Standing on the northern rampart of the station, Mr. Lawson, the aged proprietor, directed the attention of the Pilgrim-party of 1849 to a small cottage on the opposite shore. ‘There,’ said he, ‘lived a Scottish reaver, who in the days of my grandfather made, on nineteen successive Easter-eves, a successful foray on the English side. A twentieth time he prepared to go; his family remonstrated, he however persisted, saying that this should be his last attempt. Our people were prepared for him and slew him.’ Some of the party asked ‘what notice did the law take of the transaction?’ 'None; the law which could not protect a man, would not punish him for taking the law into his own hands.' Now, nearly arrived at the western extremity of the great Barrier, we meet with but few traces of its characteristic masonry; enough, however, remains to lure us pleasantly to our journey’s end. In cutting the canal from Carlisle to the Solway Firth, in 1823, a prostrate forest of oak was discovered, which belonged to an age anterior to that of Hadrian. The engineer of the canal says— [Sidenote: PRIMEVAL FOREST.] A subterraneous forest was cut through in the excavation of the canal, near the banks of the Solway Firth, about half a mile north-west of the village of Glasson, and extending into Kirklands. The trees were all prostrate, and they had fallen, with little deviation, in a northerly direction, or a little eastward of it.—Some short trunks, of two or three feet in height, were in the position of their natural growth; but although the trees, with the exception of their alburnum and all the branches, were perfectly sound, yet the extremity of the trunks, whether fallen or standing, were so rugged, that it was not discoverable whether the trees had been cut down, or had fallen by a violent storm. The level upon which the trunks lay, was a little below that of high tides, and from eight to ten feet below the surface of the ground they were embedded in; which, excepting the superficial soil, is a soft blue clay, having the appearance of marine alluvion.... Although the precise period when this forest fell is not ascertainable, there is a positive proof that it must have been long prior to the building of the Wall because the foundations of the Wall passed obliquely over it, and lay three or four feet above the level of the trees.—_Arch. Æl._ ii. 117. The forest extends over a considerable tract of ground. It is probable that it was overthrown by a tempest from the south or south-west, at a time when the sea occupied a lower level than it does at present. The wood was so sound, that it was used in common with other oak timber in forming the jetties at the outlet of the canal into the Solway Firth. The president’s chair of the Society of Antiquaries, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is formed of it.