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A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE valleys, steep slopes, and even precipitous gorges, and their general aspect is broken and mountainous. The climate discourages serious agriculture. The population is pastoral and sparse. Towns other than the creations of modern manufacturing industry are comparatively few, and many of the inhabitants dwell apart in scattered cots and homesteads. These wild uplands, moreover, look westwards. Their connexions are with Ireland or with the Atlantic. They receive neither immigrants nor influences from the parts of Europe that lie nearest to Britain. These two districts, so diverse in their geographical character, were no less diverse in their history during the Roman period. The differences begin from the first moment of conquest. The lowlands, occupied by comparatively civilized tribes and presenting no serious obstacle to the march of armies, were subdued quickly and easily. The Romans landed in Kent A.D. 43. Within four or five years, by A.D. 47 or 48, they had overrun the midlands, the south, and the east of Britain, and advanced at least as far as the Severn and the Humber. It remained to reduce the uplands. The task was begun in A.D. 48 or shortly afterwards. But it was not completed with ease and speed. Instead of four years, it needed nearly forty. The hill-tribes of Wales were not tamed till A.D. 78. The resistance of the northern tribes was not seriously weakened till the years immediately following. Even when conquered, these uplands remained imperfectly subdued. Wales, it would seem, lay quiet. But the hills of Derbyshire and Lancashire and Yorkshire were the scenes of fighting on many occasions during the second century. Even the organization of the Caledonian frontier, at which the emperors Hadrian, Pius, and Septimius Severus, in turn laboured, did not secure peace for the land between the Humber and the Tyne. In the development of Britain which followed the conquest, lowlands and uplands remained sharply contrasted (fig. i). The lowlands were rapidly iURACUM LCGVIindCol RMSHIlKvi.niftl FIG. I. THE CIVILIAN AND MILITARY DISTRICTS OF BRITAIN. 192