unexpectedly encountered. The delay of five hours of inactivity might be accounted for by a reluctance to begin any hostile movement before his whole force had arrived, but the calling together of his officers during this interval, and explaining to them the intelligence Volusenus had collected, pointing out what he was intending to do, and exhorting them to act with promptness and discretion, indicates a change in his plan of operations, for the carrying out of which fresh orders were necessary; and as the fleet did not quit its anchorage till within about four hours of sunset,¹ with a new landing place to be found, a landing to be forced, and the army to be secured for the night, Caesar had good reason for urging his officers to exert themselves. A course of seven or eight miles along the coast, in the direction of the tide, brought the fleet to a flat open part of the shore, where a landing was gained with great difficulty.²
   It is now necessary to revert to the coast of Britain, and endeavour to discover the locality of the transactions just referred to. At Dover, there may have been an inlet at the date of Caesar's arrival, sufficient to be called a haven, but it must have been small, and the adjacent ground does not agree with Caesar's description.³ A distance of seven or eight miles, in the direction of the tide from Dover, reaches to Folkestone, or a little further, where an invading force would have found very serious, though probably not insuperable difficulty
  ¹ According to Halley's computation, Caesar arrived on the coast of Britain at the end of August.
   ² The effect of the fleet remaining so long stationary, must hare been to draw the Britons towards the neighbouring coast; and it is possible Caesar may have prolonged his stay to the utmost, in the hope of enticing them away from the parts to which he was about to direct his course.
   ³ The site of Dover Castle has much the appearance of having been a British fortress; if it really was so, and Caesar had attempted to land immediately below, he could hardly have failed to mention its existence.