I[OVI] O[PTIMO] M[AXIMO] ET N[VMINIBVS] AVG[VSTI] COH[ORS] PRIMA AEL[IA] DAC[ORVM] CVI PR[ÆEST] GALLICVS TR[I]B[VNVS] To Jupiter, the best and greatest, And the deities of Augustus, The first cohort (the Ælian) Of the Dacians, commanded by Gallicus, The Tribune. The name AMBOGLANNA seems to signify, the circling glen. The former part of the word, meaning _about_, is met with in most of the western languages; as the Welsh _am_, the Irish and Gaelic _umain_, the Saxon _ymb_ or _embe_, the Greek αμφι, and the Latin (in compound words) _amb_. _Glanna_ is obviously synonymous with the modern _glen_, a term of very frequent use in the land of the Gäel. Here the name has been most appropriately bestowed. The camp stands upon the precipitous edge of a tongue of land, which, on every side except the west, is severed from the adjoining ground by deep scars. Hodgson describes the spot with great accuracy— The Irthing, in front of the station, makes two grand and sweeping turns, under red scars, which have rich flat grounds before them, deeply fringed along the margin of the river with a border of alder, heckberry (_Prunus Padus_, or bird-cherry,) and other upland trees. When the banks are not steep, they are deeply wooded: and diluvial hills, rounded into vast and beautiful varieties of form, present to the eye rich sylvan and cultivated scenes, while their component parts, as the river passes their sides, expose to the geologist rounded specimens of the different kinds of rocks to be found in the plains of Cumberland, and the high mountains that lie on each side of the Firth of the Solway. [Sidenote: BIRDOSWALD.] The modern name presents greater difficulties than the ancient one. Had king Oswald been a denizen of these parts, which he was not, we might have supposed that Birdoswald was a _burgh_ of his. The name is one of old standing, but the etymology of it can only be a subject of conjecture.[124] The station contains an area of between five and six acres. The walls are in an unusually good state of preservation; the southern rampart shewing eight courses of facing-stones. Camden’s statement is still true to the letter;—‘it has been surrounded with a stately wall of free-stone, about five feet thick, as may be fairly measured at this day.’ The moat which surrounded the wall may also be satisfactorily traced. Although the Wall adapts itself to the north rampart of the fort, the station is entirely independent of the Wall (see the wood-cut _p._ 84), and must have been built before it. Probably the first step taken in the construction of the Barrier, in every case, was the erection of the stationary camps.