asian's, found the year before in scowering a ditch; but
I am sorry to observe, it has suffered more during the fifteen years in
my possession, than during the fifteen hundred it lay in the earth.

The inhabitants being in want of materials to form a turnpike road,
attempted to pull up this renowned military way, for the sake of those
materials, but found them too strongly cemented to admit of an easy
separation, and therefore desisted when they had taken up a few loads.

I saw the section of this road cut up from the bottom: the Romans seem
to have formed it with infinite labour and expence. They took out the
soil for about twenty yards wide, and one deep, perhaps, till they came
to a firm bottom; and filled up the whole with stones of all sizes,
brought from Duffield, four miles up the river; cemented with
coarse mortar.

The road here is only discoverable by its barren track, along the
cultivated meadows. It then proceeds over Morley-moor, through
Scarsdale, by Chesterfield, Balsover, through Yorkshire, Northumberland,
and terminates upon the banks of the Tine, near Tinmouth.

There are many roads in England formed by the Romans: they were of two
kinds, the military, which crossed the island; and the smaller, which
extended from one town to another. The four I have mentioned come under
the first class: they rather avoided, than led through a town, that they
might not be injured by traffic.

Two of these four, the Watling-street, and the Ikenield-street, are
thought, by their names, to be British, and with some reason; neither of
the words are derived from the Latin: but whatever were their origin,
they are certainly of Roman construction.

These great roads were begun as soon as the island was subdued, to
employ the military, and awe the natives, and were divided into stages,
at the end of each was a fort, or station, to accommodate the guard, for
the reception of stores, the conveniency of marching parties, and to
prevent the soldiers from mixing with the Britons.

The stations upon the Ikenield-street, in our neighbourhood, are Little
Chester (Derventione) a square fort, nearly half an acre; joining the
road to the south, and the Derwent to the west.

The next is Burton upon Trent (Ad Trivonam) thirteen miles south. Here I
find no remains of a station.

Then Wall (Etocetum) near Lichfield, which I have examined with great
labour, or rather with great pleasure: Here the two famous consular
roads cross each