Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/262

 2-ZG THE MAIDEX WAY, possibly for a considerable period, the centre cairn being the grave of the chieftain. Between the north and east ridges is a deep peat moss, which a few years ago was covered with water. It appears to have been a sort of loch, and to have burst its barrier, and escaped into the Lyne. A considerable way along the western side of the northern barrow is a rectangular enclosure, which ma}'' have been the oround-works of a Mile Castle, as this would be about the usual distance. The " Ancient Ditch " passes near it, and skirts along the edge of the hill. The prospect from this Knowe is striking and romantic ; nature having combined the charms of streams, rocks, and hills covered with the sweetly-scented heather ; the mountain sides being fissured by the streams which fashion them into panellings crested "with ranges of rugged and shaggy crags, with torrents thunderino; down the narrow glens, and forminir numerous jjicturcsque " strumlcts " or cascades. There are several heaps of stones resembling cairns further up the banks of the river. This district indeed abounds in reli(pics of that nature. These ancient monu- ments present to us traces of tribes to whom we must assign a very remote date. They form an inijiortant link in the chain of those remains which are connected with one of the early races of the human family, and which may be termed the unwritten history of man, bringing to liglit some faint traces of our earliest ancestry. To what })articular })eriod of our history they are to be assigned it is impossible to say, without an examination of their contents. From their contiguity to the Maiden Way they might be supposed to be of Roman construction ; but they are more probably vestiges which might tend to ilhisti'ate the cliaracter and habits, and the amount of civilisation of the inhabitants of the British Isles, many centuries before the Romans carried the arts of jx'ace in tiie train of their conquering legions. AVhat a curious page of ancient liistory might be revealed by the opening of these burial-places! They would ])rol)ably conti-ihute tlu'ir share to the histoi-y of Britain during a period coinj)Uted to be removed from ours by not less tlian thirty centuries. ( loo y;irds.) At 54.30 yards the Mai<lcn Way j)asses on the (asL side of a large grey crag in Ihoadside. An old man named John Storey, of Coldsh»p, a stone-mason, and a