Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/222

 216

NOTES AND QTEIUES. ti2s.iv. AUG.,

St. Paul's at about the same time (1790-91) that Elliston ran away from St. Paul's to go on the stage.

Donald went to sea as a stowaway. After three years on a coaster he became, at 18, the mate of a coasting vessel sailing from North Britain. He was seized il- legally by the pressgang, and shipped to the African coast. His exemplary conduct secured his promotion to quartermaster from the rating of A.B. to which by his good seamanship he had attained. In a brush with a French frigate he behaved with so much gallantry that he was placed on the quarterdeck as midshipman ; and about 1806 he was gazetted lieutenant. No record of his name is preserved in the Registers of St. Paul's School, which are admittedly incomplete at the end of the eighteenth century. MICHAEL F. J. MCDONNELL.

Bathurst, Gambia, British West Africa.

WINCHESTER COLLEGE CHAPEL : STAINED- GLASS PAINTER. In the modern copy (1822) of the ancient glass (inserted between 1387 and 1394) that fills the east window of Winchester College Chapel may be seen the small kneeling figure of a man wearing a blue grey gown with marone hood, and from his mouth issues a label inscribed " Thomas operator isttus vitri." I should be vory glad to know of any other such portraits of English mediaeval glass -painters. JOHN D LE GouTEm

Southsea.

THE GREEK STADIUM. In Smith's ' Diet, of Class. Antiq.' it is stated that in the Greek stadium there were three pillars : the first was inscribed dpto-reue, the second Ka/juf/ov, and the third orreuSe. The authority is stated to be the scholiast on Soph., ' Electra,' 691. The statement, however, does not appear to be in that passage of the scholia in Gaisford's or the Teubner editions. Could any of the classical scholars among your readers give me the words of the scholiast in the Greek or the exact reference ?

G. H. J.

ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN : THKIR ALIGN- MENT. Many people besides engineers, land surveyors, and ploughmen must have ex- perienced the difficulty of " rangine " a straight line between two points not visible to each other. When two such points were more than a hundred miles apart in old times the problem must have been hard indeed, especially where the country had no buildings or artificial landmarks, and where the lower portion^of it was covered with thick forests

and marshes. How then did the Romans manage to secure so correct an alignment of their roads 1 In the case of the Fosse, starting from near the seacoast of Dorset, and passing through Ilchester, Bath, Cirencester, and Leicester to Lincoln and the Humber coast, there is no deviation in its whole course of two hundred miles from a true line S.W. to N.E., beyond a slight northerly bend between Leicester and Newark. In the case of the other main trunk road, i.e., the Watling Street from Kent, through London, to Chester, the adjustment of the line is not quite so perfect, though correctly drawn as far as Daventry, beyond which place it takes too northerly a direction, and then branches due W. for Uriconium, the original route to Chester being apparently lost.

Perhaps some of your readers could explain how this correctness of line was achieved. Could it be that the position of the two points being fixed approximately by their relation to certain fixed stars, or ones low on the horizon, a succession of beacon fires was then lighted between those stars ? This would enable the Roman engineers to erect a succession of cross- staves pointing directly to such fires, and giving the true line by which to guide operations in the daytime. I should be glad of any information or references to the subject.

A few years ago Mr. Belloc published a monograph on the ' Stane Street,' a road from Chichester to London, and traced its course very minutely. Has the same process been applied elsewhere ?

CHARLES R. MOOEE. Oxford and Cambridge Club, Pall Mall, S.W.

" SONS OF ICHWE." Can any of your readers give me information as to the origin, or any reference to a book containing an account, of the " Sons of Ichwe " ? The term is used in Prince Lichnowsky's Memoirs. JOHN W. SINGLETON,

Borough Librarian.

Accrington.

MEDALS : INNOCENT X. AND GEORGE II. I should be glad to know what the two medals noted below are intended to com- memorate.

1. Bronze. Obverse, bust of Pope Innocent X., wearing vestments and a cap ; legend, '' Innocentius X. Pon. Max. an. III." (1647). Reverse, Christ washing the feet of an apostle ; legend, " TV Dominvs et Magister " ; in exergue, " exempl. dedi vobis."