cted by
Agricola. His line, "the Antonine Vallum," had its works on commanding
ridges; and fire-signals, in case of attack by the natives, flashed the
news "from one sea to the other sea," while the troops of occupation
could be provisioned from the Roman fleet. Judging by the coins found by
the excavators, the line was abandoned about 190, and the forts were
wrecked and dismantled, perhaps by the retreating Romans.

After the retreat from the Antonine Vallum, about 190, we hear of the
vigorous "unrest" of the Meatae and Caledonians; the latter people are
said, on very poor authority, to have been little better than savages.
Against them Severus (208) made an expedition indefinitely far to the
north, but the enemy shunned a general engagement, cut off small
detachments, and caused the Romans terrible losses in this march to a non-
existent Moscow.

Not till 306 do we hear of the Picts, about whom there is infinite
learning but little knowledge. They must have spoken Gaelic by Severus's
time (208), whatever their original language; and were long recognised in
Galloway, where the hill and river names are Gaelic.

The later years of the Romans, who abandoned Britain in 410, were
perturbed by attacks of the Scoti (Scots) from Ireland, and it is to a
settlement in Argyll of "Dalriadic" Scots from Ireland about 500 A.D.
that our country owes the name of Scotland.

Rome has left traces of her presence on Scottish soil--vestiges of the
forts and vallum wall between the firths; a station rich in antiquities
under the Eildons at Newstead; another, Ardoch, near Sheriffmuir; a third
near Solway Moss (Birrenswark); and others less extensive, with some
roads extending towards the Moray Firth; and a villa at Musselburgh,
found in the reign of James VI. {4}

CHAPTER II. CHRISTIANITY--THE RIVAL KINGDOMS.

To the Scots, through St Columba, who, about 563, settled in Iona, and
converted the Picts as far north as Inverness, we owe the introduction of
Christianity, for though the Roman Church of St Ninian (397), at Whithern
in Galloway, left embers of the faith not extinct near Glasgow, St
Kentigern's country, till Columba's time, the rites of Christian Scotland
were partly of the Celtic Irish type, even after St Wilfrid's victory at
the Synod of Whitby (664).

St Columba himself was of the royal line in Ulster, was learned, as
learning was then reckoned, and, if he had previously been turbulent, he
now desired to spread