ALL visitors are agreed that Ross is a pretty and an interesting town. Although it cannot be said to possess, as a town, any very remarkable feature, yet there is enough in it to attract and please; and, without any great claims in the scenery immediately surrounding it, its prospects are sufficiently picturesque and beautiful to engage the traveller. Yet Ross derives its chief interest from the circumstance that it is the centre of a district which, remarkable for the extreme beauty of its scenery, is at the same time filled with monuments of the old time, and rich in historical reminiscenses and traditions. Not more than three miles to the south-eastward of Ross, under the commanding heights of Penyard, is traced the site of the Roman city of Ariconium. At a short GENT. MAG. VOL. XXXVII.

distance south from Ross the traveller enters upon the elevated woodlands of the Forest of Dean. Eastward and northward a rich and varied country is filled with early churches, old manor houses, camps, and tumuli, and other traces of the ancient peoples who have occupied the land. But the most beautiful and interesting excursion from Ross is that which carries the visitor down the Wye to Monmouth, and which may be made either by the river or by the road.

At less than a mile from Ross the Wye is crossed by Wilton Bridge, a good structure of the reign of Elizabeth, curious chiefly for the manner in which the stones of the arches are made to lock into one another. Close above the bridge, on the opposite bank of the river, stand, almost buried in

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trees, the ruins of Wilton Castle, the ancient baronial seat of the Lords Grey de Wilton. On passing the bridge of Wilton the traveller enters the parish of Bridstow, the little church of which possesses several points of interest for the ecclesiastical antiquary, while from the ascent of the Hereford road he will obtain one of the best near views of the town of Ross, backed by the hill of Penyard. The road to Monmouth turns off to the left at the turnpike before he ascends the rise of the Hereford road.

For more than a mile the road to Monmouth is uninteresting. It then rises a little and opens to the river, and we obtain in that direction a varying landscape, the chief feature of which is the winding course of the Wye. Looking back, Ross, known by its pointed spire and by its white square hotel (not a very pleasing object in the landscape) and Wilton bridge are seen in the distance. A little further we begin to ascend more elevated ground, and when we reach a place called Pencraig the view which presents itself to us is exceedingly fine. To the left the spire of Ross arises in the midst of the woods and hills that surround it; below the river winds its way through a beautiful valley, which has not yet closed in upon it as it does a little further down, while to the right the high promontory which overlooks it is crowned with the noble ruins of Goodrich Castle. Continuing our way from Pencraig, we shortly afterwards turn off into the grounds of Goodrich Court, celebrated for the museum of ancient armour and other antiquities collected there by the late Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick. The museum, especially its collection of carvings in ivory, bequeathed to Sir Samuel by the late Mr. Douce, is well worthy of the careful examination of the visitor. The house itself is a modern castle, built in not very good imitation of several styles, of which it would be difficult to point out any examples in the surrounding country, and presenting somewhat the appearance of a large wooden toy; it is beautifully situated with charming views over the valley of the Wye, but the building itself is in extremely bad taste, and this is felt the more from the contrast with the fine ruins which present them

selves on the summit of the adjoining hill. The latter are exceedingly interesting, and deserve to be carefully examined for their architectural peculiarities. Goodrich Gastle was originally built in the later period of the Saxon monarchy; but the present remains are Norman, with the addition of works of the Edwardian period, finally repaired and adorned in the fifteenth century. Among its peculiarities is the singular prevalence of triangular heads for arches.

The view from Goodrich Castle is superior to any which has hitherto presented itself; and the prospect of the castle from the river below is equally remarkable for its picturesque grandeur. The wanderer in search of antiquities may visit the remains of Flanesford Priory, which once stood there under the protection of the castle above, and the last remnant of which now serves the humble purposes of a barn.

After leaving Goodrich Castle, the road again turns off from the river, or rather the river turns off from the road, and, as the latter crosses over the high ridge behind, it furnishes a series of extensive views of a different description, bounded in the distance by the mountains of Wales. Hence descending to Old Forge, we again come upon the river amid some of the finest of the Wye scenery, at Whitchurch. While we have thus been following the road to Monmouth, the river itself has made a long sweep of several miles, winding between lofty hills, sometimes rising gradually and covered with thick hanging woods, and at others breaking into rocky precipices. Towards the south may be seen glimpses of the wild country of the Forest of Dean, with Ruerdean Church as a picturesque object. Further on the river passes through the narrow precipitous pass of Symond's Yat (i. e. Gate), and then discloses a new series of magnificent views, till it reaches the wild scenery of the New Weir, where the stream, confined in its channel, rushes down almost like a waterfall. From Whitchurch the road we have been pursuing runs again from the river, behind two hills called the Great and Little Dowards, till we come again in sight of the Wye, and our road then continues in a

course almost parallel to its banks, under wooded heights on the right, and on the left with fine views over the river in one direction through the valley in which it winds its course under the Dowards, and in the other through masses of wooded hills which skirt its banks, until it approaches Monmouth.

It would not be easy to point out a more beautiful situation for a town than that of Monmouth. It stands at a bend of the river Wye, where it is joined by the Monnow, in a fertile valley surrounded by high hills, which looks, from the road up the Kymin, like a green carpet raised up at numerous corners, with the town in the bottom. Monmouth is believed by antiquaries to stand on or near the site of the ancient Blestium, a town of the Romans which occupied the borders of the great Roman iron works of the Forest of Dean; and the ordinary traveller, as he treads the route which we have been following, and dwells on its picturesque beauties, little thinks that some fifteen centuries ago many of the bright cornfields and thick leafy copses which now arrest his eye were represented by bare hills covered with immense heaps of black cinders-in fact the Dudley and Birmingham of Roman Britain.

It was this circumstance which particularly attracted our attention in a recent visit to this beautiful district, and when we had reached Monmouth, instead of continuing on the beaten track of what is called "the Wye tour," we prepared for an excursion to the most interesting part of the Roman iron district, the neighbourhood of Coleford. The carriage of a friend carried us over the Wye bridge, and we pursued the road which winds through the thick mass of oak and hazel, mixed here and there with birch and mountain ash, and adorned in variegated colours with a multitude of ferns and wild-flowers, which clothe the side of the Kymin mountain. Behind us the view stretched over the vale of Monmouth, and before us was at first the scenery of the banks of the Wye through which we had previously passed, and, as we advanced further, the Buckstone and other hills, their sides covered with masses of hanging woods unequalled on this side the

Appenines. We soon turned the head of a deep ravine, and the road began to ascend still higher up to the side of the Buckstone itself. This lofty hill takes its name from one of those remarkable objects called rocking-stones, which stands within the wood at the top. With another of our party, I left the carriage about half way up the hill, and, assisted with those weapons which neither antiquary nor geologist should be without on such occasions, we forced our way upwards through the closely matted underwood, with considerable labour and time, halting from time to time to admire a wild flower or regale ourselves with the ripe bilberries with which the ground was covered. At last we reached the summit, and found ourselves at the verge of the wood, on open ground, scattered with fern and furze bushes, and covered with wild thyme and large patches of purple heath, then in full bloom. This open ground sloped towards Gloucestershire, and afforded a magnificent view over the series of wooded hills which form the Forest of Dean. We had, however, missed the Buckstone, and we had to follow the edge of the wood, and thence force our way into it again, before we reached the object of our search.

If I could bring myself to believe that masses of rock like this were so placed by the hands of ancient Druids, I should conclude that never was a grander spot chosen for the performance of their superstitious worship than that occupied by the Buckstone. It stands near the top of the hill, in a small open space, so that it is visible from a distance, with a magnificent amphitheatre of lofty hills, generally covered with wood, around, and the deep valley of the Wye hundreds of feet below. But the geologists have taught me, and my own observations have certainly led me to believe them, that we owe the rocking-stones to natural causes, and that they are not artificial. Our excursion up the Kymin afforded us a practical confirmation of this. In the midst of the wood we observed here and there numerous masses of the same stone, going through the process of being made into rockingstones. They are silicious grit, from around which the soil and the surface of the limestone rock is gradually

clearing away under the influences of time and weather, and we met with more than one example where a little more clearing with some accidental circumstances would have produced as perfect a rocking-stone as the Buckstone itself. The latter consists of a mass of grit of a pyramidal form, nearly sixty feet in circumference, supported on its apex. The point on which it rests is about three feet round. Fosbroke tell us, in his "Wye Tour," that he thought upon trial he "could just perceive it move." It did not appear to me capable of doing so. I remained long enough to make a hasty sketch of it, from which the accompanying engraving is taken, and then we crossed the open heath and descended on the other side of the mountain to the picturesque village of Staunton, where we rejoined our friends, who had proceeded thither in the carriage by the road round the brim of the Buckstone hill.

We were now in Gloucestershire, within the limits of the Forest of Dean, and a little more than two miles would have brought us to the small town of Coleford, the centre of the iron works in this district. Instead, however, of proceeding thither, we turned off along a bye-road to an old farm-house called the Scowles farm. This place, which also stands on high ground, receives its name from the numerous remains of Roman iron-mines around it, which are known by the popular appellation

of the Scowles; a name which I cannot explain. The ground occupied by the mines or Scowles, having, from its unevenness, been left uncultivated, is always covered with thick copses, and it is necessary to be careful in entering them, lest we fall unawares into the entrances to the ancient mines. These entrances are formed as follows. A large round pit or hollow in the earth -one we entered was from twenty to thirty feet in diameter and about twenty feet in depth-was sunk till the miners arrived at a vein of the iron ore, which they then worked into the earth as far as they could follow it. As they now remain, we find at the bottom of the pit just mentioned, on one side, an aperture resembling_the entrance to a large low oven. Into this we entered a few feet in the dark

we unfortunately had no lightsand then finding it somewhat clogged up with the accumulation of earth at the mouth, and considering it not very safe to pass further, we contented ourselves with throwing a stone, which we could distinctly hear rolling down for a second or more, so that it was evidently deep. The cottagers in the neighbourhood told us that some of these mines went two or three hundred feet under ground, and that they descended into them with lanterns and obtained very pure water at the bottom.

The ore, or, as the workmen call it, mine found here is of fibrous appear

ance, so rich in metal that it sometimes looks almost like pure iron, and it is still picked up so abundantly about the old Roman mines, that it is found everywhere built into the rough walls surrounding the cottage gardens. The antiquity of these mines is proved by the circumstance that Roman coins and pottery have frequently been picked up about them. Indeed we find these proofs of Roman occupation thickly scattered over this district. Some four or five years ago, workmen employed in raising blocks of silicious grit stone from an edge of rock in a small oak copse called Perry Grove, about a mile from Coleford, discovered in the cavity of a rock three earthen vessels containing upwards of three thousand Roman brass coins.

The ground between this place and the Wye is one immense mass of iron scoriæ or cinders from the Roman forges. On leaving the Scowles we drove along the way to Redbrook. The road descended between hills, now clad in woods, but which also were covered with a deep layer of Roman cinders. Some of these are known by names which indicate their former condition, such as Forge Wood and Old Hill. In the ridge between these hills a small but rapid stream descends, by the side of which our road lay. At one point of this stream, an ingenious speculator has taken advantage of it to erect a machine, of a very simple construction, which, worked by the current, reduces to powder the ancient scoriæ that are thrown into it, and this powder is carried down to Bristol, where it is used for making coarse glass bottles. At Upper Redbrook we again reached the banks of the Wye, below Monmouth, and, having sent our carriage back to that town, we prepared to cross the river by the ferry-boat established here. The cinders in the ground around had apparently increased in quantity as we approached the river, and at the edge of the water at Upper Redbrook ferry they lay under our feet like pebbles on the sea-shore.

The view on the river was again fine.

On the Redbrook side it was bordered with hills covered with wood, while opposite rose the less wooded but more elevated hill of Penalt. The ferry at Upper Redbrook is no doubt of

remote antiquity. When we landed at the foot of Penalt, we came upon an ancient road, which I have little doubt is Roman; it is paved with stones, like flags, carefully fitted together, but of all shapes and sizes, and proceeds directly up the steep side of the hill, and one of my friends well acquainted with the neighbourhood assures me that he had traced it as much as five miles in the direction of Tintern and Chepstow. It looks as though it were designed for pack-horses, carrying charcoal and other articles to and from the neighbourhood of Coleford. Another friend, who has resided in this district during many years, tells me that he remembers the same road continued on the Redbrook side of the river, and paved in a similar manner. Near the top of Penalt, we turned off through the solitary churchyard, over the hill, whence we again obtained a noble prospect of the vale of Monmouth, and so descending by Troy House, an old seat of the Herberts, built by Inigo Jones, and now belonging to the Duke of Beaufort, reached Monmouth again to a late but truly hospitable dinner.

There can be little doubt that the furnaces which produced the immense quantity of scoria that cover the country round Redbrook were fed with the ore from the neighbouring Scowles. All the country bordering on the Wye in this part of its course abounds in iron ore, and many of the hill tops are capped with ancient intrenchments, probably posts for the protection of the miners. There is one of these camps on the summit of the Little Doward, and I believe there are traces of another on the Great Doward. The Great Doward is a mass of mountain limestone, intermixed with iron ore, and it probably furnished no inconsiderable portion of the iron cinders which are spread so thick over the country to the north of the Wye between Bridstow and Monmouth. Near the foot of this mountain is still seen the entrance to the ancient iron mines, to which popular tradition has given the name of King Arthur's Hall. There were no doubt old legends which connected the spot with the history of the fabulous British hero, and some of our topographers have alluded to them without condescend