ILLUSTRATIONS. xvii ANGLO-SAXON POTTERY. FOUND IN NORFOLK, KENT, AND CAMBRIDGE. FROM THE ORIGINALS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM PAGE OF GOSPELS. FROM THE ORIGINAL MS. CHAPEL AT BRADFORD-ON-AVON. EARLIEST SPECI MEN OF SAXON BUILDING EXTANT PAGE 118 130 147 ANGLO-SAXON DRINKING HORN. FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM CHARLEMAGNE. MAP OF BRITAIN, A. D. 827 ANGLO-SAXON JEWELS. FROM OTTO HENNE AM 66 RHYN'S CULTUR GESCHICHTE DES DEUTSCHEN ANGLO-SAXON CALENDAR-REAPING. 210 FROM THE ANGLO-SAXON CUP. FOUND AT HALTON, LANCA EDGAR. FROM THE ORIGINAL MS. 223 230 265 271 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, '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. |