being cold. The district is rich in flowering heaths and everlasting flowers. The name Caledon was given to the town and district in honour of the 2nd earl of Caledon, governor of the Cape 1807–1811. (2) A river of South Africa, tributary to the Orange (q.v.), also named after Lord Caledon.
CALEDONIA, the Roman name of North Britain, still used especially in poetry for Scotland. It occurs first in the poet Lucan (A.D. 64), and then often in Roman literature. There were (1) a district Caledonia, of which the southern border must have been on or near the isthmus between the Clyde and the Forth, (2) a Caledonian Forest (possibly in Perthshire), and (3) a tribe of Caledones or Calidones, named by the geographer Ptolemy as living within boundaries which are now unascertainable. The Romans first invaded Caledonia under Agricola (about A.D. 83). They then fortified the Forth and Clyde Isthmus with a line of forts, two of which, those at Camelon and Barhill, have been identified and excavated, penetrated into Perthshire, and fought the decisive battle of the war (according to Tacitus) on the slopes of Mons Graupius.[1] The site—quite as hotly contested among antiquaries as between Roman and Caledonian—may have been near the Roman encampment of Inchtuthill (in the policies of Delvine, 10 m. N. of Perth near the union of Tay and Isla), which is the most northerly of the ascertained Roman encampments in Scotland and seems to belong to the age of Agricola. Tacitus represents the result as a victory. The home government, whether averse to expensive conquests of barren hills, or afraid of a victorious general, abruptly recalled Agricola, and his northern conquests—all beyond the Tweed, if not all beyond Cheviot—were abandoned. The next advance followed more than fifty years later. About A.D. 140 the district up to the Firth of Forth was definitely annexed, and a rampart with forts along it, the Wall of Antoninus Pius, was drawn from sea to sea (see Britain: Roman; and Graham’s Dyke). At the same time the Roman forts at Ardoch, north of Dunblane, Carpow near Abernethy, and perhaps one or two more, were occupied. But the conquest was stubbornly disputed, and after several risings, the land north of Cheviot seems to have been lost about A.D. 180–185. About A.D. 208 the emperor Septimius Severus carried out an extensive punitive expedition against the northern tribes, but while it is doubtful how far he penetrated, it is certain that after his death the Roman writ never again ran north of Cheviot. Rome is said, indeed, to have recovered the whole land up to the Wall of Pius in A.D. 368 and to have established there a province, Valentia. A province with that name was certainly organized somewhere. But its site and extent is quite uncertain and its duration was exceedingly brief. Throughout, Scotland remained substantially untouched by Roman influences, and its Celtic art, though perhaps influenced by Irish, remained free from Mediterranean infusion. Even in the south of Scotland, where Rome ruled for half a century (A.D. 142–180), the occupation was military and produced no civilizing effects. Of the actual condition of the land during the period of Roman rule in Britain, we have yet to learn the details by excavation. The curious carvings and ramparts, at Burghead on the coast of Elgin, and the underground stone houses locally called “wheems,” in which Roman fragments have been found, may represent the native forms of dwelling, &c., and some of the “Late Celtic” metal-work may belong to this age. But of the political divisions, the boundaries and capitals of the tribes, and the like, we know nothing. Ptolemy gives a list of tribe and place-names. But hardly one can be identified with any approach to certainty, except in the extreme south. Nor has any certainty been reached about the ethnological problems of the population, the Aryan or non-Aryan character of the Picts and the like. That the Caledonians, like the later Scots, sometimes sought their fortunes in the south, is proved by a curious tablet of about A.D. 220, found at Colchester, dedicated to an unknown equivalent of Mars, Medocius, by one “Lossio Veda, nepos [ = kin of] Vepogeni, Caledo.” The name Caledonia is said to survive in the second syllable of Dunkeld and in the mountain name Schiehallion (Sith-chaillinn).
Authorities.—Tacitus, Agricola; Hist. Augusta, Vita Severi; Dio lxxvi.; F. Haverfield, The Antonine Wall Report (Glasgow, 1899), pp. 154-168; J. Rhys, Celtic Britain (ed. 3). On Burghead, see H. W. Young, Proc. of Scottish Antiq. xxv., xxvii.; J. Macdonald, Trans. Glasgow Arch. Society. The Roman remains of Scotland are described in Rob. Stuart’s Caled. Romana (Edinburgh, 1852), the volumes of the Scottish Antiq. Society, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. vii., and elsewhere. (F. J. H.)
CALEDONIAN CANAL. The chain of fresh-water lakes—Lochs
Ness, Oich and Lochy—which stretch along the line of the
Great Glen of Scotland in a S.W. direction from Inverness early
suggested the idea of connecting the east and west coasts of
Scotland by a canal which would save ships about 400 m. of
coasting voyage round the north of Great Britain through the
stormy Pentland Firth. In 1773 James Watt was employed by
the government to make a survey for such a canal, which again
was the subject of an official report by Thomas Telford in 1801.
In 1803 an act of parliament was passed authorizing the construction
of the canal, which was begun forthwith under Telford’s
direction, and traffic was started in 1822. From the northern
entrance on Beauly Firth to the southern, near Fort William,
the total length is about 60 m., that of the artificial portion being
about 22 m. The number of locks is 28, and their standard
dimensions are:—length 160 ft, breadth 38 ft., water-depth 15 ft.
Their lift is in general about 8 ft., but some of them are for
regulating purposes only. A flight of 8 at Corpach, with a total
lift of 64 ft., is known as “Neptune’s Staircase.” The navigation
is vested in and managed by the commissioners of the Caledonian
Canal, of whom the speaker of the House of Commons is ex officio
chairman. Usually the income is between £7000 and
£8000 annually, and exceeds the expenditure by a few hundred
pounds; but the commissioners are not entitled to make a
profit, and the credit balances, though sometimes allowed to
accumulate, must be expended on renewals and improvements
of the canal. They have not, however, always proved sufficient
for their purposes, and parliament is occasionally called upon to
make special grants. In the commissioners is also vested the
Crinan Canal, which extends from Ardrishaig on Loch Gilp to
Crinan on Loch Crinan. This canal was made by a company
incorporated by act of parliament in 1793, and was opened for
traffic in 1801. At various times it received grants of public
money, and ultimately in respect of these it passed into the hands
of the government. In 1848 it was vested by parliament in the
commissioners of the Caledonian Canal (who had in fact administered
it for many years previously); the act contained a
proviso that the company might take back the undertaking on
repayment of the debt within 20 years, but the power was not
exercised. The length of the canal is 9 m., and it saves vessels
sailing from the Clyde a distance of about 85 m. as compared
with the alternative route round the Mull of Kintyre. Its
highest reach is 64 ft. above sea level, and its locks, 15 in number,
are 96 ft. long, by 24 ft. wide, the depth of water being such as to
admit vessels up to a draught of 912 ft. The revenue is over
£6000 a year, and there is usually a small credit balance which,
as with the Caledonian Canal, must be applied to the purposes
of the undertaking.
CALENBERG, or Kalenberg, the name of a district, including the town of Hanover, which was formerly part of the duchy of Brunswick. It received its name from a castle near Schulenburg, and is traversed by the rivers Weser and Leine, its area being about 1050 sq. m. The district was given to various cadets of the ruling house of Brunswick, one of these being Ernest Augustus, afterwards elector of Hanover, and the ancestor of the Hanoverian kings of Great Britain and Ireland.
CALENDAR, so called from the Roman Calends or Kalends, a method of distributing time into certain periods adapted to the purposes of civil life, as hours, days, weeks, months, years, &c.
Of all the periods marked out by the motions of the celestial bodies, the most conspicuous, and the most intimately connected with the affairs of mankind, are the solar day, which is
- ↑ This, not Grampius, is the proper spelling, though Grampius was at one time commonly accepted and indeed gave rise to the modern name Grampian.
