[5] Some think this port to be Witsand, others Boulogne.

[6] Coway Stakes, near Kingston-on-Thames.

CHAPTER II.

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN.

That Britain was first peopled from Gaul we are assured by the best proofs,—­proximity of situation, and resemblance in language and manners.  Of the time in which this event happened we must be contented to remain in ignorance, for we have no monuments.  But we may conclude that it was a very ancient settlement, since the Carthaginians found this island inhabited when they traded hither for tin,—­as the Phoenicians, whose tracks they followed in this commerce, are said to have done long before them.  It is true, that, when we consider the short interval between the universal deluge and that period, and compare it with the first settlement of men at such a distance from this corner of the world, it may seem not easy to reconcile such a claim to antiquity with the only authentic account we have of the origin and progress of mankind,—­especially as in those early ages the whole face of Nature was extremely rude and uncultivated, when the links of commerce, even in the countries first settled, were few and weak, navigation imperfect, geography unknown, and the hardships of travelling excessive.  But the spirit of migration, of which we have now only some faint ideas, was then strong and universal, and it fully compensated all these disadvantages.  Many writers, indeed, imagine that these migrations, so common in the primitive times, were caused by the prodigious increase of people beyond what their several territories could maintain.  But this opinion, far from being supported, is rather contradicted by the general appearance of things in that early time, when in every country vast tracts of land were suffered to lie almost useless in morasses and forests.  Nor is it, indeed, more countenanced by the ancient modes of life, no way favorable to population.  I apprehend that these first settled countries, so far from being overstocked with inhabitants, were rather thinly peopled, and that the same causes which occasioned that thinness occasioned also those frequent migrations which make so large a part of the first history of almost all nations.  For in these ages men subsisted chiefly by pasturage or hunting.  These are occupations which spread the people without multiplying them in proportion; they teach them an extensive knowledge of the country; they carry them frequently and far from their homes, and weaken those ties which might attach them to any particular habitation.