While traveling in Italy in 1898, he found a manuscript written by Sextus Julius Frontinus, who was the designer of the water supply system of ancient Rome.
He subdued the Silures and other tribes of Wales hostile to Roman invasion, establishing a new base at Caerleon or Isca Augusta for Legio II Augusta and a network of smaller forts fifteen to twenty kilometres apart for his auxiliary units.
The management and maintenance involved in keeping the aqueducts flowing is well described by Frontinus, a general appointed by the emperor Nerva as water commissioner toward the end of the first century AD.