Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/38

 the record left by that geographer, being only fifteen instead of twenty-five miles north of the Belisama or Ribble estuary. Rigodunum, or Ribchester, is fully thirty miles to the east of the spot where it is wished to locate the Portus, and thus approaches very nearly to the forty-mile measurement of Ptolemy, whose distances, as just hinted, were universally excessive. As an instance of such error it may be stated that the longitude, east from Ferro, of Morecambe Bay or Estuary given by Ptolemy, is 3° 40' in excess of that marked on modern maps of ancient Britannia, and if the same over-plus be allowed in the longitude of the Portus Setantiorum a line drawn in accordance, from north to south, would pass across the west extremity of the "Lune Deep," showing that its distance from the Bay corresponds pretty accurately with that of the Portus from the Morecambe Æstuarium as geographically fixed by Ptolemy. In describing the extent and direction of the Roman road, or Danes' Pad, in his "History of Blackpool and Neighbourhood," Mr. Thornber writes:—"Commencing at the terminus, we trace its course from the Warren, near the spot named the 'Abbot's walk';" but that the place thus indicated was not the terminus, in the sense of end or origin, is proved by the fact that shortly after the publication of this statement, the workmen engaged in excavating for a sea-wall foundation in that vicinity came upon the road in the sand on the very margin of the Warren. Hence it would seem that the path was continued onwards over the site of the North Wharf sand bank, either towards the foot of Wyre where its channel joins that of Lune, and where would be the original mouth of the former river, or, as we think more probable, towards the Lune itself, and along its banks westward to the estuary of the stream, as now marked by the termination of "Lune Deep." The Wyre, during the period it existed simply as a tributary of the Lune, a name very possibly compounded from the Celtic al, chief, and aun, or un, contractions of afon, a river, must have been a stream of comparatively slight utility in a navigable point of view, and even to this day its seaward channel from Fleetwood is obstructed by two shallows, denominated from time out of mind the Great and Little Fords. The Lune, or "Chief River," on the contrary, was evidently, from its very title, whether acquired from its relative position to its tributary, or from its favourable comparison