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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Sec. i]   THE TERMINAL STATION ON THE WALL   635

terrace occupied by our Camp 17 I. a, less than two miles away. At the foot of the steep south slope below the tower T. iv. a, but still on high ground, the beginning of this section of the wall towards the south was found still in very good preservation. For a distance of sixteen yards or so it rose to a height of five or six feet. It was constructed, as elsewhere along the western portion of

the Limes, of alternate layers of stamped clay and fascines, each being about six inches in thickness. The fascines, made of reeds, were placed within these layers at right angles to the direction of the wall. Outside, the faces of the wall were revetted with similar fascines fixed lengthwise by means of strings of twisted reeds. The width of the wall at its foot was eight feet, as observed elsewhere.

From the point where the wall entered the level ground of the basin it had decayed, under the effect of moisture and vegetation, into a mere low mound. But seen from the height of the watch-station, its line, perfectly straight, showed up distinctly enough for close upon a mile. Among the thick growth of scrub and reeds the straight mound was more difficult to follow and, as the soil grew more and more marshy, the last faint indication of the agger disappeared entirely. As already explained, the very nature of the ground to the west, all spring-fed marsh with salt bogs and lagoons, had rendered the defence of this flank by a wall needless further on. But I consider it all the same possible that the wall was either actually carried, or originally planned to extend, to the clay terrace on which my Camp 171. a stood. As a reference to Plate 33 shows, this terrace exactly faces the watch-station T. iv. c from the west, and in conjunction with it would complete a quadrilateral protected by watch-posts. This, adjoining the curtain of the wall from T. iv. a to T. iv. b, would have served a very useful purpose as a safe place for camps, etc., on the westernmost flank of the Limes. As, however, I did not notice any old remains at Camp 171. a, the ancient occupation of this terrace must remain a matter of conjecture.

That there was an intention of specially safeguarding this area seems to me clearly proved by the ruined watch-tower T. iv. c just mentioned. It is perched, as seen in Fig. 170, at the western end, and on the top, of a very steeply eroded clay ridge which rises about 120 feet above the depression below it, covered with scrub and Toghrak jungle. The tower was roughly but solidly built with courses of hard lumps of clay, evidently quarried on the spot, and intervening layers of reeds and Toghrak branches. In the existing height of this masonry, thirteen feet, I counted ten such alternating courses and layers. The tower may have originally measured about eighteen to twenty feet square at its base. Nothing was found on searching the ground close to it. But at the northern edge of the ridge, about forty yards off, scanty traces of a hut survived, built with clay walls which had been faced or strengthened by vertical bundles of reeds. Here we recovered a much-clipped copper coin of the Wu-chu type and small fragments of a woollen material and tanned leather. It appears to me improbable that this tower T. iv. c could have been built for any other purpose than that of rendering the area due south of the curtain T. iv. a—b safer. Its distance from the watch-station T. v, conspicuously situated to the south-west, is only about two furlongs less than the distance from the same station to T. iv. b, and fire signals, etc., sent from T. v could be sighted quite as well at T. Iv. b (or even at T. iii) as at T. iv. c. Hence the construction of this latter station behind the line of the wall must have been called for by some other object, and the one just suggested seems to me the most obvious.

The tower -r. iv. b, the position of which on the line of the wall I have already described,

proved to be relatively well preserved, rising to about twenty-three feet in height. It was built of carefully laid bricks, measuring on the average fourteen by seven and a half inches, with a thickness of five and a half inches, and had the usual thin layers of reeds after every three courses. The plan made by Naik Ram Singh (Plate 36) showed the base of this tower measuring eighteen by twenty-one feet. But the closer examination I was able to make in 1914 proved that it had been eighteen feet

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Possible extension of wall to C. r71. a.

T. iv. c guards area within Limes corner.

Watch- tower

T. iv. b.