ashing in. Their
incessant industry would result in closing up the passage entirely,
were it not that the waters of the river must have an outlet; and thus
the current, setting outward, wages perpetual war with the surf and
surges which are continually breaking in. The expeditions of the
Northmen, however, found their way through all these obstructions. They
ascended the river with their ships, and finally gained a permanent
settlement in the country. They had occupied the country for some
centuries at the time when our story begins--the province being governed
by a line of princes--almost, if not quite, independent
sovereigns--called the _Dukes of Normandy_.

The first Duke of Normandy, and the founder of the line--the chieftain
who originally invaded and conquered the country--was a wild and
half-savage hero from the north, named _Rollo_. He is often, in history,
called Rollo the Dane. Norway was his native land. He was a chieftain by
birth there, and, being of a wild and adventurous disposition, he
collected a band of followers, and committed with them so many piracies
and robberies, that at length the king of the country expelled him.

Rollo seems not to have considered this banishment as any very great
calamity, since, far from interrupting his career of piracy and
plunder, it only widened the field on which he was to pursue it. He
accordingly increased the equipment and the force of his fleet, enlisted
more followers, and set sail across the northern part of the German
Ocean toward the British shores.

Off the northwestern coast of Scotland there are some groups of
mountainous and gloomy islands, which have been, in many different
periods of the world, the refuge of fugitives and outlaws. Rollo made
these islands his rendezvous now; and he found collected there many
other similar spirits, who had fled to these lonely retreats, some on
account of political disturbances in which they had become involved, and
some on account of their crimes. Rollo's impetuous, ardent, and
self-confident character inspired them with new energy and zeal. They
gathered around him as their leader. Finding his strength thus
increasing, he formed a scheme of concentrating all the force that he
could command, so as to organize a grand expedition to proceed to the
southward, and endeavor to find some pleasant country which they could
seize and settle upon, and make their own. The desperate adventurers
around him were ready enough to enter