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Rh of the expedition,"—that of informing their commander-in-chief how far his next summer's advance might extend,—"they returned, as I cannot doubt, still creeping timidly, as was their wont, from headland to headland, and having hugged the eastern coast from Caithness to the Firth of Forth, were finally drawn up for the winter on the beach from which they had been launched at the commencement of the season." "The demonstration thus obtained was itself regarded as a triumphal achievement, and Agricola was celebrated by his countrymen as an explorer as well as a conqueror."

The appellation of "conqueror" is justly due to Agricola for his achievements north of the Humber, where he reduced to at least a temporary submission the present districts of Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland, and for his success in the hitherto untrodden ground of Caledonia. Still greater praise than that accorded him for his victories in the field, belongs to him for the care he took to secure and consolidate his acquisitions. With the patience and precaution of a Wellington, he never made an advance without previously providing for the safety of his army in flank and rear, and he employed for that end the constant Roman method of laying down roads and building a chain of forts linked to one another by walls of earth capped and faced with stone or solid brick-work. "Struck perhaps with the natural defences of the line from the Tyne to the Solway, where the island seems to have been broken, us it were, in the middle, he drew a chain of forts from sea to sea to protect the reclaimed subjects of the southern valleys from the untamed