for it was almost dark. By the next
morning the white chalk of Beachy Head was in sight, and at nine o'clock
William had landed on English soil.

Close to Dives and in sight of the hill on which the Normans were
mustered, there is a small watering-place known as Houlgate-sur-mer. The
houses are charmingly situated among trees, and the place has in recent
years become known as one of those quiet resorts where princes and
princesses with their families may be seen enjoying the simple pleasures
of the seaside, _incognito_. This fact, of course, gets known to
enterprising journalists who come down and photograph these members of the
European royal families wherever they can get them in particularly
unconventional surroundings.

From Houlgate all the way to Trouville the country is wooded and hilly, and
in the hollows, where the timber-framed farms with their thatched roofs are
picturesquely arranged, there is much to attract the visitor who, wearying
of the gaiety of Trouville and its imitators along the coast, wishes to
find solitudes and natural surroundings.

CHAPTER XI

Some Notes on the History of Normandy

The early inhabitants of Normandy submitted to the Roman legions under
Titurus Sabinus in B.C. 58, only a few years before Caesar's first attempt
upon Britain. By their repeated attacks upon Roman territory the Gaulish
tribes had brought upon themselves the invasion which, after some stubborn
fighting, made their country a province of the Roman Empire. Inter-tribal
strife having now ceased, the civilisation of Rome made its way all over
the country including that northern portion known as Neustria, much of
which from the days of Rollo came to be called Normandy. Traces of the
Roman occupation are scattered all over the province, the most remarkable
being the finely preserved theatre at Lillebonne, a corruption of
Juliabona, mentioned in another chapter.

In the second century Rouen, under its Roman name Rotomagos, is mentioned
by Ptolemy. It was then merely the capital of the tribe of Velocasses, but
in Diocletian's reign it had become not only the port of Roman Paris, but
also the most important town in the province. In time the position occupied
by Rotomagos became recognised as one having greater strategical advantages
than Juliabona, a little further down the river, and this Gallo-Roman
precursor of the modern Rouen became the headquarters of the provincial
governor. The site of Rotomagos would app