Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/19

Rh stones still appear on the surface of the ground. On the north side of this field it passes on the east side of a small mound, which has been partly carted away, and which may have been the site of a small watch-tower.

(400 yards.) At 850 yards it crosses the public road to Gilsland. Here it enters the Slack-house ground, where a gateway has been left in the stone fence. It passes along the east side of a small plantation, where it is now used for the cart-road. It appears to have been undisturbed. It then enters the corner of another field belonging to the Slack-house Farm, where it has been raised considerably above the adjoining ground, leaving unquestionable traces of its progress.

(400 yards.) At 1250 yards it enters Lordsgate meadow, and passes through the north-east corner, which was drained about three years since. Several of the drains intersected the Way, and produced a large quantity of stones. These drains, showing such manifest traces of the Way, are decisive against Mr. Hutchinson's statement as to its passing to the north from Carvorran, unless we admit that there have been two lines of Roman road each called the Maiden Way.

(180 yards.) At 1430 yards it enters the Waterhead Fell, at the south-west corner, and runs for several hundred yards on the east side of the stone wall, which forms the western boundary of the Fell. The Way here is considerably raised above the adjoining ground, and in some places shows a ditch on the east side. It passes over the summit of a barren and mossy ridge about the middle of this Fell. I have thought it necessary to be thus explicit at starting, to show the nature of the evidence on which I maintain that it has proceeded to the north from Birdoswald. The general aspect of this Fell is singularly bleak and wild, with little to arrest the attention, except now and then the whirring of a startled brood of grouse, the melancholy whistle of the plover, or the solitary scream of the curlew.

From the south-west corner of this Fell, a ditch, or syke, proceeds up the hill on the east side of the Maiden Way, and aims to the north-east. This ditch appears to accompany the Maiden Way as far as the Scottish border. It often crosses it, being sometimes on the east side, and at other times on the west of it. It generally has a low rampart, probably formed by the earth cast out of the ditch, on the