Such monuments of an antiquity so great that they have no history but what may be gathered from barrows and stones, accompany one upon any day's journey in southern England, but it is only in one place that a man can stand and say: Here began the history of my country. That place as it happens lies as it should upon the Pilgrims' Road.
Beyond Harbledown, some two miles from Canterbury, he Pilgrims' Road along the hillside passes clean through earthwork of unknown antiquity. Well, it was here the Seventh Legion charged: here, indeed, we stand upon the very battlefield which saw the birth of civilisation in our island. Lying there in the early morning sunshine I considered it all over again.
Caesar's first landing in Britain in B.C. 55 had been, as he himself tells us, merely a reconnaissance. In the following summer, however, he returned in force, indeed with a very considerable army, and with the intention of bringing us, too, within that great administration which he and his adoptive son Augustus were to do so much to make a final and in many ways an indestructible thing.
It might seem that in spite of the lack of the means of rapid communication we possess, the admirable system of Roman roads enabled Caesar to administer his huge government--he was then in control of the two Gauls--with a thoroughness we might envy. After his first return from Britain in the early autumn of B.C. 55 he crossed the Alps, completed much business in Cisalpine Gaul, journeyed into Illyricum to see what damage the Pirustae had done, dealt with them effectively, returned to Cisalpine Gaul, held conventions, crossed the Alps again, rejoined his army, went round all their winter quarters, inspected all the many ships he was building at Portus Itius and other places, marched with four Legions and some cavalry against a tribe of Belgae known as the Treviri, settled matters with them, and before the summer of B.C. 54 was back at Portus Itius, making final preparations for the invasion of Britain.
This invasion, glorious as it was to be, and full of the greatest results for us, was accompanied all through by a series of petty disasters. Caesar had purposed to set out certainly early in July, but delay followed upon delay, and when he was ready at last, the wind settled into the north-west and blew steadily from that quarter for twenty-five days. It had been a dry summer and all Gaul was suffering from drought. The great preparations which Caesar had been making for at least a year were at last complete, the specially built ships, wide and of shallow draft, of an intermediate size between his own swift- sailing vessels and those of burthen which he had gathered locally, were all ready to the number of six hundred, with twenty-eight _naves longae_ or war vessels, and some two hundred of the older boats. But the wind made a start impossible for twenty-five days.