piece of antiquity, but as not wholly unnecessary towards comprehending
the great change made in all these points, when the Roman conquest came
afterwards to be completed.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Some think this port to be Witsand, others Boulogne.

[6] Coway Stakes, near Kingston-on-Thames.

CHAPTER II.

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN.

That Britain was first peopled from Gaul we are assured by the best
proofs,--proximity of situation, and resemblance in language and
manners. Of the time in which this event happened we must be contented
to remain in ignorance, for we have no monuments. But we may conclude
that it was a very ancient settlement, since the Carthaginians found
this island inhabited when they traded hither for tin,--as the
Phoenicians, whose tracks they followed in this commerce, are said to
have done long before them. It is true, that, when we consider the short
interval between the universal deluge and that period, and compare it
with the first settlement of men at such a distance from this corner of
the world, it may seem not easy to reconcile such a claim to antiquity
with the only authentic account we have of the origin and progress of
mankind,--especially as in those early ages the whole face of Nature was
extremely rude and uncultivated, when the links of commerce, even in the
countries first settled, were few and weak, navigation imperfect,
geography unknown, and the hardships of travelling excessive. But the
spirit of migration, of which we have now only some faint ideas, was
then strong and universal, and it fully compensated all these
disadvantages. Many writers, indeed, imagine that these migrations, so
common in the primitive times, were caused by the prodigious increase of
people beyond what their several territories could maintain. But this
opinion, far from being supported, is rather contradicted by the
general appearance of things in that early time, when in every country
vast tracts of land were suffered to lie almost useless in morasses and
forests. Nor is it, indeed, more countenanced by the ancient modes of
life, no way favorable to population. I apprehend that these first
settled countries, so far from being overstocked with inhabitants, were
rather thinly peopled, and that the same causes which occasioned that
thinness occasioned also those frequent migrations which make so large a
part of the first history of almost all nations. For in these ages men
subsi