§ 16. In Cambridgeshire, however, the only traces of their existence remaining are their sepulchral barrows and their weapons, sometimes formed of local flint, sometimes of such as is more usually found in the North of England (which may, however, have been obtained from the boulder clay of the neighbourhood); while specimens are not unknown of the beautiful jadite axe-heads, whose existence tells us so much concerning prehistoric civilization.

17. In these we have the very earliest evidence of trade; and that not mere local barter, but an interchange of commodities between regions very widely separated. The only known locality where the material of which these axe-heads are composed is to be found is in the Chinese Empire; but the axe-heads themselves are met with all over Europe, and also in North America, proving that trade routes existed throughout the greater part of the Northern Hemisphere; while the wonderful finish of the articles, and their manufacture from so intractable a material, speaks much for the degree of skill to which their makers had attained.

§ 18. With the coming in of the Celtic races flint was everywhere superseded by metal, first bronze, and then iron, but so gradually and with so little breach of continuity that we find flint weapons still in use as late as the Battle of Hastings (where William of Poitiers mentions "lignis imposita saxa" as amongst the arms of the English militia); while the chalk-pits at Brandon in Norfolk bear evidence of having been continually worked for flints from prehistoric times to the present day. Now these pits only supply the guns of negro slave-hunters; but the piles of chippings and flakes around tell of the days when Europeans fought with flintlocks and struck their light by means of tinder-boxes, no less than of the more distant Ugrian period. Nay, the very implements still used in the pits, with their peculiar shape, are but

copies in wood and iron of the stone heads fixed into deer-horn hafts which are now and then found in some fallen-in adit, along with the bones of their prehistoric

owner.

It

19. Like workings, though now quite disused, are also found in the South Downs, and Cambridgeshire has one very remarkable example in the Royston Cave. Though modified by subsequent use for the purposes of Christian worship, there can be little doubt that this interesting excavation was originally made by flint-seekers. presents the usual features of their pits: a perpendicular shaft some twenty feet deep, narrow enough to be climbed by means of footholds cut in the sides, and gradually opening out into a circular chamber, widened as the flints and the surrounding chalk were dug away, the whole cave thus being shaped like a bottle.

20. The first Aryans who reached our island belonged to the Celtic races, the earliest swarm, in all probability, cast off by the parent stock from its home in Central Asia. Pushing across the Russian steppes, exterminating and driving before them whatever previous inhabitants they met with in their course, these races in wave upon wave poured in upon our shores. The first inrush was probably that of the pure Celts, or Goidels, the latest that of the Britons, or Cymry (an appellation signifying simply 'confederates,' and probably the 'Gomer' of Genesis x. 2), who on their march had left their name abidingly attached both to the Crimea and to the Cimbric peninsula of Denmark; and, each tribe being quite as ready to make room for itself at the expense of its Aryan kindred as at that of the aboriginal savages, it was by the Britons that the region now called England was finally occupied.

§ 21. Nor does this final occupation appear to have been of more than a few centuries' standing, when the conquests of Julius Cæsar first bring the country into connection with classical history. We there find that it was

at that time divided amongst some score of Cymric clans, small and great, of the same blood, speech, and religion as those of Gaul; sometimes, indeed, even of the same name, for there were Parisians settled on the Humber. Cambridge formed the western march of the dominions of the Iceni (as the name is usually written, though their own spelling of it, as their coins testify, was Ecen, while its many survivals in local topography show it to have been unquestionably pronounced Ickn), the most powerful, perhaps, of all the clans, themselves occupying the whole of Norfolk and Suffolk, and exercising over neighbouring tribes an influence so widely felt that Cæsar knew them as the Cenimagni-'the great Iceni '—while their military frontier road, the Icknield Way, extended right down to the Thames near Reading. This road followed the line of what are usually called the East Anglian Heights, its course testified to by such names as Ickborough in Norfolk, Icklingham in Suffolk, Ickleton in Cambridgeshire, and Ickleford in Herts, found along it.

§ 22. The existence of engineering works on so large a scale would alone be sufficient to prove that the Britons were not the mere savages which, until quite recently, historians have depicted them. Cicero, indeed, declares, in belittling Cæsar's doings, that Britain could produce no plunder worth lifting except slaves, "and quite uncultured slaves too"; but Cæsar himself and other writers, as well as the few undisputed relics of the pre-Roman British peric d, tell a different tale. The Britons had for many years been sufficiently civilized to have a coinage of their own, of native Welsh and Cornish gold, rudely

1 Cæsar, "Bell. Gal.," v. 12.

2 Cæsar speaks of this coinage as follows: "Utuntur aut ære aut nummo aureo, aut annulis ferreis ad certum pondus examinatis pro nummo." This passage was deliberately corrupted by Scaliger in the seventeenth century to deny the use of money amongst the Britons, and he was followed by editors for 200 years.

imitated from the staters of Philip of Macedon. To his equestrian device the Iceni added their own tribal badge, a crescent and a star, their coins, which are not uncommon, being mostly small thick saucers of gold, weighing about as much as a sovereign, with more rare examples of thinner and smaller specimens only one-fourth of that weight. These coins were probably introduced in the first instance through the Greek traders of Marseilles, to whom the British Druids were also most likely indebted for the Greek alphabet,1 and possibly for the Greek language, at that time the lingua franca of commerce and civilization throughout the world. The Britons were even sufficiently advanced to have fraudulent coiners amongst them, spurious imitations, composed of base metal gilded over, being sometimes found amongst their hoards. At the same time, the increasing rudeness of their devices, which begin with a perfectly recognisable copy of their Greek original, and degenerate into a series of unintelligible scratches, testify to their lack of artistic ability, till Roman influence began to make itself felt in the first century before Christ. Under that influence we see a fresh development take place; the unintelligible scratches are superseded by devices of no small merit-a vine-leaf, or an ear of corn, or a wild-boar, or a bull, or an armed warrior; while Cunobelin, who reigned in Britain about the time of the Christian era, with such sway that his name alone of independent British monarchs has been echoed down by tradition (in the form of Cymbeline), added a Latin superscription above the figure presumably meant for his image, and used silver and bronze as well as gold in his mint.

§ 23. Cambridgeshire has supplied various examples of his coinage, as well as of the earlier Icenic gold; and has likewise preserved indications of its British period, not only in the Icknield Street (which runs across the 1 Cæsar, "Bell. Gall.," vi. 13.

south-eastern corner of the county, and in the town of Royston is still called by its ancient namé), but in the earthworks of Castle Hill at Cambridge, of Vandlebury on the Gog Magog Hills, of the Round Moats at Fowlmere, and, probably, in those at Shuckburgh Castle and at Grantchester. The four (or five) great dykes which cross the Icknield Way at right angles may also be assigned almost with certainty to this period. Excavations show them to be of later age than the street itself, and to be intended for its defence against invaders from the westward. All begin from the low marshes fringing the course of the Cam, and run south-eastwards for a few miles, thus completely crossing the narrow strip of open chalk slopes which must always have existed between those marshes and the primæval forest on the East Anglian Heights. That narrow strip would form the natural path into the land of the Iceni, and was thus at once the line of their military road and a jealouslyguarded military frontier. An invader endeavouring to advance along the road would first have had to force the passage of the Brand Ditch, running from the boggy region between Melbourne and Fowlmere (still full of springs) to Heydon on the summit of the Thames watershed; then that of the Brent Ditch near Abington; then (according to the very probable view of Professor Hughes) that of the so-called Worsted Street, with its north-western flank protected by the great fort of Vandlebury; then that of the Fleam Dyke, running from Fen Ditton (a name probably derived from Ditch End) to Balsham; and finally the yet more formidable line of the famous Devil's Dyke across Newmarket Heath. This stupendous fortification extends for nearly ten miles, from the fen at Reach to the forest at Wood Ditton. The rampart (here, as in all the other defences, on the eastern side), is thirty feet above the bottom of the ditch, and was doubtless surmounted by a palisade of heavy timbers,