Who cares? The old Romans were there, at least 10,000 strong:
and some sentimental tribune or other of them had taste enough to
perch his summer-house out on a conical point of the Hartland Cliffs,
now tumbling into the sea, tesselated pavement, baths and all. And
strange work, no doubt, went on in that lonely nook, looking out over
the Atlantic swell,--nights and days fit for Petronius's own pen,
among a seraglio of dark Celtic beauties. Perhaps it could not be
otherwise. An ugly state of things--as heathen conquests always must
have been; yet even in it there was a use and meaning. But they are
past like a dream, those 10,000 stalwart men, who looked far and wide
over the Damnonian moors from a station which would be, even in these
days, a first-rate military position. Gone, too, are the old Saxon
Franklins who succeeded. Old Wrengils, or some such name, whoever he
was, at last found some one's bill too hard for his brain-pan; and
there he lies on the hill above, in his 'barrow' of Wrinklebury. And
gone, too, the gay Norman squire, who, as tradition says, kept his
fair lady in the old watch-tower, on the highest point of the White
Cliff--'Gallantry Bower,' as they call it to this day--now a mere
ring of turf-covered stones, and a few low stunted oaks, shorn by the
Atlantic blasts into the shape of two huge cannon, which form a
favourite landmark for the fisherman of the bay.
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