Page:Roman Manchester (1900) by Charles Roeder.djvu/88

 alive. The traffic and transport of troops from London and Chester to the north must have been unceasing, for the station formed a link in the great artery of the Second and Tenth Iter, and it was a little cosmopolitan beehive, crowded with soldiers, officials, traders, and natives.

We have evidence of the navigation of the Irwell and Mersey by the discovery of the keel of an oaken canoe found in 1897 in excavating Nos. 7 and 8 docks at the Ship Canal, Old Trafford, at the depth of 15 feet to 20 feet in the gravel, and canoes at Barton (Sticking Islands), and at Veratinum (Wilderspool); by the golden bulla dredged up in the river near Eccles, and in the finding of coins in the channel of the Irwell at Victoria Bridge (306–340), Blackfriars Bridge (249–255), Quay Street Bridge (98–141), and the lid of a jar in May, 1899, 12 feet deep in the gravel of the Irwell at the Parsonage.

The great number of iron nails of all sizes, found outside the station in the suburbs, shows activity in the erection of houses, the iron scoria, cinders, and charcoal and mineral coal demonstrate the presence of smiths and smithies. We have sheet lead and leaden nails and stamps, the nails for fixing the antefix; plain green-coloured window glass, golden wire and rings, pewter dishes; glass and stone beads and blue fluted beads; bronze pins and rings, bracelets, bullæ, scales, ladles, statuettes and figures, fibulæ of silver and bronze, brooches, buckles, glass bottles and vases, plain and embossed, of greenish and blue colour; iron axes, knives, and styli, bronze celts and spearheads, terra cotta lamps, Samian ornamental fictile bowls and vases, and the thousand and one articles used in kitchen and scullery, such as dishes, jars, stands, tubs, mortariæ, amphoræ, ampullæ, pots, platters, urns, &c., too innumerable to specify. The fair amount, amongst them, of objects de luxe shows that the garrison