discerned that, in addition to the Latin inscription in Roman letters, the same inscription was written down at the angle in Ogham characters, showing that the monument had been erected by Irish settlers. Mrs. Bray was simply furious. She had had this stone before her eyes every day for many years, and had never seen the strokes that signified the Ogham writing She had drawn the stone for her book, and yet had been blind to the second writing. Since then other Ogham inscriptions have been found in Devon and Cornwall, showing that a colony from Kerry had at one time planted itself in this country.
Now we know for certain that the rude stone relics pertain to the early Bronze period, before ever the island was invaded by the Celts. The tin-streaming began in the Middle Ages, and was energetically pursued in the reign of Elizabeth. The traces of tin-streaming are abundant everywhere, yet none of these works were undertaken by the primitive dwellers on the Moors, who knew of bronze only as a rare imported alloy, and entertained no conception that tin^one ingredient, was under their feet, and the other, copper, was Co be found on the banks of the Tamar.
The original inhabitants were a pastoral people who lived on the uplands during the summer and retreated to hibernate in the lowlands during the winter, when they lodged in the forests that clothed the sides of the hills above the lakes and morasses of the valley-bottoms.
A remarkable fact is this—the Romans never discovered that there was tin in Cornwall and on Dartmoor. They lighted on gold in Wales, where their workings remain to this day. They pushed their roads across the Tamar, or only just beyond it. Certainly, if the Cornish men at that time had raised tin, they kept the secret very close. But as no Cornishman could ever resist a bribe, and as no Cornishman that I have come across has been able to keep a secret, I feel confident that these men of the West knew nothing whatever about tin being present among them.
At Princetown is the huge convict establishment, in the building, much enlarged, in which had been confined the French prisoners during the Napoleonic wars. The convicts are employed in reclaiming the moor, and in so doing I fear have destroyed many prehistoric remains. I have, however, never heard of their
