et called London Wall, and also in
Southwark, some nine feet below the present surface. A few articles of
Roman make were found mixed with a few bone implements of a ruder type.
This, the only authentic discovery of the kind, does not prove more than
that some of the Britons lived among the Romans, and the date is quite
uncertain. As to their dwellings before the Romans came, we have remains
in various places from which we can but gather that, though some ancient
race in these islands built up such rude but vast temples as Stonehenge,
the dwellings of the people who lived by the Walbrook, or in Southwark,
were mere wigwams. A hollow was dug in the ground, and where stones were
plentiful, which cannot have been the case on the site of Lynn Dun, a
few were used in the flooring. Over the hollow the house was raised--a
bank of earth, perhaps roofed with boughs and trunks, and with some
means of making a wood fire. Rings of brass and scraps of pottery are
often found in the hollows, but of such discoveries in London the
records are silent.

[Illustration: RED-GLAZED POTTERY (ROMAN).]

II.--ROMAN LONDON

With the coming of the Romans, we might expect to find ourselves on
firmer ground than in our vain endeavours to learn something about the
early Britons in London. But if we date the Latin discovery of Britain
with the coming of Julius Caesar to the southern coast of our island in
55 B.C., it is evident that before the expedition, which was eventually
commanded by Aulus Plautius in A.D. 43, nearly a century elapsed, and
that during all that time there is no mention at all of London. To use
Dr. Guest's cautious words: "The notion entertained by some antiquaries
that a British town preceded the Roman camp has no foundation to rest
upon." In the chapter on Celtic London I have endeavoured to show that
the British town, if there was one, stood, as Ptolemy asserts, on the
Cantian side of the river. The Romans seldom or hardly ever chose a
Celtic site for a new building, but, to quote Guest again, "generally
built their _castellum_ two or three miles from the British _oppidum_."
On this principle, the new building of Aulus would be either a couple of
miles from the Celtic town, or separated from it at least by the width
of the Thames. If we suppose, as is more than probable, that Lynn Dun
was in Southwark, and that some settlement was also among the shallows
and islets crossed by the Dover Road and named by the Anglo-Saxons the