suspecting a design to purchase his farm, or take it out of his
hands.--I endeavour to remove his apprehensions, by approaching him; and
introduce a conversation tending to my pursuit, which he understands as
well as if, like the sons of Jacob, I addressed him in Hebrew; yet,
notwithstanding his total ignorance of the matter, he has sometimes
dropt an accidental word, which has thrown more light on the subject,
than all my researches for a twelvemonth. If an honest farmer, in
future, should see upon his premises a plumpish figure, five feet six,
with one third of his hair on, a cane in his left hand, a glove upon
each, and a Pomeranian dog at his heels, let him fear no evil; his farm
will not be additionally tythed, his sheep worried, nor his hedges
broken--it is only a solitary animal, in quest of a Roman phantom.

Upon the north west extremity of Sutton Coldfield, joining the Chester
road, is _The Bowen Pool_; at the tail of which, one hundred yards west
of the road, on a small eminence, or swell of the earth, are the remains
of a fortification, called _Loaches Banks_; but of what use or original
is uncertain, no author having mentioned it.

Four hundred yards farther west, in the same flat, is a hill of some
magnitude, deemed, by the curious, a tumolus--it is a common thing for
an historian to be lost, but not quite so common to acknowledge it. In
attempting to visit this tumolus, I soon found myself in the center of a
morass; and here, my dear reader might have seen the historian set fast
in a double sense. I was obliged, for that evening, February 16, 1783,
to retreat, as the sun had just done before me. I made my approaches
from another quarter, April 13, when the hill appeared the work of
nature, upon too broad a base for a tumolus; covering about three acres,
perfectly round, rising gradually to the center, which is about sixteen
feet above the level, surrounded by a ditch, perhaps made for some
private purpose by the owner.

The Roman tumoli were of two sorts, the small for the reception of a
general, or great man, as that at Cloudsley-bush, near the High Cross,
the tomb of Claudius; and the large, as at Seckington, near Tamworth,
for the reception of the dead, after a battle: they are both of the same
shape, rather high than broad. That before us comes under the
description of neither; nor could the dead well be conveyed over
the morass.

The ground-plot, in the center of the fort, at Loaches Banks, is abou