical questions connected with the ancient history of East Kent, was a bad writer, and sometimes failed to make his meaning clear.

Major Rennell, who was in his day ‘the acknowledged head of British geographers’,[2474] believed that Caesar landed at Deal. ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘the margin of the ancient beach, on which Caesar landed, must now be very far within land, as well as very considerably raised.’[2475] The words ‘of course’ prepare us for the discovery that Rennell quotes no authority and gives no reasons.

Professor Montagu Burrows,[2476] also without giving either authority or reason, tells us that Deal ‘probably had once a haven, which was choked up in very early times’. But choked up it was not unless it existed; and observe that its existence is only ‘probable’. As a matter of fact, the so-called probability is unsupported by any evidence.[2477] The professor goes on to say that ‘the old town [of Deal] was already separated from the sea by a considerable interval when Henry [the Eighth] built the three castles of Deal, Sandown, and Walmer for the protection of the coast, which had now become a continuous stretch of steep shingly beach’. Now if, in the time of Henry the Eighth, ‘the old town was _already_ separated from the sea by a considerable interval,’ the inference is that it had once been quite close to the sea; and of this there is no evidence. Was the professor thinking of Leland,[2478] who describes ‘Deale’ as ‘half a Myle fro the Shore of the Se, a Fisshcher Village iii. Myles or more above Sandwic’? If so, why should he assume that because Deal in the time of Leland, that is to say, of Henry the Eighth, was half a mile from the sea, it had once been on the sea? The only conceivable reply to this question would be that as Upper Deal is now more than half a mile from the sea,[2479] and as, according to Leland, it was only half a mile from the sea in the time of Henry, it may once have been actually on the seashore. But Deal Castle was built by Henry; and the sea was therefore at least as far from Upper Deal in his time as it is now. The truth is that Leland’s ‘Myles’ were sometimes very long: he tells us that Sandwich was ‘iii. Myles’ from Deal, and it is really six.

Dowker, in the paper which he published in 1876,[2480] maintained that ‘Deal probably did not exist in Roman times’, and that, when Caesar landed in Britain, ‘the coast was cut back behind Deal’:[2481] that is to say, he virtually committed himself to agreement with the view, already stated, of Major Rennell. In the same paper he affirmed that ‘the present town of Deal is situated on a comparatively recent beach’, and went on to say, in proof of his assertion, ‘I have evidence of the beach at the back of Deal containing mediaeval remains.’[2482] What the evidence was, he did not say; and what he meant by ‘the beach at the back of Deal’, I do not know. In 1887 another paper[2483] was published, containing a report of his views. Herein I find that there is ‘no evidence’ of ‘a shore-line cutting far back beyond the Deal beach’. No evidence in 1887, though in 1876 the evidence was irrefragable.[2484]

The opinion of Stukeley,[2485] who believed that Caesar had landed between Walmer Castle and Deal, was diametrically opposed to that of Rennell. He maintained that Caesar’s camps must have been ‘absorpt by the ocean, which has so long been ... wasting the land away’. ‘Even since Henry the VIII^{ths} time,’ he continued, ‘it has carried off the seaward esplanade of the three castles’ [of Walmer, Deal, and Sandown].[2486] But it does not follow that in the interval which separated the time of Caesar from the time of Henry the Eighth the sea in the neighbourhood of Deal had been continuously gaining upon the land. It would appear that in the last four centuries it has alternately advanced a little and receded.[2487] In 1615, 1626, and 1627 the waves were wearing away the walls which had been erected for the protection of the castles of Walmer and Deal.[2488] During the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, shingle was being rapidly thrown up along the coast between St. Margaret’s Bay and a point which, as Mr. Elvin[2489] says, was ‘considerably to the north of Sandown Castle’; and, although during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century the sea was again encroaching, at all events at Walmer, the bank of shingle between the Rifle Range at Kingsdown and Walmer then began again to increase, while northward of Deal as far as Sandown Castle the sea was simultaneously gaining ground. In 1885 shingle was still accumulating at Walmer Castle and also at Deal, although it was recognized that at the latter place its movements were variable. For some years previously, however, the shingle which formerly protected the cliffs between St. Margaret’s and Kingsdown had been travelling northwards past Walmer to Deal; and during the fourteen years that followed 1885 the same process was going on: I daresay it is going on still. At Deal, wrote Dowker in 1899,[2490] ‘the shore line has been nearly stationary until we approach the north end of Deal, where the ... sea had washed most of the beach away and carried it past the Castle.’ Finally, it must be borne in mind that from various places between Walmer and the North Foreland a great deal of shingle has been abstracted.[2491] Still, if _The North West View of Walmer Castle_, by S. and N. Buck, which was published in 1735, was approximately accurate, the sea was a good deal nearer the castle then than it is now; and the observations that were made between 1741 and 1884 show that while in that period the sea at Sandown Castle gained 200 feet upon the land, off Deal Castle the increase of shingle amounted to 120 feet, and off Walmer Castle to no less than 385.

The Reverend Beale Poste, a well-known antiquary of the nineteenth century, maintained[2492] that the bank of beach upon which Deal stands must have existed in the time of Caesar, ‘since numerous Roman coins are found at neap tides at low water on the chalk at the edge of the beach.’ He added that ‘when the piles for the pier were driven into the beach in 1842, it was found in a highly concrete state, almost like rock, denoting great antiquity’. The former statement, if it is correct,[2493] would seem to prove that the shore-line has receded, in other words, that the sea has on the whole gained upon the land since the days of Caesar; the argument based upon the condition of the beach into which the piles were driven only tends to show that the lower stratum of the beach was old.

Quite recently a discovery has been made which ought to set the question at rest. Romano-British interments have been unearthed about seven hundred yards north of Walmer Castle, ‘on the low ground ... adjoining, and only on a slightly higher level than the Castle meadows.’[2494] The spot where they lay is about two hundred and fifty feet west of the high-water mark of ordinary tides. The discovery, as Mr. Cumberland Woodruff remarks,[2495] proves that ‘the shore lands [between Walmer and Deal] were protected then as now, though probably [or rather certainly] by a much thinner line of shingle’.[2496]

The conclusion appears to be this. There is no reason to suppose that the coast-line between Sandown Castle and Walmer Castle was very different in Caesar’s time from that which is depicted on the Ordnance Map; and there is positive proof that between Walmer Castle and Deal Castle, at some period of the Roman occupation, it was nearly the same. On the other hand, it is certain that since Caesar landed a great deal of shingle has accumulated along this part of the coast, especially at Walmer; and it may be inferred that the beach was less steep then than it is now.

III. THE GOODWIN SANDS

Before we attempt to inquire what was the condition of the Goodwin Sands in the time of Caesar, it will be well to state the relevant facts which have been ascertained since exact observations began to be recorded.

‘The north-eastern part of the North Goodwin,’ says the author of the _Channel Pilot_,[2497] ‘dries in places 7 feet at low water; the South Goodwin not more than 4 or 5 feet at any part.’

The form of the sands is altered periodically by the tides. Beale Poste argued in 1857 that the Goodwin Sands were still growing, as ‘Kingsdown Mark, a pile ... built in the reign of Elizabeth to show the South Sand head, is ... of no use, the sand having now extended itself a mile further to the southward’. Moreover, he says, it was stated in the Report of the Commission of the Harbours of Refuge for 1845 that ‘the Brake Sand, a branch of the Goodwin Sands in the Small Downs, had moved _bodily inwards_ towards the shore seven hundred yards within the last fifty years’. This, he maintains, can only mean that ‘a deposit has taken place on the inward side of the sand ... while the outward side has been eroded by the winds and tides’.[2498] In 1885 it was found that ‘the former Bunthead shoal’ had ‘entirely disappeared’,[2499] and that ‘the whole body of the South Calliper’ had ‘moved about a mile north-eastward’. Again, it was ascertained by ‘a re-survey of the Downs, Goodwin Sands, and adjacent coast’, executed in 1896, that since 1887 considerable changes had taken place. ‘The Goodwin Sand,’ we learn from this source, ‘has continued its general movement towards the coast, and the area of drying sand has largely increased.’[2500]

The results of borings carried out at various times in the Goodwin Sands have shown that blue clay, resting on chalk, was found at the depths of 7, 15, 57, and 78 feet.[2501] From these data Sir Charles Lyell[2502] concludes that the Goodwins ‘are a remnant of land, and not “a mere accumulation of sea sand”;’ and, referring to the destructive storm mentioned in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_[2503] as having occurred in 1099, he conjectures that ‘the last remains of an island, consisting, like Sheppey, of clay, may perhaps have been carried away about that time’.

Dr. Guest[2504] holds that in Caesar’s time the Goodwin Sands did not exist. He reminds us that, according to Somner,[2505] it was the opinion of ‘several men of judgement’ that they had not appeared until after the time of Earl Godwin, and, remarking that this was also the view of Sir Thomas More, he argues that ‘we may infer that such at that period was the opinion of educated men who had local knowledge’. Leland,[2506] he goes on to say, ‘attributed the decay of Sandwich to the Goodwin Sands, and as Sandwich was a flourishing port in the fourteenth century, we may infer that it was not till the fifteenth that the sands attained those formidable dimensions which produced so much mischief.’ Immediately north of Sandown Castle there is, he observes, a tract of land covered with low sand-hills, which, in Philipot’s map of Kent, are called the ‘smale downs’,[2507] and upon which the sea has long been encroaching. He accounts for the name given to the roadstead by assuming that it once formed part of the ‘smale downs’, and affirms his belief that ‘the flats round Sandwich once projected into the sea as a low ness or foreland,--probably divided into islands, of which Lomea [an island which John Twine asserted to have formerly existed about four miles from Thanet] was the easternmost’. He assumes that as Lomea is not mentioned in Domesday Book, it perished by some natural convulsion before the end of the eleventh century, and goes on to say that ‘After the destruction of this island, the Goodwin Sands may have been gradually accumulated, not necessarily on the site of the island, but near it, and the Downs just as gradually excavated’.[2508] Beale Poste[2509] also affirms that in 1098 ‘an island named Lomea was overflowed, on which occasion the sands are said to have been formed. This is mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis, and from him by Twine.... But Earl Goodwin (_sic_) died in ... 1053, and Domesday-book negatives that any extensive tract of land was overflowed and lost, in this direction.’

Now John Twine[2510] (or Twyne) merely says that he has read about Lomea in the works of ‘certain writers’. It was once, he says, a low fertile island, which was submerged in consequence of a great storm, and covered with sand, and it is now the Goodwin Sands. As for Giraldus Cambrensis, I have searched his writings diligently, and I can find no mention whatever therein either of Lomea[2511] or of the Goodwin Sands. The name ‘Downs’ is easily accounted for. ‘The DOWNS,’ says the author of the _Channel Pilot_,[2512] ‘in a general sense, implies the numerous banks lying immediately off the coast between the South and North Forelands ... that [anchorage] which is commonly ... known as the Downs is off the town of Deal between Walmer Castle and the northern part of the town,’ &c. I see no reason to doubt that the name of the roadstead is derived from the aforesaid banks and from the sand-_dunes_ on the shore.

Somner,[2513] remarking that, according to the common opinion, Lomea was submerged in 1097, observes that there is no notice of such an island either in Domesday Book or in ‘any Author whether foreign or domestick, of any antiquity, that ever I could meet with’.

The late C. H. Pearson[2514] inferred from ‘the legend of their formation’[2515] that the sands were ‘first remarked about the end of the eleventh century’, and that they were ‘probably formed by bank-currents gradually depositing sand about a shoal’.

On the other hand, S. Pritchard,[2516] the historian, so called, of Deal, argues that the sands must have existed ‘from all time’ as otherwise Deal and the adjoining country would inevitably have been inundated. Why? The island, the former existence of which is assumed by Sir Charles Lyell, would have been as good a protection as the sands; and in the time, which was certainly anterior to the Roman invasion of Britain, when the shingle bank had not accumulated to a sufficient height,[2517] the very small area in the neighbourhood of Deal which is below high-water mark may have been inundated, unless, as Dowker[2518] and Mr. Spurrell[2519] believe, the level of the land has been depressed since the Roman occupation.

The reader has doubtless already concluded that it is impossible to affirm either that the Goodwin Sands existed in the time of Caesar, or that they had not then accumulated to such a degree as to attract attention, or that their place was occupied by an island. If the silence of Domesday Book and, as it should seem, the absence of any other positive testimony constitutes an argument against the hypothesis of Sir Charles Lyell,[2520] the same argument may be advanced to show that before the Norman Conquest the sands had not begun to appear. Yet, as we shall see in a subsequent article, there is some reason to believe that either sands or an island were there when Caesar invaded Britain.[2521] Tradition, vague as it is, combined with Lyell’s authority, disposes me to accept tentatively the latter alternative.

IV. THE SOUTH FORELAND AND THE DOVER CLIFFS

Professor Montagu Burrows[2522] affirms that ‘the space over which the tides travel [in the Straits of Dover] must be at least two miles wider than it was some 2,000 years ago’. This is one of the _ex cathedra_ statements in which the professor’s work abounds, and for proof of which his amazed readers search his pages in vain. Dowker’s estimate is more moderate: he only bids us ‘assume the Straits are now one mile wider than when Caesar visited our shores’;[2523] but, like Professor Burrows, he requires us to make this assumption in the dark.

In M. Vivien de St.-Martin’s great work it is stated that Cape Grisnez ‘perd en moyenne 25 centim. par an; autrement dit, il recule 25 m. par siècle’.[2524] Assuming the accuracy of this statement, and assuming, further, that the rate of erosion has been constant since the invasion of Caesar, Cape Grisnez then projected seaward 489 metres, or about 534 yards further than it does now. I take for granted that the statement is based upon exact and prolonged observation; but when did that observation begin?[2525]

As for the South Foreland, it is certain that, as Dowker says,[2526] it is (or at all events was in 1885 and for some years previously) ‘being gradually undermined by the sea’; but it would be a great mistake to leap to the conclusion that this erosion has been going on continuously since the time of Caesar. In 1850 Captain K. B. Martin, who was harbour-master of Ramsgate, affirmed that the cliff between Dover and the South Foreland, being protected by ‘an inclined plane of shingle’ from the sea, had ‘preserved its contour from time immemorial’.[2527] The phrase is somewhat vague: but the captain was a careful observer; and we may believe him when he tells us that since his boyhood, fifty years before the time when he wrote, there had been no change.[2528] Why, then, were the Dover cliffs and the South Foreland being gradually eaten away in 1876, when Dowker wrote, and in 1884? Simply because the supply of shingle had, from various causes, been cut off.[2529] The erosion, said Mr. E. R. N. Druce, Engineer to the Government pier at Dover, takes place ‘at no particular rate, but falls of cliff at the points above named have taken place at intervals for some years past ... since they have lost the protection of the shingle at their base’. He added that the loss was ‘confined to areas bare of shingle’, and that, so far as he could ascertain, there existed no ‘data for determining the rate of erosion from early maps or other documents’.[2530] It would appear, then, that Professor Burrows’s assertion is based upon pure imagination.

When the subsidence which had taken place in the Neolithic Age was virtually complete the sea was bordered by a narrow plain, to which the high ground descended gradually. Erosion was at first rapid while the waters were devouring loose talus; but when beaches had had time to form it was of course retarded.[2531] How slow it is where the rocks are hard is proved by the fact that the contour of a prehistoric camp near Hastings shows that the seaward defence was formed not by an artificial rampart but by the East Cliff.[2532] Yet Professor Burrows asks us to believe that erosion has been as rapid in the chalk of the South Foreland as in the soft cliffs between Flamborough Head and the Thames.[2533] Generally speaking, as erosion proceeds, cliffs become higher;[2534] and it is obvious that if the Channel had been two miles wider in Caesar’s time, the Dover cliffs, if they had existed, would have been insignificant. But since Caesar described them as ‘precipitous heights’,[2535] and Cicero as ‘astonishing masses of cliff’,[2536] they were evidently little lower then than now. Let the reader ponder these things, and he will realize how monstrously exaggerated is the estimate which assigns to the Straits of Caesar’s time a breadth two miles less than our modern maps show.[2537]

V. DOVER HARBOUR