st interesting avenues of speculation; many of them
were undoubtedly built as defences, some few--such as the small earthwork
on the din's edge at Martinhoe--as beacons or signalling stations, and
some are conjectured to have been built for burial purposes, not the mere
barrows for single internment, but in connection with sepulchral
ceremonies and rites of the worship of the dead. Such, perhaps, is the
small camp at Parracombe, which is built with a strong double fosse, but
the inner fosse deeper than the outer, which does not seem to have been
the case with camps built only for defence. There are two other camps at
Parracombe, one on the common and one on a high hill; near Lynton there
are two simple earth enclosures, called popularly Roborough Castle and
Stock Castle, and seven miles south of Lynton there is a square enclosure
called High Bray Castle, which commands a view of the fortified camps of
the district from Barnstaple to Braunton and Martinhoe. Tradition has it
that Alfred held this camp against the Danes, not that he built it, for
even in his day its foundation had become legendary and was ascribed to
"men of old time."

The Saxons do not seem to have built earth-camps, but stone
fortifications on hills, like Athelstan's castle at Barnstaple, or
Kenwith Castle, though they used the barrow-camps at their need. The
Romans, we know, were mighty engineers, and their roads and buildings
bear witness to the endurance of their handiwork, but many of these camps
are indisputably not Roman, and their names bear witness to their Celtic
origin. Such is the camp at Countisbury, which name is almost certainly
the same as Canterbury--"Kant-ys-bury," the "camp on the headland," and
which is one of the most perfect in Devonshire. It stands on a hill a
thousand feet above the sea, commanding a view of the coast from Porlock
to Heddon's Mouth, with the line of the Welsh coast opposite; it consists
of a triple rampart and fosse, rising boldly one within the other, with a
gate cut in the northern face of the rampart, and with a small mound
exactly in the centre of the inner camp. How did these peoples of the
Celtic speech build a work of such engineering magnitude, without the
tools and appliances of the Roman civilization, with implements of flint,
or at best of bronze, a work of such strategical foresight, of such
nicety of proportion, and of such enduring strength, that now after the
lapse of probably twenty-five cent