The hard road goes on and on -- and the wind sings through your helmet-plume -- past altars to Legions and Generals forgotten , and broken statues of Gods and Heroes , and thousands of graves where the mountain foxes and hares peep at you . Red-hot in summer , freezing in winter , is that big , purple heather country of broken stone . ` Just when you think you are at the world 's end , you see a smoke from East to West as far as the eye can turn , and then , under it , also as far as the eye can stretch , houses and temples , shops and theatres , barracks and granaries , trickling along like dice behind -- always behind -- one long , low , rising and falling , and hiding and showing line of towers . And that is the Wall ! ' ` Ah ! ' said the children , taking breath . ` You may well , ' said Parnesius . ` Old men who have followed the Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the Empire is more wonderful than first sight of the Wall ! ' ` Is it just a Wall ? Like the one round the kitchen-garden ? ' said Dan . ` No , no ! It is the Wall . Along the top are towers with guard-houses , small towers , between . Even on the narrowest part of it three men with shields can walk abreast , from guard-house to guard-house . A little curtain wall , no higher than a man 's neck , runs along the top of the thick wall , so that from a distance you see the helmets of the sentries sliding back and forth like beads . Thirty feet high is the Wall , and on the Picts ' side , the North , is a ditch , strewn with blades of old swords and spear-heads set in wood , and tyres of wheels joined by chains . The Little People come there to steal iron for their arrow-heads . ` But the Wall itself is not more wonderful than the town behind it . Long ago there were great ramparts and ditches on the South side , and no one was allowed to build there .
Now the XXXXX are partly pulled down and built over , from end to end of the Wall ; making a thin town eighty miles long .
! Eagles Picts West first foxes guard-house ramparts sentries spear-heads