s, "is less than Britain, but larger than those of Our Sea.
Situated between Britain and Spain and lying commodiously to the Bay
of Biscay, it would have formed a very beneficial connection between
the most powerful parts of the Empire. Its soil, climate, and the
manners and dispositions of its inhabitants are little different from
those of Britain. Its ports and harbours are better known from the
concourse of merchants for the purposes of commerce."

Not only the British Isles, but a good deal of the wild North Sea and
the low-lying coast on the opposite side were explored by Roman ships
and Roman soldiers. Caesar had crossed the Rhine; he had heard of a
great forest which took a man four months to cross, and in 16 A.D.
a Roman general, Drusus, penetrated into the interior of Germany.
Drusus crossed the Rhine near the coast, made his way across the river
Weser, and reached the banks of the Elbe. But the fame of Drusus rests
mainly on his navigation of the German Ocean or North Sea in a Roman
fleet. Near the mouth of the Rhine a thousand ships were quickly built
by expert Romans. "Some were short, with narrow stern and prow and
broad in the middle, the easier to endure the shock of the waves; some
had flat bottoms that without damage they might run aground; many were
fitted for carrying horses and provisions, convenient for sails and
swift with oars."

The Roman troops were in high spirits as they launched their splendid
fleet on the Northern Ocean and sailed prosperously to the mouth of
the Elbe, startling the Frisians into submission. But no friendliness
greeted them on the farther side of the river. The Germans were ready
to defend their land, and further advance was impossible. Returning
along the northern coast, the Romans got a taste of the storms of this
northern ocean, of which they were in such complete ignorance.

"The sea, at first calm," says Tacitus, "resounded with the oars of
a thousand ships; but presently a shower of hail poured down from a
black mass of clouds, at the same time storms raging on all sides in
every variety, the billows rolling now here, now there, obstructed
the view and made it impossible to manage the ships. The whole expanse
of air and sea was swept by a south-west wind, which, deriving strength
from the mountainous regions of Germany, its deep rivers and boundless
tract of clouded atmosphere, and rendered still harsher by the rigour
of the neighbouring north, tore away the ships, s