CHAPTER 1 FIRST PEOPLING OF BRITAIN.

While Alexander was Overruning the world by his arms, and Greece was enlightening it with her arts, Scotland lay hidden beneath the cloud of barbarianism, and had neither name nor place among the nations of the earth. Its isolation, however was not complete and absolute. Centuries before the great Macedonian had commenced his victorious career, the adventurous navigators of the Phoenician seaboard had explored the darkness of the hyperbborean ocean. The First to steer by the pole- star, they boldly adventured where less skilful mariners would have feared to penetrate. Within the Hazy confine of the North Sea they descried an island, swathed in a mild if humid air, and disclosing the eye, behind its frontier screen of chalk cliffs, the pleasing prospect of wooded hills and far expanding meadows, roamed over by numerous herds, and dotted by the frequent wattle- built hamlets of its rude inhabitants. The Phoenicians oft revisited this remote, and to all but themselves unknown shore,2 but the enriching trade which they carried on with it they retained for centuries in their own hands. Their ships might be seen passing out at the “Pillars of Hercules” on voyages of unknown destination, and, after the lapse of months, they would return laden with the products of regions, which had found as yet no name on the chart of geographer. 1 But the source of this trade they kept a secret from the rest of the nations. By and by, however, it began to be rumored that the fleets seen going and returning on these mysterious voyages traded with an island that lay far north, and which was rich in a metal so white and lustrous that it had begun to be used as a substitute for silver. In this capacity it was employed how to lend a meretricious glitter to the robe of the courtezan, and now to impart a more legitimate splendor to the mantle of the magistrate.

In the process of time other sea- faring peoples, taught by the example of the Phoenicians to sail by the stars, and to brave terrors in pursuit of wealth, followed in the track which these early merchants had seen the first to open. The tin of cornwall and of the Scilly Islands, the “Cassiterides” of the ancients, began to circulate among the nations of Asia Minor, and was not unknown even to the tribes of the Arabian desert. It is interesting to think that Britain had already begun to benefit nations which knew not as yet to pronounce her name. But it was on the Syrian shore, and among the maritime tribes that nestled in the bays of Lebanon, that the main stream of this traffic continued to diffuse its various riches. The wealth and power of the Phoenician state were largely owing to its trade with Britain. Its capital, Sidon, was nursed by the produce of our mines into early greatness. The site of Rome was still morass; the cities of Greece were only mean hamlets; the palaces of Babylon were brick- built structures; and Jerusalem was but a hill fort; while Sidon had risen in splendor and grown to a size that made men speak of her, evening the age of Joshua, as the “Great Sidon” Nor was Sidon the only city on that shore that owed its greatness to the remote and barbarous Britain. Tyre, the daughter of Sidon, feeding her power at the same distant springs, came ultimately to surpass in wealth , and eclipses in beauty, the mother city. No sublimer ode has come down to us than that which has as its burden the greatness and the fall of Tyre- the number of her ships, the multitude of her merchants, the splendor of her palaces, the exceeding loftiness of her pomp and pride, and the dark night in which her day of if glory was to close.

The bronzed gates set up by Shalmaneezer to commemorate his triumphs, exhumed but the other day from the ruined mounds of Assyria, present to modern eyes a vivid picture of the greatness of the Phoenician cities. On these gates Tyre is seen seated on her island- rock, encompassed by strong walls, with other serrated battlements and flanking towers. A broad avenue leads from her gates to the sea. Down this path is being borne her rich and various merchandise, which we see ferried across to the mainland. Ingots of gold and silver, rare woods, curious bowls, precious stones, spices, dyed clothes, embroidered garments, and similar products, brought from far off lands, form the tribute which we here see laid at the feet of the conqueror Shalmanezer. The monarch in his robes of state, a tiara on his head, stands a little in advance of a brilliant staff of officers and princes, while an attendant eunuch shades him with a richly embroidered umbrella from the hot Syrian sun, and a deputation of Tyrian merchants offer him the submission of the now tributary city. This was in the year B. C. 859. f1 But though the doom foretold by the prophet has long since fallen upon this ancient mistress of the seas, her ruin is not so utter but that we may trace at this day the dimensions of those harbors from which the fleets engaged in the traffic with Britain set sail, and where, on their return, they discharged their rich cargos. The harbors of Tyre, as their ruins, still visible below the waves, show, had an average area of twelve acres. The ports of Sidon were of a somewhat larger capacity. Their average area was twenty acres, so do the scholars of the “Palestine Exploration” tell us. We who are familiar with the “Leviathans” that plow the deep in modern times, cannot but feel surprise at the diminutive size of the craft employed in the Tyrian traffic, as judged of by the limited capacity of the basins in which they unloaded their wares. A modern ironclad would hardly venture into a port of so diminutive a size. But if the ships of Tyre were of small tonnage, so much greater the evidence of the skill and courage of the crews that manned them, and the enterprise of the merchants that sent them forth on such distant voyages. And it is pleasant to reflect that even at that early age, the riches of our mines formed an important factor in the commercial activity, the artistic taste, and the varied grandeur, of which the narrow strip of territory that stretches along on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, beneath the cliffs of Lebanon, was then the seat. f2 The palmiest era of the Phoenician commerce was from the twelfth to the sixth century before Christ. It follows, that Britain, with whom these early merchants traded, was then inhabited, and probably had been so for some considerable time previous. At what time did the first immigrants arrive on its shore, and from what quarter did they come? We cannot tell the year, nor even the century, when the first wanderer from across the sea sighted its cliffs, and moored his bark on its strand; nor can we solve the question touching the first peopling of our island, otherwise than by an approximating process. In a brief discussion of this point, we shall avail ourselves of the guidance furnished by great ethnological principles and facts, as well as of the help given us by historic statements.

The earliest and most authentic of all histories- for the monumental and historic evidence of the Bible does not lessen but grow with the current of the centuries- tells us that the Ark rested, after the flood, on one of the mountains of Ararat. Here, at the center of the earth, is placed the second cradle of the human family, and to this point are we to trace up all the migrations of mankind. The Ark might have been set down by the retiring waters on the verge of Asia, or on the remotest boundary of America; or it might have been floated on currents, or driven by winds far into the polar regions. Escaping all these mischances, here, the central regions of the world, and probably within sight of those plains with which Noah had been familiar before the flood overspread the earth, did the Ark deposit its burden. It was the first great providential act towards the human family in post- diluvian times.

Let us take our stand beside “the world’s grey fathers,” and survey with them, from the summits where the ark is seen to rest, the singular framework of rivers, mountains, and plains spread out around the spot.

The various fortunes and destinies of their descendants lie written before the eyes of the first fathers of mankind on the face of the silent earth; for undoubted it is that in the geographical arrangements of the globe is so far laid the ground- work of the history, political and moral, of its nations. The physical conditions of a region assist insensibly but powerfully in shaping the mental and moral peculiarities of its inhabitants, and prognosticate dimly the events of which any particular region is to become the theatre. The mountainchains that part kingdoms, the oceans that divide continents by diversifying the climatic influences of the globe, enrich that “one blood” of which all the nations of the earth partake, and by engendering a difference of temperament and aptitude, and stimulating to a variety of pursuit prepare more variously endowed instrumentalities for the world’s work, and impart to history a breadth, a variety, and grandeur which otherwise would have been lacking to it.

From this new starting point of the race great natural pathways are soon to stretch out in all directions. In the heart of the Armenian mountains, close to the resting place of the ark, four great rivers take their rise, and proceeding thence in divergent courses, flow towards the four quarters of the globe. A tribe or colony in quest of habitations naturally follows the course of some great stream, seeing the fertility which its waters create along its banks afford pasture for their flocks and food for themselves. Of the four great rivers which here have their birth, the Euphrates turned off to the west, and pointed the way to Palestine and Egypt and Greece. The second of these great streams, the Tigris, sending its floods to the south, and traveling with rapid flow the great plains which lie between the mountains of Armenia and the Persian gulf, would open the road to India and the countries of the East.

The Araxes and the Phasis, rising on the other side of the mountain- chain which here forms the water- shed between Asia and Europe, and flowing towards the north, would draw off, in that direction, no inconsiderable portion of the human tide that was now going forth from this central region to people the wilderness, into which, since the flood, the earth had again reverted. The settlers who proceeded along the banks of the Araxes, whose waters fall into the Caspian, would people the northern and north- eastern lands of Asia. Those who took the Phasis as the guide of their exploring footsteps, would arrive in due time in the west and north of Europe. By the several roads spread out around their starting- point, do these emigrants journey to those distant and unknown homes where their posterity in after ages are to found kingdoms, build cities, become great in arms, or seek renown in the nobler pursuits of peace.

But farther, this mountain- girdle, which is drawn round the middle of the globe, and which has two great river on either side of it flowing in opposite directions and in divergent channels, parts the earth into two grand divisions. It gives us a northern and a southern world. In this striking arrangement we see two stages prepared in anticipation of two great dramas, an earlier and a later, to be enacted after time. The one was destined to introduce, and the other to conclude and crown the business of the world. Let us mark what a difference betwixt the natural endowments of the two zones, yet how perfect the adaptation of each to the races that were to occupy them, and the part these races were to play in the affairs of the world!

On the south of the great mountain- chain which bisected Asia and Europe was a world blessed with the happiest physical conditions. The skies were serene, the air was warm, and the soil was molient and fertile. How manifest is it that this favored region had been prepared with special view to its occupancy by the early races, whose knowledge of the arts did not enable them meanwhile to construct dwellings such as should suffice to protect them from the cold of a northern sky, and whose skill in husbandry was not enough, as yet, to draw from less fertile soils the necessaries of life in sufficient abundance. In this genial clime the inhabitants could dispense with houses of stone; a tent of hair- cloth would better meet their wants; and hardly was it necessary that their exuberant soil should be turned by the plow; without labor almost it would yield the food of man. Here then was meet dwelling- place for the infancy and youth of the human family; the brilliant light, the sparkling waters, the gorgeous tints of the sky, and the rich fruitage of field and tree, would combine to quicken the sensibilities and stimulate the imagination of man, and so fit him for those more elegant acquisitions and those lighter labors in which his youth was to be passed. Here the arts of music and painting grew up, and here, too, passion poured itself forth in poetry and song. In these voluptuous climes man perfected his conceptions as regards symmetry of form and melody of speech, and from these ages and lands have come to us the incomparable models of statuary, of architecture, and of eloquence. “Graiis dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui.” Nor, even yet, has the glow of morning altogether left the sky of the world.

The pure and beautiful ideals which these young races succeeded in perfecting for us still continue to delight. They exert to this day a refining and elevating influence on the whole of life. Our graver thoughts and more matter- of- fact labors wear something of the golden lacquering of these early times.

On the north of the great mountain- wall which, as we have said, parts the world in two, the ground runs off in a mighty downward slope, diversified by forests and lakes, and furrowed by mountain- chains, and finally terminates in the steppes of Tartary and the frozen lands of Siberia. This vast descent would conduct man by slow journeys from the genial air and teeming luxuriance of his primeval dwelling to the stony soils, the stunted products, and the biting sky of a northern latitude. The boundless plains spread out on this mighty decline refuse their harvests save to the skill of the hand and the sweat of the brow. In vain the inhabitant holds out his cup to have it filled with the spontaneous bounty of the earth. But if nature has denied to these regions the feathery palm, the odorous gum, and the precious jewel, she has provided an ample compensation in having ordained that products of infinitely greater price should here be ripened.

This zone was to be the trainingground of the hardier races. Here, in their contests with the ruggedness of nature, were they to acquire the virtues of courage, of perseverance, and of endurance, and by that discipline were they to be prepared to step upon the stage, and take up the weightier business of the world, when the earlier races had fulfilled their mission, and closed their brief but brilliant career. Here, in a word, on these stern soils, and under these tempestuous skies, was to be set that hardy stock on which the precious grafts of liberty and Christianity were to be implanted in days to come. With the advent of the northern races the real business of the world began.

When Noah comes forth from the Ark we see him accompanied by three sons- Shem, Ham, and Japhet. These are the three fountain- heads of the world’s population. “These are the three sons of Noah, and of them was the whole earth overspread.” “Peleg,” who lived in the fifth generation from Noah, is set up as a great finger- post at the parting of the ways, “for in his days was the earth divided.” And it is strikingly corroborative of the truth of this statement, that after four thousand years, during which climate, migration, and numerous other influences have been acting unceasingly on the species, all tending to deepen the peculiarities of race, and to widen the distinctions between nations, the population of the world at this day, by whatever test we try it, whether that of physical characteristic, or by the surer proof of language, is still resolvable into three grand groups, corresponding to the three patriarchs of the race, Shem, Ham, and Japhet.

The descendants of Ham, crossing the narrow bridge between Asia and Africa, the Isthmus of Suez to wit, planted themselves along the banks of the Nile, finding in that rich valley a second plain of Shinar, and in the great river that waters it another Euphrates. Egypt is known by its inhabitants as the land of Mizraim to this day. From the black loamy Delta, which reposes so securely betwixt the two great deserts of the world, and which the annual overflow of the Nile clothes with an eternal luxuriance, Ham spread his swarthy swarms over the African continent. Shem turned his face towards Arabia and India, and his advancing bands, crossing the Indus and the Ganges, overflowed the vast and fertile plains which are bounded by the lofty Himalayas on the one side, and washed by the Indian Ocean on the other. An illustrious member of the Semitic family was recalled westward to occupy Palestine, where his posterity, as the divinelyappointed priesthood of the world, dwelt apart with a glory all their own.

Japhet, crossing the mountainous wall which rose like a vast partition betwixt the north and the south, poured the tide of his numerous and hardy descendants down the vast slope of the northern hemisphere over Europe, and the trans- Caucasian regions of Asia, with, at times, a reflex wave that flowed back into the territories of Shem. Thus was the splendid inheritance of a world divided amongst the three sons of Noah.

Our main business is to track the migration of the sons of Japhet, and see by what route they traveled towards our island. From their starting point in the highlands of Armenia, or on the plain of the Euphrates, two great pathways offer themselves, by either of which, or by both, their migrating hordes might reach the shores of the distant Britain. There is the great hollow which Nature has scooped out between the giant Atlas and the mountains of the Alps, and which forms the basin of the Mediterranean Sea. Moving westward through this great natural cleft, and dropping colonies on the fair islands, and by the sheltered bays of its delicious shores, they would people in succession the soil Greece and the countries of Italy and Spain. Pushed on from behind by their ever increasing numbers, or drawn by the powerful attraction of new habitations, they maintain their slow but inevitable advance across the rugged Pyrenees and the broad and fertile plains of France. The van of the advancing horde is now in sight of Albion. They can descry the gleam of its white cliffs across the narrow channel that separates it from the continent; and passing over, they find a land, which, though owned as yet by only the beast of prey, offers enough in the various produce of its soil and the hidden treasures of its rocks to reward them for the toil of their long journey and to induce them to make it the final goal of their wanderings.

By this route, we know, did the clans and tribes springing from Javan- the ION of the Greeks- travel to the west. We trace the footprints of his sons, Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim all along the northern shore of the Mediterranean, from the Lebanon to the pyrenees, notably in Greece and Italy, less palpably in Cyprus and Spain, attesting to this day the truth of the Bible’s statement, that by them were the “isles of the Gentiles,” that is, the western seaboard of Asia Minor and the northern coast of the Mediterranean, “peopled.”

Meanwhile, another branch of the great Japhethian family is on its way by slow marches to the northern and western world by another route. This great emigrant host proceeds along the great pathways which have been so distinctly traced out by the hand of Nature on the surface of the globe. The Araxes and the Phasis are the guide of their steps. They descend the great slope of northern Asia, and winding round the shores of the Euxine, they thread their way through a boundless maze of river and morass, of meadow and forest, and mountain- chain, and stand at length on the shores of that ocean that washes the flats of Holland and the headlands of Norway: and thus of the human tide which we see advancing towards our island, which is still lying as the waters of the flood had left it, the one division, flowing along through the basin of the Mediterranean, finds egress by the Pillars of Hercules, and the other, rolling down the great northern slope of the Caucasian chain, issues forth at the frozen doors of the Baltic.

This parting of the emigrant host into two great bands, and the sending of them round to their future home by two different routes, had in it a great moral end. There are worse schools for a nation destined for future service, than a long and arduous journey on which they have to suffer hunger and brave danger. The horde of slaves that left Egypt of old, having finished their “forty years” in the “great and terrible wilderness,” emerged on Canaan a disciplined and courageous nation. The route by which these two Japhethian bands journeyed to their final possessions, left on each a marked and indelible stamp. The resemblance between the two at the beginning of their journey, as regards the great features of the Japhethian image, which was common to both, was, we can well imagine, much altered and diversified by the time they had arrived at the end of it, and our country, in consequence, came to be stocked with a race more varied in faculty, richer in genius, and sturdier in intellect than its occupants would probably have been, but for the disciplinary influences to which they were subjected while yet on the road to it. The aborigines of Albion combined the strength of the north with the passion of the south. Of the two great hosts that mingled on its soil, the one, passing under the freezing sky of the Sarmatian plains, and combatting with flood and storm on their way, arrived in their new abode earnest, patient, and courageous. The other, coming round by the bright and genial shores of the Mediterranean, were lively and volatile, and brimming with rich and lofty impulses. Though sprung of the same stock, they came in this way to unite the qualities of different races and climesthe gravity of the Occident with the warm and thrilling enthusiasm of the Orient.

The stream that descended the slopes of the Caucasus, passing betwixt the Caspian and the Euxine, would arrive on our eastern sea- board, and people that part of our island which fronts the German Ocean. The other current, which flowed along by the Mediterranean, and turned northward over France and Spain, would have its course directed towards our western coasts. In the different temperaments that mark the population of the two sides of our island, we trace the vestiges of this long and devious peregrination. The strong Teutonic fiber of our eastern sea- board, and the poetic fire that glows in the men of our western mountains, give evidence at this day of various original endowments in this one population. These mixed qualities are seen working together in the daily life of the people, which exhibits it sustained and fruitful industry, fed and quickened by a latent enthusiasm. The presence of the two qualities is traceable also in their higher and more artistic pursuits, as, for instance, in their literary productions, which, even when they kindle into the passionate glow of the East, are always seen to have as their substratum that cool and sober reason which is the characteristic of the West. Most of all is this line union discernible, on those occasions when a great principle stirs the soul of the nation, and its feelings find vent he an overmastering and dazzling outburst of patriotism.

We do not know the number of links which connected the Patriarch of the Armenian mountains with that generation of his descendants, who were the first to set foot on the shores of Britain; but we seem warranted in concluding that Gomer and Ashkenaz were the two great fathers of the first British population. The nomadic hordes that we see descending the vast slope that leads down to the Scandinavian countries and the coast of the White Sea, are those of Gomer. This much do their footsteps, still traceable, attest. They have their names to the lands over which their track lay, and these memorials, more durable than written record or even pillar of stone, remain to this day, the ineffaceable mementos of that primeval immigration by which Europe was peopled. Here is Gomer- land (Germany) lying on their direct route: for this track was far too extensive and fertile not to commend itself to the permanent occupation of a people on the out- look for new habitations. “The Celts, from the Euxine to the Baltic,” says Pinkerton, “were commonly called Cimmerii, a name noted in Grecian history and fable; and from their antiquity so obscure that a Cimmerian darkness dwells upon them. From the ancients we learn to a certainty, that they were the same people with the Cimbri, and that they extended from the Bosphorus Cimmerius on the Euxine, to the Cimbric Chersonese of Denmark, and to the Rhine.” The main body of these immigrants would squat down on the soil at each successive halt, and only the front rank would be pushed forward into the unpeopled wilderness.

Their progress, olden retarded by scarce penetrable forest ,and by swollen river, would be at length conclusively arrested on the shores of the North Sea; and yet not finally even there. Passing over in such craft as their skill enabled them to construct- a fleet of canoes, hollowed out of the trunks of oaks, felled in the German forests- they would take possession of Britain, and begin to people a land, till then a region of silence or solitude, untrodden by human foot since the period of the Flood, if not since the era of the creation.

The new- comers brought with them the tradition of their descent. They called themselves Cymry or Kymbry. They are the Gimirrai of the Assyrian monuments. The Greeks, adopting their own designation, styled them Kimmerioi, and the Latins Cimbri. Cymry is the name by which the aborigines of Britain have uniformly distinguished themselves from the remotest antiquity up to the present hour; and their language, which they have retained through all revolutions, they have invariably called Cymraeg, which means the language of the aborigines, or “the language of the first race.” “It is reasonable to conclude,” says Pinkerton in his learned “Enquiry into the History of Scotland,” “that the north and east of Britain were peopled from Germany by the Cimbri of the opposite shores, who were the first inhabitants of Scotland, who can be traced, from leaving Cumraig names to rivers and mountains, even in the furthest Hebudes.” f7

CHAPTER - JOURNEY OF THE KYMRI TO BRITAIN.

THERE are three guides which we can summon to our aid when we set out in quest of the cradle of the tribes, races, and nations that people the globe. The first is Philology, or language: the second is Mythology, or worship: and third is Tradition, or folk- lore. These are three guides that will not lie, and that cannot mislead us.

As regards the first, no great power of reflection is needed to convince us that in the first age men conversed with one another in a common language; in other words, that man started with one speech. May not that one speech linger somewhere on the earth, slightly changed and modified, it may be, by time and other influences, but still containing the roots and elemental characteristics of those numerous tongues which are diffused over the earth, and of which it is the parent? This is not a supposition, but a fact. Philology holds in its hand the clue by which it can track all the tongues of the world through the perplexed labyrinth of diverse grammars, idioms, and dialects, to the one primeval tongue of the race. And when we permit philology to perform its office, it conducts us to the great central plain of Asia, called Iran. The researches of Max Muller, Sir William Jones, and others, appear to have established the fact, that we find the ancestor of all the numerous tongues of the nations, not in the classic languages of Greece and Rome, nor in the more ancient Semitic, but in the speech of the Indo- European races, or Aryans. The Sanscrit possesses the rootaffinities, and stands in a common relation to all the languages of the East on the one hand, and the West on the other. It presents its proud claim to be the parent of human tongues, and it identifies Iran as the spot whence the human family was spread abroad. “After thousands of years,” says Mr.

Dasent, “the language and traditions of those who went East, and of those who went West, bear such an affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond discussion or dispute, the fact of their descent from a common stock.”

Let us next attend to the evidence, on the point before us, of the second witness, Mythology, or worship. The first form of worship- keeping out of view the one divinely appointed form- was Nature worship. By nature worship we mean the adoration of the Deity through an earthly symbol.

The first symbol of the Creator was the sun, and consequently the earliest form of nature worship was sunworship. Where, and in what region of the earth was the first act of sun- worship performed? All are agreed that this form of worship took its rise in the same region to which philology has already conducted us and identified as the father- land of mankind. On the plains of Shinar rose the great tower or temple of Bel, or the Sun. There was the first outbreak of a worship which quickly spread over the earth, continually multiplying its rites, and varying its outward forms, becoming ever the more gorgeous but ever the more gross, but exhibiting in every land, and among all peoples, the same seminal characteristics and rootaffinities which were embodied in the first act of sun- adoration on the Chaldean plain. Thus a second time we arrive on those great plains on which Ararat looks down.

There is a third witness, and the testimony of this witness is to the same effect with that of the former two. There exists a unique body of literature which is found floating in the languages of both the East and the West. It is mainly popular, consisting of traditions, fables, and tales, and is commonly styled folk- lore. These Tales bear the stamp of being the creation of a young race: they are bright with the colors of romance, and they embody, in the guise of allegory ; and fable, the maxims of an ancient wisdom.

Whether it is the Celtic or the Teutonic, the classic or the vernacular tongue, in which we hear these tales rehearsed, they are found to be the same. They have the same groundwork or plot though diffused over the globe. This points to a common origin, and in tracing them up to that origin we pass the tongues of modern Europe, we pass the Latin and (Greek tongues, we come to the language spoken by the Aryan races of Asia, and there we find the fountain- head of these unique and world- wide tales. Thus is another link )between the East and the West, between the peoples that beheld the “grey dawn” and those on whom the world’s “eve” is destined to descend. Such is the witness of these three- Philology, Religion, Tradition. They are the footprints which the human family have left on the road by which they have traveled; and following these traces we are led to Iran, where lived the men who were the first to “till and ear” the soil.

Thirty years ago it would have required some little courage to mention, unless to repudiate, the authority which we are about to cite. At that time it was fashionable to stand in doubt of the early traditions of all nations. The first chroniclers were believed to display a vein for legend rather than a genius for history. Lacking the critical acumen of the wise moderns, they were supposed to delight in garnishing their pages with prodigies and marvels, rather than storing them with ascertained facts. But this spirit of historic skepticism has since been markedly rebuked. The graven tablets dug up from the ruins of Nineveh, the treasures exhumed from the mounds of Babylon, and .the secrets of a bygone time with which the explorations on the plain of Troy have made us acquainted, have signally attested the veracity of the ,early writers, and shown us, that instead of indulging a love of fable, they exercised a scrupulous regard to fact, and an abstention from poetic adornment for which the world, in these latter days, had not given them credit. The consequence is that the early historians now speak with a justly enhanced authority. This remark is specially true of the sacred writers, and also, to a large extent, of the secular historians.

We in Great Britain likewise possess the records of an ancient time. These writings have been preserved, not in the dust of the earth, like the written cylinders and graven slabs of the Tigris and the Euphrates valley, but in the sacred repositories of the aboriginal race whose origin they profess to record. We refer to the “Welsh Triads.” These documents are the traditions received from the first settlers, handed down from father to son, and at last committed to writing by the Druids, the priests of the aborigines. They are arranged in groups, and each group consists of three analogous events; the design of this arrangement obviously being to simplify the narrative and aid the memory. We do not claim for them the authority of history; we use them solely as throwing a side light on the darkness of that remote age, and as confirmatory, or at least illustrative, as far as it is now possible to understand them, of the sketch we have ventured to trace of the peopling of Europe, and the first settling of Britain, from the etymological and historic proofs that remain to us.

The fourth Triad says: “There are three pillars of the nation of Britain. The first was Hu the Mighty, who brought the nation of the Kymry first to the isle of Britain; and they came from the summer country, which is called Defrobani (the shores of the Bosphorus), and they came over the Hazy Sea to the Isle of Britain, and to Armorica (Gaul) where they settled. The other two pillars of the nation of the Kymri were Prydain and Moelmud, who gave them laws, and established sovereignty among them.”

The fifth Triad says: “There were three social tribes of the Isle of Britain.

The first was the tribe of the Kymry who came to the Isle of Britain with Hu the Mighty, because he would not possess a country and land by fighting and pursuit, but by justice and tranquillity. The second was the tribe of Lloegrians (the Loire) who came from Gascony; and they were descended from the primitive tribe of the Kymry. The third were the Brython, who came from Armorica, and who were descended from the primitive tribe of the Kymry, and they had all three the same language and speech.” This Triad offers a rough sketch of two migrations which are seen moving towards our island, each by a different route. The one comes over the Hazy Sea (most probably the German Ocean), and the other from Gaul across the channel. But both are sprung of the same stock, the Kymri, the descendants of Gomer that first peopled Europe.

The Triads go on to speak of two subsequent arrivals of settlers by whom the first great immigration into Britain was followed and supplemented.

The two later immigrations were doubtless passed on to the remoter, and perhaps as yet, uninhabitated districts of our country. The first arrivals, it is natural to suppose, would plant themselves in the fertile and grassy plains of England, and would refuse, not without reason, to surrender to newcomers lands in which they had already established, by cultivation, the right of ownership. These last explorers would have to move onward and seek a settlement in the less hospitable and more mountainous regions of Scotland. Those whom we now see arriving in our island, and retiring to the straths and slopes of the Grampians, are probably the ancestors of the men who came afterwards to bear the name of Caledonians.

At what period the sons of Gomer- for their migration Claudian calls the ocean opposite the Rhine the Cimbric. The Duan, says Pinkerton, puts the Cumri as first possessors of only does it concern us to trace- took their departure from their original scats in the East, no history informs us. It is natural to suppose that before his death Noah gave to his sons no uncertain intimation of how he meant the earth to be parted amongst them, and the quarter of the globe in which they were to seek their several dwellings. As the great Patriarch of mankind he possessed the princedom of the world.

This vast sovereignty he could not transmit entire. Like some great monarchs who have lived since his day, he must needs distribute his power among his successors; and in this he acted, we cannot doubt, in conformity with the intimations which had been made to him of the will of a yet greater monarch than himself. For we are told that “the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance.” But rivalships and conflicts would, not unlikely, spring up in connection with the distribution of so splendid a possession. Some might be unwilling to go forth into the unknown regions allotted to them, and instead of a long and doubtful journey, would prefer remaining near their original seat. The fruitful hills and well- watered vales of Armenia, and the broad plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, would not be easily forsaken for a climate less hospitable and an earth less bounteous.

Noah would judge it expedient, doubtless, that while he was yet alive the three Septs into which his descendants were parted should begin their journey each in the direction of its allotted possession.

Ham must direct his steps toward his sandy continent on the West. Japhet must cross the mountains on the North, and seek a home for his posterity under skies less genial than those of Assyria. Shem must turn his face towards the burning plains of India. To leave their sheltered and now wellcultivated valley for unknown lands whose rugged soils they must begin by subduing, was a prospect far from inviting. The command to go forth seemed a hard one. They would lose the strength which union gives, and be scattered defenseless over the face of the earth. And if we read aright the brief record of Genesis, the mandate of heaven, delivered to mankind through their common Father, that they should disperse and settle the world, met with an open and organized resistance. They broke out into revolt, and in token thereof built their tower on the plain of Shinar. There is one name that stands out, bold and distinct, in the darkness, that hides all his contemporaries; that even of the leader in this rebellion. Nimrod saw in this strong aversion of the human kind to break up into tribes and disperse abroad, a sentiment on which he might rest his project of a universal monarchy. His plan was to keep the human family in one place, and accordingly he encouraged the rearing of this enormous structure, and he consecrated it to the worship of the Sun, or Bel. This tower on the plain of Shinar was meant to be the great temple of the world, the shrine at which the unbroken family of man should meet and perform their worship, and so realize their unity. The tower was the symbol of a double tyranny, that of political despotism and that of religious superstition. The policy of Nimrod was the same with that of many an autocrat since, who has found priestcraft the best ally of ambition, and concluded that the surest way to keep a people under his own .yoke was first to bend their necks to that of a false god. It was the policy adopted by Jeroboam in an age long posterior, when he set up his golden calves at Dan and Bethel, that the ten tribes might have no occasion to resort to Jerusalem to worship, and so be seduced back into their allegiance to the House of David.

This bold and impious attempt met with speedy and awful discomfiture. “The Lord came down,” says the inspired historian, using a form of speech which is commonly employed to indicate, not indeed a bodily or personal appearance on the scene, but all occurrence so altogether out of the ordinary course; a catastrophe so unlooked for, and so tremendous, that it is felt to be the work of Deity. We can imagine the lightenings and mighty tempests which accompanied the overthrow of this earliest of idolatrous temples, and center of what was meant to be a worldwide despotism. There was after this no need to repeat the patriarchal command to go forth. Pursued by strange terrors, men were in haste to flee from a region where the Almighty’s authority had been signally defied, and was now as signally vindicated. If Noah outlived this catastrophe, as he had survived all earlier and more awful one, he now beheld the insurrection against his patriarchal government quelled, and his posterity forced to go forth in three great bodies or colonies to seek the primeval forests and wildernesses of the world each its allotted home. We cannot be very wide of the mark if we fix the epoch of this great exodus it about the three hundredth year after the Flood.

The length of time occupied by the bands of Gomer in their journey from their starting- point to the shores of Britain would depend not so much on the space to be traversed, as on the incidents which might arise to facilitate or retard their journey. They had no pioneers to smooth their way, and they could have no chart to guide them over regions which they themselves were the first to explore. The speed of the single traveler, and even the caravan, is swift and uninterrupted; the movements of a million or two of emigrants are unwieldy and laborious. Their flocks and herds accompany them on their march. They had to cross innumerable rivers, passable only by extemporized bridges, or in canoes scooped hastily out of great oaks felled in the neighboring forest. They had to traverse swampy plains, hew their way through tangled woods, and struggle through narrow mountain defiles. A march of this sort must necessarily be slow. They made long halts, doubtless, in the more fertile. regions that lay on their route. In these spots they would practice a little husbandry, and exchange their nomadic habits for the pursuits of a more settled mode of life; and only, when the place became too narrow for their increasing numbers, would they send forth a new swarm to spy out the wilderness beyond, and find new habitations which would become in turn radiating points whence fresh streams might go forth to people the plains and mountains lying around their track. Their progress would exhibit the reverse picture of that presented by the army whose terrible march an inspired writer has so graphically described. The locust host of the prophet pursued its way, an Eden before it, a wilderness behind it. It was otherwise with the invading, but peaceful, millions, whose march we are contemplating. Wherever their footsteps passed the barren earth was turned into a garden. It was beauty, not blackness and burning, which lay behind them. They advanced to make war upon the desert only. The swampy pool and the black wood disappeared as they went on, and behind them on their track lay smiling fields and the habitations of men.

Forty years sufficed to carry the Goths from the banks of the Danube to the shores of the Atlantic. But their steps were quickened by their love of war and their thirst for plunder. No such incentives animated the emigrant horde whose march we are tracing, or urged on their advance. Their movement would bear not a little resemblance to what we see in America and Australia at this day, where there is a gradual but continuous outflow from the centers of population into the wilderness beyond, and the zone of desolation and silence is constantly receding before the face of man.

Hundreds of year- we know not how many -would these early intruders into the silent wastes of the northern hemisphere occupy as they journeyed slowly onward and gave the first touch of cultivation to what is now, and has long been, the scene of fair kingdoms and flourishing cities. The men whom we now see stepping upon our shores are shepherds and hunters.

They had learned something. in their long journey, but they had forgotten more. That journey had not been conducive to their advance in knowledge, nor to their refinement in manners. The epithet “barbarian” was doubtless more applicable to them on their arrival at their new homes than when they took their departure from their original abodes. Whatever skill in husbandry’ and the arts they possessed in their native seats, would be diminished, if not well nigh lost in its transmission through successive generations in the course of their wandering and unsettled life. Their daily combats with the ruggedness of the earth, with the storms of the sky, or with the beast of prey, would brace their bodies and discipline their courage, but it would at the same time tend to roughen their manners, and impart a tinge of ferocity to their tempers and dispositions.

Counteractive influences, such as the modern emigrant from the old centers of civilization carries with him into the wilds of the southern or western world, they had none. We are accustomed to invest the shepherd’s life with the hues of poetry, and we people Arcadia with the virtues of simplicity and innocence, but when from this imaginary world we turn to the contemplation of real life we are rudely awakened from our dream. We are shocked to find brutality and cruelty where we had pictured to ourselves gentleness and love. It is the pasture grounds of Europe float have sent forth its fiercest warriors. Its nomadic tribes have been its most ruthless desolators. In proof of our assertion we might appeal to the portrait which Herodotus draws of the Scythians of his day; or to the ravaging hordes which issued from the banks of the Borysthenes, or of the Volga; or to the sanguinary halberdiers which in later times so often descended from the mountains of the Swiss to spread battle and carnage over the Austrian and Italian plains. The influences which molded these dwellers amid sheep- cots into warriors and plunderers would operate, though with greatly modified force, on the army of nomades which we see pursuing their way century after century, down the great slope which conducts from the highlands of Armenia, and the ranges of Caucasus, to the shores of the North Sea. They could hardly avoid catching the color of the savage scenes amid which their track lay. There are souls to which the gloom of the far- extending forest, the grandeur of the soaring peak, and the darkness of tim tempest impart a sentiment of elevation and refinement; but as regards the generality of mankind they are but little moved by the grandest of nature’s scenes, and are apt to become stern and hard as the rocks amid which they dwell.

The tendency of these injurious influences on the host whose movement we are tracing would be aggravated by other circumstances inseparable from their condition. They could carry with them no magazine of corn. Their daily food would be the flesh of their slaughtered herds, or of the animals caught in the chase. This is a species of diet, as physicians tell us, which is by no means fitted to cool the blood or allay the passions, but rather to inflame the irritability of both. Besides, this host was subjected to a natural process of weeding, in virtue of which only the hardiest and the most daring were sent onward. The less adventurous would remain behind at each halt to be transformed into tillers of the soil, or dressers of the vineyard, and this process of selection, repeated time alter time, would result at last in the creation of a race singularly robust in body and equally indomitable in spirit. And such, doubtless, were the physical and mental characteristics of that band of immigrants that ultimately stepped upon our shore. They were not like the Scythians of Herodotus, or the Goths of the Roman invasion, or the treacherous and cruel Arab of our own day. They were men occupied in the first great humanizing mission of subduing and cultivating the earth. Battle they had not seen all the way, if we except the contests they had to wage with the forces of nature. Blood they had not shed, save that of bullock or of beast of prey. But if their long journey had schooled them in the peaceable virtues of patience and endurance, it had engendered not less a keen relish for their wild freedom, and stalwart in frame and strong of heart, they were able and ready to defend the independence which had been theirs ever since the day that they rallied beneath the standard of their great progenitor, and contemning the double yoke of despotism and sun- worship which Nimrod had attempted to impose upon them, turned their faces toward the free lands of the North. f9

CHAPTER - HABITS, HABITATIOIN’S, AND ARTS OF THE FIRST SETTLERS.

WE see these emigrants from the land of Armenia arriving on our shore, but the moment they pass within the confine of our island the curtain drops behind them, and for ages they are completely hidden from our view. What passed in our country during the centuries that elapsed between the period when it was taken possession of by the sons of Gomer and the advent of Caesar with his fleet, we can only dubiously conjecture.

As regards one important particular, we have tolerable grounds, we apprehend, for the conclusion we are now to state. These emigrants brought with them the essentials of Divine revelation. When they left their original dwelling, the world’s first Christianity, the Edenic to wit, had not been wholly obscured by the rising cloud of nature- worship. The first idolatrous temple had already been reared, and the earliest form of idolatrous worship, that of the sun ,and the heavenly bodies, had been instituted; but the dispersion which immediately followed had removed the Japhethian emigrants, whom we now see on their way to the fill’ north, from contact with the rites of the rising idolatry, and from those corrupting and darkening influences which acted powerfully, doubtless, on those who remained nearer the seat of the Nimrod instituted worship. Besides, the heads of this emigration had conversed with the men who had been in the ark with Noah, and stood beside the altar whereon the Common Father offered his first sacrifice to Jehovah after the flood. It is not conceivable that Japhet had joined in the rebellion of Nimrod, or ever worshipped in the great temple on Shinar. From Japhet they had learned the knowledge of the one true God, and the promise of a Redeemer, who was to appear in after ages, and in some not yet clearly understood way, though dimly foreshadowed in the victim on the Patriarchal Altar, was to accomplish a great deliverance for the race. This great Tradition would journey with them, and some rays of the primeval day would shine on the remote shores of Britain. We have been taught to picture the earliest condition of our country as one of unbroken darkness. A calm consideration of the time and circumstances of its first peopling warrants a more cheerful view. Believing in a God, invisible and eternal, and knowing that He heareth those in every land who pray unto Him, who can tell how many “devout fearers” of ‘His name there may have been among the first inhabitants of our country? How many lives may this knowledge have. purified, and how many death- beds may it have brightened! The Patriarchs themselves had not much more than was possessed by those whom we behold setting ,out towards our distant shore.

Our idea that the earliest ages of all nations were the purest, and that as time passed on mankind receded ever the farther from the knowledge of the true God and sank ever the deeper into idolatry, is corroborated by the fact that the oldest known Egyptian manuscript, and of course the oldest known manuscript in the world, contains no traces of idolatry, and does not mention the name of one Egyptian god. f10 These settlers found the climate of their new country more temperate- its summers less hot, and its winters less cold- than that of the continental lands over which they had passed on their way thither. Its plains wore a covering of luxuriant grass, and afforded ample pasturage for their flocks and herds. Forests covered the mountain sides, and in places not a few stretched down into the valleys and straths. These would furnish in abundance materials for the construction of dwellings, one of the first requisites of the emigrant. The new- comers go about this task in the following wise. They clear a space in the forest, or on the jungly plain, felling the trees with a stone hatchet. On the open area they plant stakes of timber, intertwine them with wattles, and roof them with straw. There rises a little cluster of huts. A wall of palisades is run around the hamlet to defend it from the beast of prey, for, as yet, human foe they have none to dread.

In at least one instance, if we mistake not, we come upon the traces of these aboriginal settlers, and the memorials, disclosed after so long an interval, touchingly attest the truth of the picture we have drawn. The relics in question occur as far north as Loch Etive, Argyleshire. Under a black peat moss, on the banks of the loch just named, are found, here and there, patches of stone pavement of an oval form. These pavements, on being dug down to, are found strewed over with wood- ashes, the remains of fires long since extinguished; and around them lie portions of decayed hazel stakes, the relics of the palisading that once formed the defenses of the encampment. Here stood a cluster of log huts, and at a period so remote that the moss that now covers the site to a depth of eight feet has had time to grow above it. It is touching to think that in these memorials we behold the oldest known “hearths” in Scotland. We picture to ourselves the forms that sat around their fires. They may not have been just the savages we are so apt to fancy them. They had their joys and their sorrows as we at this day have ours. The human heart is the same whether it beats under a garment of ox- hide or under a vesture of fine linen. It ever goes back into the past, or forward into the future, in quest of the elements of hope and happiness. These settlers cherished, doubtless, as their most precious treasure, the traditions which their fathers had brought with them from their far- off early home. They will not let them die even in this rude land. And when the winter draws on, and the storm lowers dark on the hill, and the winds roar in the fir wood, or lash into fury the waters of the lake, beside which they have raised their huts, the inmates gather in a circle round their blazing hearth, and the patriarch of the dwelling rehearses to ears attent the traditions of an early day and a distant land. Tales of the flood and of the ark, who knows, may here have had their eloquent reciters and their absorbed listeners. The “glorious hopes” carried to our island by the first pilgrim settlers would be clung to by their descendants. The knowledge of them alone kept their head above the darkness. To part with them was to obliterate by far the brightest traces by which to track their past. But gradually, veiled in legend, or disfigured and darkened by fable, these “hopes” died out, or, rather, were crystallized in the ritual of the Druid.

The sons of Gomer, who erected these frail structures on the shores of Loch Etive, were probably coeval with the sons of Ham, who were the first builders of the pyramids on thebanks of the Nile. The monuments of the workers in granite, thanks to the durability of the material, still remain to us. The perishable edifices of the workers in wattle and sod have also been preserved by the kindly moss which, growing with the centuries, at last covered them up for the benefit of future ages. We can now compare them with the huts in which their brethren of the Gomer race, on the other side of the German Ocean, were found still living, in times not so very remote. Simple, indeed, in both style and material, was the architecture of these Cymric houses, whether on German plain or on Scottish moor. A circular row of wooden piles formed their wall. The roof was of straw; a fire was kindled on the stone floor, and the smoke made its escape by an opening left for that purpose in the center of the roof.

The habits of the inmates were simple. They were compelled to accommodate their life to the conditions of the country i~ which they found themselves. A humid atmosphere, the necessary accompaniment of a Swampy soil, would darken the sky with a frequent haze, and diminish the sun’s power to ripen the grain. Corn they did not grow. Their long devotion to the shepherd’s life had made them unfamiliar with the art of tillage. What of the husbandman’s skill they had known and practised in their ancestral homes had been unlearned on their long journey. It hardly matters, for their wants are supplied by the milk of their flocks, by the game in which their forests abound, and the fish with which their rivers are stocked, which they spear with sharpened stakes. Their hardihood is maintained by the daily combats in which they are compelled to engage with the beasts of prey. The weapons with which they do battle against these depredators of their herds, and, at times, assailants of their villages, are simple indeed. The club, the stone hatchet, the bow, the spear tipped with flint or bone, the snare, the sling, are the instruments they wield, being the only ones then known to them.

Invention sleeps when the wants of man are few. Necessity rouses the dormant faculties, and impels to the cultivation of the arts, slow and tardy at the best. It is easier transforming the shepherd into ~t warrior than training him into an artisan; the wild freedom of the hills is not easily cast off for the minute diligence and close application of the workshop. Yet were there handicrafts which these pilgrim- shepherds were compelled to learn. We find them expert at canoe- building. They had had frequent occasion to practice this art on their long journey, and the friths and lakes of their new home were too numerous to permit their skill in this important department to rust. New needs as they arise prompt to new devices. A tent may suffice as a dwelling on the plains of Asia, but not on the bleak Caledonian moor. The inhabitants of the latter must dig a chamber in the earth, or erect a hut above ground of dry sods, or of unhewn stones, would they protect themselves from the rains and frost. Garments of some sort they must needs have; for though some historians have portrayed the Caledonian as running nude on his mountains, or covering his person with paint instead of raiment, we submit that this was incompatible with existence amid the snow and ice of a Scottish winter. A succession of rigorous seasons, such as are incident to our high latitude, would have wound up the drama of the race before it had well begun, and instead of flourishing in stalwart figure for centuries, the Caledonian would have perished from the land, and left it ,is desolate and silent as when he first set foot on it. It is the historian, we suspect, who has painted.

If the Caledonian dispensed with clothing, it was only at times. He stripped himself that he might give greater agility to his limbs when he chased the roe, or greater terror to his visage when he grappled with his enemy in battle; or he disencumbered himself to wade his marshes and swim his rivers. Raiment he not only needed, but raiment of ~ very substantial kind.

The hoar frosts of Caledonia were so famous as to be heard of at Rome, and the light fabrics woven on the looms of later days would have afforded but small protection from the hairs and icy blasts of the then Scotland.

The skin of sheep or the hide of ox formed a substantial and comfortable garment for the native. This was his winter covering. The stitching of it together taught him a little tailoring. He used a needle of bone with a sinew for a thread. His summer robe was lighter, and, moreover, admitted of a little gaiety in the way of color, which would bring out in bright relief the figure of the wearer as he was seen moving athwart brown moor or blue hill. This was fabricated from the wool of his flock or the hair of his goats. The manufacture of these homely stuffs initiated the Caledonian into the useful arts of carding, spinning, and weaving.

The aboriginal dwellings merit a more particular description. They are commonly known by the name of weems. These weems have been discovered in groups in almost every county of Scotland, more particularly in Aberdeenshire, in Buchan, in Forfarshire, and even in the wildest districts of the Highlands. They are nearly as common as the sepulchral cairn. Generally the surface of the ground gives no clue to the existence of these underground dwellings. The moor or heath looks perfectly level and unbroken, and the traveler may pass and repass a hundred times without once suspecting that underneath his feet are houses that were constructed thousands of years ago, still containing the implements and utensils of the men who lived in them- the quernes in which they ground their corn, the bones and horns of the animals they hunted, the relics of their meal, and the ashes of the fire on which they cooked it.

These weems in their construction show both ingenuity and labor. Those found in Aberdeenshire are built of blocks of granite more than six feet long. They vary, of course, in their details, but the general style and structure are alike in all of them. Some of these subterranean abodes arc upwards of thirty feet long, and from eight to nine feet wide. The walls converge as they rise, and the roof is formed in the same way as in the cyclopean edifices of early Greece and the colossal temples of Mexico and Yucatan, whose builders would appear to have been ignorant of the principle of the arch. The great slabs have been made to overlap each other; the intervening space is reduced at each successive row, and at last the opening a- top is so narrowed as to be covered in by a single block, and the vault completed. Not unfrequently small side chambers are attached to the main chamber. These are entered by passages not above three feet in height, and as a proof of the inefficiency of the tools with which these primitive builders worked, the stones in the wall longing the partition between the two chambers, though placed flush in the side which presents itself to the great chamber, project their narrow ends in the side turned to the small apartment. The workmen evidently lacked metal tools to dress and smooth the stones. If one may judge from the indications in the case of the best preserved of these weems, the doorway was formed of two upright slabs; the width between being sufficient for the occupant to glide in, and by a slanting passage find his way to the chamber below. It was in many cases the only opening, and served the purpose of door, window, and chimney all in one. In some instances, however, a small aperture is found at the farther end, which might give egress to the smoke, or permit the entrance of