perfected.¹ There is another indication to be noticed in this locality. On the rise of the hill, to the south of the old road ascending from Echingham Church, there is a step in the ground winding round in a curve towards the new road by Haremare; this is marked partly by a hedge and partly by a narrow belt of wood between the fields. As the natural effect of long-continued cultivation on sloping ground is to produce steps of this kind next the fences, there would be nothing noticeable in this circumstance, were it not that a continuation of the irregularity is to be traced in the wood on the opposite side of the old road.
   Of the direction of Caesar's advance into the country we have no evidence. The road through Lamberhurst and Tunbridge may be considered to be of British origin; but the Britons never would have allowed him to pass the Medway without a sharp contest,—more especially as they had a camp overhanging the line of his approach within about a mile of the latter place;—and if an important battle had been fought there, Caesar could hardly have failed to make some allusion to the peculiarities of the ground. If he had accurate information of
   ¹  No tradition or name seems to be attached to this spot; a cottager to whom I applied knew the circular excavation merely as a deserted sand hole, but it was originally assuredly not a sand pit; and when seen from the south-west, with the wood cleared away, it certainly looks like the beginning of a fortress. The soil of this neighbourhood is too tenacious of wet to admit of the formation of dry moats, except in situations where the ends of the trenches can run out on the side of a hill; the ground in the Burg Wood has a steep descent towards the north from the chief excavation, and in this respect is well suited for a British camp. Caesar describes
the entrances of the place which he stormed to have been defended with felled trees; and his troops applied the testudo and also raised an agger in the attack. An assault on this spot must have been made from the south-or east, and there is a mound projecting into the south side of the oval excavation, which an ardent imagination may claim to be the very work of Caesar's soldiers.
   ² There are remains of a British camp at Castle Hill, close to the pike road opposite Summer Hill Park, rather more than a mile south south-east of the town of Tunbridge.