Next morning I started westward again, first to visit Chesters, within half a mile of Chollerford, where are the famous remains of tie Roman fort of CILURNUM. My plan was to walk every step of the line of the Wall, as far as possible consecutively, so now I had to pick it up again on the west bank of the North Tyne where the Roman bridge had crossed. It was a perfect morning, with a sweet fresh air, and great clouds rolling up, from behind which the sun shone coquettishly at frequent intervals. The beeches which here overhang the road were at their freshest stage of green, having just scattered their bright russet leaf-caps all over the road, as a carpet for the wayfarer to tread upon. The pink and white leaf-caps of the sycamores made less show, in colour as in quantity; there is no tree so lavishly clothed with leaves as is the beech. I once had a little conversation with the genial landlord of the _George_ about these very beeches, one evening when he was showing me his garden. He was telling me of the famous people who had visited the _George_ and signed its visitors' book, amongst them Bernard Shaw and Rudyard Kipling; and then he added: "It's a funny thing, but do you know, Mr. Rudyard Kipling didn't know the difference between a beech and an oak--clever {83} gentleman as he is. Would you have believed it?" I said: "What makes you think that?" "Well, he came up to me, and he said: 'Mr. Simmonds, you have some very fine oaks in this part of the country.' I said: 'They're not oaks, sir, they're beeches.' And he said: 'Oh, are they?' So you see he didn't know." "But how can you be sure he was not referring to the oaks, for there are oaks about here too?" "Oh no; he _meant_ the beeches right enough." And so we left it at that. {84} CHAPTER IX CILURNUM It was the late Mr. John Clayton of Chesters who laid the foundation of the new knowledge of the Wall which excavation has brought to light. As other people collect antiquities to put in a glass case, so he collected the Roman Wall. Whenever a piece of ground along its line was in the market, he was first in the field to buy it; and to his zeal and knowledge it is due that so much has been preserved and excavated. It was his life-work. Therefore it is no mere figure of speech to say that a visit to the Roman Wall is a visit to his shrine; and since Chesters was his home for so many years, the Museum there, and the very fort of Cilurnum itself are especially commemorative of him and his work. All the forts along the line follow a general plan, though each has its distinctive features. In plan they are parallelograms, with rounded corners, enclosed by a stone wall at least 5 feet thick, with a circumscribing ditch, and with gateways north, south, east and west. {85} [Illustration: Fig. 8.--Plan of the Fort of Cilurnum at Chesters. (From _Archæologia Æliana_.)]