ric population occupied the actual site,
or even whether the valley may not have then been a salt-water creek,
it is wiser in this brief sketch to pass over these primitive people
and the lake-dwellers who, after a considerable interval, were
possibly their successors, and come to the surer ground of history.
This brings us to the early Roman invasions of Britain and Julius
CA|sar's description of the people of Kent, whose civilization he found
on a higher level than in the other parts he penetrated. He described
them as being little different in their manner of living from the
Gauls, whose houses were built of planks and willow-branches, roofed
with thatch, and were large and circular in form, but he adds:

All the Britons dye themselves with woad, which gives them a
bluish colour, and so makes them very dreadful in battle. They
have long hair, and shave all the body except the head and
upper lip.

These people, owning allegiance to various chiefs and living in camps
or villages defended by earthen ramparts, were attacked by the Roman
expeditions which invaded Britain in the opening years of the
Christian Era, and there is evidence for believing that there was a
British settlement of considerable importance on the site of
Canterbury. Of this there remains a lofty artificial mound, now known
as the Dane John--another form of the familiar donjon. The Romans
called it Durovernum, a name perhaps derived from the British
Derwhern, and although their historians are curiously silent in
regard to the place there cannot be any doubt that the town rose to
great importance in the later years of the four centuries of the Roman
occupation of Britain. A glance at a map of the Roman roads in Kent
shows Durovernum as a centre for five great ways leading from the
coast towns of Portus Lemanis (Lymne), Portus Dubris (Dover), Portus
Ritupis (Richborough, near Sandwich), Regulbium (Reculver), and also
the Isle of Thanet, and from this important centre the Watling Street
ran straight to Londinium. These roads all converge upon the spot
where the River Stour became a tidal estuary and where it was
fordable, and all who arrived or departed from the ports nearest to
Gaul would therefore of necessity pass that way. Another indication of
the size of the town is found in the five Roman burial-places
discovered close to Canterbury, and if anything else were needed it is
only necessary to look at the walls of St. Augustine's Abbe