Where the Romans and the Romano-British citizens of Venta lived when the tribes were reduced--where the Venta Icenorum of Roman rule really was, in fact--is a mystery, for, unlike most of our great cities, Norwich has furnished no relics of that age; while, beyond coins and odds and ends, Caistor camp has produced nothing. No vestiges of streets or houses have been found, here or elsewhere, and Venta might, for all there is to show of it, have been a city of dreams. The fact that the original capital of the Iceni was re-settled by the Danes when they came in a conquering flood, seems to point to the site of it having long been deserted; and that they called it after the North "wic" or creek, presupposes a "South wic" somewhere else, near or far. The position of that south creek is fixed by the ancient geography of these last few miles. In those times the ground on which Yarmouth, at the mouth of the Yare estuary, is now built, was under the waves of the sea, which ran up in a long navigable creek--the "Gariensis" of the Romans and the "North Wic" of the Danes--from a Roman fortified port where Caistor-by-Yarmouth stands, to the site of Norwich, which indeed, centuries later, was still a port. Where the River Tase is now confluent with the Yare and the Wensum, there then branched out a shorter and perhaps shallower creek, running almost due south; the "South wic" of those northern pirates. At its head stood Caistor, where the navigation ceased. [Illustration: CAISTOR CAMP.] It is far inland now, but the marshy valley of the Tase still bears signs of those old conditions, and perhaps the villas of wealthy Roman citizens, together with other relics of the vanished city, still lie preserved deep down in the mud and silt that have filled up the old channel. The lie of the land, in accord with these views, is plain to see when, returning to the high road, the journey to Norwich is continued to Hartford Bridge; bird's-eye views unfolding across the valley to the right. At Hartford Bridge, where there are several bridges, none of them sizeable, rivers, streams and runlets of sorts trickle, flow, and gurgle in their different ways through flat meadows, below the long rise where, two miles from Norwich, the road begins to grow suburban. It is on the summit that the Newmarket and Thetford route from London joins with this, and together they descend into the city. XXXIX THIS way came Queen Elizabeth into Norwich on her great "progress" of 1578, by St Stephen's Plain and through St Stephen's Gate. Gates and walls are gone that once kept out the turbulent, or even condemned the belated citizen to lodge the night without the precincts of the city, in suburbs not in those times to be reckoned safe.