IX. Several indications enable us again to fix precisely the period of the second expedition to Britain. We know, from a letter from Quintus to his brother Cicero, that Cæsar was at the end of May at Lodi (we admit the 22nd of May).[412] He might therefore have arrived towards the 2nd of June on the shores of the ocean, where he inspected his fleet. During the interval before it assembled at the Portus Itius, he proceeded to the country of the Treviri, where he did not remain long; for, towards the middle of the summer (_ne æstatem in Treviris consumere cogeretur_), he started for Boulogne, where he arrived at the end of June. The winds from the north-west retained him there twenty-five days, that is, till towards the end of July. On another hand, Cicero wrote to Atticus on the 26th of July: “I see, from my brother’s letters, that he must already be in Britain.”[413] In reply to another letter of Quintus, dated on the 4th of the Ides of August (the 8th of August), he rejoices at having received on the day of the Ides of September (9th of September), the news of his arrival in that island.[414] These data fix the departure of the expedition to the end of July, for the letters took from twenty to thirty days to pass from Britain to Rome.[415] When the army moved from the coasts, the news was naturally much longer on the way; and in the month of October, Cicero wrote to his brother, “Here are fifty days passed without the arrival of letter or sign of life from you, or Cæsar, or even from where you are.”[416] Having ascertained the month of July for that of his departure, we have next to find the day on which that departure took place. Cæsar sailed at sunset, that is, towards eight o’clock (_solis occasu naves solvit, leni Africo provectus_). The wind having ceased at midnight, he was drawn by the currents towards the north; and when day broke, at four o’clock in the morning, he saw on his left the cliffs of the South Foreland; but then, the current changing with the tide, by force of rowing he made land towards midday, as in the preceding summer, near Deal.