whither the neighbouring farmers and their cattle might flee when in
danger from a hostile raid. The lack of water in many of them shows
that they could never have been permanently occupied either in war or
peace.[50] Perhaps the best remaining example is Maiden[51] Castle,
which dominates Dorchester, being at once the largest and the most
untouched by later ages. Here three huge concentric ramparts, nearly
three miles in circuit, gird in a space of about fifty acres on a
gentle swell of the chalk ridge above the modern town by the river. A
single tortuous entrance, defended by an outwork, gives access to the
levelled interior. All, save the oaken palisades which once topped
each round of the barrier, remains as it was when first constructed,
looking down, now as then, on the spot where the population for whose
benefit it was made dwelt in time of peace. For English Dorchester is
the British town whose name the Romans, when they raised the square
ramparts which still encircle it, transliterated into Durnovaria.
Durnovaria in turn became, on Anglo-Saxon lips, Dornwara-ceaster,
Dorn-ceaster, and finally Dorchester.

G. 10.--We have already, on physical grounds, assigned these
Durotriges to the Damnonian Name. There were certainly fewer natural
obstacles between them and the men of Devon to the west than between
them and the Belgae to the northward. Caesar, however, distinctly
states that the Belgic power extended to the coast line, so the
Britons of the Frome valley may have been conquered by them. Or the
Durotriges may be a Belgic tribe after all. For, as we have pointed
out, our evidence is of the scantiest, and there is every reason
to suppose that the era of the Roman invasion was one of incessant
political confusion in the land.