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 Britain, and its benefits came first to those dwellers of the southern and south-eastern coasts who were nearest to the ports of Europe.

But the foreign traders also took home with them the report that Britain looked a fertile country, and was quite worth conquering. And so, perhaps about a thousand years before Christ, a set of new tribes began to cross the Channel, and to land in our islands, not as traders, but as fighters. Terrible big fellows they were, with fair hair, and much stronger than the Stone Age men. They were armed, too, with this new-fangled bronze, which made short work of our poor little bows and flint-tipped arrows and spears. Those of us who were not killed or made slaves at once, fled to the forests, fled ever northwards or westwards, or hid in our caves again. But many of us were made slaves, especially the women, some of whom afterwards married their conquerors. The Celts, for that was the name of the new people, seized all the best land, all the flocks and herds, and all the strong places on the hill-tops, and began to lead in Britain the life which they had been leading for several centuries in the country we now call France. From these Celts the Scottish, Irish and Welsh people are mainly descended.

They rode on war-ponies, and, like the Assyrians in the the Bible, they drove war-chariots; they knew, or were soon taught by foreign traders, how to dig in the earth for minerals, and they soon did a large trade in that valuable metal, tin, which is found in Cornwall. They were in every way more civilized than the Stone Age men; their gods were fiercer and stronger; their priests, called Druids, more powerful; their tribes were much larger and better organized for war. Their