was quite easy to imagine oneself looking out over the Picts’ country still, so far do the moorlands stretch, and so few are the signs of habitation.  Rolling ridges stretch northward, wave upon wave, clothed with grass and heather, amongst which Parnesius and Pertinax went hunting with little Allo the Pict; to the northeast the heights of Simonside showed; and far beyond them, though more to the westward, the rounded summits of the Cheviots lay on the horizon.

A short distance westward from the Crag is Hot Bank farmhouse, a place which most visitors to the Wall remember with grateful feelings; for what is more refreshing, after a long tramp, than a farmhouse cup of tea accompanied by that most appetising of Northumbrian dainties, hot girdle cakes!  The Visitors’ Book at Hot Bank is a “civil list” of all the most learned and noted names in Great Britain, and many outside its shores, together with legions of humbler folk.  In this it resembles the one at Cilurnum, which is the only other considerable station along the line of the Wall in Northumberland.

This station of Cilurnum, or Chesters, is a little over five acres in extent, and is quite near to Chollerford station on the North British Railway.  To describe Cilurnum in detail, and the interesting museum connected with it, filled with a wonderful collection of objects found on the line of the Wall, would require a book to deal with that alone.  The general plan is the same as that which we have already seen at Borcovicus, with the same rounded corners, and double gateway with guard-chambers at each side; the western and eastern walls at Chesters, however, have each an additional single gateway to the south of the larger portals.  We must content ourselves with a short survey of the camp, with its two wide streets at right angles to each other as at Borcovicus, and the rest of them very narrow—­indeed, little more than two feet in width; the remains of its Forum and market, its barracks and houses, its open shops and colonnades, the bases of the pillars yet in position; its baths, with pipes, cistern, and flues; and a vaulted chamber which was thought, on its being first excavated, to lead to underground stables, for a local tradition held that such were in existence, and would be found, with a troop of five hundred horses.  The vault, however, did not lead further, so that the tradition remained unproven.  Notwithstanding this, there was a grain of fact in it; for Chesters was a cavalry station, and five hundred was the full complement of the ala, or troop (ala being a “wing,” and cavalry forming the “wing” of an army in position).