Forests and fens gave its name to the Gwenta of the Iceni, the predecessor of our Norwich. The North Downs, as they neared the sea, widened out, in their turn, into a third upland that still preserves its name of the Caint or Kent, and whose broad front ran from the cliffs of Thanet to those of Dover and Folkestone. Free spaces of the same character were found on the Cotswolds or on the wolds of Lincoln and York; and in all we find traces of early culture and of the presence of a population which has passed away as tillage was drawn to richer soils. . . But even at the close of the Roman rule the clearings along the river valleys were still mere strips of culture which threaded their way through a mighty waste. To realize the Britain of the Roman age, we must set before us the Poland or northern Russia of our own: a country into whose tracts of forest man is still hewing his way, and where the clearings round town or village hardly break the reaches of silent moorlands or as silent fens. The wolf roamed over the long "desert" that stretched from the Cheviots to the Peak. Beavers built in the streams of marshy hollows, such as that which reached from Beverly to Ravenspur. The wild bull wandered through forest after forest from Ettrick to Hampstead. Though the Roman engineers won fields from Romney Marsh on the Kentish coast, nothing broke the solitude of the peat bogs which stretched up the Parrett into the heart of Somersetshire, of the swamp which struck into the heart of the island along the lower Trent, or of the mightier fen along the eastern coast, the Wash, which then ran inland up the Witham all but to Lincoln, and up the Nen and the Cam as far as Huntingdon and Cambridge. But neither moor nor fen covered so vast a space of Britain as its woods. The wedge of forest and scrub that filled the hollow between the North and South Downs stretched in an unbroken mass for a hundred and twenty miles, from Hampshire to the valley of the Medway; but, huge as it was, this "Andredsweald" was hardly greater than other of the woodlands which covered Britain. A line of thickets along the shore of the Southampton Water linked it with as large a forest tract to the west, a fragment of which survives in our New Forest, but which then bent away through the present Dorsetshire and spread northward round the western edge of the Wiltshire Downs to the valley of the Frome. The line of the Severn was blocked above Worcester by the forest of Wyre, · which extended northward to Cheshire; while the Avon skirted the border of a mighty woodland, of which Shakespeare's Arden became the dwindled representative, and which all but covered the area of the present Warwickshire. Away to the east the rises of Highgate and Hampstead formed the southern edge of a forest tract that stretched without a break to the Wash, and thus almost touched the belt of woodland which ran athwart Mid-Britain in the forests of Rockingham and Charnwood, and in the Brunewald of the Lincoln heights. The northern part of the province was yet wilder and more inaccessible than the part to the south; for while Sherwood and Needwood filled the space between the Peak and the Trent, the Vale of York was pressed between the moorlands of Pickering and the waste or "desert" that stretched from the Peak of Derbyshire to the Roman wall; and beyond the wall to the Forth the country was little more than a vast wilderness of moorland and woodland which later times knew as the forest of Selkirk. 7. Cæsar's first invasion, 55 B.C. CHAPTER II PREHISTORIC AND CELTIC BRITAIN I. THE FIRST CONTACT OF THE ROMANS WITH THE BRITONS Cæsar himself gives the following account of his two famous invasions of Britain, in the years 55 B.C. and 54 B.C., and with this account the written history of the country begins. No one had had any communication with the Britons except the merchants, and even they knew nothing except the coast region and those parts which lie opposite Gaul. Cæsar therefore summoned the merchants from all sides, but was unable to find out the size of the island, or what nations inhabited it, how large these nations were, what skill they possessed in war, what customs they followed, or what harbors were suitable for a number of large ships. He thought it best to obtain information before he should incur any risk, and sent Caius Volusenus ahead with a war galley, commanding him to ascertain the truth and return to him as soon as possible. . . . Volusenus inspected all those regions as carefully as any one could who did not dare to leave his ship or join battle with the barbarians. On the fifth day he returned to Cæsar and announced to him what he had seen there... When Cæsar had collected and furnished about eighty transports, as many as he judged necessary to carry two legions, he gave the war galleys which he had to the quæstor, the lieutenants, and the prefects. Added to these were eighteen transports which were detained eight miles away by the wind; these he assigned to the cavalry. After he had arranged these matters, meeting with a favorable wind he set sail about the third watch; ΙΟ he ordered the cavalry to go to the farther port, set sail, and follow him. While these orders were being executed by them rather slowly, Cæsar himself reached Britain about the third hour of the day with the first of the ships, and there saw the forces of the enemy ready armed and drawn up in line of battle on all the hills. The nature of this place was such, and so closely bounded was the sea by the cliffs, that a weapon could be hurled from the heights to the beach. Since he considered this place by no means suitable for disembarking, he waited at anchor up to the ninth hour, until the rest of the boats should arrive. . . . When he obtained a suitable wind and tide at the same time, at a given signal he weighed anchor and advanced about seven miles from this place, where he drew up his ships on a low-lying open coast. But the barbarians, as soon as they recognized the plans of the Romans, sent forward their cavalry and charioteers, which they were accustomed to use in battle. They themselves following prevented our soldiers First contests from disembarking. Serious difficulties arose, for several reasons; on account of their size the ships could not be moored the Romans except in deep water, the soldiers were depressed by their ignorance of the place, and their hands were encumbered by the heavy weight of their arms. At one time they were obliged to leap from the boats, stand in the waves, and fight with their opponents, while the enemy, either on dry ground or standing only in shallow water, with free hands, in a locality well known to them were boldly hurling weapons and spurring forward their horses trained to this kind of battle. Our men, terrified by all this and entirely unaccustomed to this method of warfare, did not show their customary quickness and zeal. When Cæsar noticed this he ordered the war galleys, whose appearance was rather strange to the barbarians and whose motion was swifter, to be removed a little from the transports and rowed forward, in order that they might be brought up on the open flank of the enemy and the latter be driven away by the slings, arrows, and missiles. This was of great assistance to our soldiers. The barbarians, greatly disturbed by the form of the boats, by the speed of the rowers, by the unusual kind of missiles, stopped their advance and even retreated a little. . . . between the Britons and Difficult position of the Romans The battle was fiercely contested on each side. Our men were thrown into much disorder, as they were unable to preserve their ranks, to stand firmly, or to keep near their standards, so that men from the various ships gathered under whatever standards they happened to be near; since the enemy knew the shallow places, whenever from the shore they saw separate soldiers coming from the ships they spurred on their horses and attacked them while they were in difficulty; several kept surrounding a few; some on the unprotected side were hurling weapons against all of our soldiers. When Cæsar noticed this he ordered the skiffs from the war galleys and likewise the reconnoitering boats to be filled with soldiers, and sent them to help those whom he saw in difficulty. As soon as our men stood on dry ground and their comrades had joined them, they made an attack upon the enemy, putting them to flight; but they were not able to follow very far, since the cavalrymen had been unable to hold to their course and to make the island. Cæsar's usual fortune failed him in this point alone. Since the enemy were overcome in this battle, as soon as they recovered from their flight they immediately sent ambassadors to Cæsar concerning peace. The first invasion of Cæsar had been begun very late in the summer, and he had intended it rather as an armed exploration than as an attempt at conquest. The expedition of the next year was undertaken much more deliberately and carried out much more seriously. Even at this time, however, the Roman army did not. penetrate nearly so far as the center of the country, and withdrew after a three months' campaign. Therefore, although the Britons and the Romans were thus brought into contact, and our continuous knowledge of the history of the island begins, the Roman period proper does not open till almost a century later. After the completion of these things, Cæsar left Labienus on the continent with three legions and with two thousand |