"
We paid a hurried visit to the castle on the summit of a sharp aclivity
overlooking the River Eden, in whose dungeons many brave men have been
incarcerated, where we saw a dripping-or dropping-stone worn smooth, it
was said, by the tongues of thirsty prisoners to whom water was denied.
The dropping was incessant, and we were told a story which seems the
refinement of cruelty, in which the water was allowed to drop on a
prisoner's head until it killed him. From the castle mound we could see
the country for a long distance, and there must have been a good view of
the Roman wall in ancient times, as the little church of Stanwix we had
passed before crossing the River Eden was built on the site of a Roman
station on Hadrian's Wall, which there crossed the river on low arches.
The wall was intended to form the boundary between England and Scotland,
and extended for seventy miles, from Bowness-on-the-Solway to
Wallsend-on-the-Tyne, thus crossing the kingdom at its narrowest part.
We left Carlisle at a speed of four miles per hour, and within the hour
we had our first near view of the Cumberland Hills, Scawfell being the
most conspicuous. We decided to go to Maryport, however, as we heard
that a great number of Roman altars had recently been discovered there.
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