oulogne
and Kent, to Iceland, Greenland, and, perhaps, America. The colonisation
of South-Eastern Britain was but the first chapter in this long history
of predatory excursions on the part of the Low German peoples.

The piratical ships of the early English were row-boats of very simple
construction. We actually possess one undoubted specimen at the present
day, whose very date is fixed for us by the circumstances of its
discovery. It was dug up, some years since, from a peat-bog in Sleswick,
the old England of our forefathers, along with iron arms and implements,
and in association with Roman coins ranging in date from A.D. 67 to A.D.
217. It may therefore be pretty confidently assigned to the first half
of the third century. In this interesting relic, then, we have one of
the identical boats in which the descents upon the British coast were
first made. The craft is rudely built of oaken boards, and is seventy
feet long by nine broad. The stem and stern are alike in shape, and the
boat is fitted for being beached upon the foreshore. A sculptured stone
at Haeggeby, in Uplande, roughly represents for us such a ship under way,
probably of about the same date. It is rowed with twelve pairs of oars,
and has no sails; and it contains no other persons but the rowers and a
coxswain, who acted doubtless as leader of the expedition. Such a boat
might convey about 120 fighting men.

There are some grounds for believing that, even before the establishment
of the Roman power in Britain, Teutonic pirates from the northern
marshlands were already in the habit of plundering the Celtic
inhabitants of the country between the Wash and the mouth of the Thames;
and it is possible that an English colony may, even then, have
established itself in the modern Lincolnshire. But, be this as it may,
we know at least that during the period of the Roman occupation, Low
German adventurers were constantly engaged in descending upon the
exposed coasts of the English Channel and the North Sea. The Low German
tribe nearest to the Roman provinces was that of the Saxons, and
accordingly these Teutonic pirates, of whatever race, were known as
Saxons by the provincials, and all Englishmen are still so called by the
modern Celts, in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.

The outlying Roman provinces were close at hand, easy to reach, rich,
ill-defended, and a tempting prey for the barbaric tribesmen of the
north. Setting out in their light open skiffs from the isl