this castle was built long before Hengist’s time; for I saw enough of the old Roman wall to evince its founders: one great piece stands on the verge of the church-yard; another by a house: there are more behind the school-house in the pastures, and I have met with many men that have dug at its foundations in several other places: it is built of white rag-stone laid sometimes sideways, sometimes flat, in mortar exceedingly hard, full of pebbles and sand; nor is it mixed to any fineness: so that I conjecture it was the method of the Romans to pour the mortar on liquid, as soon as the lime was slaked: thus the heat and moisture, struggling together, created a most strict union or attraction between the lime and stone, the motion favouring their approximation; and the lime, no doubt, being made of the same stone, promoted a more intimate union between the cement and the hard materials by similitude of parts. I suppose this narrow tongue of land was thus encompassed with a wall quite to the market-place, objecting only its end to the plain before the hill, the rest standing upon the stoney precipice. From under the castle-walls almost quite round rise many quick springs; but Syfer spring is most famous, having now four fluxes of water from between the joints of great stones laid flat like a wall; and joined together with lead, probably first by the Romans, for it is under their wall; shaded over with trees very pleasantly: this is the morning and evening rendezvous of the servant-maids, where consequently intelligence is given of all domestic news: they say, within memory it ran much quicker, so that the water projected three or four foot from the wall; others say, that originally it ran in one stream like the sheet of a cascade. Syfer spring, no doubt, is the Saxon _syfer_, pure, clean, as the stream here deserves to be called. There is a place by the fold, south-west of the church, still called Castle-hill, where many bodies have been dug up. I am inclinable to think the meaning of _Thong-castle_ to be fetched from _Thane Degen_, Saxonicè, _miles_, _præfectus_, analogous to the Latin _comes_.[88] Here it is likely our Saxon ancestors placed a garrison of troops to secure this country, as they conquered from the Roman Britons. In the church is a monumental _effigies_, in stone, of a knight of the name of Hundon; another, of a lady; another, of a knight of St. John of Jerusalem, cross-legged. In Snarford church some fine monuments, in alabaster, of the family of St. Paul’s. Return we now to Lindum. _Sol medium cœli conscenderat igneus orbem Cum muros arcemque procul & rara domorum Tecta vides, modo quæ Romana potentia cœlo Æquavit_—— +Virg.+ Æ. viii. A mile north upon the Foss is a _tumulus_ of hard stone, called the Castle.