Under Currents

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18113, 2 September 1930, Page 6

Under Currents

(By “Gleaner.”)'

nc.nc., irttKE & EVERYWHERE.

CYMBELINE’S CAPITAL. Already, after less than thred months’ digging on the site of Camulodunum, close to modern Colchester, valuable results have been obtained, throwing light on the life of the Celtic inhabitants just before the Roman conquest. Camulodunum was the capital of Cunobelin, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, the king of a tribe called the Trinovantes, and he reigned roughly during the forty years before the arrival of the Romans in A.D. 44. Mr Christopher Hawkes, of theBritish Museum, who has been directing the excavations for the learnedsocieties that are financing the work, says that in . digging along the line of the new road—the construction of which has made the work possible—• they have found the remains of the working-class quarter of Gymbeline’s town. The people lived in huts with timber frames filled with wattle and daub. Traces were unearthed of still earlier dwellings, which seem to have consisted of pits hollpwed in the ground. In the rubbish heaps of the subjects of Cunobelin were the bones of pigs and cattle. A well, with the timber lining intact, is probably the earliest well of this type discovered. The Celtic town, it- is now definitely proved, ceased to be occupied after the conquest, when the Romans founded their own “ colony ” on the site of present-day Colchester. A large quantity of pottery has come to light, including cheap pottery imported from the Roman factories in Italy and (Caul, as well as examples of the beautiful tooled native Celtic ware. There were also many ' brooches of enamelled bronze, a craft in which the Celts of Britain, as is well known, reached a high excellence.

• * * * SHAMROCK V. Portsmouth has seen the beginning, of many a sea adventure in the past, and on a recent morning there sailed from the harbour a new and gallant challenger. Britain’s proverbial mastery of the seas has never been able to win for her' the blue riband of the yachting world, but Shamrock V.’s owner and crew still hope this time to bring back the America’s Cup to Britain. It was in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition, that ‘ the schooner America won a silver cup in a race open to the yachts of all nations round the Isle of Wight. A few years later the owner of America gave the cup to the New York Yaching Club, to be held thereafter as an international yachting trophy. Since then thirteen attempts, all unsuccessful, have been made by Britain to recapture the cup, four of them, the earliest with the original Shamrock, ' by ' Sir Thomas Lipton. At eighty years of age he is as keen and as determined as ever. *» • * * UP, THE REBELS ! The “ Rebellious Daughter ” of Willesden, who, according to the English newspaper headlines on her case, “Will Not Behave And Will Not Go Away,” reminds one rather of the epigram on Queen Caroline and the result of “ the delicate investigation ” into her conduct. Quoting from memory the epigram ran:— Most gracious Queen, we thee implore To go away and sin no more; But if that be too much, we pray

That you at least will go away. According to her father, the rebellious young woman of Willesden will not go away, though “ I have offered her ten shillings a week to leave home.” Instead, she stays—and car-ries-on, and, according to poor'Poppa, makes life unbearable. “ A few weeks ago,” he ■ told the magistrate, “ I bought my son out of the navy so as to deal with her, but the strife has been worse than ever since he took her in hand.” It seems a sad thing when even the Senior Service cannot cope with the so-called weaker sex—but what can you expect? Women are obviously bosses of the air and at Bisley, and it can be only a matter of time and opportunity before They make the whole of the male navy take a back seat, too. The young woman of Wiliesden Is only just feeling her feet. Where she” leads others will presently follow', and the Royal Navy wit begin to understand that Britannia really does

rule the waves. * * * * MISSING MONUMENTS. - It cannot be said that Britain has hitherto received no warning about the intended removal of her cherished national possessions to America. The usual procedure includes the announcement, the outcry, the appeal for subscriptions, and, occasionally, the national purchase of the threatened relic. This process must have become not only familiar but frequently successful, for it is now asserted that effor/ are made to hasten the removal oi old buildings before the usual proced'ure can be applied; it is even said that an old house near Bury St, Edmunds “ was pulled down in a few hours and packed on lorries,” and that it was not until the lorries were on their way to London Docks “ that the building was missed and recovered by an

organisation interested in its preservation.” There is something slightly alarming about this method of snapping up unconsider'ed trifles in the way of an Elizabethan cottage for re-erection in Massachusetts. If a few lorries can carry off a cottage a fleet of them might manage a moated grange; it would be a sad thing if the lads of the' village rose up one morning and “ missed ” the - manor house, finding only-rubble and level ruins where one of the stately homes of England had stood the night before. Could one regard any of Britain’s ancient monuments, however gravely scheduled, as safely rooted?- With enough lorries and a little organisation she might “ miss ” even Westminster Abbey and York Minster, these, too, might vanish between dusk and daybreak and be on their way to Southampton before the alarm was raised. As for a remote and unfrequented exhibit like Hadrian’s Wall, it might be months before its disappearance was noticed; intending smugglers would he well advised to concentrate on such distant attractions rather than the Tower of London or Hampton Court. However, appetite comes, with eating, and, though Rome was not built in a day, it may yet prove possible to remove the Colosseum in the course ot' a week-end. And can the Egyptian Government feel quite sure that it. wil' remain in permanent possession of the Pyramidal