BRITAIN BEFORE THE ROMANS.

SOMETIME in the fourth century B.C. Pytheas, a native of Massilia (Marseilles) visited the island of Britain. He travelled over a considerable part of it, and found that it consisted, for the most part, of forest or marsh. But there were open spaces in the woods in which sheep and cattle were kept, and there was a strip of land along the coast, or, at least, part of the coast, in which the traveller saw wheat growing. "This wheat," the traveller says, "the natives threshed, not on open floors, but in barns, because they had so little sunshine and so much rain." As he went further north he found that corn could not be grown. The natives made intoxicating drinks, he tells us, out of corn and honey.

The island was inhabited, probably at this time,

I What is here said of Pytheas and his account of his travels must be taken with a certain reserve. His work has been lost, and all that we know of it is derived from quotations made from it by writers who did not attach much credit to it. But on more than one point where they criticized him, we know that he was right and they were wrong. Sir E. H. Bunbury ("History of Ancient Geography," i. 590 seq.) discusses the question fully, and is inclined to regard Pytheas as, in the main, a trustworthy writer.

and certainly afterwards when we reach the historical period, by two races of men. Tacitus, writing about the end of the first century of our era, says that the physical character of the inhabitants of Britain differs much. One part of them—he speaks of these under the name of Silures-had dark complexions, and, for the most part, curly hair. These he identified with the Iberians, or inhabitants of Spain. The other part, he says, resembled the Gauls. They had red hair, and were tall of stature.

Cæsar, of whom we shall hear more in the following chapters, writing about a century and a half before Tacitus, gives testimony to much the same effect— that the interior of Britain was inhabited by a race which considered itself to be indigenous, the sea-coast by another people which, in search of adventure or booty, had crossed over from Belgic Gaul. This people, he tells us, still retained the names by which its various tribes were known on the mainland.

So far we may consider ourselves to be on firm ground. When we attempt to advance further we find ourselves at a loss. Who were these Iberians and Gauls?

Some would identify the Iberians with the race still found in the extreme north of Europe, and known by the names of Lapps and Finns. This theory may, with little or no hesitation, be set aside. It is more reasonable to see their kindred in the Bretons, occupying the extreme north-west of France, and the Basques of Northern Spain, two populations which still represent the Aquitani, the third of three races into which Cæsar divides the inhabitants of ancient

IBERIANS AND BELGIAN CElts.

3

Gaul. The Gauls of Britain, on the other hand, are identified beyond all doubt with the Gauls of the Continent, and with the Belgic stock of this people.

It is a well-known fact that in the ancient British burial-places-burial-places dating from before the time of the Roman invasion-two very distinct types of skull are found, one being broad and the other long.2 The same observation has been made of remains of the same date in France. It has been further inferred from the character of the weapons and articles of domestic use found in these graves, that the long-headed men were the ruder race. And it has been suggested that the short-headed men, with their superior weapons, drove out the earlier occupants, this dispossession being the movement spoken of by Cæsar when he says that the Belgian Gauls crossed over from the mainland and occupied the maritime parts of the island. There is a tempting neatness in the hypothesis that the long-headed Britons were Iberians, the short-headed Belgian Celts. But facts do not exactly harmonize with this theory. As Professor Huxley remarks, “the extremes of longand short-headedness are to be met with among the fair 3 inhabitants of Germany and of Scandinavia at the present day-the South-western Germans and the Swiss being markedly broad-headed, while the Scandinavians are as predominantly long-headed.” Happily the subject may be left with this statement.

The three are Belgians, Celts, and Aquitani.

2 The two types are known by the names of Brachycephalic and Dolichocephalic.

3 According to the theory all the fair, i.e., non-Iberian people, ought to be short-headed.